But Mr. Humphreys, whose mind and fortune naturally enough centered in his hardware store, couldn’t be expected to know that the impossible had happened for Peter Champneys.  He would hardly be able to take Peter’s bare word for it, even if Peter should tell him:  he didn’t know that his absent-minded clerk really liked him, and longed to tell him that he was leaving Riverton shortly—­he hoped for years and years—­and was only awaiting the message that should speed his departure.  Mr. Humphreys, then, cannot be blamed for complaining with feeling and profanity that of all the damidjits he had ever seen in his life, Peter Champneys was about the worst.  Loony was no name for him, and what was to become of such a chump he didn’t know.  “If this thing keeps up, he’ll be drooling before he’s forty, and we’ll have to hire a nigger to feed him out of a papspoon,” said Mr. Humphreys, forebodingly.

And in the meanwhile the days dragged and dragged—­two whole weeks of suspense and expectancy.  On the Monday of the third week the end of Peter’s waiting and of Mr. Humphreys’s patience came together.  One, in fact, brought about the other.  The postman who drove in with the daily mail brought for Peter Champneys the yellow envelope toward which he had been looking with such feverish impatience.

He was really to go!  The young man experienced that reeling, ecstatic shock which shakes one when a long-delayed desire suddenly assumes reality.  He stood with the telegram in his fingers, and stared about the dusty, dingy, uninteresting store, and saw as with new eyes how hopelessly hideous it really was; and wondered and wondered if he were really himself, Peter Champneys, who was going to get away from it.

At that moment stout old Mrs. Beach entered the store and waddled up to him.  Mrs. Beach was a woman who never knew what she really wanted, or if, indeed, she really wanted anything in particular; but then again, as she said, she might.  She didn’t like to leave her house often; and when she did finally make up her mind to dress and go out, she popped into every store she happened to pass, on the chance that she might want something from it, and would thus save herself an extra trip to get it.  She would say to a perspiring clerk: 

“Now, let me see:  there’s something I wanted to get from this store.  I know it, because on Tuesday last something happened to put me in mind of it—­or was it Wednesday, maybe?  I know it’s something I need about the house—­or maybe the yard.  You’ll have to help me out.  I’ve got a poor memory, but you just sort of run over a list of things folks would be most likely to need and maybe you’ll hit on the right thing, and if it’s that I want, I’ll get it right now.  Don’t stand there like a hitching-post, boy!  Why can’t you suggest something, and help out a woman old enough to be your mother?”

If by some fortuitous chance you happened to hit upon an article she thought she might happen to need, and it suited her, she would buy it.  But it never occurred to her to thank you for your help, or to apologize for the nerve-racking strain to which she subjected you.