“He didn’t say why he wanted them, I suppose?” Don inquired.
“Oh, no,” protested Mr. Potts. “And of course I didn’t ask him. I’m not in the habit of asking people what they buy things for, you know!”
“I know it!” returned Hudson, gravely. “You wouldn’t do anything like that, Mr. Potts!”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Potts agreed, eyeing him suspiciously. “I never ask no questions. What do you boys want to know what Peter bought the blades for?”
“We want to hire him to do a job for us,” Jim said, gravely. “Colonel Morrell is thinking of building a new school and he wants Peter to saw up the lumber for him!”
“For lands sake! You don’t saw up lumber with a steel metal-cutting blade. Look here, are you boys poking fun at me?”
The boys looked from one to the other in silence and then Douglas shook his head. “It is horribly bad manners to poke at anyone, Mr. Potts. We wouldn’t think of it. Well, thanks for your information. So long.”
The cadets walked out of the local hardware store, leaving Mr. Potts in an uncertain frame of mind. He shook his head and went back to work, addressing his clerk briefly.
“Them cadets must be crazy. Such looney talk I never heard!”
On the way out to the unkempt street that had been named Meadow Street Don chuckled.