Old Mose Miller came slouching into the Bazar just before noon next day. Old Mose lived up the river in a little shanty, but he had a big farm and fine barns and a herd of Holstein cattle that would make your eyes bung out. He lived all alone. Seemed like he didn’t like folks. Mostly he wouldn’t speak to anybody, and the man who went through his gate without good and sufficient business was taking a chance. I suppose every boy in Wicksville had been chased by Old Mose—and quite a lot of the men.

Well, Old Mose came in and began snarling around and making faces like everything he saw hit him on the wrong side of his temper. He was the homeliest old coot you ever saw. Downright homely, he was! He didn’t have a hair on his head, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were gone. If that was all he wouldn’t have had much chance to be thought good-looking, but it wasn’t all. His nose was broken and came zigzagging down the middle of his face like a rail fence, and he had only about every second tooth in front. That’s all that ailed his head if you forgot about his ears—and they were so big they flapped when he walked.

The rest of him was just as bad, but I expect his feet were his strongest point. They were flat—flat as pancakes. And big! Well, say, folks was used to saying that in winter he didn’t need to use snow-shoes. If the rest of him had grown up to match his feet he’d have been eleven feet tall.

Mark stepped up to wait on him.

“W-what can I do for you, Mr. Miller?” he asked, as polite as could be.

“You kin talk like a human bein’,” says Old Mose, “and not like a buggy joltin’ over a corduroy road.”

I ducked down back of the counter so Mark couldn’t see me laugh, for he does hate to have anybody make fun of his stuttering. I listened sharp, expecting him to give Old Mose as good as he sent, but not a word did he say. In business hours he tended to business, and so long as a customer didn’t go too far Mark would be patient as a lamb. So he just waited.

“Folks,” says Old Mose, “is a pesky nuisance.”

“Yes, sir,” says Mark.

“Shet up,” says Mose. “What d’you know about it?”

I could see Mark’s eyes begin to twinkle and knew he was enjoying himself. Pretty soon Old Mose snapped at him again.

“I won’t have no folks in the house with me. Not me. Can’t make ’em shet up when you want ’em to. Talk, talk, talk, that’s the way with folks. Never run down.”

“Yes, sir,” says Mark.

“Yes, sir! Yes, sir! Can’t you say nothin’ but ‘Yes, sir’?”

“Yes, sir,” says Mark, as innocent to look at as a head of cabbage.

Old Mose reached for his ears and took one in each hand. Then he stamped on the floor, and while he stamped he pulled. That’s how his ears got so big, likely. Mad! My! he was mad. He jabbered and growled and called Mark an “idjit,” and allowed that of all idjits he was the worst, and how came anybody to take the trouble to raise him? He went on quite a spell before he quieted down. Then he started off on folks in general again.

“I don’t like folks,” he says in his cracked voice. “I don’t like to have ’em around. But I git tired of the sound of my own voice. Mighty tired. Lots of times I don’t talk to myself for a whole day, b’jing! There’s times when I want somebody to talk to me. But you can’t trust folks. They wouldn’t shut up. Not them. Can’t turn ’em off. That’s why I come here.” He glared at Mark as though he was to blame for the whole thing. “Heard one of them talkin’-machines, that’s what! Human voice comin’ out of it. Talk! Sing! Whistle! Likewise playin’ of bands and sich-like. Better’n a human. Better comp’ny. Kin turn the screw and shut ’em off.... Got one of them talkin’-machines to sell?”

“Yes, sir,” says Mark, and Old Mose scowled at him like he was ready to take a chunk out of his leg. “We g-got three kinds. Forty dollars, seventy dollars, and hundred and ten dollars.”

“More’n they’re wuth! More’n they’re wuth. It’s a cheat, I say. Forty dollars! Whoosh!”

“Let me p-play them for you,” says Mark.

He started the seventy-dollar one off with a woman singing, and then played a band piece, and another with a fellow telling jokes, and some more and some more. Right in the middle of a piece Old Mose yelled:

“Shut ’er off! Lemme see you shut ’er off.”

Mark snapped it off short, and Old Mose looked almost pleased—and I guess he came as close to it as he could.

“Always shet up like that?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” says Mark.

“How much do them wax plates come at?”

“Different p-prices,” says Mark. “Here’s the list.”

“Don’t want to see it. Don’t want to see it.” He pulled a wallet out of his pocket and laid down a hundred-dollar bill. “Here,” says he, “gimme that machine and enough of them wax things to make up a hundred dollars’ worth. Hear me? Want to keep me waitin’ all day?”

“All ready for you in a s-second, sir,” says Mark, and quicker than I can tell you about it he had picked out the records and was packing them careful so they wouldn’t break.

“This’ll give you a th-thousand votes,” he says to Old Mose.

“Votes? What votes? What do I want of votes?”

“Handsomest-man contest,” says Mark. “Folks in Wicksville is votin’ to see who he is.”

Old Mose glared. “Young feller,” says he, “if you’re a-makin’ fun of me I’m a-goin’ to lay you acrost my knee and give you what your pa’s neglected to.”

“It’s not a j-joke, sir. Everybody’s votin’. ’Most every man in t-town’s entered.”

Old Mose chuckled. “Kin I vote ’em for anybody I want to?”

“Yes, sir.”

He chuckled again, sort of mean-like.

“Gimme them votes. I calc’late I’ll take ’em home and think it over. ’Tain’t no easy job to pick the handsomest man in this town. Wicksville’s that full of handsome men they’re stumblin’ over each other in the street. Handsome! If there’s a feller in this town that kin look at his own reflection without feelin’ timid of it then I hain’t seen him. Gimme them votes, I say. What’s ailin’ you?”

Mark counted out the votes and then we helped Old Mose load his phonograph into his wagon. He climbed on to the seat and went off without even looking at us again. Crusty old codger, I say.

“Plunk,” says Mark, “d-don’t hesitate about spreadin’ the news.”

“What news?”

“Why, that Old Mose has g-got a thousand votes—and that he hain’t made up his mind who to cast ’em for.”

“What good ’ll that do?”

“Remember the time Old Mose sicked his d-dog on us?”

“You bet I do.”

“Here’s our chance to g-git even. Mose don’t like folks. As soon as this news gits out he’ll see plenty of ’em—mostly wimmin. Everybody that’s g-got a man entered in this contest’ll be after Old Mose. There’ll be a procession out to his house. He’ll have more folks campin’ on his trail than he thought was in the county.”

It was plain enough. I could just see Mrs. Peterson and Mrs. Bloom and the Presbyterian ladies and the Baptist ladies trotting out to Old Mose’s and honeying around him and making his life miserable. It would be as good as a show. They’d catch him in the morning and they’d catch him in the afternoon, and it would be as much as his life was worth to show his face in town. I just threw back my head and laughed like I haven’t felt like laughing since father was hurt.

Mark didn’t laugh, but his eyes twinkled. When I sobered down he says:

“We don’t want to l-let this beauty contest take all our time. We got to think up other schemes.”

“Sure,” says I.

“I been th-thinkin’,” says he, “that we ought to find out somethin’ everybody’ll be wantin’ about now—and git some we can sell cheap.”

“Good idee,” says I. “What’ll it be?”

“I dun’no’—yet,” says he.

We stood and thought and thought. Finally I remembered right off I knew something every woman in Wicksville would be buying about then.

“Cannin’ season,” says I.

“Course,” says he. “Mason jars. Wonder what they cost?”

“I’ll run over to the grocery and see,” I says, and off I went.

The clerk said they were selling for fifty-five cents a dozen without the rubbers.

“Hum,” says Mark. “That’s about a n-nickel apiece. If we could sell ’em three for a dime and make any profit at all we’d do consid’able b-business.”

“Where d’you buy ’em?” I wanted to know.

“Spillane & Company handle ’em,” says he. “I’ll write ’em a letter.... No, I’ll telegraph ’em. Save time.” He went back to the desk to write a message, but he stopped and thought.

“Price ’d d-depend on how many we was goin’ to use,” says he. “Wonder how many we’d sell?”

“No way of tellin’,” says I.

“There m-must be,” says he in that arguing way of his. “We got to find out.... Say, you fellers go home and ask your mothers and my mother how many they’re goin’ to buy this fall.”

We went off obedient as little sheep. Mark’s mother was going to need two dozen new ones, Binney’s mother figured on three dozen, and Tallow’s mother allowed as how she needed about two dozen and a half.

Mark blinked and pinched his cheek and whistled a little.

“There’s about two hundred h-houses in Wicksville. The population of the township’s about four thousand, so that means about two hundred more farm-houses. That’s figgerin’ five folks to the house for town and country. Looks like the average number of cans was about two d-dozen and a half. But that’s high. Lots of folks don’t set as good a table as your f-folks. But ’most everybody in Wicksville cans some. Let’s guess low. Say a dozen cans to every house. How about that?”

“Too high,” says I.

“Maybe so,” says he; “b-better be safe and figger ’way low. Say eight cans to a house. How many’s that?”

“Thirty-two hundred cans,” says I.

“Course we couldn’t sell all of ’em—even if the p-price was low. But we could sell most—if we let folks know about it. Ought to sell two thousand of those cans.”

“Ought to,” says I, “but it’d be better to turn some f-folks away than to have a couple of hundred cans left on hand.”

“Um!... Well, say ten g-gross. That’s fourteen hundred and forty. How about that?”

“Sounds safe to me,” I says, and Tallow and Binney agreed.

“Then we’ll wire for a price on that m-many,” says Mark, and he turns and makes out the message.

Wire best price ten gross quart Mason jars for sale.

We sent off the message, but the answer didn’t come till next morning. It said:

Can quote special price three ninety-five per gross delivered.

We sat down to figure. That would make the cans cost two and three-quarter cents apiece. We could sell them three for ten cents and make a profit of a cent and three-quarters. That would give us a total profit of eight dollars and forty cents. That wasn’t much, but it was a brand-new profit in addition to everything else. We thought it was worth trying, so we wired Spillane & Company to send on the goods.

They wired back that the goods would be shipped immediately and would get to Wicksville the next afternoon.

“Now for the advertising,” says Mark.

He brought the horse and wagon and Tallow and Binney into commission again. This time the signs were about the Mason jars and the great sale we were going to have on Friday—three cans for ten cents. They drove all over town and out through the country, banging on a drum. I guess folks were getting used to this way of telling them things, for when they heard the drum whanging women would come running to the door to see what new thing we were up to. Mark put a big sign up in the window, too, and as the paper came out Thursday he put an advertisement in that told all about it. That was about all we could do. Now the Wicksville folks would have to do the rest.

I can tell you we were all anxious. That deal meant an investment of thirty-nine dollars and fifty cents. Not very much, maybe you will say. But it was a lot to us, fixed the way we were. If we should be stuck for nearly forty dollars just at that time we would be in a hard way, and don’t ever forget it. We had to sell those jars!

Friday morning the jars were there and displayed in the window. Everything was ready for the sale, which was to start at ten o’clock. Mark had fixed up special tables and arranged things so that two of us would sell, one would handle the money, and the other would wrap up the jars folks bought. By nine o’clock we were ready—and there wasn’t anything to do but wait. It was a long, anxious hour.

Well, sir, about a quarter past nine we heard a bell ringing fit to bust itself out in the street. Then we heard another bell. All of us ran to the door. There, just starting out from the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, were three boys with big signs on the ends of poles—and those signs said:

Four for ten cents! That was a quarter of a cent less than we had to pay Spillane & Company for them!