Harry smiled shyly and recollecting the candy, passed it around.
“Me, I don’t care for any,” said Chub as he scooped up a handful. Then they sat down and had a nice cozy talk up there on the roof-deck, and ate candy to their hearts’--or rather their stomachs’--content. Presently Chub asked:
“Wasn’t it funny, Mr. Cole, that you should meet Billy Noon here?”
“Why, yes, it was,” was the answer. “Still, Noon’s the sort of a chap that you’re likely to come across in strange places and when you least expect to.”
“Have you known him long?” asked Chub in politely conversational tones. The artist suppressed a smile.
“He seems to have tried all sorts of trades,” continued Chub, nothing daunted. “He says he’s been a dentist, a clown in a circus, a sleight-of-hand performer, a ventriloquist, a--a--”
“Indeed,” laughed the artist, “I’d never heard of that. How did you find that out?”
So Chub told him about the missing bread and butter and the verses substituted, about the fish and the poem written on birch bark, and so worked around to Billy’s experience with the Great Indian Chief Medicine Company.
“Well, he’s tried his hand at lots of things,” said Mr. Cole, “and strangely enough he does everything well. I haven’t any doubt but that if I could persuade Noon to take the _Roger_ to sell for me he’d find a buyer inside of a week.”
“Couldn’t you?” asked Dick. The artist shook his head.
“I’m afraid not,” he answered. “He’s a pretty busy person.”
“But I should think it would pay him better than selling books,” Chub insisted. Mr. Cole smiled mysteriously.
“Noon’s book-selling is a bigger thing than you think,” he replied.
“Get up; it’s after eight o’clock,” said Roy.
“Pull the bedclothes off of him,” counseled a voice outside the tent which Chub, just dropping back to slumber, recognized as belonging to Dick.
“Can’t,” Roy answered. “He’s kicked them on to the floor. Chub, you lazy duffer, get up! Do you hear? We’re eating breakfast.”
“Then it’s too late,” murmured Chub serenely. “Call me before lunch.”
“He won’t get up, Dick,” announced Roy. “You’d better come.”
“No!” yelled the tardy one, jumping as though a yellow-jacket had wandered into bed with him. “I’m up, Dick, honest! Ain’t I, Roy?”
“You’re half up,” was the answer. “I want to see you all up before I leave.”