“All light,” says the Chink, sulky-like. “I give you velly good pair o’ boots.”
Hank’s eyes nearly popped out of his head, and so did Larry’s, when they saw what Sandy had got through just having the gall to ask.
A beautiful pair of sea-boots they were, and brand-new, or very near it, by the look of them. Sandy thought the old fellow was joshing him; but it was all right. He was nearly beside himself with delight. He stopped outside a saloon once on the way to the ship, and stood turning over his money in his pocket so long that the boys began to think he was going to celebrate his good fortune in a fitting manner.
But all he said at the finish was, “It’s a peety to change a five spot. Once change your money an’ it fair melts awa’”
Larry sighed. If he’d known about those boots he might have had a bid for them. And now Sandy had got them for nothing. Larry made him a sporting offer of his coral in exchange for them, but it was no go.
“To hell wid ye for a skin-louse!” says Larry, who was getting a bit nasty by this time. He had a great thirst on him, and no money to gratify it, and that was the way it took him. “Ye’d take the pennies off your own father’s eyes, so you would, and he lying dead.”
Sandy showed the boots to the rest of the crowd, and of course every one had something to say. But there could be no doubt he had got a wonderful fine bargain.
“I wouldn’t wonder but they have a hole in them,” said Larry. The notion seemed to brighten him up a whole lot. “The water will run in and out of them boots the way you’ll wish you never saw them. I know no more uncomfortable thing than a pair of boots and they letting in water on you.”
Sandy was a bit upset by this idea of Larry’s, so he filled the boots with water to see if there was anything in it. Leak—not they!
“It would be a good thing,” said Larry with a sigh, he was that disappointed, “if the old drogher herself was as seaworthy as them boots. As good as new they are, and devil a leak is there in ayther one of them. But maybe,” he went on, cheering up again a bit, “maybe some person has been wearing them that died of the plague. It is not a very pleasant thing, now, to die of the plague. I would not care to be wearing a pair of boots and I not knowing who had them before me.”