"Oh, I'm all ready to do anything that is needed, short of being kicked out."
"No danger of that if you're a real book agent. It's the snide that gets kicked. You've got t' have some savvy in this, just like any other business." He stopped in his dressing to say, "We've struck a great boarding place, hey?"
"Looks like it."
"I begin t' cotton to the old lady a'ready. Good 'eal like mother used t' be 'fore she broke down. Didn't the old lady have a time of it raisin' me? Phewee! Patient! Job wasn't a patchin'. But the test is goin' t' come on the biscuit; if her biscuit comes up t' mother's I'm hern till death."
He broke off to comb his hair, a very nice bit of work in his case.
II.
There was no discernible reason why the little town should have been called Tyre, and yet its name was as characteristically American as its architecture. It had the usual main street lined with low brick or wooden stores—a street which developed into a road running back up a wide, sandy valley away from the river. Being a county town, it had a courthouse in a yard near the center of the town, and a big summer hotel. The valley was peculiarly picturesque. Curiously shaped and oddly distributed hills rose out of the valley sand abruptly, forming a sort of amphitheater in which the village lay. These square-topped hills rose to a common level, showing that they were not the result of an upheaval, but were the remains of the original stratification left standing after the vast scooping action of the post-glacial floods.
The abrupt cliffs and lone huge pillars and peaks rising out of tamarack swamps here and there showed the original layers of rock unmoved. They looked like ruined walls of castles ancient as hills, on whose massive tops time had sown sturdy oaks and cedars. They lent a distinct air of romance to the valley at all times; but when in summer vines clambered over their rugged sides and underbrush softened their broken lines, it was not at all difficult to imagine them the remains of an unrecorded, very warlike people.
Even now, in winter, with yellow-brown and green cedars standing starkly upon their summits, the hickories and small ashes blue-black with their masses of fine bare limbs meshed against the snow, these towers had a distinct charm. The weather was glorious winter, and in the early morning when the trees glistened with frost, or at evening when the white light of the sun was softened and violet shadows lay along the snow, the whole valley was a delight to the eye, full of distinct and lasting charm, part of the beautiful and strange Mississippi River scenery.
In the campaign which Hartley began Albert did his best, and his best was done unconsciously, for the charm of his manner (all unknown to himself) was the most potent factor in securing consideration.