Odd Numbers. Ford Sewell
a heliotrope lid, and the foundation must have used up enough straw to bed down a circus. It has the dimensions and general outlines of a summerhouse. The scheme of decoration is simple enough, though. The top of this heliotrope summerhouse has been caught in a heliotrope fog, that’s all. There’s yards and yards of this gauzy stuff draped and puffed and looped around it, with only a wide purple ribbon showin’ here and there and keepin’ the fog in place.
Well, all that is restin’ careless in a box, the size of a quarter-mile runnin’ track, with the cover half off. And it’s a work of art in itself, that box—all Looey Cans pictures, and a thick purple silk cord to tie it up with. Why, one glimpse of that combination was enough to make me clap my hand over my roll and back away from the spot!
Just then, though, I notices another gent steppin’ up for a squint at the monstrosity, and I can’t help lingerin’ to see if he gets the same kind of a shock. He’s sort of a queer party, too—short, stoop shouldered, thin faced, wrinkled old chap, with a sandy mustache mixed some with gray, and a pair of shrewd little eyes peerin’ out under bushy brows. Anybody could spot him as a rutabaga delegate by the high crowned soft hat and the back number ulster that he’s still stickin’ to, though the thermometer is way up in the eighties.
But he don’t seem to shy any at the purple lid. He sticks his head out first this way and then that, like a turtle, and then all of a sudden he shoots over kind of a quizzin’ glance at me. I can’t help but give him the grin. At that his mouth corners wrinkle up and the little gray eyes begin to twinkle.
“Quite a hat, eh?” he chuckles.
“It’s goin’ some in the lid line,” says I.
“I expect that’s a mighty stylish article, though,” says he.
“That’s the bluff the store people are makin’,” says I, “and there’s no law against it.”
“What would be your guess on the price of that there, now?” says he, edging up.
“Ah, let’s leave such harrowin’ details to the man that has to pay for it,” says I. “No use in our gettin’ the chilly spine over what’s marked on the price ticket; that is, unless you’re thinking of investin’,” and as I tips him the humorous wink I starts to move off.
But this wa’n’t a case where I was to get out so easy. He comes right after me. “Excuse me, neighbor,” says he; “but—but that’s exactly what I was thinking of doing, if it wasn’t too infernally expensive.”
“What!” says I, gazin’ at him; for he ain’t the kind of citizen you’d expect to find indulgin’ in such foolishness. “Oh, well, don’t mind my remarks. Go ahead and blow yourself. You want it for the missus, eh?”
“Ye-e-es,” he drawls; “for—for my wife. Ah—er—would it be asking too much of a stranger if I should get you to step in there with me while I find out the price?”
“Why,” says I, lookin’ him over careful—“why, I don’t know as I’d want to go as far as—— Well, what’s the object?”
“You see,” says he, “I’m sort of a bashful person—always have been—and I don’t just like to go in there alone amongst all them women folks. But the fact is, I’ve kind of got my mind set on having that hat, and——”
“Wife ain’t in town, then?” says I.
“No,” says he, “she’s—she isn’t.”
“Ain’t you runnin’ some risks,” says I, “loadin’ up with a lid that may not fit her partic’lar style of beauty?”
“That’s so, that’s so,” says he. “Ought to be something that would kind of jibe with her complexion and the color of her hair, hadn’t it?”
“You’ve surrounded the idea,” says I. “Maybe it would be safer to send for her to come on.”
“No,” says he; “couldn’t be done. But see here,” and he takes my arm and steers me up the avenue, “if you don’t mind talking this over, I’d like to tell you a plan I’ve just thought out.”
Well, he’d got me some int’rested in him by that time. I could see he wa’n’t no common Rube, and them twinklin’ little eyes of his kind of got me. So I tells him to reel it off.
“Maybe you never heard of me,” he goes on; “but I’m Goliah Daggett, from South Forks, Iowy.”
“Guess I’ve missed hearin’ of you,” says I.
“I suppose so,” says he, kind of disappointed, though. “The boys out there call me Gol Daggett.”
“Sounds most like a cussword,” says I.
“Yes,” says he; “that’s one reason I’m pretty well known in the State. And there may be other reasons, too.” He lets out a little chuckle at that; not loud, you know, but just as though he was swallowin’ some joke or other. It was a specialty of his, this smothered chuckle business. “Of course,” he goes on, “you needn’t tell me your name, unless——”
“It’s a fair swap,” says I. “Mine’s McCabe; Shorty for short.”
“Yes?” says he. “I knew a McCabe once. He—er—well, he——”
“Never mind,” says I. “It’s a big fam’ly, and there’s only a few of us that’s real credits to the name. But about this scheme of yours, Mr. Daggett?”
“Certainly,” says he. “It’s just this: If I could find a woman who looked a good deal like my wife, I could try the hat on her, couldn’t I? She’d do as well, eh?”
“I don’t know why not,” says I.
“Well,” says he, “I know of just such a woman; saw her this morning in my hotel barber shop, where I dropped in for a haircut. She was one of these—What do you call ’em now?”
“Manicure artists?” says I.
“That’s it,” says he. “Asked me if I didn’t want my fingers manicured; and, by jinks! I let her do it, just to see what it was like. Never felt so blamed foolish in my life! Look at them fingernails, will you? Been parin’ ’em with a jackknife for fifty-seven years; and she soaks ’em out in a bowl of perfumery, jabs under ’em with a little stick wrapped in cotton, cuts off all the hang nails, files ’em round at the ends, and polishes ’em up so they shine as if they were varnished! He, he! Guess the boys would laugh if they could have seen me.”
“It’s one experience you’ve got on me,” says I. “And this manicure lady is a ringer for Mrs. Daggett, eh?”
“Well, now,” says he, scratchin’ his chin, “maybe I ought to put it that she looks a good deal as Mrs. Daggett might have looked ten or fifteen years ago if she’d been got up that way—same shade of red hair, only not such a thunderin’ lot of it; same kind of blue eyes, only not so wide open and starry; and a nose and chin that I couldn’t help remarking. Course, now, you understand this young woman was fixed up considerable smarter than Mrs. Daggett ever was in her life.”
“If she’s a manicure artist in one of them Broadway hotels,” says I, “I could guess that; specially if Mrs. Daggett’s always stuck to Iowa.”
“Yes, that’s right; she has,” says Daggett. “But if she’d had the same chance to know what to wear and how to wear it——Well, I wish she’d had it, that’s all. And she wanted it. My, my! how she did hanker for such things, Mr. McCabe!”
“Well, better late than never,” says I.
“No, no!” says he, his voice kind of breakin’ up. “That’s what I want to forget, how—how late it is!” and hanged if he don’t have to fish out a handkerchief and swab off his eyes. “You see,”