“Only thirty-five bones a month? Well, by gum!” The tramp looked the shrinking clerk over with unspeakable contempt. “Why, there ain’t a Dago shoveler in the outfit doesn’t get more than that!
“Very well, then,” he conceded loftily. “You can keep your coppers. I never let it be said I rob the poor.
“But I tell you what I will have,” he went on suddenly. “Them clothes are sure too good for any man not getting as much money as a Dago. These,” indicating his own tattered and grimy garments, “are more in your line. Come on! Peel off!”
The trimly-dressed clerk stared aghast.
“You surely—don’t mean—”
“I surely DO mean! Shell off!” roared the tramp.
And utterly beyond belief as it was, ten minutes later Elder was surveying himself in the unspeakable rags of the hobo, and the latter, before him, was ridiculously attired in his own natty, smaller garments.
Having then removed Elder’s fancy Stetson and clamped his own greasy and battered christy down to the clerk’s ears, the tramp had one further humiliation. Pointing to a clump of black, oily waste hanging from a nearby axle-box, he ordered, “Pull out a bunch of that!”
Slowly, wondering, Elder did so.
“No one would believe you were a genuine hobo with such a scandalously clean face as that. Rub the waste over it,” commanded the tramp.