“Well, I should hope to cough in your mess kit, I have,” Williams announced with no attempt to shield his indignation. “What do I look like—somethin’ that would scare away the women and babies?”
“To be honest with you,” Lefty replied, struggling to keep a straight face, “I should say, yes—also the old folks as well as the women and babies!”
“I’d like to punch you in the nose,” Panama roared, then holding up the snapshots, changed his mind and said, “Come here, useless, and lamp these! Ain’t she a peach!”
Lefty came closer and took the photos in his hands, examining them closely as he felt his heart heating away furiously. He looked up at Panama with uncertainty, struggling to hide his apparent concern. “Is this your girl?”
Panama grinned broadly, throwing out his chest and looking down at Lefty with self-confidence, believing that he had succeeded in redeeming his self-respect insofar as being an attraction for the opposite sex was concerned.
“You see, I ain’t so hard to look at,” he added, boastfully. “There are some people who say we’ll be gettin’ married some day, if I ever get the nerve to ask her.”
Lefty forced himself to smile generously as he slapped his friend on the back in a good-natured fashion.
“Why don’t you ask her—are you afraid!”
“Not exactly, only—well—I don’t know how to put the right kind of words together. Gee—if I only had your lingo—we’d of probably been married long ago! You know, somethin’! I didn’t even have the crust to ask her for these pictures! Yes, sir, I had to wait until she was gone and swipe ’em!”
From the moment that Lefty grasped the fact that Panama was in love with the same girl whom he idolized, the boy’s heart sunk within him.