Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/187

 his swelling. He came forward offering his hand, his resonant voice loud in the office.

Laylander met his friendly advance with a peculiar kindling of humor and affront in his ruddy countenance. Banjo was before him, full of voluble expostulations of his unbounded joy, his notable banjo-picking right hand offered in jubilant salute. Laylander reached into the pocket of his cougar-skin vest, and bestowed some trifle in the hand of Banjo Gibson with as much indifference as he would throw a base coin to an aggressive beggar. He turned then with a soft word of excuse to the new friends, and genuine, who had come forward in his hour of need, held the dining-room door open to Louise, and left Banjo Gibson looking foolishly at a dime in the palm of his famous banjo-picking palm.

"The presence of that ornery little man, wantin' to shake hands with me!" said Tom. "Only a little while ago he snubbed me like I was a nigger when I come in from work on the section."

Banjo Gibson's loud, resounding, merriment-contagious laugh seemed to answer from the office. He was not to be humbled, not to be outdone. He was passing it off before the engineers and conductors as a rare and mighty joke.

The new girl, heavy as a plow-horse, came to wait on Louise and Tom as they sat at his old table in the far corner by the window. Myron was engaged with a scythe among the tall weeds on the back of the hotel lot;