"You don't seem so sure of it as you might be," complained Caleb. "Have you struck a stump?"
"No; oh, no."
"What is the matter, Mr. Owl?" asked Grace, moving toward the couple.
"I'm puzzled—that's all, yet 'tis not a little," Philip replied. "I don't think I'm a fool about business. Even Caleb here, who is too true a friend to flatter, says I've done remarkably well, and increased the number of our customers and the profits of the business, yet 'tis never I who devise the new, clever plans by which the increase comes. This matter of the free circulating library is only one of several cases in point; they began months ago, with the use of our piano in church. I don't believe I'd have done them solely with a view to business, but I couldn't have helped seeing that they would have that effect in the end, so I wonder why I, myself, shouldn't have thought of them. Perhaps you can tell me, Caleb; don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, and don't be over-modest about yourself; 'tis all between friends, you know."
Caleb leaned on the counter, from which he brushed some imaginary dust; then he contemplated the brushed spot as if he were trying to look through the counter, as he replied:—
"Mebbe it's because we have different startin'-places. In a book of sermons I've got up in my room—though 'tain't by one o' our Methodists—there's a passage that tells how astronomers find certain kinds o' stars. It 'pears that they don't p'int their telescopes here, there, an' ev'rywhere, lookin' for the star an' nothin' else, but they turn the big concern on a rather dark bit o' sky, somewhere near where the star ought to be, an' they work it 'round, little by little, lookin' at ev'rythin' they can see, until they've took in the whole neighborhood, so to speak, an' what stars of ev'ry kind is around, an' what all of 'em is doin', an' so workin' in'ard, little by little, they stumble on what they was really lookin' for. Well, that's 'bout my way in business. First, I think about the neighborhood, the people, an' what they're doin', an' what ought to be done for 'em, an' all of a sudden they're all p'intin' right at the business, like the little stars for the big one, and couldn't keep from doin' it if they tried their level best. Now, p'raps you don't work that way, but try the other, 'cause—well, p'raps 'cause it's the quickest. P'raps I ought to say that mebbe my way ain't the best, but—"
"Don't say it," interrupted Philip, "because I shan't believe it, nor shall I believe that you yourself thought there was any possibility of its not being the better way of the two."
