Page:Cruise of the Jasper B (1916).djvu/37

 unfavorably impressed. Finally he closed his knife with a click and suddenly piped out in a high, shrill voice:

"No! Do you?"

"I—er—do I what?" It had taken the old man so long to answer that Cleggett had forgotten his own question, and the shrill fierceness of the voice was disconcerting.

He regarded Cleggett contemptuously, spat on the deck, and then demanded truculently:

"D'ye want to buy any seed potatoes?"

"Why—er, no," said Cleggett.

"Humph!" said the brown one, with the air of meaning that it was only to be expected of an idiot like Cleggett that he would not want to buy any seed potatoes. But after a further embarrassing silence he relented enough to give Cleggett another chance.

"You want some seed corn!" he announced rather than asked.

"No. I"

"Tomato plants!" shrilled the brown one, as if daring him to deny it.

"No."

He turned his back on Cleggett, as if he had