much of a stranger if I should get you to step in there with me while I
find out the price?"

"Why," says I, lookin' him over careful,--"why, I don't know as I'd want
to go as far as---- Well, what's the object?"

"You see," says he, "I'm sort of a bashful person,--always have
been,--and I don't just like to go in there alone amongst all them women
folks. But the fact is, I've kind of got my mind set on having that hat,
and----"

"Wife ain't in town, then?" says I.

"No," says he, "she's--she isn't."

"Ain't you runnin' some risks," says I, "loadin' up with a lid that may
not fit her partic'lar style of beauty?"

"That's so, that's so," says he. "Ought to be something that would kind
of jibe with her complexion and the color of her hair, hadn't it?"

"You've surrounded the idea," says I. "Maybe it would be safer to send
for her to come on."

"No," says he; "couldn't be done. But see here," and he takes my arm and
steers me up the avenue, "if you don't mind talking this over, I'd like
to tell you a plan I've just thought out."

Well, he'd got me some int'rested in him by that time. I could see he
wa'n't no common Rube, and them twinklin' little eyes of his kind of got
me. So I tells him to reel it off.

"Maybe you never heard of me," he goes on; "but I'm Goliah Daggett, from
South Forks, Iowy."

"Guess I've missed hearin' of you," says I.

"I suppose so," says he, kind of disappointed, though. "The boys out
there call me Gol Daggett."

"Sounds most like a cussword," says I.

"Yes," says he; "that's one reason I'm pretty well known in the State.
And there may be other reasons, too." He lets out a little chuckle at
that; not loud, you know, but just as though he was swallowin' some joke
or other. It was a specialty of his, this smothered chuckle business. "Of
course," he goes on, "you needn't tell me your name, unless----"

"It's a fair swap," says I. "Mine's McCabe; Shorty for short."

"Yes?" says he. "I knew a McCabe once. He--er--well, he----"

"Never mind," says I. "It's a big fam'ly, and there's only a few of us
that's real credits to the name. But about this scheme of yours, Mr.
Daggett?"

"Certainly," says he. "It's just this: If I could find a woman who looked
a good deal like my wife, I could try the hat on her, couldn't I? She'd
do as well, eh?"

"I don't know why not," says I.

"Well," says he, "I know of just such a woman; saw her this morning in my
hotel barber shop, where I dropped i