picking out each weed with minute care and petting the tender young bulbs through their covering of soft earth as he went along. Mama Schnitt, divided into two bulges by an apron-string and wearing a man's broad-brimmed straw hat, stood placidly at the end of the row for company. 

 "Good morning, Mr. Schnitt," said Johnny cheerfully. "I have just come from Ersten's. He wants you to come back." 

 "Did he say it?" asked Heinrich with no disguise of his eagerness. 

 "Not exactly," admitted Johnny, "but he said that you are the best coat cutter in New York and that your job's waiting for you." 

 "I know it," asserted Heinrich. "Is he going to move?" 

 "Not just yet," was the diplomatic return. "He will after you go back to work, I think." 

 "I never work in that place again," announced the old man with a sigh. "I said it." 

 "That shop isn't light enough, is it?" suggested the messenger. 

 "There is no light and no room," agreed Heinrich. 

 "Your eyes began to give out on you, didn't they?" 

 Heinrich straightened himself and his waxen-white face turned a delicate pink with indignation. 

 "My eyes are like a young man's yet!" he stoutly maintained. 

 "You don't read much any more," charged Mama Schnitt. 

 "My glasses don't fit," he retorted to that. 

 "You changed them last winter," she insisted. "Now, papa, don't be foolish! You know your eyes got bad in Louis Ersten's dark workroom. You never tell lies. Say it!" 

 Heinrich struggled for a moment between his pride and his honesty. 

 "Well, maybe they ain't just so good as they was," he admitted. 

 "That's what I told Ersten," stated Johnny. "He's worried stiff about it! I think he'll move so you have a lighter workroom if you go back." 

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