“Wasn't you? Good! I'm glad of it. I wouldn't, anyhow. She's liable to be about the best friend you'll have in this world.”
To Albert's mind flashed the addition: “Better than you, that means,” but he kept it to himself.
The lumber yards were on a spur track not very far from the railway station where he had spent that miserable half hour the previous evening. The darkness then had prevented his seeing them. Not that he would have been greatly interested if he had seen them, nor was he more interested now, although his grandfather took him on a personally conducted tour between the piles of spruce and pine and hemlock and pointed out which was which and added further details. “Those are two by fours,” he said. Or, “Those are larger joist, different sizes.” “This is good, clear stock, as good a lot of white pine as we've got hold of for a long spell.” He gave particulars concerning the “handiest way to drive a team” to one or the other of the piles. Albert found it rather boring. He longed to speak concerning enormous lumber yards he had seen in New York or Chicago or elsewhere. He felt almost a pitying condescension toward this provincial grandparent who seemed to think his little piles of “two by fours” so important.
It was much the same, perhaps a little worse, when they entered the hardware shop and the office. The rows and rows of little drawers and boxes, each with samples of its contents—screws, or bolts, or hooks, or knobs—affixed to its front, were even more boring than the lumber piles. There was a countryfied, middle-aged person in overalls sweeping out the shop and Captain Zelotes introduced him.
“Albert,” he said, “this is Mr. Issachar Price, who works around the place here. Issy, let me make you acquainted with my grandson, Albert.”
Mr. Price, looking over his spectacles, extended a horny hand and observed: “Yus, yus. Pleased to meet you, Albert. I've heard tell of you.”
Albert's private appraisal of “Issy” was that the latter was another funny Rube. Whatever Issy's estimate of his employer's grandson might have been, he, also, kept it to himself.
Captain Zelotes looked about the shop and glanced into the office.
“Humph!” he grunted. “No sign or symptoms of Laban this mornin', I presume likely?”
Issachar went on with his sweeping.