"Positively disgusting!" adds Pinckney. "A crowd of smelly foreigners! Shorty, you should put a stop to this."
"Trust me," says I. "Ah, here we have the guilty party!" and in comes Swifty towin' Eggleston K. by the collar. No wonder Eggy is some agitated, after bein' hauled down two flights in that fashion!
"Well," says I, as Swifty stands him up in front of us. "Who are your outside friends, and why?"
"My—my friends?" says he. "I—I don't understand. And I must protest, you know, against this manner of——"
"Gwan!" says I. "I'm doin' all the protestin' here. And I want to know what you mean by collectin' such a crowd of steerage junk that my customers can't get in without bein' mobbed? Howled for us to take their pictures, and mentioned your name."
"Oh! Pictures!" and Eggy seems to get the key. "Why, I—I'd forgotten."
"Can you beat that?" says I. "He'd forgotten! Well, they hadn't. But what's the idea, anyway? Collectin' fam'ly portraits of prominent gunmen, or what?"
"It—it's my way of getting material for my work," says Eggleston. "You see, through some friends in a settlement house, I get to know these people. I take snapshots of them for nothing. They like to send the pictures back home, you know, and I can use some of them myself."
"In the book?" says I.
"Perhaps," says Eggy, blushin'. "I had promised a few of them to take some studio pictures if they would come up to-day."