Page:Weeds (1923).pdf/80

 Uncle Ezra looked beaten and utterly miserable. "Oh, I s'pose so," he grunted at last.

Uncle Sam had come prepared to clinch matters. He pulled out from his hip pocket a roll of bills, selected two tens, a five, and a two; then fished around among his loose change till he found a fifty-cent piece, and laid the whole in Uncle Ezra's reluctant, yet eager, hand.

Aunt Eppie was waiting anxiously for the result. She had watched the men set out together.

"Did he buy it, Ezry?" she queried excitedly, as soon as her husband appeared in the dooryard.

"Yump."

"Haow much did he give fer it?"

"Twenty-seven fifty."

"Twenty-seven fifty! Do you mean to tell me, Ezry Pettit, you sold that five ton o' good hay fer twenty-seven dollars an' fifty cents, an' hay worth sixteen dollars a ton if it's worth a dollar! The poorhouse is where we'll all end up if that's the way you're a-goin' to go on!"

"Waal, I had to git shet of it; an' nobody's a-buyin' hay naow."

Uncle Ezra was too sick at heart to enter into a quarrel. He walked away as the easiest way of ending the argument, disgusted at the unreasonableness of womankind.

Uncle Sam, the veteran bargain driver, was as gratified as a boy who has just traded a watch that won't go for a shotgun that will. It was a feather in his cap to get the better of old Ezra Pettit. He bragged about it far and near and received congratulations from all the neighbors. There was nobody for ten miles around who did not enjoy a joke at the expense of Uncle Ezra. Being a wag, Uncle Sam could not resist the temptation to get some fun out of his deal. So he hauled the hay away in many lightly-piled loads, craftily built to look much larger than they really were. These loads got on Aunt Eppie's nerves. When the eleventh load trundled by the kitchen window, she shrieked hysterically: "Well, Ezra, ye might as well lock the doors an' pull daown the blinds! The