“Oh, that’s different. Wa’al, I guess I might as well go then,” and he leisurely laid aside the shoe, the piece of leather and needle.
“I think you had better hurry,” said Dan respectfully.
“Hurry? What fer? Didn’t ye say th’ other fellow was payin’ fer it? I ain’t got no call t’ hurry. It don’t cost me nothin’, an’ ef folks calls me up they has t’ wait till I git good an’ ready t’ answer.”
There was no use trying to combat such a mean argument as Dan felt this to be, so he said nothing, but went back to resume his hoeing, before Mr. Savage would have a chance to scold him for being lazy.
“I wish some one would call me up on the telephone, and tell me they had a good job for me—somewhere else besides on a farm,” thought Dan, as he bent to his work. “I wonder how it seems to talk over a wire. It must be queer.”
When he found out he did not have to pay for the telephone message Mr. Savage proceeded slowly down the road to Mr. Lane’s house. Though he pretended he was not anxious, the old miserly farmer was, nevertheless, quite excited in wondering who could want to talk to him.
“Maybe it’s a message from th’ police, to say that th’ feller what give me that bad quarter has been arrested,” he murmured as he approached the house. “I hope it is. I’d like t’ see him git ten years. It was a mean trick t’ play on me.”
“You’d better hurry,” advised Mr. Lane, as he saw Mr. Savage coming up the front walk. “The party on the other end of the wire is getting impatient.”
“Wa’al, folks what bothers me at my work has t’ wait,” spoke up Mr. Savage, in rather a surly tone, and he did not thank Mr. Lane for his trouble in calling him to the telephone.
Mr. Savage took up the receiver, and fairly shouted into the transmitter: