"So  you're  not  too  tony  for  the  grocery  business,  eh?"

"Oh,  no,  sir."

"It  was  good  enough  for  old  Benjamin  Breck,"  he  said.
"Well,  I'll  give  you  a  fair  trial,  my  boy,  and  no  favouritism
on  account  of  relationship,  any  more  than  to  Willie."


64  A  FAR  COUNTRY

His  strong  voice  resounded  through  the  store,  and  pres-
ently my  cousin  Willie  appeared  in  answer  to  his  summons,
the  same  Willie  who  used  to  lead  me,  on  mischief  bent,
through  the  bams  and  woods  and  fields  of  Claremore.  He
was  barefoot  no  longer,  though  freckled  still,  grown  lanky
and  tall;  he  wore  a  coarse  blue  apron  that  fell  below  his
knees,  and  a  pencil  was  stuck  behind  his  ear.
"  Get  an  apron  for  Hugh,"  said  his  father.
Willie's  grin  grew  wider.
"I'll  fit  him  out,"  he  said.
"Start  him  in  the  shipping  department,"  directed  Cousin
Robert,  and  turned  to  his  letters.
I  was  forthwith  provided  with  an  apron,  and  introduced
to  the  slim  and  ansemic  but  cheerful  Johnny  Hedges,  the  ship-
ping clerk,  hard  at  work  in  the  alley.  Secretly  I  looked
down  on  my  fellow-clerks,  as  one  destined  for  a  higher  mis-
sion, made  out  of  better  stuff,  —  finer  stujff.  Despite  my
attempt  to  hide  this  sense  of  superiority  they  were  swift  to
discover  it ;  and  perhaps  it  is  to  my  credit  as  well  as  theirs
that  they  did  not  resent  it.  Curiously  enough,  they  seemed
to  acknowledge  it.  Before  the  week  was  out  I  had  earned
the  nickname  of  Beau  Brummel.
