Madelaine smiled to herself, then “shot.”
“I’d like to be directed to some elderly man or woman who has lived a long time here and is acquainted with most of the town’s people. Especially those who lived here about ten years ago. I’m hunting a friend. Yet I don’t want my business made public. I’d prefer some elderly, accommodating man——”
“That’s a cinch!” returned Pat. “Skin around the corner and see Uncle Joe Fodder.”
“Uncle Joe Fodder?”
“Yeah; he runs the livery stable. He knows everybody from way back, who their grandmothers was and what the family et for supper the night they was born.”
“That’s very good of you,” returned Madelaine. And she thanked him.
“I’m all yours, Missie,” was Pat’s rejoinder. He meant no offense. He dealt so with all the “lady drummers”.
Madelaine picked her way into the puddle-dotted, straw-strewn livery yard. A single light burned over the big stable door. Another shone through the murky windowpanes of a tiny office at the left.
Three men were in that office with a kindly old fellow who looked exactly as William Cullen Bryant might have looked if William Cullen Bryant had conducted a livery stable in one Vermont community for half a century. He wore a blue gingham shirt, patched trousers and soiled suspenders. But Madelaine liked his eyes.
“Mr. Fodder?” the girl asked.