"Putt in y'r horse," he said, in a thin high voice like a woman's, "tie him in the far stall, Jack. Come in, sir." This last to Sir William, upon whom the eyes of Mr. Tomlinson—who wanted $20,000, for his half-section—were fixed in timid appraisal.
Jimmy Tomlinson, who had been a country bachelor for over half a century, now in his later but still sound and healthy years, wanted two things—to move into town, and to get married. His father had worked out in the harvest field when past ninety, and his mother had "run the house" unaided till her death at eighty-seven. Neither had ever had "a sick day"; so it was the reasonable expectation of their son, in his fifties, that he had between thirty and forty more comfortable years "above ground". As a result of a score and a half years of thrifty farming, Jimmy Tomlinson had $30,000 in bank. This, with the $20,000 which he intended to ask and to get for his farm, would make $50,000. If no young woman wanted a healthy bachelor with $50,000—even though slightly above the usual age at which married life is commenced—then the world had changed mightily from what it used to be. Besides, there was no law against a man wearing a toupee. And if—as said a certain beauty pamphlet which had come to Jimmy's house wrapped around a cake of toilet soap—massage and a certain kind of "cream" could do marvels with the wrinkles of womankind, where was the reason a man could not lock the door, plug up the keyhole, pull down the window-blind, and regain youthful beauty in the same way. Surely a man's fingers were his to use, and to look pretty is a legitimate ambition.
Jimmy had once thought of Daisy for his own; and it was therefore with a slight, but passing, tinge of envy that he now looked out of the corner of a diffident eye at her husband, who was after all no younger than himself.
Entering the house of Mr. Tomlinson, Sir William Ware found himself in a single log-walled room, of which the floor was tidily swept and the central small table covered with red oilcloth. On a shelf braced with home-sawn brackets, stood a round alarm clock, a coal-oil lamp and—their titled backs turned outward—a little pile of paper-bound books whose names suggested that they were love stories. On top of all was a department store catalogue, with the page turned back at the men's attire section. There were in the room three kitchen chairs and an old upholstered easy-chair, to the last of which Mr. Tomlinson escorted his guest.
"Jolly healthy out here, old chap," Ware remarked, as he sat down, in the chilly March-end breeze that blew in through the open door; "there must be a bit of an Old Country strain in you. Do you keep the door open all winter?"
"Pretty near all winter," said Jimmy Tomlinson, answering with the simple truth, "I'm outside most o' the time."
With this, he sat down diffidently, put his knees together, and spread his hands upon them; and, as Sir William was in a meditative mood, no more words passed between host and guest till Nixon came in from the stable.
"Well," he said, setting his hat to the back of his head and drawing up a chair, "I s'pose we may as well get down to business—eh, boys? Jim here's the only man that has all summer on his hands. You're mighty foolish to sell out now, Jim, with wheat the price it is and the farmers just commencin' to make a little money."
"I have all the money I want," said Jimmy Tomlinson, in his thin voice.