“You’re giving them clothes away, are you, Judge Peterson?”

“I am leaving them here for any one who chooses to take them.  Do you want first pick, Jolson?”

“Not me!  I ain’t taking charity hand-me-downs from any man, Judge.  If it’s a polite question, why are you giving away your duds this way?”

“I think you have just answered that question, Jolson.  I offered you these clothes.  Your nose went into the air.  Other men have acted in the same way in the past when I have offered to give a fellow a good suit.  I don’t want to hurt other folks’ feelings.  I don’t want to have my own feelings hurt.  So, let any man help himself when no one is looking.”

“I’ll take the alarm-clock, if you say so,” volunteered Jolson.  “It’ll help to rout me out of bed at milking-time.”

“No, you cannot have the clock, Jolson.  I have tinkered it so that it will purr a little every half-hour.  It will call attention to the clothes.  You see, a good many men rush through life without looking to right or left, and so they miss a lot of opportunities.”

Jolson clucked to his horse and rattled away down the road, muttering sour remarks.

The old gentleman, with the air of a man who has satisfied his philanthropic ambitions, climbed into his chaise and followed the farmer.

The brisk breeze flirted the tails of the frock-coat and the trousers legs tried out a modest little gig as if some of the jocose spirit of the old gentleman had remained with the garments he had discarded.

There were several passers before another half-hour had elapsed.

The trousers kicked out quite hilariously when a young couple drove by in a buggy.  The girl was pretty, and companionship with her might have suited even a judge’s garments.  But the young man and the girl were quite absorbed in each other, and the trousers kicked and the frock-coat flirted ineffectually.

A peddler’s cart passed very slowly, but the driver did not look up from a paper filled with figures.

There were others to whom the judge’s garments offered themselves mutely, but no one glanced that way and the clock was discreetly silent.  The breeze died down and the trousers and the coat hung with a sort of homeless, homesick, and wistful air.  One might have thought they were trying to conceal themselves when the next person appeared, so still were they.  He was not an inviting person—­not such a new lord and master as a judge’s garments might be expected to welcome.

He was grossly fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable.  Surely, a most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments of a judge!  But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of inanimate things, the clock jangled its alarm.