"Where can I get a flatiron?" I inquired at the Postoffice when I first entered the village.
"Most likely at Burridge's," was the reply.
"Do you know where I can get a pair of row-locks?" I asked of a boy who was lounging about the town dock.
"At Burridge's," he replied.
When we wanted oars, pickles of a certain variety, golden syrup, and a dozen other things which were essential at times, we were compelled to go to Burridge's, so that at last he obtained a very fair portion of our trade despite the condition of his store.
During all these earlier dealings there cropped up something curt and dry in his conversation. One day we lost a fruit jar which he had loaned, and I took one very much like it back in its place. When I began to apologize he interrupted me with, "A jar's a jar, isn't it?"
Another time, when I remarked in a conciliatory tone that he owed me eight cents for a can of potted ham which had proved stale, he exclaimed, "Well, I won't owe you long," and forthwith pulled the money out of the loose jacket of his jumper and paid me.
I inquired one day if a certain thing were good. "If it isn't," he replied, with a peculiar elevation of the eyebrows, "your money is. You can have that back."
"That's the way you do business, is it?"
"Yes, sir," he replied, and his long upper lip thinned out along the line of the lower one like a vise.