"Hmp!" grunted her father dryly. "I'd like to know, young man, why the
police are shadowing this house?"
"I expect they're lookin' for me."
"I expect they are, and I'm not sure I won't help them find you.
You'll have to show cause if I don't."
"His bark is much worse than his bite," the girl explained to Clay,
just as though her father were not present.
"Hmp!" exploded the mining magnate a second time. "Get busy, young
fellow."
Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had
wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The
cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for
mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled
cockerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a
while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I.
Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with
his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a
suit which I might be married in without shame, un'erstan' me."
Colin Whitford was of the West himself. He had lived its
rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the
Bird Cage. He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years
before. The sound of Clay's drawling voice was like a message from
home. He began to grin in spite of himself. This man was too good to
be true. It wasn't possible that anybody could come to the big town
and import into it so naively such a genuine touch of the outdoor West.
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