Pa Sloane sighed. His invention was giving out.
“Didn’t I hear you say day before yesterday that you were out of nutmegs?” he queried, after a few moments’ severe reflection.
“I got a supply of them from the egg-pedlar yesterday,” responded Ma, by a great effort preventing the twinkle from spreading over her entire face. She wondered if this third failure would squelch Pa. But Pa was not to be squelched.
“Well, anyway,” he said, brightening up under the influence of a sudden saving inspiration. “I’ll have to go up to get the sorrel mare shod. So, if you’ve any little errands you want done at the store, Ma, just make a memo of them while I hitch up.”
The matter of shoeing the sorrel mare was beyond Ma’s province, although she had her own suspicions about the sorrel mare’s need of shoes.
“Why can’t you give up beating about the bush, Pa?” she demanded, with contemptuous pity. “You might as well own up what’s taking you to Carmody. _I_ can see through your design. You want to get away to the Garland auction. That is what is troubling you, Pa Sloane.”
“I dunno but what I might step over, seeing it’s so handy. But the sorrel mare really does need shoeing, Ma,” protested Pa.
“There’s always something needing to be done if it’s convenient,” retorted Ma. “Your mania for auctions will be the ruin of you yet, Pa. A man of fifty-five ought to have grown out of such a hankering. But the older you get the worse you get. Anyway, if _I_ wanted to go to auctions, I’d select them as was something like, and not waste my time on little one-horse affairs like this of Garland’s.”
“One might pick up something real cheap at Garland’s,” said Pa defensively.
“Well, you are not going to pick up anything, cheap or otherwise, Pa Sloane, because I’m going with you to see that you don’t. I know I can’t stop you from going. I might as well try to stop the wind from blowing. But I shall go, too, out of self-defence. This house is so full now of old clutter and truck that you’ve brought home from auctions that I feel as if I was made up out of pieces and left overs.”
Pa Sloane sighed again. It was not exhilarating to attend an auction with Ma. She would never let him bid on anything. But he realized that Ma’s mind was made up beyond the power of mortal man’s persuasion to alter it, so he went out to hitch up.