That's all I ask.
Just shut your eyes and give me a chance."
All day Joe sat astride his harness maker's horse, and when he was not
at work, stared out through a dirty window into an alleyway and tried to
understand Jim's idea of what a harness maker's attitude should be toward
his customers, now that new times had come. He felt very old. Although Jim
was as old in years lived as himself, he seemed very young. He began to be
a little afraid of the man. He could not understand why the money, nearly
twenty-five hundred dollars he had put in the bank during the two years Jim
had been with him, seemed so unimportant and the twelve hundred dollars he
had earned slowly after twenty years of work seemed so important. As there
was much repair work always waiting to be done in the shop, he did not go
home to lunch, but every day carried a few sandwiches to the shop in his
pocket. At the noon hour, when Jim had gone to his boarding-house, he was
alone, and if no one came in, he was happy. It seemed to him the best time
of the day. Every few minutes he went to the front door to look out. The
quiet Main Street, on which his shop had faced since he was a young man
just come home from his trade adventures, and which had always been such a
sleepy place at the noon hour in the summer, was now like a battle-field
from which an army had retreated. A great gash had been cut in the street
where the new sewer was to be laid.
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