To the curb in front of another grocery store as I was coming back to the hotel drew up a small, rickety buggy—so dilapidated and antique, scarcely worthy or safe to be hauled about rough country roads any longer. In it were “my Grandfather Squeers”—jackknife legs and all—and his wife, a most spare and crotchety female, in a very plain black dress, so inexpensive, a grey linseywoolsey shawl and a grey poke bonnet. She looked so set and fixed and yet humanly interesting in her way. I felt sorry for the two of them at once, as I always do for age and that limited array of thoughts which has produced only a hard, toilsome life. (We laugh at ignorance or dullness or condemn them so loudly, but sometimes they are combined with such earnestness and effort that one would rather cry.) “My Grandfather Squeers” was plainly a little rheumatic and crotchety, too. He reminded me of that Mr. Gridley who was occupying my old room in Warsaw, only he was much older and not quite so intelligent. He was having a hard time getting down between the wheels and straightening out some parcels under the seat, the while Aunt Sally stared on straight ahead and the horse looked back at them—a not overfed bay mare which seemed very much concerned in their affairs and what they were going to do next.
“Now, don’t you forget about them seed onions,” came a definite caution from the figure on the seat.
“No, I won’t,” he replied.
“And ast about the potatoes.”
“Yes.”
He cricketed his way into the store and presently came out with a small bag followed by a boy carrying a large bag—of potatoes, I assumed.
“I guess we can put them right in front—eh, mother?” he called.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she assented, rather sharply, I thought, but not angrily.
The while the boy roughly bestowed the bag between them he went back for something, then came out and readjusted the potatoes properly.
“He didn’t have any red tape,” he called loudly, as though it was a matter of considerable importance.