"Sure," he says, "I'll buy a paper. Give me one of all your papers.
"Now let's see," he says then. "Where's the pop-corn wagon?"
There wasn't any. None of the boys had ever heard of one.
"No pop-corn wagon? Bless me," he says, "you don't mean to say you don't have a circus every year—with pop-corn wagons and—"
A groan broke out from every boy. "No!" they says in chorus. "Aw, it ain't comin'. Pitcairn's wanted to show here. But the town struck 'em for high license."
Mr. Nordman looked at the boys a minute. Then he rapped his cane down hard on the platform. "It's a burning shame!" he says out, indignant and human. "Ain't they even any ice-cream cones in this town?" he cries.
Oh, yes, there was them. The boys set up a shout. Mr. Nordman—he give them a nickel apiece, and the next instant the platform was swept clean of every boy of them. And him and me begun walking down the street.
"Bless me," he says. "What a nice little town it's grown! What a very nice little town!" And the way he said it shut me right up again.
I dunno how it was, but this was no more the way I'd imagined showing Nick Nordman over the village than anything on earth. I'd been going to tell him about old Harvey Myers' hanging himself in the garret we were then passing, but I hadn't the heart nor the interest.
Just as we got along down to the main block of Daphne Street, the council meeting was out and Silas and Eppleby and Timothy Toplady and the rest came streaming out of the engine house. Mis' Toplady and Mame Holcomb were sitting outside, waiting for their husbands, and so of course I marched Mr. Nicholas Nordman right up to the lot of them and named them to him. Every one of them had known him over twenty years before.