IT was Fourth of July morning, and Davie Carson had been up since a good while before the sun, not firing crackers and torpedoes, nor watching the firing of the great cannon, but doing the chores. He was in tremendous haste. An entire holiday was a thing he did not have twice in a year. A hard-working boy was Davie, with not only his own bread to earn, but with a great longing in his heart to help earn the bread of two sisters and a brother younger than himself. He lived in a small village where there was little chance of a boy of his age earning much. The best that he had been able to do, so far, was to seize odd jobs as they happened along; or rather as he hunted them out. Not very pleasant jobs, all of them. Davie liked horses, and was glad of a chance to lead Dr. Bristol’s to water; but to like to clean out their stalls was another thing. But he knew how to do this work, and did it well, and had put on his great work apron this morning for the purpose of taking that job next.

It was his last one for the morning; after that breakfast, and then a four-mile brisk run to the next village to the Fourth of July celebration. His mother had not made the least objection to his staying to the celebration. On the contrary she had said heartily: “I am glad the doctor wants an errand done there; it will give you a good excuse for going. Of course you may stay, and welcome; and I’ll put you up a nice Fourth of July lunch; and if there is something to see, or to buy, that doesn’t cost more than ten cents, you just have it, or see it, whichever it is. You deserve a treat, Davie.”

Davie laughed gleefully. It was pleasant to hear his mother speak such words, but he had a very different plan. Hurried as he had been that morning, he leaned on his spade and thought it all out. In the village where the celebration was to be was a large book store, where he had once or twice been sent on errands for Dr. Bristol, and had feasted his eyes upon the rows and rows of books and magazines, and thought what a thing it would be to have a chance to handle them. The day before, while holding the horses and waiting for the doctor, his eyes had rested on an advertisement in the paper—WANTED: A BOY. Then had followed a brief statement of the kind of boy, and what his duties would be, and the whole was signed by the proprietor of the book store.

Davie’s cheeks had glowed so while reading it, that the doctor, returning just then, had looked hard at him, and asked him if he was getting up a fever. The splendid plan which the boy had thought out leaning on his shovel was, that he would clip around to the book store the moment the doctor’s errand was done, and try for that place!

To be sure there was hardly a possibility that he would succeed, but then he might, and certainly he would never accomplish anything if he did not try. But he did not mean to let any body know of his ambitions, so he had only a laugh for his mother’s suggestion.

“If I get a chance to see the procession and hear the music and a few such things it will be all the lark I want,” he said cheerily, “except the lunch; I’ll be sure to want that. You are sure you can get along without me for such a long time?”

“O, yes, indeed!” the mother said, smiling back on him. It was so like her Davie to think of mother.

Davie made good speed over the road, though it was up hill and dusty, and the day was warm. He believed himself to be in ample time to see the parade which was to be made in honor of the day. At the corner he halted and glanced wistfully toward the book store; it was within half a block of him, and who knew but that if he should appear so early in the day he might get ahead of somebody?

“No, it can’t be done,” he said at last, speaking aloud and firmly. “Davie Carson, I am ashamed of you! A package of medicine in your pocket that the doctor said an old lady was anxiously waiting for, and you thinking about stopping on an errand of your own. Just march down to Coleman Street as fast as your feet can carry you!”

And the order was meekly obeyed. Here he was detained for minutes which seemed like hours to him. The sound of martial music was heard in the near distance, and people all along the streets were dodging to the doors to see if anything was to be seen; but the old lady’s daughter wanted to write a note to the doctor to send back by Davie. She would not be a minute, she said; but she was.

“I might call for the note on my way home,” Davie timidly suggested. But she said, “O, no! that was not worth while; she could just as well write it now, and make sure of it; she would have it ready very soon.” And the sound of music drew nearer and nearer, until it passed the corner and faded in the distance; and the note was ready at last.

Davie crowded it into his pocket, tried to listen respectfully to several messages besides, and went down the stairs three steps at a time to follow that fading music. The street was nearly deserted; all the boys had rushed out of sight with the procession. Davie took long strides in the same direction, and wondered if it would be improper to break into a run.

Appearing at that moment around the corner ahead of him was a belated group—a father, mother and two children; odd-looking people, queerly dressed, and seeming to be entirely out of place in a town.

“Halloo! what’s the matter now?” Another corner had been reached and turned by the people ahead of him, with the exception of the youngest of the group, who had tumbled down; it was her outcry which roused him. He picked her up, brushing the dust and soil from her clothes, straightening the much bent sunbonnet, and urging her not to cry, that they would find the others in a jiffy. She stopped crying the moment she discovered herself in kind hands, and looked confidingly at Davie out of great blue eyes, and slipped her small brown hand into his with great satisfaction. Then they two turned the corner, and were at once in a crowd. The thing which astonished and troubled him was, that the father and mother and older sister of his little girl seemed to have disappeared. For a weary half-hour the two jostled against the crowd and stared and hunted. At last there darted toward him an angry father, talking broken English in loud tones, followed by an angrier mother and a crying little girl. “What was he doing with Gretchen? How dare he steal their Gretchen and make off with her! Bad, wicked boy! The police should know all about it, that they should!” In vain Davie tried to explain; they were too excited and frightened to listen to explanations. In the midst of Davie’s attempts two well-dressed boys standing near, broke into laughter, and so confused him that he stopped short, and the enraged family trudged away, his little girl in his arms, and the father shaking his head at Davie. But the little girl looked back and smiled lovingly on him.

Then Davie found that the crowd were trying to get near the band stand.

“Come this way,” said one of the boys who had laughed, touching his shoulder; “there is a chance to slip in behind here and get a first-rate position.” Davie thanked them, and was just going to slip in, when a little girl who was flying past, going in the opposite direction from the pushing crowd, jostled against him, and as she did so dropped from under her arm a small package. Davie picked it up and looked eagerly after the girl, shouting, “Hold on, you’ve lost something!” But she flew like the wind.

“You can’t catch her,” said a man; “she is lost in the jam by this time. You may as well pocket the bundle and call it Fourth of July luck.”

“And you will lose your chance in here if you don’t come this minute,” said one of the boys, trying to keep a way open for him.

“Thank you,” said Davie, “but I think I ought to find the little girl,” saying which he struck into the crowd, and began his search.

It was several hours afterwards that a boy who was very tired, and who, if he had not been so disappointed, would have been hungry, came out of the handsome book store and with slow steps started for his long walk home. He had delivered the medicine for which he came in the first place; he had the note for the doctor safe in his pocket; he had picked up a little German girl, and after much trouble given her back to a father who was angry at him about it; he had followed a little girl, or rather followed the road over which she vanished, for two weary hours, and at last found her and restored the lost parcel, only to hear her laugh gleefully and declare that there was nothing in it but some dried-up sandwiches, which he was welcome to if he wanted them. And not a glimpse of procession, or sound of martial music or voice of public speaker had he seen or heard that day, save the few strains in the distance which had lured him in the morning.

Moreover, he had called at the book store only to have the proprietor shake his head and say: “Of course, my boy, I couldn’t engage you for such a place as this without references. For whom do you work when you are at home?”

Davie explained that they had been but a short time in that part of the country; he had no regular place, but did odd jobs for Dr. Bristol—cleaned out the stable and such things. No, Dr. Bristol did not know much about him—nobody did but mother—and he had not known that a recommendation would be needed.

“I might just as well have staid at home and helped mother,” said Davie, as he walked slowly, with head down. “I’ve lost a day, and gained nothing at all. I wish I had—no, I don’t either. I did what I thought was right. I’m glad I did it.” Whereupon Davie whistled.

“Who was that boy, father, and what did he want?” A young man asked the question of the bookseller as he came back to his parlor; he liked the looks of the boy.

“Do you know anything about him?” replied the father, and before he could answer a bright-faced little girl chimed in: “O, Uncle Edward! what is his name? Don’t you know? I’m so sorry if you don’t; papa wants to know it.”

“No, sir,” said the young man; “I don’t know him; but he is the chap I was telling you about who wandered around with that little German girl, and took patiently a hard scolding from the father afterwards, and a laugh from two well-dressed, thoughtless boys.”

“Is he, indeed?” said the father; “I wish I had known it.”

Then the little girl: “And O, Uncle Edward! don’t you think he is the very same boy who hunted after me for two hours to give me those sandwiches. Papa said I was a little dunce not to ask his name; that he ought to be rewarded for honesty and faithfulness.”

“I know his name,” said Uncle Edward, “and I believe I will reward him.”

The next morning, when Davie was out in the little garden hoeing and whistling, a strange thing happened to him; he received a letter—the first letter with his name on the envelope which he had ever received. It was short and to the point:

“Mother,” said Davie, as they went all over the plans for the third time, “who could have called on him who knows anything about me? I can’t imagine.”

Pansy.