Pike had known and pondered long.
It happened just about then that the arrears of rent for the village
hotel had so accumulated on Mr. Spouter, the last occupant, that the
owner, an indulgent man, finally had said, what he had been expected
for years and years to say, that he could not wait on Mr. Spouter
forever and eternally. It was at this very nick, so to speak, that Mr.
Pike made to Mr. Fluker the suggestion to quit a business so far
beneath his powers, sell out, or rent out, or tenant out, or do
something else with his farm, march into town, plant himself upon the
ruins of Jacob Spouter, and begin his upward soar.
Now Mr. Fluker had many and many a time acknowledged that he had
ambition; so one night he said to his wife:
"You see how it is here, Nervy. Farmin' somehow don't suit my talons.
I need to be flung more 'mong people to fetch out what's in me. Then
thar's Marann, which is gittin' to be nigh on to a growd-up woman; an'
the child need the s'iety which you 'bleeged to acknowledge is sca'ce
about here, six mile from town. Your brer Sam can stay here an' raise
butter, chickens, eggs, pigs, an'--an'--an' so forth.
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