But the Cap’n did not seem to be disposed to echo this scorn.

“This here I’ve got may be only a notion, and it prob’ly is,” he said, knotting his gray brows, “and it don’t seem sensible.  First sight of him you wouldn’t think he could be used.  But when I laid eyes on old Dot-and-carry-one there, and when he grabbed into this thing the way he did just as I was thinkin’ hard of what Colonel Gid Ward has done to me, it came over me that I was goin’ to find a use for him.”

“How?” persisted the utilitarian Hiram.

“Don’t have the least idea,” confessed the Cap’n.  “It’s like pickin’ up a stockin’ full of wet mud and walkin’ along hopin’ that you’ll meet the man you want to swat with it.  I’m goin’ to pick him up.”

He stumped off the piazza and followed Mr. Bodge.  And Hiram, stopping to relight his cigar, went along, too, reflecting that when a man has plenty of time on his hands he can afford to spend a little of it on the gratification of curiosity.

The first exhibits in the domain of Bodge were not cheering or suggestive of value.  For instance, from among the litter in a tumble-down shop Mr. Bodge produced something in the shape of a five-pointed star that he called his “Anti-stagger Shoe.”

“I saw old Ike Bradley go past here with a hard-cider jag that looped over till its aidges dragged on the ground,” he explained.  “I tied cross-pieces onto his feet and he went along all level.  Now see how a quick mind like mine acts?  Here’s the anti-stagger shoe.  To be kept in all city clubs and et cetry.  Let like umbrellas.  Five places in each shoe for a man to shove his foot.  Can’t miss it.  Then he starts off braced front, sides, and behind.”

Hiram sniffed and the Cap’n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the “Anti-stagger Shoe.”

The “Patent Cat Identifier and Introducer,” exhibited in actual operation in the Bodge home, attracted more favorable attention from inspecting capital.  Mr. Bodge explained that this device allowed a hard-working man to sleep after he once got into bed, and saved his wife from running around nights in her bare feet and getting cold and incurring disease and doctors’ bills.  It was an admitted fact in natural history, he stated, that the uneasy feline is either yowling to be let out or meowing on the window-sill to be let in.  With quiet pride the inventor pointed to a panel in the door, hinged at the top.  This permitted egress, but not ingress.

“An ordinary, cheap inventor would have had the panel swing both ways,” said Mr. Bodge, “and he would have a kitchen full of strange cats, with a skunk or two throwed in for luck.  You see that I’ve hinged a pane of winder-glass and hitched it to a bevelled stick that tips inward.  Cat gets up on the sill outside and meows.  Dog runs to the winder and stands up to see, and puts his paws on the stick because it’s his nature for to do so.  Pane tips in.  If it’s our cat, dog don’t stop her comin’ in.  If it’s a strange cat—­br-r-r, wow-wow!  Off she goes!”