“I guess there’s Sam at the door,” said Abel Jefferson, blowing a cloud of smoke from his mouth that might have made a small cannon envious.
The door flew open as he spoke, and Sam Scott, the trader, strode into the hut. He was a tall, raw-boned man, with a good-humoured but intensely impudent expression of countenance, and tanned to a rich dark brown by constant exposure to the weather in the prosecution of his arduous calling.
“Halloo! stranger, what air you up to!” inquired Sam, sitting down on the bench behind Ned, and looking over his shoulder.
Ned might perhaps have replied to this question despite its unceremoniousness, had not the Yankee followed it up by spitting over his shoulder into the fire-place. As it was, he kept silence, and went on with his work.
“Why I do declare,” continued Sam, “if you ain’t photogged here as small as life, mole an’ all, like nothin’. I say, stranger, ain’t you a Britisher?”
Sam again followed up his question with a shot at the fire-place.
“Yes,” answered Ned, somewhat angrily, “and I am so much of a Britisher, that I positively object to your spitting past my ear.”
“No, you don’t, do you? Now, that is cur’ous. I do believe if you Britishers had your own way, you’d not let us spit at all. What air you better than we, that you hold your heads so high, and give yourselves sich airs! that’s what I want to know.”
Ned’s disgust having subsided, he replied—
“If we do hold our heads high, it is because we are straightforward, and not afraid to look any man in the face. As to giving ourselves airs, you mistake our natural reserve and dislike to obtrude ourselves upon strangers for pride; and in this respect, at least, if in no other, we are better than you—we don’t spit all over each other’s floors and close past each other’s noses.”