“You handle crockery?” asked a man from the end of the table. “Well, I guess Dilwell County consumes a few gross of jugs all right. But you’d better be careful not to whisper jugs too loud here. There’s usually a couple of revenue men around town.”
They all went together to the office, where they picked up their sample cases and sallied forth for a descent upon the Raleigh merchants; and Ardmore, thus reminded that he was in the crockery business, and that he had a sample in his room, sat down under a tree on the sidewalk at the inn door to consider what he should do with his little brown jug. It had undoubtedly been intended for Governor Dangerfield, who was supposed to be on the train he had himself taken from Atlanta to Raleigh. There had been, in fact, two jugs, but one of them he had tossed back into the hands of the man who had pursued the train at Kildare. Ardmore smoked his pipe and meditated, trying to determine which jug he had tossed back; and after long deliberation, he slapped his knee, and said aloud,—
“I gave him the wrong one, by jing!”
The boy had said that his offering contained buttermilk, a beverage which Ardmore knew was affected by eccentric people for their stomach’s sake. He had sniffed the other jug, and it contained, undeniably, an alcoholic liquid of some sort.
Jugs had not figured prominently in Ardmore’s domestic experiences; but as he sat under the tree on the curb before the Guilford House he wondered, as many other philosophers have wondered, why a jug is so incapable of innocency! A bottle, while suggestive, is not inherently wicked; but a jug is the symbol of joyous sin. Even the soberest souls, who frown at the mention of a bottle, smile tolerantly when a jug is suggested. Jugs of many centuries are assembled in museums, and round them the ethnologist reconstructs extinct races of men; and yet even science and history, strive they never so sadly, cannot wholly relieve the jug of its cheery insouciance. A bottle of inferior liquor may be dressed forth enticingly, and alluringly named; but there’s no disguising the jug; its genial shame cannot be hidden. There are pleasant places in America where, if one deposit a half-dollar and a little brown jug behind a certain stone, or on the shady side of a blackberry bush, jug and coin will together disappear between sunset and sunrise; but lo! the jug, filled and plugged with a corn-cob, will return alone mysteriously, in contravention of the statutes in such cases made and provided. Too rare for glass this fluid, which bubbles out of the southern hills with as little guilt in its soul as the brooks beside which it comes into being! But, lest he be accused of aiding and abetting crime against the majesty of the law, this chronicler hastens to say that on a hot day in the harvest field, honest water, hidden away in a little brown jug in the fence corner, acquires a quality and imparts a delight that no mug of crystal or of gold can yield.
As Mr. Ardmore pondered duty and the jug a tall man in shabby corduroy halted near by and inspected him carefully. Mr. Ardmore, hard upon his pipe, had not noticed him, somewhat, it seemed, to the stranger’s vexation. He patrolled the sidewalk before the inn, hoping to attract Ardmore’s attention, but finding that the young man’s absorption continued, he presently dropped into a neighbouring chair under the maple tree.
“Good-morning,” said Ardmore pleasantly.
The man nodded but did not speak. He was examining Ardmore with a pair of small, shrewd gray eyes. In his hands he held a crumpled bit of brown paper that looked like a telegram.
“Well, I reckon you jest got to town this mornin’, young fella.”
“Yes, certainly,” Ardmore replied promptly. He had never been addressed in quite this fashion before, but it was all in keeping with his new destiny, and he was immediately interested in the stranger, who was well on in middle age, with a rough grizzled beard, and a soft hat, once black, that now struggled for a compromise tint between yellow and green.