"Do you know," Ed asked the Captain, "the motto that I'd print on that door?"
The Captain didn't.
"Push," said he dramatically; "that's my motto."
I can see the old Captain drawing himself up to his full stature (he was about once and a half Ed's size).
"Well, sir," said he, "we need no such sign on our door. Our door has stood wide open to our friends, sir, for thirty years."
When the old Captain began to be excessively polite, and to address a man as "sir," he who was wise sought shelter. It was the old Antietam spirit boiling within him. But Ed Smith blithely pursued his way, full of confidence in himself and in the god he worshipped, and it was one of Anthy's real triumphs, in those days of excursions and alarms, that she was able both to pacify the Captain and keep Fergus down.
Ed came in that morning while I was in the printing-office, a cheerful, quick-stepping, bold-eyed young fellow with a small neat moustache, his hat slightly tilted back, and a toothbrush in his vest pocket.
"You are the man," he said to me briskly, "that writes the stuff about the Corwin neighbourhood."
I acknowledged that I was.
"Good stuff," said he, "good stuff! Give us more of it. And can't you drum up a few new subs out there for us? Those farmers around you ought to be able to come up with the ready cash."