“Tell you what I'll do, Peter,” said Rapp, “I'll give fifty dollars for the boat, and five dollars for floating her down to my new place down the river.”
“I'm much obliged, but I guess I won't sell,” said Peter nervously. “You better take off your coat, George, unless you want to hurry away. That stove is heating up. She's a wonderful stove, that stove is. You wouldn't think, to look at her right now, that she could go out in a minute, would you? But she can. Why, when she wants to, that stove can start in and get red hot all over, stove-pipe and legs and all, until it's so hot in here the tar melts off them nets yonder—drips off 'em like rain off the bob-wires. You'd think she'd suffocate me out of here, but she don't. No, sir. The very next minute she'll be as cold as ice. For a man alone as much as I am that's a great stove, George.”
“Will you sell me the boat, or won't you?” asked Rapp.
“Now, I wish you wouldn't ask me to sell her, George,” said Peter regretfully, for it hurt him to refuse his friend. “To tell you the honest truth, George, I can't sell her because it would upset my plans. I've got my plans all laid out to float down river next spring, soon as the ice goes out, and when I get to New Orleans I'm going to load this boat on to a ship, and I'm going to take her to the Amazon River, and trap chinchillas. I read how there's a big market for chinchilla skins right now. I'm goin' up the Amazon River and then I'm goin' to haul the boat across to the Orinoco River and float down the Orinoco, and then—”
“You told me last week you were going down to Florida next spring and shoot alligators from this boat,” said Rapp.
Peter looked up blankly, but in a moment his cheerfulness returned.
“If I didn't forget all about that!” he began. “Well, sir, I'm glad I did! That would have been a sad mistake. It looks to me like alligator skin was going out of fashion. I'd be foolish to take this boat all the way to Florida and then find out there was no market for alligator skins, wouldn't I?”
“You would,” said Rapp. “And you might get down there in South America and find there was no market for chinchillas. It looks to me as if the style was veering off from chinchillas already. You'd better sell me the boat, Peter.”
“You know I'd sell to you if I would to anybody, George,” said Peter, pushing aside the works of the clock, “but this boat is a sort of home to me, George. It's the only home I 've got, since Jane don't want me 'round no more. You're the best friend I've got, and you've done a lot for me—you let me sleep in your stable whenever I want to, and you give me odd jobs, and clothes—and I appreciate it, George, but a man don't like to get rid of his home, if he can help it. I haven't had a home I could call my own since I was fourteen years old, as you might say, and I'm going on fifty years old now. Ever since Jane got tired havin' me 'round I've been livin' in your barn, and in old shacks, and anywheres, and now, when I've got a boat that's a home for me, and I can go traveling in her whenever I want to go, you want me to sell her. No, I don't want to sell her, George. I think maybe I'll start her down river to-morrow, so as to be able to start up the Missouri when the ice goes out—”
“I thought you said Amazon a minute ago,” said Rapp.