And
again he used them as breastworks in foraging at the boardinghouse.
Firing at you a volley of figures concerning the weight of a lineal
foot of bar-iron 5 x 2 3/4 inches, and the average annual rainfall at
Fort Snelling, Minn., he would transfix with his fork the best piece of
chicken on the dish while you were trying to rally sufficiently to ask
him weakly why does a hen cross the road.
Thus, brightly armed, and further equipped with a measure of good looks,
of a hair-oily, shopping-district-at-three-in-the-afternoon kind, it
seems that Joe, of the Lilliputian emporium, had a rival worthy of his
steel. But Joe carried no steel. There wouldn't have been room in his
store to draw it if he had.
One Saturday afternoon, about four o'clock, Daisy and Mr. Dabster
stopped before Joe's booth. Dabster wore a silk hat, and--well, Daisy
was a woman, and that hat had no chance to get back in its box until Joe
had seen it. A stick of pineapple chewing gum was the ostensible object
of the call. Joe supplied it through the open side of his store. He did
not pale or falter at sight of the hat.
"Mr. Dabster's going to take me on top of the building to observe the
view," said Daisy, after she had introduced her admirers.
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