“He says ‘with open arms’ he will be your friend.”
“Good, I gad.”
“Coute qu’il coute,” declared Jan, smiling.
“The devil abit,” said Dick Allen, who had just come up, “and what is it he says?”
“He has sworn to be Buster’s friend ‘Let it cost what it may.’”
“A beau jeu, beau retour (one good turn deserves another).”
Buster and Jan, the one six-feet-five, erect, weighing 260, and the other, four-feet-one, stocky, and stooped, ambled off toward the press room.
“That pile of old papers, under the table, will be your bed, Monsieur Jan Pier,” said Buster. “Your drawing room and all. The spigot will be your wash basin, and any old issue of The Observer or Chronicle, your towel. May you prosper.”
Jan Pier stirred the enmity of the native newsboys, some of whom hammered him the next morning when out of sight of the shop force. Although dejected and sad, the Frenchman sold every paper he took out. Offering one to a traveling man, who was climbing in a hack at the Selwyn, he imagined that his offer had been accepted, and ran to the station, four blocks away, keeping close in the wake of the hustling horse. Seeing what the boy had done the salesman said: “I will take two.” Jan was delighted.