"Trouble with me was," said David, "that till I was consid'able older 'n you be I had to scratch grav'l like all possessed, an' it's hard work now sometimes to git the idee out of my head but what the money's wuth more 'n the things. I guess," he remarked, looking at the ivory-backed brushes and the various toilet knick-knacks of cut-glass and silver which adorned John's bureau, and indicating them with a motion of his hand, "that up to about now you ben in the habit of figurin' the other way mostly." "Too much so, perhaps," said John; "but yet, after all, I don't think I am sorry. I wouldn't spend the money for those things now, but I am glad I bought them when I did." "Jess so, jess so," said David appreciatively. He reached over to the table and laid his cigar on the edge of a book, and, reaching for his hip pocket, produced a silver tobacco box, at which he looked contemplatively for a moment, opening and shutting the lid with a snap. "There," he said, holding it out on his palm, "I was twenty years makin' up my mind to buy that box, an' to this day I can't bring myself to carry it all the time. Yes, sir, I wanted that box fer twenty years. I don't mean to say that I didn't spend the wuth of it foolishly times over an' agin, but I couldn't never make up my mind to put that amount o' money into that pertic'ler thing. I was alwus figurin' that some day I'd have a silver tobacco box, an' I sometimes think the reason it seemed so extrav'gant, an' I put it off so long, was because I wanted it so much. Now I s'pose you couldn't understand that, could ye?" "Yes," said John, nodding his head thoughtfully, "I think I can understand it perfectly," and indeed it spoke pages of David's biography. "Yes, sir," said David, "I never spent a small amount o' money but one other time an' got so much value, only I alwus ben kickin' myself to think I didn't do it sooner." "Perhaps," suggested John, "you enjoyed it all the more for waiting so long." "No," said David, "it wa'n't that--I dunno--'t was the feelin' 't I'd got there at last, I guess. Fur's waitin' fer things is concerned, the' is such a thing as waitin' too long. Your appetite 'll change mebbe. I used to think when I was a youngster that if ever I got where I c'd have all the custard pie I c'd eat that'd be all 't I'd ask fer. I used to imagine bein' baked into one an' eatin' my way out. Nowdays the's a good many things I'd sooner have than custard pie, though," he said with a wink, "I gen'ally do eat two pieces jest to please Polly." John laughed. "What was the other thing?" he asked.