He
grinned amiably, then regarded me with a shrewd eye and demanded if I
had been drinking.
"This," I said; "I am drunk with this," and held the card up to him.
But when he took it interestedly he merely read the obverse side which
I had not observed until now. "Go to Epstein's for Everything You
Wear," it said in large type, and added, "The Square Deal Mammoth
Store."
"They carry a nice stock," he said, still a bit puzzled by my tone,
"though I generally trade at the Red Front." I turned the card over
for him and he studied the list of humble-born notables, though from a
point of view peculiarly his own. "I don't see," he began, "what right
they got to rake up all that stuff about people that's dead and gone.
Who cares what their folks was!" And he added, "'Horace was the son of
a shopkeeper'--Horace who?" Plainly the matter did not excite him, and
I saw it would be useless to try to convey to him what the items had
meant to me.
"I mean to say, I'm glad to be here with you," I said.
"I knew you'd like it," he answered. "Everything is nice here."
"America is some country," I said.
"She is, she is," he answered. "And now you can bile up a pot of tea
in your own way while I clean these here fish for sapper."
I made the tea.
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