"I have vanted to ask you thes': If I vork at that bad place in the road in front—if I bring sand from the hill behind, what I can, and fill in that hole, slow, you know—but some every day—you would not mind?"
"Mind?" says I. "Why, my, no. But it's part the village's business to do that. You're in the village limits, you know. It'd ought to been done long ago."
"The village?" said he. "But it is your place. Why should the village fix that hole?"
"It's the village's business," I told him, "to keep the streets good. Most of them do it pretty lackadaisical, but it's their business to do it."
His face lit up like turning up the wick. "Nu!" he cried. "So I vill do. I thought it vould be you I am doing it for, and I vas glad. But if it is the village, then I am many times more glad of that."
It wasn't much of a compliment to a lady, but I thought I see what he meant.
"Why are you glad, Mr. Jeffro," I says, to make sure, "that it's the village?"
"It does all the things for me," he says, simple. "The fire-engine, the post-office—even the telephone is free to me in the village. So it is America doing this for me; for thes' village, it belongs to America. There is no army that I go in or pay to keep out of—there are no soldiers that are jostling me in the streets—they do not even make me buy and put up any flag. And my little Joseph, all day long he is learning. And the people—here they call me 'Mr.' All is free—free. For all thes' I pay nothing. And now you tell me here is a hole that it is the village business to fill up. It is the business of America to fill up that hole! Vell, I can make that my business, for a little—what-you-say—pay-back."
It was awful hard to know what to say. I wonder what you'd have said? I just stood still and kept still. Because, if I'd known what to say, it would have been pretty hard, just then, to say it anyway.
"It is a luck for the folks," he said, "that their own vork lets them make some paying back. My toys, they don't pay back, not very much. I must find another vay."