"Well, when Hawk saw his own face in the glass after that reapin', he hardly knowed himself, an' he sneaked into the store by climbin' the fence an' knockin' at the back door, for fear of havin' to be interdooced to any neighbors that might be hangin' 'round the counters. Then he made another try at the clothes, an' called your uncle in again, and said:-- "'They looked all right until I put my hat on, an' then somethin' went wrong again.' "'Shouldn't wonder if 'twas your hat,' said your uncle, comin' back for a special hat an' a pair of Sunday shoes, all Howlaway's size, that he'd ordered with the clothes. He took 'em in an' said:-- "'When you start to dress like a gentleman, to stand 'longside of a lady, you want to go the whole hog or none.' "Well,--I didn't know this story was so long when I begun to tell it,--Hawk sneaked the clothes home, an' it come out in the course o' time that when on Sunday mornin' he dressed up an' showed off to his wife, she kissed him for the first time in three year, which sot him up so that he had the courage to go to church without first loadin' up with whiskey, as he'd expected to, to nerve him up to be looked at in his new things, an' when hog-killin' an' settlement time came round again, Hawk brought his pork to us, an' when he found his wife's silk dress hadn't been charged to him, he said in a high an' mighty way that he reckoned that until he was dead or divorced he could afford to pay for his own wife's duds, hearin' which, your uncle, who'd already socked the price of the dress onto the price of Hawk's own clothes, smiled out o' both sides of his mouth, an' all the way round to the back of his neck. An' since then, Hawk's always brought his pork to us, an' got a new silk dress ev'ry winter for his wife, an' new Sunday clothes for himself, an' nobody would he buy of but your uncle. Let's see; what was we talkin' 'bout when I turned off onto this story?" "We were talking of ways of cajoling customers into paying their year's bills," said Philip. "Apparently I ought, just as a starter, to know how to coddle customer's boys, and supply hair-cutting and shaving plans to the village barber, and to play wife against husband, and learn to measure a man for clothes, like a--" "That's so," said Caleb, "an' you can't be too quick about that, either, for Hawk'll want a new suit pretty soon." "Anything else? By the way: what you said about the need of ready money reminds me of some questions I've been intending to ask, but forgotten. There are some mortgages in the safe on which interest will be due on the first of the year,--only a fortnight off. 'Twill aggregate nearly a thousand dollars."