"Dirt don't stick to _you_, Mr. Oldfield," once said a seeking widow.
"Your washing can't be much. I guess anybody'd be glad to undertake it
for you." Mr. Oldfield nodded gravely, as one receiving the tribute
which was justly his, and continued to do his washing himself.
As he walked the dusty road, bearing his little bag, so he had walked
it for years, sometimes within a few miles of home, and again at the
extreme limit of the county edge. The clocks of the region were all his
clients, some regarded with compassion ("ramshackle things" that needed
perpetual tinkering) and others with a holy awe. "The only thing
Nicholas Oldfield bows the knee before is a double-back-action clock a
thousand years old," said Brad Freeman, the regardless. "That's how he
reads Ancient of Days." The justice of the remark was acknowledged,
though, as touching Mr. Oldfield, it was felt to be striking rather too
keenly at the root of things. For Nicholas Oldfield was looked upon
with a respect not so much inspired by his outward circumstances as by
his method of taking them. There are, indeed, ways and ways among us
who serve the public. When Tom O'Neil went round peddling essences,
children saw him from afar, ran to meet him, and, falling on his pack,
besought him for "two-three-drops-o'-c'logne" with such fervor that the
mothers had to haul them off by main force, in order themselves to
approach his redolence; but when the clock-mender appeared, with his
little bag, propriety walked before him, and the naughtiest scion of
the flock would come soberly in, to announce:--
"Mother, here's Mr.
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