I had him!
“Exactly,” I exclaimed eagerly.
We both paused. He was the first to speak—with some embarrassment:
“Say, you're just like a preacher I used to know when I was a kid. He was always sayin' things that meant something else and when you found out what he was drivin' at you always felt kind of queer in your insides.”
I laughed.
“It's a mighty good sign,” I said, “when a man begins to feel queer in the insides. It shows that something is happening to him.”
With that we walked back to the road, feeling very close and friendly—and shovelling again, not saying much. After quite a time, when we had nearly cleaned up the landslide, I heard the husky road-worker chuckling to himself; finally, straightening up, he said:
“Say, there's more things in a road than ever I dreamt of.”
“I see,” said I, “that the new spectacles are a good fit.”
The road-worker laughed long and loud.