I want to see you."
Mr. Hardy looked over his shoulder and then backed his equipage
opposite the Winslow gate.
"Hello, Jedidah Shavin's," he observed, with a grin. "Didn't know
you for a minute, with that shawl over your front crimps. What you
got on your mind; anything except sawdust?"
Jed was too much perturbed even to resent the loathed name "Jedidah."
"Philander," he whispered, anxiously; "say, Philander, what does
she want? Mrs. Armstrong, I mean? What is it you're comin' back
for at four o'clock?"
Philander looked down at the earnest face under the ancient
sweater. Then he winked, solemnly.
"Well, I tell you, Shavin's," he said. "You see, I don't know how
'tis, but woman folks always seem to take a terrible shine to me.
Now this Mrs. Armstrong here-- Say, she's some peach, ain't she!--
she ain't seen me more'n half a dozen times, but here she is
beggin' me to fetch her my photograph. 'It's rainin' pretty hard,
to-day,' I says. 'Won't it do if I fetch it to-morrow?' But no,
she--"
Jed held up a protesting hand. "I don't doubt she wants your
photograph, Philander," he drawled. "Your kind of face is rare.
But I heard you say somethin' about comin' for trunks. Whose
trunks?"
"Whose? Why, hers and the young-one's, I presume likely. 'Twas
them I fetched from Luretta Smalley's. Now she wants me to take
'em back there.
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