Part 16 (1/2)

”All right. Then rent it to the first chap who'll take it for two dollars; but _I_ ain't acquainted with him.”

”How much _will_ you give then?”

”How much will you take?”

”Well, now, I like to help the young, so I'll take a dollar a week.”

”Not from me,” said Tode, promptly.

”Do hear the fellow! As generous as I've been to him, too. Well, come, now, its your turn to make an offer.”

”I'll give you fifty cents a week, and pay you every Sat.u.r.day night at seven o'clock.”

”It's a bargain,” exclaimed the man, striking his hand down on the counter, till the dirty gla.s.ses jingled. There was a further attempt to discover the intention of the new firm, but Tode made his escape the moment the bargain was concluded, and went off vigorously to work to get the old barrel out of his premises. Then he departed, and presently made his appearance again with an old dry-goods box, which he brought on a wheelbarrow, and deposited squarely on the stone. Off again, and back with boards, hammer and nails. And then ensued a vigorous pounding, which, when it was finished, was productive of three neat fitting shelves inside the dry-goods box.

”Jolly,” he said, eyeing his work triumphantly and his fingers ruefully, ”I'm glad I own a hotel instead of a carpenter's shop. I wonder now which I did pound the oftenest, them nails or my thumb? Ain't my shelves some though? So much got along with; now for my next move. I wonder where the old lady lives what's going to lend her stove for my coffee?

Must be somewhere along here, because I couldn't go far away from my place of business after it, specially if all my waiters should happen to be out when the rush comes. I may as well start off and hunt her up.”

Just next to the oyster-saloon was a little old yellow house. Thither Tode bent his steps, and knocked boldly at the door. No reply.

”Not at home,” he said, shaking his head as he peeped in at the curtainless window. ”No use of talking about you then. _You_ won't do, 'cause you see my old lady must be at home. I can't be having her run off just at the busiest time.”

There were two doors very near together, and our young adventurer tried the next one. It was quickly opened, and a very slatternly young woman appeared to him with a baby in her arms, and three almost babies hanging to various portions of her dress.

”Does Mr. Smith live here?” queried Tode.

The woman shook her head and slammed the door.

”That's lucky now,” soliloquized Tode; ”because he _does_ live most everywhere, and I don't want to see him just about now--fact is, it would never do to have them nine babies tumbling into my coffee and getting scalded.”

He trudged back to a little weather-worn, tumble-down building on the other side of his new enterprise, and knocked. Such a dear little old fat woman in a bright calico dress, and with a wide white frill to her cap, answered his knock. He chuckled inwardly, and said at once: ”I guess you're the woman what's going to let me boil my coffee on your stove, and warm a pie now and then, ain't you?”

”Whatever is the lad talking about?” asked the bewildered old lady.

”Why--” said Tode, conscious that he had made a very unbusiness-like opening, and he begun at the beginning, and told her his story.

”Well now, I never!” said the woman, sinking into a chair. ”No, I never did in all my life! And so you left that there place, because you wasn't going to give bottles to your neighbors no longer, and now you're going into business for yourself? Well, well, the land knows I wish there wasn't no bottles to put to 'em--and then they wouldn't be put, you know; and if there's anything I _do_ pray for with all my might and main, next to prayin' that my two boys would let the bottles alone--which I'm afraid they don't, and more's the pity--it's that the bottles will all get clean smashed up one of these days, in His own good time you know.”

Tode turned upon her an eager, questioning look.

”Who do you pray to?” he asked, abruptly.

”Why, bless the boy! I ain't a heathen, you know, to bow down to wood and stone, the work of men's hands, and them things as it were. I pray to the dear Lord that made me, and died for me too, and, for the matter of that, lives for me all the time.”

A bright color glowed in Tode's cheek, and a bright fire sparkled in his eye.

”I know him,” he said, briefly and earnestly.

”Now, do you, though?” said the little old lady, as eager and earnest as himself, ”and do you pray to him?”