“Ye-e-es,” he drawls; “for—for my wife. Ah—er—would it be asking too much of a stranger if I should get you to step in there with me while I find out the price?”
“Why,” says I, lookin’ him over careful,—“why, I don’t know as I’d want to go as far as—— Well, what’s the object?”
“You see,” says he, “I’m sort of a bashful person,—always have been,—and I don’t just like to go in there alone amongst all them women folks. But the fact is, I’ve kind of got my mind set on having that hat, and——”
“Wife ain’t in town, then?” says I.
“No,” says he, “she’s—she isn’t.”
“Ain’t you runnin’ some risks,” says I, “loadin’ up with a lid that may not fit her partic’lar style of beauty?”
“That’s so, that’s so,” says he. “Ought to be something that would kind of jibe with her complexion and the color of her hair, hadn’t it?”
“You’ve surrounded the idea,” says I. “Maybe it would be safer to send for her to come on.”
“No,” says he; “couldn’t be done. But see here,” and he takes my arm and steers me up the avenue, “if you don’t mind talking this over, I’d like to tell you a plan I’ve just thought out.”
Well, he’d got me some int’rested in him by that time. I could see he wa’n’t no common Rube, and them twinklin’ little eyes of his kind of got me. So I tells him to reel it off.