Then you'll tell him he's a three-cornered idiot, because
you'll admire the truth, and come back and we'll have a drink."
"All right," he says, absent-minded and calm, and went off up Market
Street. By-and-by the agent came down with Craney floating behind.
"This is Mr. J. R. Phipp," says the agent, "who has chartered the
_Good Sister_. Get her ready. Mr. Phipp will superintend cargo
himself and sail with you."
That was the way it happened. Craney spent days going round the
stores in the city and buying everything that took his eyes. He
bought house-furnishings and pictures, toys, horns, drums, cases of
tobacco and spirits, glass ornaments and plaster statues, crockery
and cutlery, guns, clothes, neckties, and silk handkerchiefs, and
cheap jewelry. He'd go in and ask for a drygoods box. Then he'd
potter around the shop till the box was full. He'd buy out a show
case of goods, and maybe he'd buy the show case. He bought barrels
full of old magazines and books on theology and law, and a cord or
two of ten-cent novels, and some poetry that was handy, and three
encyclopaedias, and two or three kinds of dogs, and a basket
phaeton with green wheels, and a printing press, and a stereopticon.
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