“People considerably stirred up down there?” continued Blakely, determined not to give up.
“Quite so.”
Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, and seeing Ned Strong on the broad grin, frowned severely. Strong instantly assumed an abstracted air, and began humming softly,
“I wish I was in Dixie.”
“The State of Maine,” observed Blakely, with a certain defiance of manner not at all necessary in discussing a geographical question, “is a pleasant State.”
“In summer,” suggested the stranger.
“In summer, I mean,” returned Blakely with animation, thinking he had broken the ice. “Cold as blazes in winter, though—Isn't it?”
The new recruit merely nodded.
Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a moment, and then, smiling one of those smiles of simulated gayety which the novelists inform us are more tragic than tears, turned upon him with withering irony.
“Trust you left the old folks pretty comfortable?”