“Mein picture in your baber, eh? Ho! What for does Ol’ Hans want mit a picture in the baber?”
“It isn’t what you w-w-want,” says Mark, “it’s what the f-f-folks in town want. Why, Mr. Richter, this thing won’t be worth a cent if you ain’t in it! What kind of a p-page of prominent citizens of Wicksville would it b-be if you wasn’t there? No good. Folks ’u’d say, ‘Where’s Hans Richter? Where’s the man that’s been f-fetchin’ our milk for twenty year?’ That’s what they’d say. And folks comin’ from out of t-t-town would want to know what b-business we had printin’ other men’s pictures and leavin’ yours out. Why, Mr. Richter, we d-dassen’t leave you out!”
“You t’ink dot?”
“You bet I do. We just got to have you. You don’t think we want to have to print Jim Withers’s picture, do you? He hain’t been p-peddlin’ milk here more ’n two years.”
“Jim Withers, iss it? Ho! You print his picture in your baber if mine I do not give? Eh?”
“We’d have to, but we don’t want to.”
“By yimminy, you don’t haff to. Nein. Shall der people be cheated? Nein. Dey shall haff Hans Richter’s picture, and not any other. Jim Withers! Whoosh! He iss a no-goot milkman. How much you said dot vass?”
“Two d-dollars ’n’ a half,” says Mark.
Old Hans dug down into his back pocket and pulled out a leather bag, and I’m going to turn as black as a crow if he didn’t give Mark the money.
“Now,” says he, “I giff you dot picture, eh? Vun I got w’ich was took in mein vedding coat a year ago. Dot coat iss yet as goot as new, and fourt-one year old it iss. Ya. Fourt-one year.”