"Well, it seems there's a young man in Boston who has a good deal of ingenuity, and he actually has a sewing machine on exhibition at a tailor's there. For some days he's been sewing seams with it, the paper said, at the rate of three hundred stitches to the minute. Perhaps we shall find that tailor's shop to-morrow."
"I should like nothing better," answered Mrs. Wheeler. "Maybe we can buy Jonathan's trousers there."
Jonathan had been an interested listener to this conversation; but just then he caught sight of a moving column of smoke, and for the rest of the drive he thought of little else but the engine he could scarcely wait to see. By ten o'clock came South Acton; then the long hours while his elders ate slowly and talked much; at last the wonderful, puffing, noisy engine and the strange, flat-roofed houses on wheels with their many little windows. Jonathan's world had grown very large indeed when he went to sleep that night at the City Tavern in Brattle Street.
The next morning at the breakfast table, with the aid of the Morning Advertiser and the Boston Transcript of the night before, the Wheelers made their plans for the day's shopping and sight-seeing.
"We'll do the shopping first," decided Mrs. Wheeler. "Here's an advertisement of ready-made clothing." And she read aloud what was, for those days, a rather startling advertisement, beginning:
PERPETUAL FAIR
AT
QUINCY HALL
OVER QUINCY HALL MARKET
BOSTON
"Let's go there," advised Uncle William. "Quincy Market isn't far from here." So the Wheelers' first stopping place that morning was Mr. Simmons's establishment at Quincy Market.
"Has thee any linen trousers for this little boy to wear with the dark blue jacket he has on?" inquired Mrs. Wheeler of the young man who came forward to serve them.
"We have, madam, I am sure." And deftly the polite young man picked out a pair of dark blue and white striped linen trousers from the middle of a neat pile of garments. Sure enough, the trousers were of the right size; and, to the Wheelers' astonishment, the price was less than they had expected to pay.