“Well,” says I, “if I have got to come to the scratch, the less I consider on it the better.” So one stormy day I put my head down against a north-easter, and set my feet a-going; and the next thing I was standing right before Captain Peabody. He was in his grain-house, shelling corn, sitting on a tub, with an old frying-pan stuck through the handles; and he made the cobs fly every which way, hit or miss—he didn’t care. But it tickled him so to see me dodge ’em, that he got into uncommon good humour.
“Well, Johnny Beedle, what has bro’t you up here, right into the wind’s eye, this ere morning?”
“Why, Cap’m, I’ve got an idea in my head.”
“No! how you talk!”
“Ye see, the upshot of the matter is, I’ve a notion of setting up a store, and getting a wife, and settling myself down as a merchant.”
“Whoorah, John, there’s two ideas—a store and a wife.”
“But I want a little of your help,” says I.
“Well, John,” says he, “I’ll do the handsome thing by ye. If you keep better goods than anybody else, and sell cheaper, you shall have my custom, and welcome, provided you’ll take pay in sauce and things. Isn’t that fair?”
“O, yes, Cap’m.”
“And I wish you success, on the other tack. No fear of that, I’ll warrant. There’s lots of silly girls afloat; and such a fine, taught-rigged gen’man as you are, can run one down in no time.”