UNCONVENTIONAL CALLERS (4). Baker Boy. 

There are few back-door callers who will not stop and talk if given the opportunity, and many that will do so in spite of severe discouragement. Baker Boy was the prime exception. During a long acquaintance he was never known to volunteer any remark beyond the necessary ‘Good morning’ or ‘Thank you' and, if addressed, had one invariable reply: "That's right.' 

Useless to remark that it was a fine day or that it looked like rain, he would answer ‘That's right’ and no more. Useless to, to comment on the absence of a particularly shaped loaf, for he could contrive, by a discreet silence, to make me shape my remarks, so that ‘That's right' could convey apology for its absence. 

I sometimes wondered if he had once been told that ‘the customer is always Right! and had taken it to heart, but I cannot feel that he was wise in carrying this precept to its ultimate length and so leading an exasperated client. It happened when he began to bring me much~advertised wrapped bread, which may have been very hygienic, but which had a crust of such a clammy and leathery consistency as I had never before encountered. 

"I don't think much of this wrapped bread of yours," said I, with some justification, “Its crust is all soft, not crisp and crunchy like other loaves.” “That's right," said he, agreeing politely. 

"But it shouldn't be soft," I retorted, getting a little annoyed, “ not if it were wrapped when cold, It must have been wrapped too soon, so that the crust got steamed." 

“That's right," said he, admiringly, his tone conveying that it was clever of me to have thought of that, but I refused to be flattered. I wanted my complaint passed on and we were getting nowhere. 

"Tell the man," said I, emphatically, “ that wrapping his - bread warm ‘is making it simply uneatable, In fact," said I, rising to heights of exaggeration, “it isn't bread, it's pudding!" 

Had I floored Him? Not a bit of it. "That's right," said he cheerfully, and shouldering his basket, went whistling off.