"Yes, yes, I heard it," says I. "Fine seasonable weather we're havin' these days. Don't see any signs of snow yet, do you?"
If he'd been skipper of a pleasure boat with a picnic party aboard he couldn't have paid less attention to my weather signals.
"It's been hired for an eatin'-house," he says, puffin' and out of breath. "A man by the name of Fred from Buffalo, has hired it, and—"
"Fred, hey?" I interrupted. "Humph! 'Cordin' to the proclamations I heard he cruises under the name of George—Eben George—and he hails from Bangor."
"No, no!" he says, emphatic. "His name's Edgar Fred and it's Buffalo he comes from. Henry Williams told me and he got it from his wife's aunt, Mrs. Debby Baker, and her cousin by marriage told her. She is a Knowles—the cousin is—married one of the Denboro Knowleses—and she got it from Peleg Kendrick's nephew whose stepmother is related to the woman that used to do old Judge Higgins's cookin' when he was alive. So it come straight, you see."
"Yes," I says, "about as straight as the eel went through the snarled fish net. All right. I don't care. How's your rheumatiz gettin' on, Solon?"
I thought that would fetch him, but it didn't. Gen'rally speakin', he'd talk for an hour about his rheumatiz and never skip an ache; but now he was too much interested in the Higgins Place even to catalogue his symptoms.
"It's some better," he says, "since I tried the Electric Ointment out of the newspaper. But, Cap'n Zeb, did you know that this Fred man was goin' to start a swell dinin'-room for automobile folks? He is. He's had all kinds of experience in them lines. He's goin' to have foreign help and a chief Frenchman to do the cookin' and—and I don't know what all."
"I guess that's right," says I. "Well, I don't know what all, either, and I ain't goin' to worry. We'll see what we shall see, as the blind feller said. Hello! there's the minister over there and I'll bet he ain't heard a word about it."
That done the trick. Away he put, all sail set, to give the minister the earache, and I went on down to the store. And there was Jacobs talkin' to a man I'd never seen afore and both of 'em so interested they scarcely noticed me when I come in.