Johnny was not above work, either; to him “the dignity of labour” was not a juiceless platitude, as it is to me, but a living, nourishing truth, as satisfying and wholesome as that two sides of a triangle are equal to one side of bacon.  He would hold horses for gentlemen who desired to step into a bar to inquire for letters.  He would pursue the fleeting pig at the behest of a drover.  He would carry water to the lions of a travelling menagerie, or do anything, for gain.  He was sharp-witted too:  before conveying a drop of comfort to the parching king of beasts, he would stipulate for six-pence instead of the usual free ticket—­or “tasting order,” so to speak.  He cared not a button for the show.

The first hard work Johnny did of a morning was to look over the house for fugitive pins, needles, hair-pins, matches, and other unconsidered trifles; and if he sometimes found these where nobody had lost them, he made such reparation as was in his power by losing them again where nobody but he could find them.  In the course of time, when he had garnered a good many, he would “realize,” and bank the proceeds.

Nor was he weakly superstitious, this Johnny.  You could not fool him with the Santa Claus hoax on Christmas Eve:  he would lie awake all night, as sceptical as a priest; and along toward morning, getting quietly out of bed, would examine the pendent stockings of the other children, to satisfy himself the predicted presents were not there; and in the morning it always turned out that they were not.  Then, when the other children cried because they did not get anything, and the parents affected surprise (as if they really believed in the venerable fiction), Johnny was too manly to utter a whimper:  he would simply slip out of the back door, and engage in traffic with affluent orphans; disposing of woolly horses, tin whistles, marbles, tops, dolls, and sugar archangels, at a ruinous discount for cash.  He continued these provident courses for nine long years, always banking his accretions with scrupulous care.  Everybody predicted he would one day be a merchant prince or a railway king; and some added he would sell his crown to the junk-dealers.

His unthrifty brother, meanwhile, kept growing worse and worse.  He was so careless of wealth—­so so wastefully extravagant of lucre—­that Johnny felt it his duty at times to clandestinely assume control of the fraternal finances, lest the habit of squandering should wreck the fraternal moral sense.  It was plain that Charles had entered upon the broad road which leads from the cradle to the workhouse—­and that he rather liked the travelling.  So profuse was his prodigality that there were grave suspicions as to his method of acquiring what he so openly disbursed.  There was but one opinion as to the melancholy termination of his career—­a termination which he seemed to regard as eminently desirable.  But one day, when the good pastor put it at him in so many words, Charles gave token of some apprehension.