He did so, and briefly,—very briefly, for the sounds indicated that Marion was desperately sponging her skirt on the dining-room table,—I sketched a proposition similar to Peter's. "Now," I concluded, "do you consider that a fair arrangement for the city man as well as for the farmer?"
"A fair arrangement!" he exclaimed. "Where is the city man's share?"
"Wouldn't it be in the money he wouldn't spend by not working the land himself?" I asked earnestly.
He laughed in joyous abandonment. "Really, Mr. Waydean," he gasped, "you have an extraordinary mind. But it doesn't pay to juggle with one's conscience, even in the case of a city man—it would be downright extortion."
Again I was moved by his geniality to confess that I was not the man I seemed; again was this virtuous resolve crushed. Before I could speak, he went on: "You wouldn't have asked me this if your conscience hadn't troubled you. Three hundred dollars bonus for the farmer—and all the produce!" Again his smile broke out afresh as he looked at me in mild reproof. "Oh, I know what you're thinking. I, too, thought at one time that amateur farmers were designed by Providence to add to the prosperity and entertainment of legitimate cultivators of the soil, but—oh, dear me!—three hun—ho, ho, ho!—Why, you'd kill your goose."
"Goose!" I cried fiercely. "Do you mean to call me a goose?"
"No, no,—I was going to say you'd kill your goose——"
"Don't say it, then," I adjured him, with bitter resentment. "If you mention anything oval and metallic and glittering, I'll have a—a nervous prostration. Why do men of your profession want to wreck the nerves of your listeners by firing off the most obvious remarks, the stalest platitudes, the most hackneyed metaphors? Why can't you sometimes say something unexpected? I'd go to church if I could listen to sermons in which I didn't always know what was coming next."
It was his turn to wince. An angry flush mounted to his cheeks, and he positively glowered at me. "Permit me to say," he thundered, extending his right arm in a pulpit gesture, "that I wasn't going to mention the gol"—I don't know what he wasn't going to mention, for I clapped my hands over my ears just in time to escape hearing, because I felt that I really couldn't bear a certain reference that he seemed bent upon making. The next words that reached me were: "—was about to say that if you pluck all the feathers off your goose out of season the result will be fatal. Mr. Waydean, you are behaving in——"
"Don't," I implored—"don't Mr. Waydean me again. I'm not old Waydean. I'm——"