Vesper let his surprised eyes wander out through the car window.

"Pretty soon we'll begin to run through the woods. There'll be a shanty or two, a few decent houses and a station here and there, and you'd think we were miles from nowhere, but at the same time we're running abreast of a village thirty-five miles long."

"That is a good length."

"The houses are strung along the shores of this Bay," continued the salesman, leaning over and tapping the map spread on Vesper's knee. "The Bay is forty miles long."

"Why didn't they build the railway where the village is?"

"That's Nova Scotia," said the salesman, drily. "Because the people were there, they put the railroad through the woods. They beat the Dutch."

"Can't they make money?"

"Like the mischief, if they want to," and the salesman settled back in his seat and put his hands in his pockets. "It makes me smile to hear people talking about these green Nova Scotians. They'll jump[Pg 37] ahead of you in a bargain as quick as a New Yorker when they give their minds to it. But I'll add 'em up in one word,—they don't care."

[Pg 37]

Vesper did not reply, and, after a minute's pause his companion went on, with waxing indignation. "They ought to have been born in the cannibal isles, every man Jack of 'em, where they could sit outdoors all day and pick up cocoanuts or eat each other. Upon my life, you can stand in the middle of Halifax, which is their capital city, and shy a stone at half a dozen banks and the post-office, and look down and see grass growing between the bricks at your feet."

"Very unprogressive," murmured Vesper.

The salesman relented. "But I've got some good chums there, and I must say they've got a lot of soft soap,—more than we have."

"That is, better manners?"

"Exactly; but"—and he once more hardened his heart against the Nova Scotians,—"they've got more time than we have. There ain't so many of 'em. Look at our Boston women at a bargain-counter,—you've got a lot of curtains at four dollars a pair. You can't sell 'em. You run 'em up to six dollars and advertise, 'Great drop on ten-dollar curtains.' The women rush to get 'em. How much time have they to be polite? About as much as a pack of wolves."

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