436“It comes to about seven hundred apiece, don’t it?” drawled Yank.
The commonplace remark saved the situation from bathos, as I am now certain shrewd old Yank knew it would.
“What are you going to do with your shares, boys?” asked Talbot after a while. “Going back home, or mining? Speak up, Yank.”
Yank spat accurately out the open window.
“I’ve been figgering,” he replied. “And when you come right down to it, what’s the use of going back? Ain’t it just an idee we got that it’s the proper thing to do? What’s the matter with this country, anyway–barring mining?”
“Barring mining?” echoed Talbot.
“To hell with mining!” said Yank; “it’s all right for a vacation, but it ain’t noways a white man’s stiddy work. Well, we had our vacation.”
“Then you’re not going back to the mines?”
“Not any!” stated Yank emphatically.
“Nor home?”