"Think it's a good one, if you're willin' to heave morals and common honesty overboard—otherwise no. To put up a trick like that on an old widow woman like Aunt Hannah Watson—to land a billiard room on her property, when she'd rather die than have it there, is too close to robbin' the Old Ladies' Home to suit me. I wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole. So good day to you, Rat Taylor," says I, and walked out.
But Jim Henry Jacobs didn't walk out. No, sir! him and that young Taylor scamp stayed in that back room for another half hour and left it whisperin' in each other's ears and actin' thicker than thieves. I wondered what was up, but I was too put-out and mad to ask.
"I'll look it over right after dinner to-morrer," says Jacobs, as they shook hands at the front door.
"Sure you will, now?" asks Ratty, anxious. "Don't put it off, 'cause it may be too late."
"At one o'clock to-morrer I'll be there," says Jim Henry, and Rat went away lookin' pretty average happy.
Jacobs scarcely spoke to me all the rest of that day nor the next mornin'. As we got up from the boardin' house table the follerin' noon he says, without lookin' me in the face, "I ain't goin' back to the store now. I've got an errand somewheres else."
"Yes," says I, "I imagined you had. You're goin' down to look at that buildin' of poor old Aunt Hannah's. That's where you're goin'. Ain't you ashamed of yourself, Jim Jacobs?"
"Oh, cut it out!" he snaps, savage. "You make me tired, Skipper. You and your backwoods scruples give me a pain. I've lived where people aren't so narrow and bigoted and I don't consider a billiard room an annex to the hot place. If, by a business deal, I can get that buildin' next door to add to our establishment, I'm goin' to do it, if I have to use my own money and not a cent of yours. Yes, I am goin' to look at that Watson property. Now, what have you got to say about it?"
"Why, just this," says I; "I cal'late I'll go with you."
"You will?" he sings out. "You?"