He felt there should be some way to get into the house and have five minutes' conversation with Miss Sally. If this Colonel and this Skinner had already had months or years of opportunity for pressing their suits, there was not time to be lost, and the sooner he began the sooner he would win. But none of his ordinary methods of entering unwilling houses would serve his purpose this time. It would not do to begin by making Miss Sally unfriendly. So Eliph' tucked his book more snugly under his left arm and looked at the house. He walked to the gate and looked up at the roof; walked across the street and viewed the house in perspective; but nothing useful came of it, so he crossed the street again and tried ringing the doorbell once more. He rang it sharply and waited. Then he knocked and waited. He was willing to wait until the door opened, and he leaned against the porch railing and waited, ringing the doorbell insinuatingly, or commandingly, or coaxingly, from time to time.
Meanwhile, the attorney waited until the half hour he had assigned was up, and then walked toward Miss Briggs' house with briskly business-like steps.
“Now, some folks,” he said to himself, as he walked, “wouldn't get any fun at all out of a case like this, but I do. That's the way to keep young. It's why I don't grow stale in this town. It is a small puddle for a toad of my size, but I hop around and keep things stirred up.”
As he neared the house, he saw the Colonel approaching from the opposite direction, and he waved his hand to him, and the Colonel hurried to meet him. They turned into the yard together, and saw Eliph' Hewlitt resting easily against the porch railing.
“Nobody's at home?” asked the attorney.
“Yes,” said Eliph'. “Somebody's home, but they don't answer the bell.
“Book agent?” said the attorney. “Well, you can't blame them, much. Gems of literature aren't always wanted.”
The Colonel scowled. He felt a personal interest in Pap Briggs' money, and he resented any attempt to part the old man from any of it. He suffered almost as deeply at tax time as Pap himself did, and he considered the money Sally had to pay in installments on Sir Walter Scott as practically thrown away, and that she might as well have taken it out of his own pocket. He knocked on the lower step of the porch, with the side of his ax, angrily.
“You git out of this here yard!” he ordered. “I don't want no book agents a-hangin' around here, an' I won't have it. You clean out of here!”
Eliph' coughed lightly behind his hand, but the words of reproof that he intended to launch softly at the Colonel were never spoken.