"'Cause he's a close connection of the Forty Thieves," he says, sharp. "He'd take a prize in the hog class at a county fair, that chap would. What's the matter with him? Does he think he's runnin' a get-rich-quick shop? Two weeks ago I paid a dollar and a half for a dinner there, and that was seventy-five cents too much. Now he's jumped to two-fifty and the feed ain't a bit better."
"Two dollars and a half for a dinner!" says I. "Whew! The cost of livin' is goin' up, ain't it? What do they give you? Canary birds' tongues on toast? Any shore dinner ever I see could be cooked for—"
He interrupted. "Shore dinner nothin'!" he snorts. "I wouldn't kick at the price if I got a good shore dinner. But what we got here is a poor imitation of a country Waldorf. Everybody's kickin', but we all go there because it's the best we can find for twenty miles. However, I hear another place is to be started in Denboro and if that makes good, your Forty Thief friend will have to haul in his horns. He'll never get another cent from me, or a hundred others I know, who have been his best customers. We're all waitin' to give him the shake and it looks as if we should be able to do it. We motorin' fellers stick together and, if the word's passed along the line, the "Sign of the Windmill" will be a dead one, mark my words."
I marked 'em, and when, by and by, I heard that the Denboro dinin'-room was open and doin' a good business, I underscored the mark.
This was about the middle of June. A week later Jim Henry got the telegram about his younger brother out in Colorado bein' sick and wantin' to see him bad. He hated to go, but he felt he had to, so he went.
I said good-by to him up at the depot and told him not to worry a mite. "I'll look out for everything," I says. "Course I'll miss you at the store, but I'll write you every day or so and keep you posted, and you can give me business prescriptions by mail."
"That's all right, Skipper," says he, "I know the store'll be took care of. But there's one thing that—that—"
"What's the one thing?" I asked. "Overboard with it. My shoulders are broad and I won't mind totin' another hogshead or so."
He hesitated and it seemed to me that he looked troubled. But finally he said he'd guessed 'twas nothin' that amounted to nothin' anyway and he'd be back in a couple of weeks sure. So off he went and I had a sort of Robinson Crusoe desert island feelin' that lasted all that day and night.
It lasted longer than that, too. I didn't hear from him for ten days. Then I got a note sayin' his brother had scarlet fever—which seemed a fool disease for a grown-up man to have—and was pretty sick. I wrote to him for the land sakes to be careful he didn't get it himself, and the next news I heard was from a doctor sayin' he had got it. After that the bulletins was infrequent and alarmin'.