Major Bounder was the victor on that day of stress and strife, for it seemed that many women didn't like the Colonel's wife.
THE AGENT AT THE DOOR
"Away with you, stranger!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger, "avaunt and skedaddle! Come here never more! You agents are making me crazy and breaking my heart, and I beg that you'll trot from my door! I've bought nutmeg graters, shoelaces and gaiters, I've bought everything from a lamp to a lyre; I've bought patent heaters and saws and egg beaters and stoves that exploded and set me afire."
"You're laboring under a curious blunder," the stranger protested; "I know very well that agents are trying, and dames tired of buying; but be not uneasy—I've nothing to sell."
"I'm used to that story—it's whiskered and hoary," replied Mrs. Granger, "you want to come in, and then when you enter, in tones of a Stentor you'll brag of your polish for silver and tin. Or maybe you're dealing in unguents healing, or dye for the whiskers, or salve for the corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd spend it for drink."
"My name," said the stranger, who backed out of danger—the woman had reached for the broom by the wall—"is Septimus Beecher; I am the new preacher; I just dropped around for a pastoral call."
GOOD AND BAD TIMES
"Times are so bad I have the blues," says Bilderbeck, who deals in shoes. "All day I loaf around my store, and folks don't come here any more; I reckon they have barely cash to buy cigars and corn beef hash, and when they've bought the grub to eat, they can't afford to clothe their feet.
"There's something wrong when trade's thus pinched," says he, "and someone should be lynched. The cost of living is so high that it's economy to die; and death is so expensive, then, that corpses want to live again. The trusts have robbed us left and right, and there's no remedy in sight; the government is out of plumb and should be knocked to Kingdom Come."
And Ganderson, across the street, is selling furniture for feet. "All day he hands out boots and shoes with cheerful cockadoodledoos. I have no reason to complain," says Ganderson; all kicks are vain; my customers don't come to hear me raising thunder by the year.