“Th’ bag’s fairly busting, it’s so full,” contributed her mother, indignantly.
“Rags weigh light; it takes a good many to make a pound,” said Mr. Beggs, oracularly, and squinting at the numbers on the iron rod.
“I don’t care if they is, an’ mine are good hefty ones—all them pieces after we got through with Sarah’s jacket, you know, Em’line,” she nodded across Mr. Beggs’s big back.
“Don’t I know, Ma?” said Em’line, thriftily; “of course, there’s lots o’ money in that bag o’ rags.”
“Twelve pounds an’ half an ounce,” declared Mr. Beggs, dumping the bag on the grass, and slipping out the iron hook from the strings. “There’s every bit as much as ’tis, an’ if you want to sell ’em to some other ragman, why, I don’t care,” he added squarely.
“Oh, we ain’t a-goin’ to sell ’em to no one else, Mr. Beggs,” Mrs. Hinman made haste to say in alarm; “only we did think there was a little more weight to ’em,—jest a leetle more.”
“That’s every scrap there is,” declared Mr. Beggs, pushing back his straw hat from his forehead, and beginning to put up his steelyards under his seat.
“An’ there’s another bag, you know,” cried Em’line. “Say, ain’t one o’ them boys goin’ to bring it down for me?”
“I d’no, I’m sure,” replied Mr. Beggs; “that’s as they say. I don’t invite folks to go a-ridin’ with me on my cart an’ then work ’em while they’re a-visitin’.”
“Well, don’t they want to?” said Em’line; “say, don’t you?” and she turned to Joel.