"Gosh all hemlock!" Farmer Weeks confided to the crowd. "They told me to
look out fer them scalawags when I come to town, but I swan I didn't
expect to see a gal like that tryin' to lift my wallet. No, sir! But
they got to get up pretty early in the mornin' to fool me--they have
that!"

Even in her fright, Bessie divined at once what the old rascal was
trying to do. He was playing the part of the green and unsuspicious
countryman, the farmer on a trip, usually the easy prey of sharpers of
all sorts, and he was doing it for a purpose--to win the sympathy of the
crowd. In her new clothes Bessie looked enough like a city girl to pass
for one easily, while Farmer Weeks wore old-fashioned clothes of rusty
black, a slouch hat, and a colored handkerchief knotted about his neck
in place of a scarf. He carried an old-fashioned cotton umbrella; too,
a huge affair--a regular "bumbleshoot," and he was dressed to play the
part.

"Hey, mister, gimme a nickel an' I'll call a cop for you!" volunteered a
small, sharp-faced boy, with a bundle of papers under his arm. Somehow
he had managed to squirm through the crowd.

Weeks looked at him reproachfully.

"You call a constable--an' I'll give you the nickel when you come back
with him," he said.

In spite of her deplorable situation, Bessie wanted to laugh. It was so
like Farmer Weeks, the miser, to be unwilling to risk even five cents
without being sure that he would get value for his money! The boy darted
off, and Bessie heard half a dozen of the crowd make remarks applauding