Page:Bedford-Jones--Boy Scouts of the Air at Cape Peril.djvu/247

 hundred year, and ev'y drug-sto' had colored three and fo' story jars a settin' in the window, red and green and yaller and cinnamon and pink, maybe; and, in front of ev'y tobakker shop war a wild Indian carved o' wood pintin' at the do' with his tommyhawk. And the patent medicine men used to come aroun' in their kerridges and spring the side-splittin'es' jokes I ever hyeard that made me bow-leggeder than I war by nature. Them war the towns I could navigate in. But thank you kindly, lad, jus' the same. Thank you agin.

"Now to go back to that there Perkins," he hurried on to avoid having to decline once more the invitation Hatton seemed on the point of repeating. "You may calkerlate he's been in my mind considerable and I ain't denyin' most o' them thoughts warn't complimentary, and boys, I laid thar las' night on my donkey's breakfast—"

"Lay on what?" asked the wondering Jimmy.

Cap'n Buffum's eyes kindled with laughter as he nodded towards his bed.

"That's what we sailor boys used to call our straw mattresses we bunked on when we warn't