EVERYTHING is as merry as a marriage bell, and the goose hangs high!” Stephen Whipple quoted, with a hearty¹ laugh, as he and Fred Walton sat on the old man’s veranda² after breakfast one Sunday morning. “And I’m a-thinking, my boy, that the suspended fowl³ is none other than our fellow citizen, J. B. Thorp. He is as mad as a wet hen. He had us plumb⁴ down, and, like the bully⁵ he is, was pounding the blood out of us with no thought of letting up. Then the rest of the hungry pack of wolves piled on top, and began to get in their work. I was so crazy I didn’t know my hat from a hole in the ground. Then your keen young brain turned the trick, and here we are. Dick has got the dandiest retail⁶ store that ever saw the light in a Western town, and it is literally⁷ packed and jammed with customers.”

“I am certainly glad it turned out as it did,” Fred replied. “It has been a great thing for Dick.”

The merchant was silent for a moment, and Fred saw him twirling his heavy thumbs as he often did when embarrassed. Finally, after clearing his throat and rather awkwardly crossing his legs, he said:

“I’ve got a silly sort of confession⁸ to make, Fred. I reckon nobody is, on the outside, exactly what they are within, and I’ve got my faults like other fellows. On the outside I’m as strait-laced as a hard-shell Baptist, but I’ve always hankered after a periodical lark⁹ of some sort. Once in a great while I’ve taken trips just for the pure fun’ of the thing. During the Centennial at Philadelphia I laid down everything and went. I stayed a week, put up at a fine hotel, and lived as high as I knew how. I saw all that there was to see. Then I struck work at one time and went to the Mardi-gras at New Orleans, and then another time I hiked off to the Cotton Exposition in Atlanta. I don’t know why I’m that way, but I am. It is my periodical spree, I reckon. You remember I told you about my boy—the little fellow that passed away?”

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