Inside the shoe-store, the proprietor was excited. "Why," he exclaimed to his assistant, "that must be Appleby, the pedestrian--fellow you read so much about--the Indianapolis paper said just this morning that he was some place in this part of the country--you know, the fellow who's tramped all over Europe and Asia with his wife, and is bound for San Francisco now." His one lone clerk, a youth with adenoids, gaped and grunted. It was incredible to him that any one should walk without having to. Father was aware of the general interest, and as he was becoming used to his role as public character, he marched into the store like the Lord Mayor of London when he goes shopping in his gold coach with three men and a boy in powdered wigs carrying his train. The proprietor bowed and ventured: "Glad to see you with us, Mr. Appleby. It is Mr. Appleby, isn't it?" "Uh-huh," growled Father. "Well, well! Tramping like yours is pretty hard on the footgear, and that's a fact! Well, well! Believe me, you've come to just the right store for sport shoes. We got a large line of smart new horsehide shoes. Dear me! Tut, tut, tut, tut! What a pity, the way the tramping has worn out yours--fine shoe, too, I can see that. Well, well, well, well! how it surely does wear out the shoes, this long tramping. Peter, bring a pair of those horsehide shoes for Mr. Appleby. Nice, small, aristocratic foot, Mr. Appleby. If you worked in a shoe-store you'd know how uncommon--" "Huh! Don't want horsehide. Try a pair o' those pigskin shoes over there that you got a sale on." "Well, well, you do know what you want," fawned the shoeman. "Those pigskins are a very fine grade of shoe, and very inexpensive, very good for tramping--" "Yump. They'll do." "Going to be with us long?" inquired the shoeman, after trying on the shoes and cursing out Peter, the adenoidic clerk, in an abstracted, hopeless manner. "Nope." Father was wonderfully bored and superior. Surely not this Seth Appleby but a twin of his, a weak-kneed inferior twin, had loafed in Tompkins Square and wavered through the New York slums, longing for something to do. He didn't really mean to be curt, but his chief business in life was to get his shoes and hurry back to Mother, who was waiting for him, a mile from town, at a farm where the lordly Father had strung fence-wire and told high-colored stories for his breakfast. The fascinated shoeman hated to let him go. The shoeman knew few celebrities, and a five-mile motor ride was his wildest adventure. But by the light of a secret lamp in the bathroom, when his wife supposed him to have gone to bed, he breathlessly read the _Back o' the Beyond Magazine_, and slew pirates with a rubber sponge, and made a Turkish towel into a turban covered with quite valuable rubies, and coldly defied all the sharks in the bathtub. He was an adventurer and he felt that Father Appleby would understand his little-appreciated gallantry. He continued, "The madam with you?" "Yump."