the owner of the house where he was staying one dollar and the liveryman fifteen cents: in turn was owed five bucks by the sheriff.
It did not require any deep thinking about the mathematical problem to provide the answer of a few dollars and some cents: the amount of his cash worth when he had collected what was due, added it to what he had and paid what he owed. Eleven dollars and seventeen cents to be precise.
So he was hardly rich, but neither was he as poor as he had been on occasion when he awakened in some other rented rooms in other towns with no immediate prospect of gainful employment.
39
Thus he was more at ease with himself than many men would have been in similar circumstances as he washed up and shaved with water from a pitcher on the bureau, using the straight razor from out of the neck pouch to remove his bristles. Then he opened the window wide and took a few deep breaths, enjoying the warm air of a fine morning that had progressed to something after seven. And from this vantage point he got a better impression of Bishopsburg than had been possible in the dark of last night. Saw it was a good looking community of mostly well preserved buildings of brick, stone, timber and adobe, sited at the centre of a broad, well watered valley that cut a gentle curve from the north to the south west.
On a few of several distant farms visible from the window work had already commenced in the crop fields. While within the town, smoke rose from most chimneys to signal a large proportion of Bishopsburg citizens were up and about after their disturbed night.
None of the stores that he was able to see along Main Street and River Road was yet open for business and there were no potential customers on the streets or sidewalks within his range of vision.
Then the smell of cooking from within the guest house drew him out of the room and down the two flights of stairs. Where Whitman introduced him to the two other roomers already seated at the circular table in a well furnished dining room filled with warm sunlight and the aroma of rosewater scent.
One of these fellow guests was an exceptionally thin, sour faced maiden lady of early middle age named Bette McBain who was the local schoolteacher and the other Otis Logan, a long-ago retired from working elderly relative of Doris Hyams. The aromas of hot food and coffee were suddenly more strongly in evidence than Miss McBain’s floral perfume as the owner of the house wheeled in a cart on which was a huge coffee pot and four large plates already piled high with food. Then there was a flurry of talk concerned with the size of the breakfast placed before each guest as the flushed with pride Doris Hyams circled the table, filling cups with coffee.
‘Enjoy,’ she encouraged and waddled out.
Next the eating commenced and Edge realised the earlier polite protests were a part of a morning ritual at this breakfast table.
He figured that a man of Whitman’s size who worked at a strenuous trade would have an appetite to match the food provided and this was so. But he was surprised at how the diminutive schoolteacher and the frail looking old man attacked their meals with so much gusto.
40
For his part, Edge felt that in this genteel company he needed to steel himself against wolfing down the food, not aware of just how hungry he had been until he began to eat. The result was that he finished last and was introduced to another custom of the first meal of the day at the Hyams Guest House. This that there was no talk of anything other than the quantity and quality of the food until everyone was through eating and there was just coffee to drink.
‘Are you just passing through, Mr Edge?’ Logan asked. He was a southerner from far below the Mason-Dixon Line. In his seventies, he had grey hair and weak brown eyes, with ears that stuck out and teeth that protruded.
‘Mr Edge rode in with George North,’ Whitman supplied.
Miss McBain, who enunciated her words very carefully as if
It did not require any deep thinking about the mathematical problem to provide the answer of a few dollars and some cents: the amount of his cash worth when he had collected what was due, added it to what he had and paid what he owed. Eleven dollars and seventeen cents to be precise.
So he was hardly rich, but neither was he as poor as he had been on occasion when he awakened in some other rented rooms in other towns with no immediate prospect of gainful employment.
39
Thus he was more at ease with himself than many men would have been in similar circumstances as he washed up and shaved with water from a pitcher on the bureau, using the straight razor from out of the neck pouch to remove his bristles. Then he opened the window wide and took a few deep breaths, enjoying the warm air of a fine morning that had progressed to something after seven. And from this vantage point he got a better impression of Bishopsburg than had been possible in the dark of last night. Saw it was a good looking community of mostly well preserved buildings of brick, stone, timber and adobe, sited at the centre of a broad, well watered valley that cut a gentle curve from the north to the south west.
On a few of several distant farms visible from the window work had already commenced in the crop fields. While within the town, smoke rose from most chimneys to signal a large proportion of Bishopsburg citizens were up and about after their disturbed night.
None of the stores that he was able to see along Main Street and River Road was yet open for business and there were no potential customers on the streets or sidewalks within his range of vision.
Then the smell of cooking from within the guest house drew him out of the room and down the two flights of stairs. Where Whitman introduced him to the two other roomers already seated at the circular table in a well furnished dining room filled with warm sunlight and the aroma of rosewater scent.
One of these fellow guests was an exceptionally thin, sour faced maiden lady of early middle age named Bette McBain who was the local schoolteacher and the other Otis Logan, a long-ago retired from working elderly relative of Doris Hyams. The aromas of hot food and coffee were suddenly more strongly in evidence than Miss McBain’s floral perfume as the owner of the house wheeled in a cart on which was a huge coffee pot and four large plates already piled high with food. Then there was a flurry of talk concerned with the size of the breakfast placed before each guest as the flushed with pride Doris Hyams circled the table, filling cups with coffee.
‘Enjoy,’ she encouraged and waddled out.
Next the eating commenced and Edge realised the earlier polite protests were a part of a morning ritual at this breakfast table.
He figured that a man of Whitman’s size who worked at a strenuous trade would have an appetite to match the food provided and this was so. But he was surprised at how the diminutive schoolteacher and the frail looking old man attacked their meals with so much gusto.
40
For his part, Edge felt that in this genteel company he needed to steel himself against wolfing down the food, not aware of just how hungry he had been until he began to eat. The result was that he finished last and was introduced to another custom of the first meal of the day at the Hyams Guest House. This that there was no talk of anything other than the quantity and quality of the food until everyone was through eating and there was just coffee to drink.
‘Are you just passing through, Mr Edge?’ Logan asked. He was a southerner from far below the Mason-Dixon Line. In his seventies, he had grey hair and weak brown eyes, with ears that stuck out and teeth that protruded.
‘Mr Edge rode in with George North,’ Whitman supplied.
Miss McBain, who enunciated her words very carefully as if
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