" His buoyant, slangy soul was a friendly thing. He was a
gregarious creature, and liked his fellow man. He felt, indeed, more at
ease with him when he needed "jollying along." Reticence was not even
etiquette in a case as usual as this.
"Say," he broke out, "perhaps I oughtn't to have worried you. Are you up
against it? Down on your luck, I mean," in hasty translation.
Mount Dunstan grinned a little.
"That's a very good way of putting it," he answered. "I never heard 'up
against it' before. It's good. Yes, I'm up against it.
"Out of a job?" with genial sympathy.
"Well, the job I had was too big for me. It needed capital." He grinned
slightly again, recalling a phrase of his Western past. "I'm afraid I'm
down and out."
"No, you're not," with cheerful scorn. "You're not dead, are you? S'long
as a man's not been dead a month, there's always a chance that there's
luck round the corner. How did you happen here? Are you piking it?"
Momentarily Mount Dunstan was baffled. G. Selden, recognising the fact,
enlightened him. "That's New York again," he said, with a boyish touch
of apology. "It means on the tramp. Travelling along the turnpike. You
don't look as if you had come to that--though it's queer the sort of
fellows you do meet piking sometimes.
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