He struck across the Drive into a side street. An apartment house occupied the corner, but from the other side a row of handsome private dwellings faced him.
The janitor of the apartment house was watering the parking beyond the sidewalk. The edge of the stream from the nozzle of the hose sprayed the path in front of Clay. He hesitated for a moment to give the man time to turn aside the hose.
But the janitor on this particular morning had been fed up with trouble. One of the tenants had complained of him to the agent of the place. Another had moved away without tipping him for an hour's help in packing he had given her. He was sulkily of the opinion that the whole world was in a conspiracy to annoy him. Just now the approaching rube typified the world.
A little flirt of the hose deluged Clay's newly shined boots and the lower six inches of his trousers.
"Look out what you're doing!" protested the man from Arizona.
"I tank you better look where you're going," retorted the one from
Sweden. He was a heavy-set, muscular man with a sullen, obstinate face.
"My shoes and trousers are sopping wet."
"Yust you bate it oop street. I ant look for no trouble with no rubes."
"I believe you did it on purpose."
"Tank so? Val, yust one teng I lak to tell you. I got no time for damn fule talk."