“I certainly do not,” said Anderson.

“Well,” said Madame Griggs, “I am very much obliged to you.  I’ll send the bill a week from to-day, and I feel a great deal better about it.  I don’t have nobody to ask, and sometimes I feel as if I didn’t have a friend or a brother to ask whether I’d better do anything or not, I should give up.  I’m very much obliged, Mr. Anderson.”

“You are very welcome to anything I have done,” replied Anderson, looking at her with a dismay of bewilderment.  It was as if he had witnessed some mental inversion which affected his own brain.  Anderson always pitied Madame Griggs, but never, after his conferences with her concerning the Carrolls, did he in his heart of hearts blame her husband for running away.

Madame Griggs’s coquettish manner developed on the threshold of the office.  She smirked until her little, delicate-skinned face was a net-work mask, and all the muscles quivered to the sight through the transparent covering.  She moved her thin, crooked elbows with a flapping motion like wings as she smirked and thanked him again.

“I should think you’d like the grocery business a heap better than law,” said she, amiably, as she went out.  “Oh, I want to get a melon if they ain’t too dear.”  She evidently expected Anderson himself to wait upon her, and was a little taken aback that he did not follow her.  She lingered for a long time haggling with Price, with a watchful eye on the office door, and finally departed without purchasing.

Shortly after she had gone, Sam Riggs came for Anderson to inspect some vegetables which had been brought in by a farmer.  “He’s got some fine potatoes,” said he, “but he wants too much for ’em, Price thinks.  He’s got cabbages, too, and them’s too high.  Guess you had better look at ’em yourself, Price says.”

So Anderson went out to interview the farmer, sparsely bearded, lank, and long-necked and seamy-skinned, his face ineffectual yet shrewd, a poor white of the South strung on wiry nerves, instead of lax muscles, the outcome of the New Jersey soil.  He shuffled determinedly in his great boots, heavy with red shale, standing guard over his fine vegetables.  He nodded phlegmatically at Anderson.  He never smiled.  Occasionally his long facial muscles relaxed, but they never widened.  He was indefinably serious by nature, yet not melancholy, and absolutely acquiescent in his life conditions.  The farmer of New Jersey is not of the stuff which breeds anarchy.  He is rooted fast to his red-clinging native soil, which has taken hold of his spirit.  He is tenacious, but not revolutionary.  He was as adamant on the prices of his vegetables, and finally Anderson purchased at his terms.

“You got stuck,” Price said, after the farmer, in his rusty wagon, drawn by a horse which was rather a fine animal, had disappeared down the street.

“Well, I don’t know,” Anderson replied.  “His vegetables are pretty fine.”