"Yes—part of it."
"What part?" asked the Welshman.
"Oh, I came up through Lower Ontario."
"Then you wasn't stopping there?" this from the Fifer, with a villainous scowl, as if Scholar had been trying to deceive. "You was in the States?"
Instead of giving them County and State as reply, he answered now with the bald: "Yes."
"What states?" asked the Welshman.
"Michigan."
"Whit was ye daeing in Michigan?" asked the Fifeman.
There came into Scholar's mind a brief conversation he had overheard earlier in the day. One man had told a story of something he had seen "when I was in Florida."—"What were you doing in Florida?" the Inquisitive One had asked after the story was told.—"Eh?" had said the man who had been in Florida, with a note of warning.—"I asked you what you were doing in Florida?" the Inquisitive One had returned, with a showing of the teeth.—"Ask my elbow!" had been all the answer to that, spoken as if each word was a knife-thrust. Scholar felt himself out of his sphere. He had no practice in saying: "Ask my elbow!" in that tone, or in any tone; and it seemed to him the requisite reply now. As he paused, wondering how to fob off these two catechists, the Fifer said, with a curl of his lip: "You're getting it now, then."
"Getting what? I don't understand you."