Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/150

138 reasonable, and it would be convenient for us to deal with him, but he is a white-haired, whey-faced, abject man with pinkish eyes, and it's too painful to go into his shop. We've been there twice, and I think that if we went a third time, or gave him an order, he'd collapse, and I'd have to gather him up from the floor. And the hand-rubbing, and the writhing, and the sickly smirk of him! The British shopkeeper's smile is enough to warn off a Bushman first thing. They straighten up pretty quick when they strike a bad debt.

I went to the draper's and got a pair of gloves as a present for the wife. They insisted on sending them, so I gave in, and told the draper to send them in a van. He bowed. I asked him to send them in the best and showiest vehicle he had, if he had more than one. He bowed, and said he would. And he did. I don't think the van belonged to him—he must have borrowed or hired it. Perhaps he bought it on the strength of a new customer.

But I had hopes then. I thought I detected, in the sending of the van, the action of a sly, dry humorist—a "joker" or "hard case," as we'd call him in the Bush; so I determined to cultivate that draper, and if possible get him to come up to my place some time of an evening, and help me to keep from feeling homesick. But I was mistaken and disappointed; he probably had less humour in him than any other man in the village.

It is cut-throat competition that does it—makes crawlers of beings who might have been men had they