Teddy and Carrots

he boy from Saranac looked at him a moment, as if trying to decide whether the city fellow would be willing to give the desired information, and then asked:

"Say, what do the brushes cost?"

"I paid Ikey Cain forty cents for these two," the stranger replied without hesitation, as he displayed the articles last mentioned. "They're good ones. I couldn't have got 'em less'n a dollar down on Fulton Street."

"That settles me," Teddy said, as if speaking to himself; and then, without particular animation, he inquired, "What's the cost of the boxes?"

"Oh, the fellers don't buy these; they make 'em. All you've got to do is ask some man in a store for one, an', if he gives it to you, find a chunk of wood an' whittle out this top part. It's the blackin' what takes the profits off. I paid twenty cents for that bottle last Monday, an' it's more'n half gone already."

Teddy ceased jingling his coins, and was about to turn away, when his new acquaintance asked: "Was you thinkin' of shinin'?