It was Lynn who suggested everything, with Max occasionally coming in with a brilliant thought like “hundreds and lousands of laspberry jam.”
As for instance—soap. “Yes, you will need soap,” Lynn said; “how much? Oh, I think you always order grocery things in half-dozens.”
“Half-dozens be it,” said Hugh.
[p68] “Six bars of soap,” wrote Octavius, who was a little deaf, and had not heard the quantity difficulty. “Six pounds of sago, six tins of curry-powder, y-y-yes, six jars of honey, certainly, six tins of tongue, six tins of asparagus, six pounds of pepper, six clothes pegs. Bacon? Any favourite brand?”
“Well, all I’m particular about,” said Hugh, with a twinkle in his eye, “is that it shall be prime middle cut and elevenpence a pound.”
“Just the very thing I make a speciality of!” cried the old man marvelling.
Finally the order was complete; it took two pages of the order book. Octavius would have to borrow Burunda’s one cart to deliver so tremendous an order; the usual thing was for Larkin to carry goods in a basket on horseback.
He would have to go over to his brother Septimus and borrow some things,—asparagus, for instance; he never kept more than two tins at a time of so expensive an article. And pepper—his whole stock of pepper at present was but three pounds!
He bowed his customers out, rubbing his hands together, praising the day, the view—everything. Some enormously wealthy friend of the Judge, without a doubt. Possibly the Premier from some other State—yes, most likely a Premier—who else could want six tins of tongue? Doubtless he was going to [p69] entertain the Ministers at a picnic at the waterfall.
“The Premier” came back after he had gone a step or two.