General stores -- Fiction; Married people -- Fiction; West (U.S.) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"That's a cruel proof of the saying that one sows and another reaps,"
she replied; "but please understand in future that this is not the
Somerton Library. It is the Caleb Wright Library."
"Je--ru--salem!" exclaimed Caleb, "an' I didn't put a cent into it!"
"You devised it," Grace replied. "'Twas like Columbus making the egg
stand on end; any one could do it after being told how."
About this time some responses, in the forms of half-grown boys and
girls on foot, began to arrive from the farming district, and Grace
had occasionally to leave the store. As she returned from one of these
excursions, Mrs. Taggess took her hands and exclaimed:--
"What a good time you must have had!"
"Oh, wife!" protested the Doctor. "Is this the place for sarcasm? The
poor girl looks tired to death."
"Nevertheless, Mrs. Taggess is entirely right," said Grace. "It was
a good time, indeed. How I wish I could sketch from memory! Still, I
shall never forget the expression of some of those faces. What a dear
lot of people there are in this town!"
"Hurrah!" shouted the Doctor. "I was afraid that, coming from the city,
you mightn't be able to find it out. I apologize with all my heart."
"'Tis high time you did," said his wife. "The idea that a doctor, of
all men, shouldn't know that a woman's heart rules her eyes."
"Yes," said the Doctor, affecting a sigh. "It's dreadful to be a man,
and know so much that sometimes an important bit of knowledge gets
hidden behind something else at the very time it's most needed. How
many books have you remaining, to satisfy the country demand, Mrs.
Somerton?"
"Not enough, I fear. We ought to have bought one or two hundred more
volumes."
"Which means," said Philip, with a pretence at being grieved at having
been forgotten during the congratulations, "that they will have to be
purchased at once, and paid for, by the mere nobody of the concern."
"Nobody, indeed!" exclaimed Grace, with a look which caused the
Taggesses to exchange delighted pinches, and the minister to say:--
"I don't think any one need go far to find a proof of the blessed
mystery that one and one need make only one, if rightly added."
"No, indeed," said the Doctor, "but at least one-half of the one in
question is so tired that it ought to get some rest, which it won't and
can't while we visitors stay here to admire and ask questions. Come
along, wife; we'll find some better time to talk her and these other
good people to death about what they've done. I've only to say that
if Brother Grateway doesn't give you his benediction in words, he will
leave one for you all the same, and there'll be two others to keep it
company--eh, wife?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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