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"Place yer spondulicks on de little ball. Wich is de next lucky one to win our money? Chent bets four sixty-five he seen de little ball go under de middle shell. Up she comes! Dis time we wins; Plattville can't win every time. Who's de next chent?" Fentriss edged slowly out of the circle, abashed, and with rapidly whitening cheeks.
"I wish I were back on the desert." "You want a drink," prescribed his volunteer prop. As his vision and control reestablished themselves, Banneker found himself being led downstairs and to the nearest bar by young Fentriss Smith, who ordered two soda cocktails. Of Smith he knew little except that the office called him "the permanent twenty-five-dollar man."
So he talked with the fervor of an enthusiast, a missionary, a devotee, who saw in that daily chronicle of the news an agency to stir men's minds and spur their thoughts, if need be, to action; at the same time the mechanism and instrument of power, of achievement, of success. Fentriss Smith listened and was troubled in spirit by these unknown fires.
Harkless seized his companion excitedly by the elbow. "Tommy!" he cried. "It's Kim Fentriss look! Did you see that old fellow?" "I saw a particularly uninterested and uninteresting gentleman sitting on a bag," replied his friend. "Why, that's old Kimball Fentriss. He's going to town; he lives on the edge of the county." "Can this be true?" said Meredith gravely.
The glamour of yachting association might be made to cast a radiance about the event, in which the damnatory fact that the principal figure was a mere reporter could be thrown into low relief. Such is the view which journalistic snobbery takes of the general public's snobbery. "Whose yacht?" Again the spiteful little smile appealed on Burt's lips as he dashed the rising hope. "Fentriss Smith's."
Then he plunged, red-faced and excited, into the circle about the shell manipulators, and offered, to lay a wager. "Hol' on there, Hen Fentriss," thickly objected a flushed young man beside him, "iss my turn." "I'm first. Hartley," returned the other. "You can hold yer bosses a minute, I reckon." "Plenty fer each and all, chents," interrupted one of the shell-men.
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