Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/298

284 I fancy it will repay you.' Just like that. 'Well,' I says, 'all right, Judge, I fancy I will. I fancy I ain't got anything else on,' I says. 'And I'm always glad to go there,' I says, because no matter what they're always saying about this here Bohemian stuff, Kate Kenner is one good scout, take it from me. So in a little while I slicked up some and went on around to her house. Then hitched outside I seen Eddie Pierce's hack, and I says, 'My lands! that's a funny thing,' I says. 'I thought the Judge was going to haul this here piano guy out to the Jackson place where he could while away the tejum, like Jackson said, and now it looks as if they was here. Or mebbe it's just Eddie himself that has fancied to look in, not having anything else on.'

"Well, so anyway I go up on the stoop and knock, and when I get in the parlour there the piano guy is and the Judge and Eddie Pierce, too, Eddie helping the Jap around with frankfurters and sauerkraut and beer and one thing and another.

"Besides them was about a dozen of Mis' Kenner's own particular friends, all of 'em good scouts, let me tell you, and everybody laughing and gassing back and forth and cutting up and having a good time all around. Well, so as soon as they seen me, everybody says, 'Oh, here comes Sour-dough—good old Sour-dough!' and all like that, and they introduced me to the piano guy, who gets up to shake hands with me and spills his beer off the chair arm on to the wife of Eddie Fosdick in the Farmers' and Merchants' National, and so I sat down and et with 'em and had a few steins of beer, and everybody had a good time all around."

The wonderful man appeared to believe that he had told