When she had gone, the storekeeper returned to his seat on the mackerel kit, and was accosted by a pensive neighbor in high boots who sat upon the upturned end of a case of brogans. "You didn't make no sale that time, Peckett," said he.
"No," said the storekeeper, "her idees is a little too fancy for our stock of goods."
"Whar's her husband, anyway?" asked a stout, elderly man in linen trousers and faded alpaca coat, who was seated on two boxes of pearl starch, one on top of the other. "I've heard that he was a member of the legislatur'. Is that so?"
"He's not that, you can take my word for it," said Tom Peckett. "Old Miss Keswick give me to understand that he was in the fertilizing business."
"That ought to be a good thing for the old lady," said the man on the starch boxes. "She'll git a discount off her gwarner."
"I never did see," said the pensive neighbor on the brogan case, "how such things do git twisted. It was only yesterday that I met a man at Tyson's Mill, who'd just come over from the Valley, and he said he'd seen this Mr Noles over thar. He's a hoss doctor, and he's going up through all the farms along thar."
"I reckon when he gits up as fur as he wants to go," said the man on the starch boxes, "he'll come here and settle fur awhile."
"That won't be so much help to the old lady," said the storekeeper, "for it wouldn't pay to keep a neffy-in-law just to doctor one sorrel horse and a pa'r o' oxen."
"I reckon his wife must be 'spectin' him," said the man on the brogan case, "from her comin' after fancy vittles."
"If he do come," said the stout, elderly neighbor, "I wish you'd let me know, Tom Peckett, fur my black mar has got a hitch in her shoulder I can't understand, and I'd like him to look at her."