“Sure did I. I told Priest how to make it. You don’t believe me, heh? Say, you young slab-sided, four-eyed, grinning, big-toothed, yellow-fingered lump of mud, don’t you t’ink that Priest guy’d ’a’ brought his blooming old tehedrum hisself, if he—”
“Uh, ‘tetrahedral,’ you mean, of course, Mr. Griffin,” smiled the reporter, very politely.
“Aw, you pen-pushers gimme a pain in de apoplexy! ‘Tehedrum’—dat’s wot all us aviators calls it, see? you bunch o’ grins.”
“Ahem!” gently protested Poodle, by the window.
“Cheese it!” gently murmured Hike, under the bed, trying to kick the bell-boy through the mattress, without being seen.
“Huk kuh!” gently coughed the reporter, then smiled again. “Your language is very interesting, Mr. Griffin—quite racy. Oh, please don’t think I don’t admire it. I was just contrasting it with the weak-kneed way in which most boys—uh, most young men of your age talk.”
“Say, youse. ’F youse don’t like de way me talk-trap works, youse kin put a’ egg in your shoe and beat it, see? Tell you how it was. You see, me dad—he’s a Colonel, his antcisters was dukes and t’ings in England—he didn’t want me to grow up like a collidge professor or any o’ them softies, so he makes me work in a mine, an’ I was to sea, as a cabin-boy (I was wrecked, twict, and I fit with Chink pirates—one of ’em gives me a blob on the head, like to kill me), and I’ve bummed it—reg’lar hobo, and I was a newsboy in N’ Yawk, and a bell-hop in Denver (I licked two reporters dere, one time; one of ’em looked an awful lot like you; Smith, his name was; gee! how I did slam dat guy!), and I worked in a machine-shop, carrying left-hand monkey-wrenches to the straw-boss—dat’s where I learned about machines.”
“Well, well,” delightedly chuckled the reporter, making notes of these remarkable adventures. “Splendid story,” he was thinking, “splendid.” He was very respectful. He was ready to believe almost anything about the boy who had made the greatest aeroplane-flight in history.
“After dat, you kin bet I wasn’t no mollycoddle. I could aviate without gettin’ cold feet. Me dad, he was a wise guy, all right. Now what else d’ yuh want to know?”
“I’d like to know your plans for the immediate future, Mr. Griffin. Will you be making any more aeroplane exhibitions?—With the, uh, the, uh—”