22
You don't HAVE to be able to read it. Why,
half the time you can't read anything a prisoner writes
on a tin plate, or anywhere else."
"Well, then, what's the sense in wasting the plates?"
"Why, blame it all, it ain't the PRISONER'S plates."
"But it's SOMEBODY'S plates, ain't it?"
"Well, spos'n it is? What does the PRISONER care
whose -"
He broke off there, because we heard the breakfasthorn
blowing.