A couple of days before the wedding, certain quarters of the town—and also those charged with the duty of enforcing a fair imitation of law and order therein—began to notice a sudden influx of strangers. They were for the most part big and very brown, and they walked with a truculent swagger and regarded the world through humorously insolent eyes. Also they held together clannishly, and for the most part—to the relief of the authorities—maintained themselves in a condition of near sobriety.
“For if ye get too full,” big Cooley explained to the bibulously inclined Chartrand, “ye miss the weddin’. An’ it’s not the likes of you is axed to one every day.”
“I’ll be mos’ awful dry, me!” Chartrand complained. He hailed little Narcisse Laviolette. “Hola, Narcisse, mon vieux! Come on, tak’ leetle drink wit’ me. Come on, you beeg Cooley. We don’t get dronk—pas du tout. We jus’ feex ourself so we lak for sing leetle chanson.”
He hammered the bar with the heavy-bottomed little glass constructed in the interests of the house to hold one man’s size drink and no more, and burst into alleged melody:
“Dat square-face-gin, she’ll be ver’ fine,
Some feller lak dat champagne wine—
But de bes’ dam’ drink w’hat I never saw
Come out of a bottle of whiskey blanc.
(O listen to me now, while I’ll tol’ you how!)
Dere was Joe Leduc an’ me, Larry Frost an’ Savigny,
Chevrier an’ Prevost, Jimmy Judge an’ Larribee,
Lamontagne an’ Lajeunesse—mebbe fifty mans, I guess;
You would know de whole kaboodle if I ain’t forget de res’.
We was drive upon dat reever an’ we ron heem down les Chats,
An’ den we hit dat Quyon where we buy dat whiskey blanc!“
“Yell her out, mes amis! Bus’ dat roof!”
“Hooraw! hooraw! pour le good ol’ whiskey blanc!
She’s gran’ for mak love on, she’s bully for fight,
She’ll keep out dat col’, an’——”
“Shut up!” roared Cooley. “Now you listen here—you ain’t goin’ to show up drunk at the boss’s weddin’, puttin’ the whole crew on the hog. Savvy? You’re three parts full now. I’ll sober ye, me buck, if it’s wid me feet in yer face!”
And the threat of Cooley, combined with the eloquent profanity of a self-constituted temperance committee, caused Chartrand to postpone his celebration. It was Cooley also who constituted himself an authority on social usage.
“Bein’ asked to this weddin’,” said he, “the c’rect thing is to put up a present.”