No nice quiet pepper-and-salt, you
understand, but the checkerboard kind, the oilcloth kind, the kind that
looks like the marble floor in the Boston post-office. They was pretty
tolerable seedy, and so was his hat. Oh, he was a last year's bird's
nest NOW, but when them clothes was fresh--whew! the northern lights and
a rainbow mixed wouldn't have been more'n a cloudy day 'longside of him.
He run up to the piazza like a clipper coming into port, and he sweeps
off that rusty hat and hails us grand and easy.
"Good-morning, gentlemen," says he.
"We don't want none," says Jonadab, decided.
The feller looked surprised. "I beg your pardon," says he. "You don't
want any--what?"
"We don't want any 'Life of King Solomon' nor 'The World's Big
Classifyers.' And we don't want to buy any patent paint, nor sewing
machines, nor clothes washers, nor climbing evergreen roses, nor
rheumatiz salve. And we don't want our pictures painted, neither."
Jonadab was getting excited. Nothing riles him wuss than a peddler,
unless it's a woman selling tickets to a church fair. The feller swelled
up until I thought the top button on that thunderstorm coat would drag
anchor, sure.
"You are mistaken," says he. "I have called to see Mr. Peter Brown; he
is--er--a relative of mine."
Well, you could have blown me and Jonadab over with a cat's-paw. We went
on our beam ends, so's to speak. A relation of Peter T.
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