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"Dat's right, but still you's bound to talk your business somewhere, to sell anybody at all, seño'."

"That's true," acceded the American, with a dim feeling that perhaps this black fellow was not the idiot he had at first appeared.

"And how would you git paid, away up there in America?" persisted the black.

The American decided to answer seriously.

"Here's the way we do it. We ship the ... the goods ... down here and at the same time draw a draft on a bank here in Caracas. We get our pay when the goods are delivered, but the bank extends the buyer six, nine, or twelve months' credit, whatever he needs. That is the accepted business method between North and South America."

The drummer was not sure the black man understood a word of this. The fellow stood scratching his head and pulling down his thick lips. Finally he said, speaking more correctly:

"Señor, I was not thinking about the time a person had to pay in. It was how you could get paid at all."

"How I could get paid at all?"

The negro nodded humbly, and his dialect grew a trifle worse: