“Sacre, Tar-rah-rah! Eesa beg-a da pardon, good-a da lady. Take eem all for a ten-a da cent-a,” and he thrust the bag of fruit into her hands. “Eesa ‘chink’ wagon. Show all-a da good-a side, hide-a da rotten side. Da morrow, Eesa sell-a da turnoppsis, carrottsis, cababages, every kind-a da veg-a-ta-bles. Some-a time Eesa black-a da boots. Saw da ood. Do anyting gett-a da mon. Go back-a da sunny Italy.”
He was so insistent, with fear of being made a subject for coarse remonstrance, she paid him his price and departed. Whereupon he again began to bawl out in his peculiar Dago dialect: “Or-ran-ges! Ba-nans! Nice-a da ripe-a banans. Ten-a cents-a doz-z. Me-lo-nas! War-ter-me-lo-nas! Nice-a da ripe-a Musha Me-lonas!” and he suddenly lowered his voice on observing Sam halt in front of him.
“Eesa tenna cent-a da one. Nice-a da ripe-a, my friend. Take-a eem a da home, two for-a da fifteen-a da centa.” And he handled a couple of small melons.
“Sacre, da damn,” and his voice again rose to a high pitch, as he shouted: “Me-lo-nas! Ba-nans! Nice-a da ripe-a da Ba-nans. Tenn-a cents-a doz!”
The peculiar idioms of the fellow, and his manner of delivery seemed strangely familiar, and as Sam moved along slowly, a pace or two, rumaging his brain for identification, he suddenly remembered the old cripple at his uncle’s reception, and also, only last night, the mysterious stranger in the park.
It may be pertinent to remark that Jack Shore had obtained most of his dago dialect from a close study of this very man. The similarity of speech and voice, therefore, was accountable for Sam’s mistake of identification.
A moment later, among a passing throng, Sam stopped and pretended to pick up a small copper-colored medal appended to a bit of soiled ribbon. He halted and ostentatiously displayed it, turning it over and over in his hands while examining it. It attracted the attention of an Italian nearby, who at once claimed the medal.
“If it is yours, no doubt you can describe certain marks which appear on its surface?”
“I don-a have to. Eets a Garibaldi! Giv-a da me!”
“What else?” Sam pressed for more definite information, for he immediately became convinced that this claimant was not the real owner.