"Huh!" he growled. "Quite some folks living here. Don't suppose they
spend such a whale of a lot of time thinking about Milt Daggett and Bill
McGolwey and Prof Jones. I guess most of these people wouldn't think
Heinie Rauskukle's store was so gosh-awful big. I wasn't scared of
Minneapolis--much--but there they didn't ring in mountains and an ocean
on you. And I didn't have to go up on the hill and meet folks like
Claire's relations, and figure out whether you shake hands
catch-as-catch-can or Corinthian. Look at that sawmill chimney--isn't it
nice of 'em to put the fly-screen over it so the flies won't get down
into the flames. No, they haven't got much more than a million feet of
lumber in that one pile. And here's a bum little furniture store--it
wouldn't cost more 'n about ten times all I've got to buy one of those
Morris chairs. Oh Gooooooosh, won't these houses ever stop? Say, that
must be a jitney. The driver snickered at me. Will the whole town be
onto me? Milt, you're a kind young fellow, and you know what's the
matter with Heinie's differential, but they don't need you here. Quite
a few folks to carry on the business. Gosh, look at that building
ahead--nine stories!"
He had planned to stop at a hotel, to wash up, and to gallop to Claire.
But--well--wouldn't it maybe be better to leave the car at a public
garage, so the Boltwoods could get it when they wanted to? He'd better
"just kind of look around before he tackled the watch-dog."
It was the public garage which finally crushed him. It was a garage of
enameled brick and colored tiles, with a plate-glass-enclosed office in
which worked young men clad as the angels. One of them wore a carnation,
Milt noted.
"Huh! I'll write back and tell Ben Sittka that hereafter he's to wear
his best-Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes and a milkweed blossom when he
comes down to work at the Red Trail Garage!"
Milt drove up the brick incline into a room thousands of miles long,
with millions of new and recently polished cars standing in lines as
straight as a running-board. He begged of a high-nosed colored
functionary--not in khaki overalls but in maroon livery--"Where'll I put
this boat?"
The Abyssinian prince gave him a check, and in a tone of extreme lack of
personal interest snapped, "Take it down the aisle to the elevator."
Milt had followed the natural lines of traffic into the city; he had
spoken to no one; the prince's snort was his welcome to Seattle.
Meekly he drove past the cars so ebon and silvery, so smug and strong,
that they would have regarded a Teal bug as an insult. Another attendant
waved him into the elevator, and Milt tried not to look surprised when
the car started, not forward, but upward, as though it had turned into
an aeroplane.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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