“Yes, but grabbing gold-mine stock from the first comer—say, my friend, do I look as green as that?”
“Hish! Don’t rear up, sir! Please don’t! But I know that fellow who just tried to sell. He’s fresh in from the hills. He doesn’t know what’s going on—and only a few do know. But I carry men on my stage who talk and don’t know I’m overhearing. I say no more! But I hope you’ll take the hint. If I could rake and scrape another dollar I’d buy that stock myself. That fellow has some kind of a hunch—but he has been too far away in the hills to know anything special. I guess he just smells it in the air. There isn’t much stock in ‘Bright Eyes’ left loose these days. I have smelt around; I know! That tells a long story, sir. If that fellow hadn’t been off in the hills they’d have got his away from him!”
He was urgent and appealing. I couldn’t understand this special interest in me and I told him so plainly.
“I don’t exactly know, either,” he said, unabashed. “I’m thinking it over and I’ll tell you when I get it thought out. Maybe it’s your style. I have always hoped to be able to wear a suit of clothes like that.”
He surveyed me with candid admiration.
My tartness didn’t bother him a bit. He beamed on me—and plainly had taken a few drinks. I asked the driver to tell me how I could reach the mayor’s store. My friend offered to conduct me. I had resolved to throw up my Breed City earthworks!
“When I take a liking to a gent I don’t do nothing by halves,” declared my guide when we were on our way. “You come unwrapped enough to-day so that I could see that you’ve got real whalebone in your stock and silk in your snapper—and that’s the kind of a whip for my hand! You come along with me and I’ll introduce you to the mayor. Him and me are chums. He ain’t none of your stuck-up dudes. I’ll tell him you’re a special friend of mine. There’s nothing like getting in right.”
He left me in the back office of a dry-goods store, sitting knees to knees in the tiny room with a fat and placid man who smiled amiably and seemed to be impressed by my dress and demeanor.
He launched out at me in a way that was surely astonishing.
“You are the kind we like to see coming into our new and growing city. We are anxious for a touch of the dignity and refinement of the East here in our midst. We hope we can offer you inducements which will wean you from that East which, though its traditions are glorious and its civilization is sublime, is nevertheless a bit—I may say, without offense, I trust—effete” By the way in which Mayor David Ware smacked his lips over that sentence I was pretty sure that he was quoting from his inaugural address.