The spectators looked on with indifference. Some of them even urged him maliciously to the attack.
"I'd sell the thing for fifty cents!" he exclaimed, with a shocking oath.
Suddenly an elderly, kindly-faced man pushed his way forward through the crowd. "I'll give you that for it," he said. "Only stop battering it!"
My master left off hitting me. He looked surlily at the speaker and then at the crowd.
"You can have it," he said between his teeth.
Hot tears of gratitude dropped from my cylinders as my deliverer pushed me to his nearby home. From that moment to this I have never known anything but happiness.
For my dear old master is a retired gas-fitter whose hobby is landscape gardening. Relieving me of my tired wheels, he has pastured me in the center of his front yard and planted me full of geraniums. I am lovingly taken care of. My kind master waters me regularly and curries me with a trowel. My working days are over. But what makes me happiest is the knowledge that I can never be sold.
