countenance. "How could I?"

"I'm so glad," murmured the woman. "Well, what did he say?"

"I can't repeat all his words, Mrs. Prency, because he talks a good
deal better than I do, you know, an' maybe I wouldn't give them the
sense that they had,--the way that he meant them."

"How did he seem to take what you said to him?"

"I'm afraid, ma'am," said Sam, "that what I said didn't entirely suit
him; because when I got through all he said was, 'Pshaw!'"

Mrs. Prency looked at the shoe through which the needle was rapidly
passing back and forth, and finally said,--

"He hasn't come again, I suppose?"

"Oh, yes, ma'am, he has,--several times. I never knew any other man to
be so much interested in the makin' of one pair of shoes as he has been
about them that he ordered of me that day. He says they're not in any
hurry, an' yet he comes in every day or two to talk about them."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Prency, her face brightening. "Doesn't he talk of
anything but his shoes?"

"Yes, ma'am," sighed Sam; "he comes back to the old subject always;
an' it does seem to me as if the one thing he was thinkin' about an'
tryin' to do was to break me down in what I've learned to believe. It
don't seem, ma'am, to me that it's very big business for a smart feller