"You bet yuh," assented Andy just as cheerfully as though he saw some
sense in the order. Luck's clothes were a reasonable request, but Andy
could not, for the life of him, figure any use for the camera and lenses;
and as for the receipts, that sounded to him like plain delirium. Andy's
brain, at that time, seemed to be revolving slowly round and round like
the big drying drum, and his thoughts were tangled in exasperating
visions of long, narrow strips of wet film.
However, at two-thirty he drove smartly up to the little house with the
camera and Luck's brown leather bag packed with the small necessities of
highly civilized journeying, and a large flat package wrapped in old
newspapers. He had not set the brake that signalled the sweating horses
to stop, before Luck was in the doorway with his hat on his head and the
air of one whose business is both urgent and of large issues.
"Got the receipts? All right! Where are the things? This the lenses? All
right! Put the team in the stable and go get yourself some rest."
"Where's your rest coming in at?" Andy flung back over his shoulder, as
Luck turned away with the camera on his shoulder and the small case in
his hands.
"Mine will come when I get through. I've got the last reel wound and
packed, though. You bed down somewhere and sleep. I'll be back in a
little. I'm going to catch that four o'clock train."
When you consider that Luck made that statement with about fifteen cents
in his pocket and no ticket, you will understand why Andy gave him that
queer look as he drove off to the stable. Luck might have climbed up
beside Andy and ridden part of the way, but he was too preoccupied with
larger matters to think of it until he found himself picking his footing
around the mud through which Andy had splashed in comfort.
At the bank, Luck went in at the side door which gave easy access to the
office behind; and without any ceremony whatever he tapped on a certain
glass-paneled door with a name printed across. He waited a second, and
then turned the knob and walked briskly in, carrying camera, tripod, and
the case of small attachments, and smiling his smile of white teeth and
perfect assurance and much good will.
Now, the cashier whom he faced was a tall man worn thin with the worries
of his position and the care of a family. He lived in a large white
house, and his wife never seemed able to find a cook who could cook; so
the cashier was troubled with indigestion that made his manner one of
passive irritation with life. His children were for some reason forever
"coming down" with colds or whooping-cough or measles or something (you
have seen children like that), so his eyes were always tired with wakeful
nights. It needed a Luck Lindsay smile to bring any answering light into
the harassed face of that cashier, but it got there after the first
surprised glance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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