“No, I don’t.”
“Then you are content to go as you are?”
“No, I shall have a new suit in a few days, if I have to pay for it myself.”
“You’re welcome to do that,” responded Seth in a tone of satisfaction, for he concluded that Grant’s mother would pay the bill, and that suited him.
No more was said to Grant on the subject of his delay in returning from the other farm. He had occasion a little later to go on an errand, and called at the village tailor’s.
“Mr. Shick,” he said, “I want you to make me up a good serviceable suit. How much will it cost?”
“It depends on the cloth, Grant. Here is a remnant that will wear like iron. I can make it up in two styles, according to the trimmings, seventeen dollars or twenty.”
“I want a good suit, and will pay twenty.”
The tailor was rather surprised, for he knew that Grant’s step-father was a thoroughly mean man.
“Mr. Tarbox is getting liberal, isn’t he?” he inquired. “That’s more than he pays for his own suits.”