“Eh?” said he quickly. “Why, I thought I said five. Is it possible that I said one? Oh, well, never mind; we’ll call it five, just the same, for it certainly was worth it. It’s yours!”
“What under the canister of heaven do you take me for?” I cried warmly. “You said five hundred. Get busy, Mr. Slick, and add about ninety-nine duplicates to that lonesome William.”
Immediately Mr. Slick blew up. He turned purple in the face, and looked like a toad with the colic.
“Why, you young scoundrel,” he roared, “are you trying to bluff me out of a lot of real money? I said I’d give any one five dollars to save my elephant, and I meant it. Under the circumstances, I’m not obliged to pay you a cent, for you didn’t pull the elephant out; it was that there dog that did it. But I can’t give money to a dog, and so——”
He started to put the bill back into his pocket.
I reached right out and secured it.
“I can take money from one,” I remarked, “and that’s just about what you are—and then a few. Unfortunately the United States slanguage does not furnish adjectives suitable to fit your particular case, and, as it happens that I can’t speak French a great deal better than I can speak it, I’ll refrain from attempting the impossible task of telling you just what I think of you. It chances that I’m busted; otherwise I would spurn your filthy lucifer with ignominy.”
I left him in high dudgeon, and went right away from there. I’ll admit that I was extensively sore; but five bones would purchase a beefsteak and trimmings, and I was again languishing with hunger.
We dined, Fido and I, and we went the limit, from beef a la mud to demi tassles. When I had tipped the waiter munificently I found that only twenty cents of the late-lamented fiver remained in the exchequer. With that I purchased a flagrant Havana cigar, and again set forth upon my weary tramp toward my predestination.
I think I had left the city about a mile astern, and was slowly oozing along, buried in deep thought, when the sudden consummate blast of an automobubble horn gave me such a start that I jumped about ten feet straight up into the ambient atmosphere.