“Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too,” said Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon.
“Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants on haulin’ ’em in, some morning ’bout seven? Whee!”
III
They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man’s world, in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman.
Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights. Babbitt was immensely conscious, in the sway and authoritative clatter of the train, of going, of going on. Leaning toward Paul he grunted, “Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?”
The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was filled mostly with the sort of men he classified as the Best Fellows You’ll Ever Meet—Real Good Mixers. There were four of them on the long seat; a fat man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man in a green velour hat, a very young young man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and Babbitt. Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Paul and a lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot-and-shoe journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation. It was the very young man, now making his first journey by Pullman, who began it.
“Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!” he gloried. “Say, if a fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a time as he can in New York!”
“Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man when I saw you get on the train!” chuckled the fat one.
The others delightedly laid down their papers.
“Well, that’s all right now! I guess I seen some things in the Arbor you never seen!” complained the boy.