Mike was powerless.
As was well said by Roxie: “W'at could he do? If he makes a roar to th' cops for us puttin' his joint in th' air, we'd have whipped one over on him for bein' open after hours.”
Mike laughed with the rest at Roxie's reminiscence. It was of another day.
“W'at's th' matter wit' your mouth, Mike?” asked St. Louis Bill, for there was a lisping queerness, not only about Mike's talk, but about his laugh.
Nigger Mike proceeded to lay bare the causes of that queerness. While engaged in a joint debate—years ago, it was—with a gentleman given as much to sudden petulances as to positive views, he had lost three of his teeth. Their place had been artifically but not artistically supplied.
“An' lately they've been feelin' funny,” explained Mike, alluding to the supplemental teeth, “an' I toins 'em over to th' Doc to fix. That guy who made 'em for me foist must have been a bum dentist. An' at that, w'at do you t'ink he charges? I'm a Dutchman if he don't lash me to th' mast for forty bucks! He says th' gold plate is wort' twenty.”
“Well, Mike,” said Nannie Miller, who'd been listening, “I don't want to make you sore, but on the level you talk like your mouth is full of mush. I'd make th' Doc come through wit' 'em as soon as I could.”
“He says he'll bring 'em in to-morry,” returned Mike.
“It's ten to one you don't see 'em for a week,” declared the pessimistic St. Louis Bill. “Youse can't tell nothin' about them hop-heads. They say 'to-morry' when they mean next year.”
St. Louis Bill, being virtuously superior to opium, never lost a chance to speak scornfully of those who couldn't make that boast.