I've never had a cent I didn't earn with them
hands." He held them up and broke into a grin. "Beauties, ain't
they? But they never wore gloves that some other poor cuss
earned."
Seagraves thought them grand hands, worthy to grasp the hand of
any man or woman living.
"Well, so I come West, just like a thousand other fellers, to get a
start where the cussed European aristocracy hadn't got a holt on the
people. I like it here-course I'd like the lakes an' meadows of
Waupac better-but I'm my own boss, as I say, an' I'm goin' to stay
my own boss if I haf to live on crackers an' wheat coffee to do it;
that's the kind of a hairpin I am."
In the pause which followed, Seagraves, plunged deep into thought
by Rob's words, leaned his head on his hand. This working farmer
had voiced the modem idea. It was an absolute overturn of all the
ideas of nobility and special privilege born of the feudal past. Rob
had spoken upon impulse, but that impulse appeared to Sea-graves
to be right.
"I'd like to use your idea for an editorial, Rob," he said.
"My ideas!" exclaimed the astounded host, pausing in the act of
filling his pipe. "My ideas! why, I didn't know I had any.
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