Page:Hugh Pendexter--Tiberius Smith.djvu/29

 vacation. When you've got a half-Nelson on prosperity it doesn't pay to quit. But now that we must loaf, let's do it orderly.'

"Naturally I fell on his neck and swore I'd never desert him, providing he would square the railroads. And as he conned passes to Vermont, where he use to be born, he decided it would be cheaper and more instructive to go home. I call Vermont my home, you know, as I never had a home and because Tib always swore I was a Green Mountain Boy by adoption. Dear! dear! how loyal he was to that State! Always hankering to be there, and always threatening to quit being a busy bee to inaugurate an 'old home week.' No mountains were so green, you know, as the home mountains; no lakes were so clear as the home lakes; and no people were so kindly as the home people.

"Well, I'd been fed on that kind of dope so long that I expected trusty agrarians to crush each other under hoof in an effort to reach us when we stepped from the train and embarrass us with gifts. It's not surprising that I should fail to appreciate that Tib had seen less of this State than any other in the Union. Nor did I realize that up on the edge of Essex County was a small settlement, utterly isolated from all railroads and highways. But it does please me to-night, as I pause and allow the