On the Stairs

ight new red tie, busy at his own window. I waved my hand, and he waved back. Raymond looked at him, but made no special sign. Johnny was packing up his specimens and his postage-stamps, preparatory to the family heg- ira, though neither of us knew. Raymond, who might have asked for almost anything, asked for nothing. Johnny, who was in position to ask for next to nothing, asked for almost everything. He was constantly teasing his parents, so far as my observation went; and his teasing was a form of criticism. "You are not doing the right thing by me " ? such might have seemed his plaint. He was beginning to spread, to reach out: acquisitiveness and assimilativeness were to be his two watchwords. He hankered after the externalities; he wanted "things." If it was only a new stamp-album, he wanted it hard, and he said so. I shall not go so far as to say that he hectored his parents into sending him to our school. They were probably feeling, on their own account, that they had come to town for better things than they had been getting; and likely enough they met his demands halfway. There was usually a certain element of cheeriness in his nagging; but the cheeriness was quite secondary to the insistence. "Oh, come, mother!" or, "Oh, father, now!" was commonly Johnny's opening formula, employed with a smile, wheedling or protesting, as the occasion seemed to require. And, "Oh, well. . .!" was commonly the opening formula for the response ? meaning, in complete...