“Well there ain’t nothin’ much in Massachusetts outsider Boston. Why the state of Noo Hampshire is goin’ to rent the rest o’ Massachusetts for a duck-yard.”
And so it goes.
“Gee! but it’s good to get into one shop where you don’t have to talk frog talk!” exclaimed one lad tonight.
“I’ve just heard the greatest compliment for you,” another lad declares solemnly, “the greatest compliment that could possibly be paid any woman.”
“Why, what was it?”
“I just heard a feller say; ‘My! don’t she look different from the French girls!’”
A flushed-faced lad leans over my end of the counter;
“You know to talk to an American girl like this again, it’s like, it’s like—”
Again and again he tries only to become helplessly inarticulate. Then pulling a large bunch of letters “from lady friends” from his pocket, nothing will do but he must tell me about each one. Finally in a fit of prodigal generosity he bestows a handful on me, “Because I’m an American and you’re one too.” As he makes the presentation something falls to the floor with a little click. We search among the litter on the floor, the lad on all fours; finally the lost is found,—a broken bit of comb about two inches and a quarter long. This is a happy chance, he explains, for he is company barber and with the company comb gone E Company would be out of luck.
Always our presence here is something that seems so strange to them as to be almost incredible.