Once started on his Californian reminiscences, experience had taught them that Mr. Dolloway rarely left the theme till actually forced to do so; and Bonny, foreseeing an extra dose of “California” coming now, interrupted the discussion promptly. “Who did buy the wagon if you did not?”
“Mr. Brook, Mr. Brook himself. I didn’t like to trust his judgment in the matter, but I had to. I had the rheumatiz that day, an’ he was goin’ into town, so he selected it. Then the wagon-makers fixed it up fresh and sent it down. It was a brand-new one, though. It wasn’t none of your ‘second hands.’ Was you a-thinkin’ it was?”
“We did not think so for a minute. We knew it must be a new one.”
“An’ business is fa’rly successful, ain’t it?”
“I think it is splendid. I am earning about three dollars a trip now, clear profit; and I think I shall do still better later in the season, when more of the city people get out here to their country homes. You see, I flatter myself that I know how to do an errand well. I try to be exact, and I know—of two things—which seems the newer or better. I owe that to my late city training. Yes, I shall build up a really profitable business, soon. Then I sell already a good many early vegetables. I have sold all of one crop of pease, and have the second one coming on. It is ‘the early bird catches the worm’ in the green-grocer or market-gardener business, in truth. By and by, when the people get their own gardens growing, my stock may have to go begging for a purchaser.”
“Humph! Then I suppose you’ll let us have at least a smell of the pease-pods!” exclaimed Bonny, laughing. “So far, I assure you, Mr. Dolloway, the enjoyment we have had in our ‘early vegetables’ has been the satisfaction of seeing them grow. But I have been more generous. I have given the family enough honey to make each member of it sick!”
“Which was a long look ahead, my friend! Because the family appetite is now cloyed, and honey may be left safely anywhere about without fear of its diminishing in quantity.”
Mr. Dolloway laughed as heartily as the others, and, having stayed long enough to “beat that young whipper-snapper of a Robert terribly” over a game of checkers, departed homeward, in high good humor with himself and all the world.
“How funny! If I had given anybody a surprise gift I don’t believe I’d be angry if it proved the surprise!” exclaimed Roland, as he closed the windows for the night.
“Don’t be too sure, my son. Almost everybody likes to be thanked for kindnesses conferred, and Mr. Dolloway is an old man, to whom all events are now great ones. The thing which worries me is his using his money, he a wage-earner himself, for us. It doesn’t seem right.”