“Well,” says Uncle Ike, “I see there’s a sight of rivalry amongst you two on this here beauty question. But it’s goin’ to be decided, Chancy; it’s goin’ to be decided. Read this sign, Chancy, and be happy.”
Chancy he read the sign and then took off his hat again and smoothed back his hair. He looked at Chet sort of speculating and Chet looked at him. Then both of them stuck up their noses simultaneous.
“Who’s been spoke of so far?” Chancy asked.
“Nobody but you and Chet,” says Uncle Ike.
“I thought,” says Chancy, “it was goin’ to be a contest. Not,” says he, “that I got any idee I’m what you’d call handsome”—he stopped to take a squint at himself in the window—“but—but compared to Chet,” says he, “I’m one of these here Greek statues alongside of a packin’-box.”
“You be, eh?” yelled Chet. “You think you be? Well, Chancy Miller, all I got to say is this: if my mother’d ’a’ had any idee I was goin’ to look like you she wouldn’t of tried to raise me. She’d drownded me when I was a day old. Why,” says Chet, getting madder and madder, “the only resemblance between you and a good-lookin’ feller is that you got two arms and legs. It ’u’d take six college professors with microscopes a year to pick out a point to you that don’t class as homely. Handsome! Oh, my!”
At that Chancy started to move toward Chet and Chet started to move toward Chancy, but they didn’t go far. They weren’t the sort of fellows to get themselves mussed up in a fight. Nobody offered to stop them, so they stopped themselves, about six feet apart, and took it out in scowling.
“We’ll let the votes of the people decide,” says Chet, as grand as an emperor.
“Huh!” says Chancy. “You’ll have to git a stiddy job now and spend your wages in the Bazar, or you won’t git a vote.”
Just then along came Mrs. Bloom and Mrs. Peterson, and they stopped to see what was going on. First they read the sign and then they listened.