"Um ... ya-as," he says. "I could move a heap, I could! I'm so durned popular amongst the good landholders in this town that any one of 'em would turn their best settin'-rooms over to me the minute I mentioned it. Yes, indeed! Just where 'bouts would I move?—if 'tain't too much to ask."
Well, that was some of a sticker, 'cause I couldn't think of anybody that would have that billiard room within a thousand fathoms of their premises, if they could help it. But Jim Henry he pretended not to be shook up a cent's wuth. That was easy; 'twas just a matter of Philander's pickin' out the right place, that was all there was to it.
Philander heard him through and then he laughed again.
"You're wastin' good business breath," he says. "I wouldn't sell if I could, unless I had a fust-class place to move into, and there ain't no such place on the main road and you know it. I'm doin' trade enough to keep me alive and I'm satisfied, though I can't lay up a cent. But, so fur as movin' out is concerned, I expect to do that on the fust of next November. I'll be fired out, I judge, and prob'ly'll have to leave town. Hey, Rat?"
Ratty Taylor, who'd been listenin', twisted his mouth and grunted.
"Yes," he says, "I guess that's right, worse luck!"
"You bet it's right!" says Philander. "As I said, Mr. Jacobs, if I could sell out to you and Cap'n Zeb I wouldn't, without a good handy place to move into. And I can't sell any way. There's a thousand dollar mortgage on this shop and lot; it's due June fust; and, unless I pay it off—which I can't, havin' not more'n five hundred to my name—the mortgage'll be foreclosed and out I go."
This was news all right. Then me and Jim Henry asked the same question, both speakin' together.
"Who owns the mortgage?" we asked.
Foster looked at Ratty and grinned. Rat grinned back, sort of sickly.