I jest give a peak in for a minit and streaked it up stairs, to see if I couldn't find somebody there. I wish you could have seen how the work hands stared and looked at one another when I went in, but I didn't stop to say nothing to nobody, but up I went, through a room chuck full and brimming over with work hands, and there in a leetle room, about as big as an undersized calf pen, sot the critter hisself, eenamost buried up in a pile of newspapers. It raly did my heart good to look at him, he'd grown so chirk and hearty, it seemed to me as if he must a fatted up two inches on the ribs since I'd seen him.
"Gracious me," sez I to myself, "I kinder wish I'd stuck to and tried to tucker it out last year, and mebby I should a had something to fat up about. Now I wonder what he's a reading that tickles him so."
Jest as I was a thinking this, the Editor of the Express he looked up, and see me a standing there, as if I'd been a growing on that identical spot ever since last summer. Gauly offilus! but didn't the newspapers fly, when he was sartin who it was. I see that he was eenamost tickled to death to see me agin.
"I hain't lost my chance here yet," sez I to myself, and so I walked right straight up to him, and held out my fist, mitten and all, and sez I—
"How do you do?"—jest so.
"Why Mr. Slick," sez he, "where did you come from?"
"Right straight from hum," sez I; "but how du you git along about these times—every thing going along about straight, I s'pose."
By this time he seemed to think that there was something that he ought to git mad about. You'd a thought he'd swollered a basket of cowcumbers all of a sudden, he looked so frosty.
"Now for it," sez I to myself.