Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/92

 waist?" The skittish clerk admitted that was a point of information he did not carry round in his mind.

"Find out," commanded Woolly Annie, and she bent a stern eye upon him while he sought a tape measure and cinctured himself with it. "You 're bowed some," was her blunt comment following a swift glance along the suffering clerk's extremities, "but I don't reckon sprung legs make any never mind with the length of pants. You seem to have the same gen'ral get-up for pants as my boy Dolphus so I 'll take two pairs of pants which 'd fit on to you." Then in confidence to the little biscuit shooter as the clerk hopped to the rear of the store where the gents' furnishings were kept: "That Dolphus of mine gets just a-rarin' and a-tearin' when I buys pants an' such for him. Says a boy eighteen oughta pick out his own pants.

" 'All right,' says I, 'any time you earn yourself five dollars you hop on a horse an' come into town an' blow yourself to some pants. Meantime your old woman 's got judgment enough to buy leg hobbles for a wuthless no-count son—more particular since she wears 'em herself! The lady finished this