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To Janice, afterward, he would say nothing more encouraging than he had said to the widow. "When one mixes up with a sharper like Abel Strout, one is likely to be burned before he is through. Strout is always and forever trying little, nasty, legal tricks. And Schrimpe is an instrument fitted to Strout's hand.
Quincy passed the morning at the grocery, making arrangements for the establishment of the branch stores, Mr. Strout's plans being approved with some material modifications. Strout told his wife that Mr. Sawyer had fixed it so he couldn't get control of the business, but that he would put a flea in his ear some fine day. "I can't see through it," said Bessie Strout.
"He must have got an all-fired trouncing, for his face looks like a raw beefsteak, an' one of the fellers said he'd been spittin' blood." "Them Sawyers is brutes," was Mr. Strout's comment. "I hope to the Lord that he is the last one of that brood to come to this town. Their money's the best part of 'em, but it ain't any better, when you come to that, than other folkses."
Over the doorway was an electric sign Mr. Strout's store was nearly deserted. About ten o'clock Abner came in. "I say, Strout, it's just scrumptious. They got three times as many goods as you have. An' there's a smoking room back of the store with a sign over the door 'Exclusively for Loafers. Loaf and Enjoy Your Soul. They say a poet feller named Whitman writ that last part.
Strout's brother-in-law, could not get printers in Fernborough, and, being an Eastborough-born boy, his paper had a large circulation in that town and in Westvale, its principal village. Quincy obtained some copies of the paper containing his speech at the Town Hall. On looking it over he was astonished to find it reported verbatim. "How did you manage it, Mr. Chisholm?
Her last will and testament was very short, containing but one clause, which gave all her property to her grandson Quincy Adams Sawyer. When Aunt Ella heard of her sister's death, she said to Alice: "They were not two distinct beings, Nathaniel was one and a half, and Sarah only a half." "That boy will sure go to the devil now," was Mr. Strout's comment. "I don't think so," said Hiram.
And then the way he butted in at my concert and turned a high-class musical entertainment inter a nigger minstrel show by whistling a tune vas enough to make anybody mad clean through." "Wall, you got mad, didn't you?" said Hiram. "What good did it do yer?" Mr. Strout's newly aroused wrath was not appeased. "Then again, the way he squeezed himself in at that surprise party.
"That runs in the family. But the horse, it seems, was independent too. Perhaps the Guv'nor will have a boxing match with him for his independence to a Sawyer." As Hiram went back into the store he said to himself: "That Strout's only a half-converted sinner anyway. He'll never forget the thrashing that Mr. Sawyer gave his man, Bob Wood."
He's got up a sign O. Strout, Fine Groceries an' says Hiram's out of the firm, and that he owns the whole business." Quincy smiled. "So, I've got to fight it out with him again, have I? Well it will be the final conflict. To use Mr. Strout's words, one or the other of us will have to leave town. You aren't going back to- night?" "Oh, I must."
Day, on second thought. "It may be all right. Just ask her who looked up the title. Tell her I will have the money ready for her to take up Strout's mortgage when it becomes due next time; but that meanwhile I shall have to have the title searched if that was not done before." "Oh, Daddy! do you believe there could be some some "
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