The old hypocrite! For a moment or two I could only stare at him. Some fine religion his was!
“Three years ago,” then came the sad story, as the giant, touched by the memory of his earlier life wiped real tears out of his big blue eyes, “I was a man of the world. Chewin’ terbaccy, movin’ pitchers an’ a car of my own jest like this ’un.... What is it, a Ford?”
“A Rolls-Royce,” says Poppy proudly, spitting on his finger and massaging a fly speck on the windshield frame.
“Of course; of course. Never heerd tell of it though. Looks kinda shot.”
“And it’s shot worse than it looks,” the grinning driver admitted.
“Wa-al,” came the continuation of the story, “steeped in the sin an’ iniquity of the world, an’ with two wimmin wantin’ me to pick ’em fur a wife, one an actress an’ the other a church worker, I up an’ made the foolishest move of my life, pickin’ the wrong one, an’ in consequence here I be in a religious penitentiary.... Gotta cigarette?”
“We don’t use ’em,” says Poppy, wondering, I guess, what crazy junk was coming next.
“Any new wars goin’ on?” the giant then inquired.
“Wars?”
“We never git no newspapers out here—they hain’t ’lowed—so I don’t know what’s goin’ on more ’an a mile away.... Douglas Fairbanks still livin’?”