"Five. No matter how neat an' easy a fellow's dress is, it's wasted this
time in the mornin'. Them street-car conductors hev a chance for it all
day, dang 'em!"
He went back to the house as softly as possible, and brought out a
lantern, which was silver-mounted and of cut glass. He hung it carefully
in the wagon.
"There's no knowin' what use I may have for it,"--shaking his head, and
rubbing it tenderly.
Andy had owned that lantern for several years, and carried it with him
always. "You cannot know, Jane," he used to say to the woman whom he
worked for, "what a comfort I find in it. It"--He always stopped there,
and she never replied, but immediately talked of something else. Their
customers (for they kept half a dozen cows on the place, and Andy took
the milk into town)--their customers, when they found out about the
lantern, used to look oddly at Andy, and one or two of them had tried in
consequence to overreach him in the bills. But no thimble-rigger had a
keener eye for the cents than Fawcett. So their milk-speculation had
prospered, until, this spring, they had added to their stock of cows. It
was the only business in which Andy was partner; after he brought the
wagon back at noon, he put on his flannel shirt, and worked as a hired
hand for the woman; the other produce she sold herself.
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