of it being a great joke, like Grandfather and myself thought it would be, instead we all broke down and cried. Afterward I went all over the place before dark, gathered all the eggs and found three new nests, and that night we popped corn and ate apples, and I told them all about Silverton and how strange a place it was. In a few days I went back to town. Then I got better acquainted.
I was big enough to help clerk in the store, but wasn’t what you would call a safe clerk. I used to clerk while Father went to dinner. Mrs. Francis, a woman just out of Silverton, used to be a regular customer of ours; she came one day and I sold her a yard of gartering; after that, for a long time she didn’t trade with us. Father met her on the street one day and asked her why and she told him. She took from her satchel a small piece of gartering, expecting to meet him she was prepared to explain. She said, “There’s what your son sold me for a yard.” Father, a thoughtful person, took the gartering, which didn’t measure more than ten inches. The two went to the store and found it measured just a yard, if you stretched it to its limit. Mrs. Francis was given some
