he makes good
chairs. He goes on strike, many's the time, without caring that it hurts
him and his worse than it hurts the boss. And often the boss thinks he
wants nothing bigger than a few more things. Maybe he _is_ wild for a
phonograph and a Ford and golden oak rockers of his own in the parlor,
and photographs enlarged in crayon hanging on the walls--and a steady
job. But, listen to me, John Wesley, Jr., and you'll be a credit to your
namesake: these wild, unreasonable workers, with all their foolishness
and sometimes wickedness, are whiles dreaming of a different world, a
better world for everybody. 'Twould be no harm if some bosses dreamed
more about that too, me boy. Your preacher--he's a fine man too, is Mr.
Drury--he understands that, and he wants to use it for something to
build on. That's why I tell folks he's a Methodist preacher with a real
method in his ministry. Now I'll quit me fashin' and get back to the
job. I doubt you'll be busy yourself this afternoon."

He gripped J.W.'s hand, so that the knuckles were unable to forget him
all day, but what he had said gripped harder than his handshake. If the
furniture factory was a mixed blessing, what of the cannery?

Somewhat to his own surprise, J.W. was getting interested in his town,
but if at first he was inclined to wonder how he happened to develop all
this new concern, he soon ceased to think of it. So slight a matter
could not stay in the front of his thinking when he really began to know
something of the Delafield to which he had never paid much attention.

It was through Joe Carbrook that he got his next jolt. Joe, now spending
his vacations in ways that amazed people who had memories of his wild
younger manner, was in and out of the Farwell store a good deal. Also he
spent considerable time with Pastor Drury, though there is no record of
what they talked about.

"J.W., old boy," Joe asked one day, coming away from the pastor's
study, "have you ever by any chance observed Main Street?"

"Why, yes," J.W. answered, "seeing that two or three or four times a day
I walk six blocks of it back and forth to this store door, I suppose I
have."

"Oh, yes, that way," Joe came back at him, "and you've seen me, a
thousand times. But did you ever observe me? My ears, for instance," and
he put his hands over them. "Which one is the larger?"

Without in the least understanding what his friend was driving at, and
stupidly wondering if he ever had noticed any dif