I hadn’t paid much attention to him before that, but I see now he was a wonderful, nice-spoken little man, with the kind of eyes that look like the sitting-room—and not like the parlor. I can’t bear parlor eyes.
“Come and look at the room,” says I, and rented it to him out of hand. And Mr. Dombledon—his name was—and Donnie—that was the little fellow—went off for their baggage, and I went off for my cakes; and what they was reflecting on I donno, but my own reflect was that it’s a wise minute can tell what the next one is going to pop open and let out. But I like it that way. I’m a natural-born vaudevillian. I love to see what’s coming next.
Well, the next thing was, after I got my two club cakes both provided for, that it turned out Mr. Dombledon was an agent, selling “notions, knick-knacks and anything o’ that,” he told me; and he use’ to start out at seven o’clock in the morning, with his satchel in one hand and his little boy, more or less, in the other.
“Land,” says I to him after a few days, “don’t your little boy get wore to the bone tramping around with you like that?”
“Some,” says he; “but I carry him part of the way.”
“Carry him?” says I, “and tote that heavy knick-knack notion satchel?”
“Well,” says he, “I don’t mind it. What I’m always thinking is this: What if I didn’t have him to tote.”
“True enough,” says I, and couldn’t say another word.
But of course the upstart and offshoot of that was that before the week was out, I’d invited Mr. Dombledon to leave the little fellow with me, some days, while he went off. And he done so, grateful, but making a curious provision.
“It’d be grand for him,” says he; “they’s only just one thing: Would—would you promise not to leave him hear anybody say anything anyways cross?”