“I should think you'd like the grocery business a heap better than law,” said she, amiably, as she went out. “Oh, I want to get a melon if they ain't too dear.” She evidently expected Anderson himself to wait upon her, and was a little taken aback that he did not follow her. She lingered for a long time haggling with Price, with a watchful eye on the office door, and finally departed without purchasing.
Shortly after she had gone, Sam Riggs came for Anderson to inspect some vegetables which had been brought in by a farmer. “He's got some fine potatoes,” said he, “but he wants too much for 'em, Price thinks. He's got cabbages, too, and them's too high. Guess you had better look at 'em yourself, Price says.”
So Anderson went out to interview the farmer, sparsely bearded, lank, and long-necked and seamy-skinned, his face ineffectual yet shrewd, a poor white of the South strung on wiry nerves, instead of lax muscles, the outcome of the New Jersey soil. He shuffled determinedly in his great boots, heavy with red shale, standing guard over his fine vegetables. He nodded phlegmatically at Anderson. He never smiled. Occasionally his long facial muscles relaxed, but they never widened. He was indefinably serious by nature, yet not melancholy, and absolutely acquiescent in his life conditions. The farmer of New Jersey is not of the stuff which breeds anarchy. He is rooted fast to his red-clinging native soil, which has taken hold of his spirit. He is tenacious, but not revolutionary. He was as adamant on the prices of his vegetables, and finally Anderson purchased at his terms.
“You got stuck,” Price said, after the farmer, in his rusty wagon, drawn by a horse which was rather a fine animal, had disappeared down the street.
“Well, I don't know,” Anderson replied. “His vegetables are pretty fine.”
“Folks won't pay the prices you ought to ask to make a penny on it.”
“Oh, I am not so sure of that. People want a good article, and very few raise potatoes or cabbages or even turnips in their own gardens.”
“Ingram is selling potatoes two cents less than you, and I rather think turnips, too.”
“Not these turnips.”
“No, guess not. He has his from another man, but they look pretty good, and half the folks don't know the dif.”