"I guess there isn't so much to tell," I said. "He stopped up at our place the other day, and said he wanted to sell his outfit. So I bought him out. He was pining to get back to Brooklyn and write a book."
"That book o' his!" said Mrs. Pratt. "He was always talkin' on it, but I don't believe he ever started it yet."
"Whereabout do you come from, Miss McGill?" said Pratt. I could see he was mighty puzzled at a woman driving a vanload of books around the country, alone.
"Over toward Redfield," I said.
"You any kin to that writer that lives up that way?"
"You mean Andrew McGill?" I said. "He's my brother."
"Do tell!" exclaimed Mrs. Pratt. "Why the Perfessor thought a terrible lot of him. He read us all to sleep with one of his books one night. Said he was the best literature in this State, I do believe."
I smiled to myself as I thought of the set-to on the road from Shelby.
"Well," said Pratt, "if the Perfessor's got any better friends than us in these parts, I'm glad to meet 'em. He come here first time 'bout four years ago. I was up working in the hayfield that afternoon, and I heard a shout down by the mill pond. I looked over that way and saw a couple o' kids waving their arms and screamin'. I ran down the hill and there was the Perfessor just a pullin' my boy Dick out o' the water. Dick's this one over here."
Dick, a small boy of thirteen or so, grew red under his freckles.