"Go on, you!" repeated Mr. Shrimplin and slapped the lines again, but less vigorously, for by this time Bill was unquestionably backing away from the curb.
"Be done! Be done!" expostulated Mr. Shrimplin, but he gave over slapping the lines, for why irritate Bill in his present uncertain mood? "Want I should get out and lead you?" asked Mr. Shrimplin, putting aside with one hand the blankets in which he was wrapped. "You're a game old codger, ain't you? I guess you ain't aware you've growed up!"
While he was still speaking he slipped to the ground and worked his way hand over hand up the lines to Bill's bit. Bill was now comfortably located on his haunches, but evidently still dissatisfied for he continued to back vigorously, drawing the protesting little lamplighter after him. When he had put perhaps twenty feet between himself and the lamp-post Bill achieved his usual upright attitude and his countenance assumed its habitual contemplative expression, the haunted look faded from his sagacious eye and his flaming nostrils resumed their normal benevolent expression. Taking note of these swift changes, it occurred to Mr. Shrimplin that rather than risk a repetition of his recent experience he would so far sacrifice his official dignity as to go on foot to the lamp-post. Bill would probably stand where he was, indefinitely, standing being one of his most valued accomplishments. The lamplighter took up his torch which he had put aside in the struggle with Bill and walked to the curb.
And here Mr. Shrimplin noticed that which had not before caught his attention. McBride's store was apparently open, for the bracketed oil lamps that hung at regular intervals the full length of the long narrow room, were all alight.
Mr. Shrimplin, whose moods were likely to be critical and censorious, realized that there was something personally offensive in the fact that Archibald McBride had chosen to disregard a holiday which his fellow-merchants had so very generally observed.
"And him, I may say, just rotten rich!" he thought.
Mr. Shrimplin further discovered that though the lamps were lit they were burning low, and he concluded that they had been lighted in the early dusk of the winter afternoon and that McBride, for reasons of economy, had deferred turning them up until it should be quite dark.
"Well, I'm a poor man, but I couldn't think of them things like he does!" reflected Mr. Shrimplin; and then even before he had ceased to pride himself on his superior liberality, he made still another discovery, and this, that the store door stood wide open to the night.
"Well," thought Mr. Shrimplin, "maybe he's saving oil, but he's wasting fuel."
Approaching the door he peered in. The store was empty, Archibald McBride was nowhere visible. Evidently the door had been open some little time, for he could see where the snow, driven by the strong wind, had formed a miniature snow-drift just beyond the threshold.