“Get tired!” he scoffed.  “Jerry Clifford get tired of bein’ dunned!  Don’t talk so foolish!  Why, he gets fat on that kind of thing; it’s the main excitement he has, that and spendin’ a cent twice a day for newspapers.  Did you ever watch Jerry buy a paper?  No?  Well, you go up to Ellis’s some day when the mornin’ papers are put out for sale and watch him.  He’ll drive up to the door with that old hoopskirt of a horse of his—­that’s what the critter looks like, one of them old-fashioned hoop-skirts; there was nothin’ to them but framework and a hollow inside, and that’s all there is to that horse.—­Well, Jerry he’ll drive up and come in to the paper counter, his eyes shinin’ and his nerves all keyed up and one hand shoved down into his britches pocket.  He’ll stand and look over the papers on the counter, readin’ as much of every one as he can for nothin’, and then by and by that hand’ll come out of his pocket with a cent in it.  Then the other hand’ll reach over and get hold of the paper he’s cal’latin’ to buy, get a good clove hitch onto it, and then for a minute he’ll stand there lookin’ first at the cent and then at the paper and rubbin’ the money between his finger and thumb—­he’s figgerin’ to have a little of the copper smell left on his hand even if he has to let go of the coin, you see—­and—­”

Mary laughed.

“Uncle Shad,” she exclaimed, “what ridiculous nonsense you do talk!”

“No nonsense about it.  It’s dead serious.  It ain’t any joke to Jerry, you can bet on that.  Well, after a spell, he kind of gets his spunk up to make the plunge, as you might say, lays down the penny—­Oh, he never throws it down; he wouldn’t treat real money as disrespectful as that—­grabs up the paper and makes a break for outdoors, never once lookin’ back for fear he might change his mind.  When he drives off in his buggy you can see that he’s all het up and trembly, like one of them reckless Wall Street speculators you read about.  He’s spent a cent, but he’s had a lovely nerve-wrackin’ time doin’ it.  Oh, a feller has to satisfy his cravin’ for excitement somehow, and Jerry satisfies his buyin’ one-cent newspapers and seein’ his creditors get mad.  Do you suppose you can worry such a critter as that by talkin’ to him about what he owes?  Might as well try to worry a codfish by leanin’ over the rail of the boat and hollerin’ to it that it’s drownin’.”

Mary laughed again.  “I’m afraid you may be right, Uncle Shad,” she said, “but I shan’t give up hope.  My chance may come some day, if I wait and watch for it.”

It came unexpectedly and in a rather odd manner.  One raw, windy March afternoon she was very much surprised to see Sam Keith walk into the store.  Sam, since his graduation from college, was, as he expressed it, “moaning on the bar” in Boston—­that is to say, he was attending the Harvard Law School with the hope, on his parents’ part, that he might ultimately become a lawyer.

“Why, Sam!” exclaimed Mary.  “Is this you?”