“What are you doing, neighbour?”
I continued a moment with my playing, but commanded him with my eye.
Oh, I assure you I assumed all the airs of a virtuoso. When I had finished my tune I removed my whistle deliberately and wiped my lips.
“Why, enjoying myself,” I replied with greatest good humour. “What are you doing?”
“Why,” he said, “watching you enjoy yourself. I heard you playing as I passed in the road, and couldn't imagine what it could be.”
I told him I thought it might still be difficult, having heard me near at hand, to imagine what it could be—and thus, tossing the ball of good-humoured repartee back and forth, we walked down to the road together. He had a quiet old horse and a curious top buggy with the unmistakable box of an agent or peddler built on behind.
“My name,” he said, “is Canfield. I fight dust.”
“And mine,” I said, “is Grayson. I whistle.”
I discovered that he was an agent for brushes, and he opened his box and showed me the greatest assortment of big and little brushes: bristle brushes, broom brushes, yarn brushes, wire brushes, brushes for man and brushes for beast, brushes of every conceivable size and shape that ever I saw in all my life. He had out one of his especial pets—he called it his “leader”—and feeling it familiarly in his hand he instinctively began the jargon of well-handled and voice-worn phrases which went with that particular brush. It was just as though some one had touched a button and had started him going. It was amazing to me that any one in the world should be so much interested in mere brushes—until he actually began to make me feel that brushes were as interesting as anything else!
What a strange, little, dried-up old fellow he was, with his balls of muttonchop sidewhiskers, his thick eyebrows, and his lively blue eyes!—a man evidently not readily turned aside by rebuffs. He had already shown that his wit as a talker had been sharpened by long and varied contact with a world of reluctant purchasers. I was really curious to know more of him, so I said finally: