“It does sound well,” said the woman.
“Good!” whispered the pedler to himself.
“Havn’t there recently been some improvements in clock-making?” asked the woman.
“Better and better,” thought the pedler—“Madam,” said he, rousing from his transient reverie, and responding to her question, “you asked me about improvements? O yes, divers improvements—clocks are made now-a-days in great perfection, and very cheap—but—I was about making a proposition in reference to that clock—” but he was cut short in the very sentence—
“I can save you all trouble of that sort,” said the woman, “I may take none of your clocks.”
“There again,” thought the pedler, “all aback!” and now, how to retrieve lost ground, he was quite at a loss. But a second thought came to his aid. The language of the woman was peculiar—“I may take none.”
“Madam!” the pedler resumed, and with some little more assurance, “I was going to put this clock to you on such terms as that you may, or any other woman in the wide world might take it.”
The woman listened. She raised her hand to her forehead—she hesitated—she seemed inclined to ask a question, and at length she did inquire—
“How do you sell your clocks?”
Had the pedler ventured to raise his eyes, they would have resembled stars of the first magnitude; but he was too politic to betray his sense of the vantage he was gaining, and therefore rather coolly remarked, “You seem so reluctant, madam, to purchase a clock, that I’m at a loss how to reply. But if you will take one, I’ll put it pretty much at your own price.”