A man had come into the store and stood leaning against a show-case on the side devoted to groceries.
“There’s a customer,” said the drummer; “don’t let me keep you, old man; you know you’ve got to look at my samples some time to-day.”
“Well, I’ll go see what he wants,” said Wilson, “and then I’ll look through your line, though I don’t feel a bit like it, after losing the best regular customer I have.”
The drummer had opened his sample-case on the desk when Wilson came back.
“You say the woman’s husband took the child away,” remarked the drummer; “did he go far?”
“They first settled away out in Texas,” replied Wilson, “but Joe Boyd, not having his wife’s wonderful head to guide him, failed at farming there, and only about three years ago he came back to this country and bought a little piece of land over in Gilmer--the county that joins this one.”
“Oh, so near as that! Then perhaps she has seen her daughter and--”
“Oh no, they’ve never met,” said Wilson, as he took a sample pair of men’s suspenders from the case and tested the elastic by stretching it between his hands. “I know that for certain. She was in here one morning waiting for one of her teams to pass to take her to Darley, when a peddler opened his pack of tin-ware and tried to sell her some pieces I was out of. He heard me call her by name, and, to be agreeable, he asked her if she was any kin to Joe Boyd and his daughter, over in Gilmer. I could have choked the fool for his stupidity. I tried to catch his eye to warn him, but he was intent on selling her a bill, and took no notice of anything else. I saw her stare at him steady for a second or two, then she seemed to swallow something, and said, ‘No, they are no kin of mine.’ And then what did the skunk do but try to make capital out of that. ‘Well, you may be glad,’ he said, ‘that they are no kin, for they are as near the ragged edge as any folks I ever ran across.’ He went on to say he stayed overnight at Boyd’s cabin and that they had hardly anything but streak-o’-lean-streak-o’-fat meat and corn-bread to offer him, and that the girl had the worst temper he’d ever seen. Mrs. Boyd, I reckon to hide her face, was looking at some of the fellow’s pans, and he seemed to think he was on the right line, and so he kept talking. Old Joe, he said, had struck him as a good-natured, lazy sort of come-easy-go-easy mountaineer, but the girl looked stuck up, like she thought she was some better than appearances would indicate. He said she was a tall, gawky sort of girl, with no good looks to brag of, and he couldn’t for the life of him see what she had to make her so proud.