IN WHICH J. RUFUS HEARS OF SOME EGYPTIANS
WORTH SPOILING
It was in a spirit of considerable loneliness that Wallingford came back from seeing Blackie Daw to the midnight train, for he had grown to like Blackie very well indeed. Moreover, his friend from Georgia was gone, and quite disconsolate, for him, he stood in front of the hotel wondering about his next move. Fate sent him a cab, from which popped a miniature edition of the man from Georgia. The new-comer, who had not waited for the cab door to be opened for him, immediately offered to bet his driver the price of the fare that the horse would eat bananas. He was a small, clean, elderly gentleman, of silvery-white hair and mustache, who must have been near sixty, but who possessed, temporarily at least, the youth and spirits of thirty; and he was one of that sort of looking men to whom one instinctively gives a title.
“Can’t take a chance, Governor,” said the driver, grinning. “I might as well go jump off the dock as go back to the stand without them four dollars. I’m in bad, anyhow.”
“I’ll bet you the tip, then,” offered the very-much-alive elderly gentleman, flourishing a five-dollar bill.
“All right,” agreed the driver, eying the money. “Nothing or two dollars.”
“No, you don’t! Not with Silas Fox, you don’t!” promptly disputed that gentleman. “First comes out of the dollar change two bits for bananas, and then the bet is nothing or a dollar and a half that your horse’ll eat ’em. Why, any horse’ll eat bananas,” he added, turning suddenly to Wallingford. With the habit of shrewdness he paused for a thorough inspection of J. Rufus, whose bigness and good grooming and jovial pinkness of countenance were so satisfactory that Mr. Fox promptly made up his mind the young man could safely be counted as one of the pleasures of existence.
“I’ll bet you this horse’ll eat bananas,” he offered.
“I’m not acquainted with the horse,” objected Wallingford, with no more than reasonable caution. “I don’t even know its name. What do you want to bet?”
“Anything from a drink to a hundred dollars.”