“Foreigners!” he exclaimed. “I was born and raised in the state of Maine, an’ if it wa’n’t fur Bill Somers—he’s from York State—to talk God’s own language to me once in awhile, I’d ’a’ gone daft long ago!”
The stranger chuckled softly.
“You hav’n’t anyone here at the works from New England, then, I take it, eh?” he asked, with studied carelessness.
A smile crept up from Pedler Jim’s mouth and looked out of his twinkling eyes.
“Well, we have—” he began, then his eyes suddenly lost their twinkle as they encountered the despairing appeal from beneath Hustler Joe’s slouch hat. “We have—been wishin’ there would be some,” he finished after the slightest of hesitations. “We’ve got everythin’ else under the sun!”
Bill Somers’s long legs came down from the counter abruptly.
“Why, Jim, there’s Hustler Joe—ain’t he from New England?”
The hunchback’s little beany eyes turned upon Somers and looked him through and through without winking.
“Hustler Joe came over the mountains from San Francisco, I have heard,” he said blandly.
“Oh, so he did—so he did!” murmured Somers, and sauntered out the door.