Joe puffed away silently.
"Now, you pretend to carry on the rag business, you spend all your money a-buying and a-storing of 'em away; the back room's full, the attic's full, the barn's full,—I can't stir hand or foot for them rags! Why on earth don't you sell 'em?"
"Waiting for 'em to rise, marm!"
"Always a-waiting!" retorted Mrs. Somerby, thrusting her scrubbing-brush and pail into a closet, and slamming the door upon her finger. "Before you get through, the chance goes by. Joe," in a coaxing tone, "I've had a presentiment."
Joe evinced no interest, but removed his pipe to say:
"Now, wife, don't get uneasy. Let's be comfortable."
"Yes, I feel a presentiment about those rags;" the little woman whisked into a chair beside her lord. "They say the paper manufacturers are giving a big price now, husband. Why can't you take a load to the city to-day? I've been thinking of it all the morning."
"I'll do my own thinking, marm," said Joe, with dignity. He rose, however, and laid his pipe away.
Mrs. Somerby said no more, sure that she had roused him from his torpid condition. She wound Joe up to the starting-point, just as she did her kitchen-clock, and he kept upon his course as steadily as that ancient time-piece. She was just the wife for ease-loving Joe, whom her brisk ways never wounded, for he knew her heart was full of tenderness for him.
An hour later Joe drove into the yard. Mrs. Somerby flew out with a lump of sugar for a jaded-looking horse, bought by Joe to speculate upon, and who ate everything he could get, including his bedding, and never grew fat.