“Thanks, folks,” he said. “I won’t forgit you.” And he continued on his way toward Riverbank.
“So you’re here,” said the first policeman he met. “Right on time with the first frosty breeze, ain’t you? Well, my friend, you can blow out of town on the breeze, just like you blew in. No more free board and gentle stone-pile massage in this town. Drift along, bo!”
He turned up the first cross-street. He went from house to house begging a hand-out, but the residents were colder than the weather. At the twelfth house he knocked on the back door, but he was beginning to feel hopeless. A thin streamer of smoke was issuing from the kitchen chimney, and where there is smoke there is food; but here, instead of a hard-faced woman coming to the door, a man put his face to the kitchen window and looked out. It was the face of a tall, thin man with a long neck and prominent Adam’s-apple, and as the man peered out of the window he looked something like a flamingo. He opened the door.
“Come right into the inside,” said Philo Gubb pleasantly, “and heat yourself up warm. The temperature is full of cold weather to-day.”
Chi Foxy entered. He looked around the kitchen. There was a brisk fire in the stove, but no sign of food.
“Say, pard,” he said, “how about giving me a bite? I haven’t had a bite this morning. I ain’t too late, am I?”
His host looked at him.
“You are not too late,” he answered, “because it may be some days of time before there is any eats here, for what’s burning into that stove is the unvalueless trimmings off of wall-paper. I’m not the regular resider at this house by no means.”
Chi Foxy looked at his host again.