"S'pose we do!" cried Mittie May.
CHAPTER IX
CANDY-MAKING
"If there's a pleasanter place than this in your village, I wish you'd show it to me!" said Calvin Parks. "I declare, Mr. Cheeseman, it does me good every time I come in here."
Mr. Cheeseman looked about him with contented eyes.
"It is pleasant," he said. "I'm glad you like it, friend Parks, for you are one of the folks I like to see in it, and them isn't everybody."
Mr. Ivory Cheeseman certainly did look rather like a monkey, but such a wise monkey! He was little and spare, with nothing profuse about him save his white hair, which grew thick and close as a cap;his whole aspect was dry and frosty, "like the right kind of winter mornin'," Calvin Parks said when he described the old man to Mary Sands. The kitchen in which he and Calvin were sitting was just behind the shop; a low, dark room, with a little stove in the middle, glowing like a red jewel, and waking dusky gleams in the pots and pans ranged along the walls. They were not altogether ordinary pots and pans. Uncle Ivory, as East Cyrus called him, was a collector in a modest way, and his bits of copper, brass and pewter were dear to his heart. Lonzo, the village "natural," found the gaiety of his life in polishing them, and receiving pay in sugar-plums. He was at work now in a dim corner, chuckling to himself as he scoured a huge old pewter dish.
