He wa’n’t ugly about it.  He just states the case calm and conversational; but somehow you was dead sure he meant it.

“All right,” says I.  “Then maybe when I see how you come out I’ll have something definite to report.”

“You should,” says he.

That’s where we dropped the subject.  It’s some swell ride we had up along the top of the Palisades, and on and on until we’re well across the State line into New York.  Along about four-thirty he says we’re most there.  We was rollin’ through a jay four corners, where the postoffice occupies one window of the gen’ral store, with the Masonic Lodge overhead, when alongside the road we comes across a little tow-headed girl, maybe eight or nine, pawin’ around in the grass and sobbin’ doleful.

“Hold up, Martin,” sings out Mr. Sturgis to the chauffeur, and Martin jams on his emergency so the brake drums squeal.

What do you guess?  Why Percey J. climbs out, asks the kid gentle what all the woe is about, and discovers that she’s lost a whole nickel that Daddy has given her to buy lolly-pops with on account of its bein’ her birthday.

“Now that’s too bad, isn’t it, little one?” says Mr. Sturgis.  “But I guess we can fix that.  Come on.  Martin, take us back to the store.”

Took out his handkerchief, Percey did, and swabbed off the tear stains, all the while talkin’ low and soothin’ to the kid, until he got her calmed down.  And when they came out of the store she was carryin’ a pound box of choc’late creams tied up flossy with a pink ribbon.  With her eyes bugged and so tickled she can’t say a word, she lets go of his hand and dashes back up the road, most likely bent on showin’ the folks at home the results of the miracle that’s happened to her.

That’s the kind of a guy Percey J. Sturgis is, even when he has worries of his own.  You’d most thought he was due for a run of luck after a kind act like that.  But someone must have had their fingers crossed; for as Martin backs up to turn around he connects a rear tire with a broken ginger ale bottle and—­s-s-s-sh! out goes eighty-five pounds’ pressure to the square inch.  No remark from Mr. Sturgis.  He lights a fresh cigar and for twenty-five minutes by the dash clock Martin is busy shiftin’ that husky shoe.

So we’re some behind schedule when we pulls up under the horse chestnut trees a quarter of a mile beyond in front of a barny, weather-beaten old farmhouse where there’s a sour-faced, square-jawed old pirate sittin’ in a home made barrel chair smokin’ his pipe and scowlin’ gloomy at the world in gen’ral.  It’s Ross himself.  Percey J. don’t waste any hot air tryin’ to melt him.  He tells the old guy plain and simple who he is and what he’s after.

“Dinna talk to me, Mon,” says Ross.  “I’m no sellin’ the farm.”

“May I ask your reasons?” says Mr. Sturgis.

Ross frowns at him a minute without sayin’ a word.  Then he pries the stubby pipe out from the bristly whiskers and points a crooked finger toward a little bunch of old apple trees on a low knoll.