Day after
day, as the coach flashed by with its money-laden passengers, Uncle
Billy had hoped that it would break down. But this was better, much
better. The coach might be quickly mended, but not the flood.
"I'm a-goin' t' charge 'em till they squeal," he declared to the
timidly protesting Aunt Margaret, "an' then I'm goin' t' charge 'em a
least mite more, drat 'em!"
He retreated behind the rough wooden counter that did duty as a desk,
slammed open the flimsy, paper-bound "cash book" that served as a
register, and planted his elbows uncompromisingly on either side of
it.
"Let 'em bring in their own traps," he commented, and Aunt Margaret
fled, ashamed and conscience-smitten, to the kitchen. It seemed awful.
The first one out of the coach was the husband of the brunette matron,
and, proceeding under instructions, he waited neither for luggage nor
women folk, but hurried straight into the Tutt House. The other man
would have been neck and neck with him in the race, if it had not been
that he paused to seize two suitcases and had the misfortune to drop
one, which burst open and scattered a choice assortment of lingerie
from one end of the dingy coach to the other.
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