“I never saw the thing in my life before.”
“You didn’t? Then away goes my last idea! Of course, if either Mr. or Miss Brook had given it, you would have known!”
Mr. Dolloway did not comment upon this opinion. He merely began to walk about the new vehicle and examine it with the eye of a connoisseur in express wagons. “H’m-m! ’Pears to be purty well put together.”
“Well put together!” exclaimed Roland, joining their visitor. “It’s perfect. Whoever picked it out knew what was what!”
“Humph! I should like to know what you, a city feller, know about wagons!”
“Well, if I never owned one I have seen them by the thousands, yes, the millions, I suppose; and I know this looks exactly like those the dry-goods’ houses send out. And the one at the last store I worked in might have been first cousin to the ‘Beckwith.’”
“H’m-m! Sounds kind of top-lofty, don’t it? You, a little, ign’runt sprat, a comin’ into a town an’ a settin’ up a business that never was set up there afore!”
Roland was in too good humor to resent the unpleasant candor of his old neighbor, so he merely whistled a bar from the “Mikado,” and went on to call Mr. Dolloway’s attention to the various merits of his new possession.
“Humph! Hain’t hitched her up yet, have you?”
“No; but I will, right away. Unless— Mother, is there anything I can do for you before I go to work?”