"Well, I do. Yes, indeed. I keep pretty nearly everything—except case-knives. There's nothing out of place in keeping shoe-laces in a grocery business, not until after you begin to wear them, and for my own part they seem to me just as decent as shoe buttons which all the town would be up in surprise if I didn't have them in my grocery business."
"Yes, I knew you kept shoe buttons," said Mrs. O'Neil.
"I keep everything, except strange women travelling after dark. My store is a general one. I thank heaven there's nothing of the specialist in me. I'd of starved if there was, or been obliged to charge very high for very little work, which would mean starving in a while anyhow, so being no doctor I couldn't stay a specialist long even if I tried."
"I think you ought to come up-stairs and see their room, Mrs. Ray," Mrs. O'Neil said, going back to the main question.
"What is it about their room?" Lassie asked.
"There isn't anything about it—that's what it is," said Mrs. Ray; "respectable people always have things about their room. Yes, indeed. But of course women walking across country nights can't carry much fancy fixings even if they don't mind stopping all night wherever the rain catches them."
"Did they stop over night anywhere?" Lassie asked.
Mrs. Ray adjusted her shawl. "Such doings!" she muttered; "I never heard the like. That's one way to work the game. I never had any game. I just had the work. Whenever there came up something as had to be done that nobody in town could do, I was glad to learn how for the money. Yes, indeed. And now they come along and live on the fat of the land, case-knives and all."
"Do let's go up and see the room," pleaded Mrs. O'Neil.
Mrs. Ray wavered. "Well, if Mary Cody will stand in the hall and watch?" she stipulated.