"All the same, I
ask you fellers straight: Has he come here to--work?"
"Meanin'?"
"If this yere deadly disease is on the rampage I, for one, 'd like to
know it."
"Me too," drawled Dan.
A silence followed as Jimmie coiled up his rope. Pete began to remove
his boots. Dan, very furtively, placed a finger upon his pulse. Then
he said with constraint--
"Boys, I don't want any joshin'. I've not felt extry spry lately."
"Same here," said Jimmie quickly.
Pete smiled sarcastically.
"A little bird tole me," he remarked slowly, looking at Dan, "as how
Miss Mary Willing was seen a-buggy-ridin' las' Sunday with Jack Rice."
"It's true," said Dan, shortly. "Me and Mame is at outs. If I was
dyin', I couldn't forgive her!"
"You don't say?" cried Jimmie. "Wal, Miss Edna Parkinson an' yours
truly ain't goin' ter speak never no more, neither. That hound Ikey
Greenberg has cut in with a noo Prince Albert coat. It's upset me
considerable."
"My trouble ain't heart only," said Dan.
"Stomach?" suggested Pete.
"All overish, mostly."
"You ain't bin readin' the advertisements o' quack doctors, hev ye?"
"Not since I was twenty.
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