When he smiled these opened slowly
like a vise. Whatever of humor played about this opening lost its
life instantly when these jaws clicked together again.
The hands were big and strong, wrinkled and seamed, their rough
backs spotted like a toad's, the wrists covered with long spidery
hairs.
Babcock noticed particularly his low, flat forehead when he
removed his hat, and the dry, red hair growing close to the
eyebrows.
"I wuz a-sp'akin' to me fri'nd Mister Lathers about doin' yer
wurruk," began McGaw, resting one foot on a pile of barrow-planks,
his elbow on his knee. "I does all the haulin' to the foort.
Surgint Duffy knows me. I wuz along here las' week, an' see ye
wuz put back fer stone. If I'd had the job, I'd had her unloaded
two days befoore."
"You're dead right, Dan," said Lathers, with an expression of
disgust. "This woman business ain't no good, nohow. She ought to
be over her tubs."
"She does her work, though," Babcock said, beginning to see the
drift of things.
"Oh, I don't be sayin' she don't. She's a dacint woman, anough;
but thim b'ys as is a-runnin' her carts is raisin' h--ll all the
toime."
"And then look at the teams," chimed in Lathers, with a jerk of
his thumb toward the dock--"a lot of staggering horse-car wrecks
you couldn't sell to a glue-factory.
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