After he'd gone and we'd made the place look a little less like an egg-nog, I took Jim Henry by the sleeve and led him into the back room where we could be alone. Even there the surroundin's was so cluttered up with goods and bales and boxes that we had to stand edgeways and talk out of the sides of our mouths.
"Jim," says I, "this place of ours ain't big enough. We've got to have more room."
He pretended to be dreadful surprised.
"Why, why, Skipper!" he says. "You shock me. This is so sudden. What put such an idea as that in your head? Seems to me I have a vague remembrance of handin' you that suggestion no less than twenty-five times since the last change of the moon, but I hope that didn't influence you."
"Aw, dry up," says I. "You was right. Let it go at that. Afore I got the postmastership this buildin' was big enough. Now it ain't. We've got to build on or move or somethin'. Have you got any definite plan?"
He smiled, superior and top-lofty, and reached over to pat me on the back; but reachin' in that crowded junk-shop was bad judgment, 'cause his elbow hit against the corner of a tea chest and his next set of remarks was as explosive and fiery as a box of ship rockets.
"Never mind the blessin'," I says. "Go ahead with the fust course. Have you got anything up your sleeve? anything besides that bump, I mean."
Well, it seems he had. Seems he'd thought it all out. We'd ought to buy Philander Foster's buildin', which was on the next lot to ours, move it close up, cut doors through, and use it for the post-office department.
"Humph!" says I, after I'd turned the notion over in my mind. "That ain't so bad, considerin' where it come from. I can only sight one possible objection in the offin'."
"What's that, you confounded Jezebel?" he says.