“Oh, I thought we got along very well,” said Bartley, with a careless yawn.
“There wasn't much chance to get acquainted.” Some of the loggers were as
handsome and well-made as he, and were of as good origin and traditions,
though he had some advantages of training. But his two-button cutaway, his
well-fitting trousers, his scarf with a pin in it, had been too much for
these young fellows in their long 'stoga boots and flannel shirts. They
looked at him askance, and despatched their meal with more than their
wonted swiftness, and were off again into the woods without any
demonstrations of satisfaction in Bartley's presence.
He had perceived their grudge, for he had felt it in his time. But it did
not displease him; he had none of the pain with which Kinney, who had so
long bragged of him to the loggers, saw that his guest was a failure.
“I guess they'll come out all right in the end,” he said. In this warm
atmosphere, after the gross and heavy dinner he had eaten, he yawned again
and again. He folded his overcoat into a pillow for his bench and lay down,
and lazily watched Kinney about his work. Presently he saw Kinney seated on
a block of wood beside the stove, with his elbow propped in one hand, and
holding a magazine, out of which he was reading; he wore spectacles, which
gave him a fresh and interesting touch of grotesqueness. Bartley found that
an empty barrel had been placed on each side of him, evidently to keep him
from rolling off his bench.
“Hello!” he said. “Much obliged to you, Kinney. I haven't been taken such
good care of since I can remember. Been asleep, haven't I?”
“About an hour,” said Kinney, with a glance at the clock, and ignoring his
agency in Bartley's comfort.
“Food for the brain!” said Bartley, sitting up. “I should think so. I've
dreamt a perfect New American Cyclopaedia, and a pronouncing gazetteer
thrown in.”
“Is that so?” said Kinney, as if pleased with the suggestive character of
his cookery, now established by eminent experiment.
Bartley yawned a yawn of satisfied sleepiness, and rubbed his hand over
his face. “I suppose,” he said, “if I'm going to write anything about Camp
Kinney, I had better see all there is to see.”
“Well, yes, I presume you had,” said Kinney. “We'll go over to where
they're cuttin', pretty soon, and you can see all there is in an hour. But
I presume you'll want to see it so as to ring in some description, hey?
Well, that's all right. But what you going to do with it, when you've done
it, now you're out of the Free Press?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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