“Well, I think, ef I was you, I’d jest let this learnin’ business go, and I’d make myself a detective. No feller could put more style into it than what you could, Bob.”
“Tom, you’re way off again. A feller can’t make no kind of a detective, nor nothin’ else, neither, unless he knows somethin’. I guess I know, and Herbert says so too.”
“Well, I hain’t got no learnin’,” replied Tom, somewhat pompously, as if to prove by himself that Bob’s statement was untrue.
“I know it,” said Bob, and stopped short.
Tom looked at him doubtfully.
“Then you might’s well say right out that I won’t make nothin’, Bob Hunter,” said he, his manner resembling that of one not a little indignant.
“Well, I said what I said, Tom, and if it fits you, why then am I to blame?”
“It’s no use for you to get mad, Tom. Anybody would tell you jest the same as what I did. Now, the thing for you to do, Tom, is ter get some learnin’—you can do it.”
“Do you think I could, Bob?” replied Tom, coming round to Bob’s views, as he almost always did.