"It's very warm work, sir," ventured Dickey, at last, "carrying all that stuff—isn't it?"
"Stuff?" returned the Itinerant Tinker, in a very mild, but unmistakably hurt tone of voice.
"Well—" Dickey hesitated timidly.
"Don't call them stuff, please," sighed the Itinerant Tinker; "call them necessary commodities."
"But whatever one does call them," Dickey persisted, "they still make you warm to carry them all about, don't they?"
The Itinerant Tinker nodded his head and sighed again.
Again Dickey waited for a considerable space of time. But the old man would have been perfectly content to sit there for ever, Dickey thought, without speaking. "I do wish he would talk," said he to himself. "It's awfully annoying to have him sit there and look at one without saying a word."
"What do you mend, sir?" Dickey inquired at last.
"I tried once," sighed the Itinerant Tinker, sadly, "to mend the break of day. It took me twenty-seven hours and eleven minutes to fix it, and it broke every twenty-four. At that rate how long would it take to patch them all together?"
Another distressing silence.