"'I don't,' I says; 'the point is that she's going. To-night she will be here but to-morrow she will be extensively elsewhere; and so,' I says, 'will we. Let us therefore depart from these parts while the departing is good,' I says.
"Which we done so, just like I'm telling you. And for some hours we trundles along very snug and comfortable, both of us being engrossed in sleep. When we wakes up it's another day, and the wicked city is far, far behind us, and we are running through a district which is entirely surrounded by scenery. If it hadn'ta been that something keeps reminding me I ai'nt had no breakfast I coulda been just as happy.
"'Where'll we git off?' says Sweet Caps, setting up and rubbing his eyes.
"'Well,' I says, 'we takes our choice. Maybe Albany,' I says. 'The legislature is in special session there, and a couple of grafters more or less wont make no material difference—they'll probably take us for members. Maybe Rochester,' I says, 'which is a pleasant city, full of large and thriving industries. Maybe,' I says, 'if this here train don't take a notion to climb down off the track and go berry-picking, maybe Chicago. Of course,' I says, 'Chi ain't quite so polished as Noo Yawk. Chi has been called crude by some. When I think of Noo Yawk,' I says, 'I think of a peroxide chorus lady going home at three o'clock in the morning in two taxicabs, but when I think of Chicago I'm reminded of a soused hired girl, with red hair, on a rampage. But,' I says, 'what's the difference? Everywhere you go,' I says, 'there's always human life, and Chicago is reputed to be quite full of population and very probably we can find a few warm-hearted persons there who are more or less addicted to taking a chance.'
"But you know how it is in these matters—you never can tell. Just as I'm concluding my remarks touching on our two largest cities, this here brakeman comes snooping along and intimates that we better be thinking about getting off. He's probably the biggest brakeman living. If he was any bigger than what he is, he'd be twins. We endeavors to argue him out of the notion but it seems like he's sort of set in his mind. Besides, being so much larger than either one of us or both of us put together, for that matter, he has the advantage in repartee. So he makes an issue of it and we sees our way clear to getting off without waiting for the locomotive to slow up or anything. After our departure, the train continues on its way thither, we remaining hither.
"'My young friend,' I says when the dust has settled down, 'the question which you propounded about five minutes ago is now answered in the affirmative. This is where we get off—right here on this identical spot. I don't know the name of the place,' I says; 'maybe it's so far out in the suburbs that they ain't found time to get round to it yet and give it a name; but,' I says, 'there's one consolation. By glancing first up this way and then down that way you will observe that from here to the point where the rails meet down yonder is exactly the same distance that it is from here to where the rails meet up yonderways—proving,' I says, 'that we are in the exact center of the country. So let us be up and doing,' I says, 'specially doing. But the first consideration,' I say, 'is vittles.'
"You know me well enough to know," interjected Mr. Doolan, interrupting the thread of his narrative for a moment and turning to me with a wave of his stout arm, "that I ain't no glutton. I can eat my grub when it's set before me or I can let it alone, only I never do. I never begin to think about the next meal till I'm almost through with the last one. And right now my mind seems to dwell on breakfast.
"Well, anyway we arises up and goes away from there, walking in a general direction, and before long we comes to a sign which says we are now approaching the incorporated village of Plentiful Valley—Autos Reduce Speed to Eight Miles an Hour—No Tramps Allowed. I kind of favors the sound of that name—Plentiful Valley. And as I remarks to the Sweet Caps Kid, 'We ain't no autos and we ain't no tramps but merely two professional men, looking for a chance to practise our profession.'
"This here is the first valley I ever see in the course of a long and more or less polka-dotted career that it is all up-hill and never no downhill. Be that as it may, we rambles on until it must be going on towards nine forty-five o'clock, and comes to a neat bungalow on a green slope inside of a high white fence. There's a venerable party setting on the front porch, in his shirt-sleeves. He looks beneficent and well fed.