The sun was shining out of a clear sky behind me, and I knew that I was travelling in the right direction. The white-throated sparrow sang on a wooded slope:
The sidings were aglow with goldenrod and bluebells, and the breeze had a musky breath, and every bush was a fountain of song. I posted a letter to my mother in a little hamlet through which I passed about ten o'clock.
Near noon I overtook a boy some two or three years older than myself. He had a wooden leg—a rude stump on which his knee rested—and walked with a grip in his hand. He was a rugged, serious-looking boy, with a face browned by the sunlight. He asked for my name and “place of residence.”
“I'm a commercial traveller,” he informed me, presently.
“What do you sell?”
“Sit down an' I'll show ye.”
We sat on the grass together, and he opened his grip. It was full of round white balls, differing in size and neatly wrapped in tinted tissue-paper.