the Post Office Savings Bank for use when he had reached manhood.... He
made a swift resolve, when this consciousness came upon him: he would
quit the school and enter the business, so that he could be of help to
his Uncle William.

"Will you let me leave the school, Uncle?" he said. "I'm tired of the
teaching, and I'd like well to go into the shop with you!"

Uncle William did not answer for a little while. He was adding up a
column of figures in the day-book, and John could hear him counting
quietly to himself. "And six makes fifty-four... six and carry four!"
he said entering the figures in pencil at the foot of the column.

"What's that you say, John, boy?"

"I want to leave school and come into the shop and help you," John
answered.

"God love you, son, what put that notion into your head?"

"I don't want to be a burden to you, Uncle William!"

"A burden to me!" Uncle William swung round on the high office stool
and regarded his nephew intently. "Man, dear, you're no burden to me!
Look at the strength of me! Feel them muscles, will you?" He held out
his tightened arm as he spoke. "Do you think a wee fellow like you
could be a burden to a man with muscles like them, as hard as iron?"

But John was not to be put off by talk of that sort. "You know rightly
what I mean," he said. "You never get no rest at all, and here's me