"My!" said Miss Mattie. "You do things wholesale while you are about it, Will, don't you?"
Red smiled in pleased acknowledgment. "I'm no peanut stand, old lady," said he. "I like to see things move."
Then Miss Mattie broached the question she had been hovering around ever since her guests had taken their leave.
"Do you think you'll really go into business with that young man who was here to dinner?" she asked.
"Why, I think it's kinder likely," said Red.
"But you don't know anything about him, Will," she continued, putting the weak side of her desire forward, in order to rest more securely if that stood the test.
"No, I don't," agreed Red. "But here's the way I feel about that: I want to be doing something according to my size; besides that, it would be a good thing for this place if some kind of a live doings was to start here. All right, that's my side of it. Now, as far as not knowing that young feller's concerned, I might think I knew him from cyclone-cellar to roof-tree, and he might do me to a crowded house. My idea is that life's a good deal like faro—you know how that is."
"I remember about his not letting the people go, but I'm afraid I don't know my Bible as well as I ought to, Will," apologised Miss Mattie, rather astonished at his allusion.
"Let the people go? Bible?" cried Red, laying down his knife and fork, still more astonished at her allusion. "Will you kindly tell me what that has to do with faro-bank? Girl, one of us is full of ghost songs, and far, far off the reservation. What in the name of Brigham Young's off-ox are you talking about?"
"Why, you spoke of Pharaoh, Will, and I can remember about his holding the children of Israel captive, and the plagues, but I really don't see just how it applies."