Old Mose Miller came slouching into the Bazar just before noon next day. Old Mose lived up the river in a little shanty, but he had a big farm and fine barns and a herd of Holstein cattle that would make your eyes bung out. He lived all alone. Seemed like he didn’t like folks. Mostly he wouldn’t speak to anybody, and the man who went through his gate without good and sufficient business was taking a chance. I suppose every boy in Wicksville had been chased by Old Mose—and quite a lot of the men.
Well, Old Mose came in and began snarling around and making faces like everything he saw hit him on the wrong side of his temper. He was the homeliest old coot you ever saw. Downright homely, he was! He didn’t have a hair on his head, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone. If that was all he wouldn’t have had much chance to be thought good-looking, but it wasn’t all. His nose was broken and came zigzagging down the middle of his face like a rail fence, and he had only about every second tooth in front. That’s all that ailed his head if you forgot about his ears—and they were so big they flapped when he walked.
The rest of him was just as bad, but I expect his feet were his strongest point. They were flat—flat as pancakes. And big! Well, say, folks was used to saying that in winter he didn’t need to use snow-shoes. If the rest of him had grown up to match his feet he’d have been eleven feet tall.
Mark stepped up to wait on him.
“W-what can I do for you, Mr. Miller?” he asked, as polite as could be.
“You kin talk like a human bein’,” says Old Mose, “and not like a buggy joltin’ over a corduroy road.”
I ducked down back of the counter so Mark couldn’t see me laugh, for he does hate to have anybody make fun of his stuttering. I listened sharp, expecting him to give Old Mose as good as he sent, but not a word did he say. In business hours he tended to business, and so long as a customer didn’t go too far Mark would be patient as a lamb. So he just waited.
“Folks,” says Old Mose, “is a pesky nuisance.”
“Yes, sir,” says Mark.
“Shet up,” says Mose. “What d’you know about it?”