And
of course Hughey Mason, being a smart Aleck, pipes up and says, 'That's
so, Uncle Tony is no business man. Why, Tom Hall says that when you
find Uncle Tony's emporium locked at eleven o'clock of a winter morning
you can bet your bottom dollar Uncle Tony's home shaking down the
furnace, and if it's closed at four of a summer afternoon Uncle Tony's
sneaked off home to mow the lawn.'
"Well, those idiots and old hypocrites were talking just like that,
goodness knows how long. They never took the trouble to see if Uncle
Tony was really around or not. But all of a sudden I looked around the
corner of the middle row of shelves and there was that poor old man
sitting as still as death in his cashier's cage and looking sick to
death. You know he wouldn't cheat a soul, and as for that store, he'd
die without it. It's all the family he has. Well I had stepped in
there to buy a couple of flat-irons. The children mislaid mine. But I
walked right out for I didn't want to call him out to wait on me.
"I was so mad I just walked around the block till I met Mrs. Jerry
Dustin right at Simpson's corner and I told her the whole thing. She
was as hurt about it as Uncle Tony and kept holding on to Simpson's
garden fence and saying, 'Dear me, Fanny, we must do something.
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