"Babper an' envelobe, two bits. Ben an' ink, two bits. Plotter, two bits, bostache-shtamp, two bits!" At Nick's order, Ikey set writing materials before them on the counter.
"Say, Nick," Raish prompted, in an undertone, while Durant was removing his snow-spectacles and chafing his stiff fingers, "best not enter into details. Best let bygones be bygones. Best just say you want your daughter to let me bring her as my wife to pay you a visit during your enforced captivity—perhaps to say good-by."
"You let me choose my own words, and be damned to yer."
"Oh, very well! Only I don't see why you should be in a hurry to shame me and Gelly before an outsider."
"My gal has shamed herself, and thar ain't no shamin' you!" Nick, however, acted on the advice. "Ready, Lucky? Say, I don't know how to start it. I kin jaw her fluent ter her face, but I never wrote her afore." He hesitated, embarrassed.
Smiling reassuringly, Durant pointed to the words he already had mechanically set down. "My dear daughter—that's how I begin to my own girl."
"Darter don't look as if it was spelled right," criticized the Bully. "But you know best, Lucky. Fire away! Make it affectionate, but firm, d'ye see? Tell her I'll cuss her in this life and skin her in the next ef she don't let Raish bring her ter me as his wife ter say good-by. No trimmin's, mind! Blow the signiture! She'll know fast enough it comes from me."
"Your loving dad," Durant concluded. "That's how I end off when I'm writing to Evelyn."
"Pop ud 'a' sounded more nateral," remarked the Bully. "But mebbe dad is dockimentary. So let her go."
"Add a postscript," in a hurried whisper Raish enjoined Durant. "Tell her this is just a matter of form, and that I promise on my honor not to hold her to the arrangement permanently, if it is distasteful to her. Tell her——"