“That’s right!” laughed his partner. “Tough Nut must have got that twenty-two hundred out of the tundra.”
“Hope that isn’t where you fellows count on findin’ gold,” said Joslin, sympathetically.
“We just about are.”
“Why, don’t you know the tundra’s froze the year round?”
“That’s why we’re takin’ up thawin’ machines—$90,000 worth.”
“Might as well take up ninety thousand pianners and play toons to the tundra.”
As though this idea had some special significance for him, a poorly-dressed boy detached himself from the group with a cheerful whistling of the eternal Boulanger march.
“There’s a hell of a lot o’ machinery goin’; I ain’t sorry I’m takin’ in chickens m’self,” observed Hildegarde’s table companion.
Cheviot caught the eye of the whistling boy as he went by. “What are you taking in?”
The boy held up a banjo. “This!” he laughed, and went briskly back to the dancers in the steerage.