“I say,” boomed the great voice of the Reverend Absalom Summers, “there never was another spot like this one! Now, was there ever, anywhere? When I get up here I feel just like a boy, I’m so happy—why, I’m just silly with happiness. I like the way the grass smells, and the road winds, and the spring gushes, and the flowers blossom, and the clouds sail, and the valley lies, and Mrs. McBirney cooks, and Mr. McBirney tells stories, and Jim whistles, and I’ll be plagued if I don’t like everything about it.”
“Well, be calm, Absalom dear,” smiled his wife. “You don’t have to hoot like an owl because you’re happy.”
“You know how to stop the hooting of an owl?” demanded the irrepressible man of the company in general. “You just stand it as long as you can without swearing and then you take off your right slipper and put it on your left foot and the owl will stop. I’ve tried it dozens of times—and the owl always stopped.”
“Git along!” called a voice from somewhere up among the trees. “That way don’t compare with my way.”
“Who is that challenging me?” roared Mr. Summers. But he had no need to ask. It was Haystack Thompson who was dropping down on them from somewhere up in the mountain, and who of course had his fiddle under his arm. For to go to a party without a fiddle was something of which Mr. Thompson never yet had been guilty.
“What’s your receipt for stopping a hootin’ owl, Mr. Bones?” demanded Mr. Summers.
“Why,” answered Haystack seriously, “you jest heat a poker white hot and wave it in the air three times and they’ll stop clean off.”
Absalom Summers shook his great fist under Haystack’s nose—“What’s the use in trying to force a fool superstition like that down our throats, Thompson?” he roared. “Changing slippers is the only up-to-date, scientific way and Heller here, who’s been to school, can tell you so.”
But Haystack refused to yield an inch. A heated poker was the thing for him, he said.
“A fiddle’s the thing for you, Mr. Thompson,” cried Mrs. Carson. “I don’t believe you know how to handle anything else—not even a porridge spoon.”