I reckon he had seen me looking him over without a great amount of liking and was anxious to put on a bit of a front.
“He’ll say that you’ll read all heads free of charge, and that’s all he’ll say,” stated Mr. Dawlin. “It isn’t necessary for him to know the difference between a medulla and a free-lunch pickle—and I don’t believe you know, yourself. Ross, we want to open the doors again to-morrow. Do you think you can get the gist of that patter into your head overnight?”
I thumbed the dirty sheets and said I’d do my best. Therefore, I went to my room and applied myself. There was a lot of extravagant guff about the curiosities, flowery flapdoodle of the usual barker sort.
The next morning I was able to make some sort of a try at it from the stand, for I have said before that I always was more or less cheeky. A sort of a fluffy-ruffle damsel with bleached hair was in the ticket-office and there never was a young fellow yet who did not try on a little extra swagger when a girl was hard by. She smiled at me encouragingly when I had arrested the attention of a few passers, some of whom bought tickets and went in. I guess I must have smiled back, for Dawlin, who was standing in the doorway, appraising my first efforts, came and climbed up beside me and growled in my ear.
“You’re breaking in fine. Only put a little more punch and sing-song into it! And, by the way, the dame who is shuffling the pasteboards—she’s private goods—mine!”
“I don’t want her,” I said, with considerable heat.
“I don’t say you do—but a lot of trouble has sometimes been made in partnerships by women. So that’s why I have flipped the buried card at the start-off. Now tune up and let it went! If your voice gets husky I’ll send out a handful of bird-seed and a hunk of cuttlefish.” I reckoned he was trying his cheap humor on me to smooth the insult about the girl. It seemed to me like an insult, and he understood pretty well how I felt.
So I went to my job and minded my own business most exclusively.
Day after day, for several weeks, I stood up on my rostrum and cajoled folks into that joint, and I say frankly and honestly that for a long time I did not have full understanding of just what went on inside. Possibly that statement makes me out a mighty stupid chap.
But I was ashamed to ask any more questions after what Dawlin had yapped out about his suspicions that I was a greenhorn.