"You get off the track in life pretty easy. And gettin' back is the very Old Boy. Just kind of do the wrong trick just for once, you think, and by jinks, you may get in the brambles for keeps! Business men know!"
The Mountain-Lover waited with wonder-struck interest. If a fat rabbit from the bushes had hopped out and sat up and given him instructions in mathematics he could hardly have been more astonished than at this unlooked-for application. He glanced up at the Wise Old Titan bending his benignant face over them; who would have dreamed that in this plump and prosperous merchant there would have been a listener?
The speaker went on, striking his short forefinger in the palm of his other hand for emphasis. His quick business imagination—for he surely had that variety, if no other—sifted its own grist from the hopper.
"Tell you what I thought of, quick as you said that," he went on in breathless earnestness.
"In our business—I'm jewellery, near Providence—have a biggish store—there's
