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“Can’t I carry yer bag for ye, Mister Paul?” asked the porter, who was showing him out.

“No, thank you, Mike,” was the young man’s answer. “That bag has very little in it. And, besides, I haven’t got to carry it far.”

The next morning Paul was the first of the three to arrive. The clerks were in their places already, but neither the senior nor the junior partner had yet come. The porter happened to be standing under the wagon archway as Paul Whittier was about to enter the store.

The young man saw the porter, and a mischievous smile hovered about the corners of his mouth.

“Mike,” he said, pausing on the door-step, “do you think you ought to smoke while you are cleaning out our office in the morning?”

“Sure, I haven’t had me pipe in me mouth this mornin’ at all,” the porter answered, taken by surprise.

“But yesterday morning?” Paul pursued.

“Yesterday mornin’!” Mike echoed, not a little puzzled.

“Yesterday morning at ten minutes before eight you were in the private office smoking a pipe.”

“But how did you see me, Mr. Paul?” cried Mike, in amaze. “Ye was late in comin’ down yesterday, wasn’t ye?”

Paul smiled pleasantly.

“A little bird told me,” he said.

“If I had the bird I’d ring his neck for tellin’ tales,” the porter remarked.

“I don’t mind your smoking, Mike,” the young man went on, “that’s your own affair; but I’d rather you didn’t smoke a pipe while you are tidying up the private office.”

“Well, Mister Paul, I won’t do it again,” the porter promised.

“And I wouldn’t encourage Bob to smoke, either,” Paul continued.

“I encourage him?” inquired Mike.

“Yes,” Paul explained; “yesterday morning you let him light his cigarette from your pipe–didn’t you?”

“Were you peekin’ in thro’ the winder, Mister Paul?” the porter asked, eagerly. “Ye saw me, an’ I never saw ye at all.”

“No,” the young man answered, “I can’t say that I saw you myself. A little bird told me.”

And with that he left the wondering porter and entered the store. Just inside the door was the office-boy, who hastily hid an unlighted cigarette as he caught sight of the senior partner’s son.

When Paul saw the red-headed boy he smiled again, mischievously.

“Bob,” he began, “when you want to see who can stand on his head the longest, you or Danny the boot-black, don’t you think you could choose a better place than the private office?”

The office-boy was quite as much taken by surprise as the porter had been, but he was younger and quicker-witted.

“And when did I have Danny in the office?” he asked, defiantly.

“Yesterday morning,” Paul answered, still smiling, “a little before half-past eight.”

“Yesterday mornin’?” repeated Bob, as though trying hard to recall all the events of the day before. “Maybe Danny did come in for a minute.”

“He played leap-frog with you all the way into the private office,” Paul went on, while Bob looked at him with increasing wonder.

“How did you know?” the office-boy asked, frankly. “Were you lookin’ through the window?”

“How do I know that you and Danny stood on your heads in the corner of the office with your heels against the safe, scratching off the paint? Next time I’d try the yard, if I were you. Sports of that sort are more fun in the open air.”

And with that parting shot Paul went on his way to his own desk, leaving the office-boy greatly puzzled.

Later in the day Bob and Mike exchanged confidences, and neither was ready with an explanation.

“At school,” Bob declared, “we used to think teacher had eyes in the back of her head. She was everlastingly catchin’ me when I did things behind her back. But Mr. Paul beats that, for he see me doin’ things when he wasn’t here.”

“Mister Paul wasn’t here, for sure, yesterday mornin’,” Mike asserted; “I’d take me oath o’ that. An’ if he wasn’t here, how could he see me givin’ ye a light from me pipe? Answer me that! He says it’s a little bird told him; but that’s not it, I’m thinkin’. Not but that they have clocks with birds into ’em, that come out and tell the time o’ day, ‘Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!’ An’ if that big clock he broke last week had a bird in it that could tell time that way, I’d break the thing quick–so I would.”