Surely you have a tongue, haven't you?" By dint of
persuasive smiles and smirks that would have sickened him at any other
time he finally induced her to say that if he kept right on until he
came to the turnpike he would find a sign-post telling him where to
get gasolene.
"But I don't want gasolene. I want bread and butter," he said.
"Well, you can git bread an' butter there too," she said. "Food fer
man an' beast, it says."
"A hotel?"
"Whut?"
"A boarding-house?" he substituted.
"It's a shindy," she said, painfully. "Men get drunk there. Pap calls
it a tavern, but Ma says it's a shindy."
"A road-house, eh?" She was puzzled--and silent. "Thank you. You'll
find the quarter in the grass. Good-bye."
He lifted his queer green hat and strode away, too much of a gentleman
to embarrass her by looking back. If he had done so he would have seen
her grubbing stealthily in the grass, not with her brown little hands,
but with the wriggling toes of a bare foot on which the mud, perhaps
of yesterday, had caked. She was too proud to stoop.
At last he came to the "pike" and there, sure enough, was the sign-
post. A huge, crudely painted hand pointed to the left, and on what
was intended to be the sleeve of a very stiff and unflinching arm
these words were printed in scaly white: "Hart's Tavern.
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