"Huh! Don't want horsehide. Try a pair o' those pigskin shoes over there
that you got a sale on."

"Well, well, you do know what you want," fawned the shoeman. "Those
pigskins are a very fine grade of shoe, and very inexpensive, very good
for tramping--"

"Yump. They'll do."

"Going to be with us long?" inquired the shoeman, after trying on the
shoes and cursing out Peter, the adenoidic clerk, in an abstracted,
hopeless manner.

"Nope." Father was wonderfully bored and superior. Surely not this Seth
Appleby but a twin of his, a weak-kneed inferior twin, had loafed in
Tompkins Square and wavered through the New York slums, longing for
something to do. He didn't really mean to be curt, but his chief
business in life was to get his shoes and hurry back to Mother, who was
waiting for him, a mile from town, at a farm where the lordly Father had
strung fence-wire and told high-colored stories for his breakfast.

The fascinated shoeman hated to let him go. The shoeman knew few
celebrities, and a five-mile motor ride was his wildest adventure. But
by the light of a secret lamp in the bathroom, when his wife supposed
him to have gone to bed, he breathlessly read the _Back o' the Beyond
Magazine_, and slew pirates with a rubber sponge, and made a Turkish
towel into a turban covered with quite valuable rubies, and coldly
defied all the sharks in the bathtub. He was an adventurer and he felt
that Father Appleby would understand his little-appreciated gallantry.
He continued, "The madam with you?"

"Yump."

"Say--uh--if I may be so bold and just suggest it, we'd be honored if
you and the madam could take dinner at our house and tell us about your
trip. The wife and me was talking about it just this morning. The wife
said, guessed we'd have to pike out and do the same thing! Hee, hee! And
Doc Schergan--fine bright man the doc, very able and cultured and
educated--he's crazy to meet you. We were talking about you just this
morning--read about your heading this way, in the Indianapolis paper.
Say," he leaned forward and whispered, after a look at his clerk which
ought to have exterminated that unadventurous youth--"say, is it true
what they say, that you're doing this on a ten-thousand-dollar bet?"

"Well," and Father thawed a little, "that's what they're all saying,
but, confidentially, and don't let this go any further, it isn't as much
as that. This is between you and I, now."

"Oh yessss," breathed the flattered shoeman.