"Mostly telegrams announces death or
sickness."
"I kin think of sixty-nine things it _might_ be," said Scattergood, "but
I got a feelin' it hain't none of 'em."
"We shouldn't of come away on this vacation," said Mandy. "Johnnie Bones
is too young a boy to leave in charge."
"Johnnie Bones is a dum good lawyer, Mandy, and a dum far-seein' young
man. I don't calc'late Johnnie's done us no harm. Hain't no hurry,
Mandy. We can't git a train home for five hours."
"We'll be settin' right in the depot waitin' for it," said Mandy, who
declined to take chances. "Be sure you keep your money in the pants
pocket on the side I'm walkin' on. Pickpockets 'u'd have some difficulty
gittin' past me."
"Only thing ag'in' Johnnie Bones," said Scattergood, "is that he hain't
a first-rate hardware clerk."
Scattergood, in spite of the ownership of twenty-four miles of
narrow-gauge railroad, of a hundred-odd thousand acres of spruce, and of
a sawmill whose capacity was thirty thousand feet a day, persisted in
regarding these things as side lines, and in looking upon his little
hardware store in Coldriver as the vital business of his life.
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