Bill laughed again.
“Oh, my Lonnie, my Llama!” wailed Mrs. V.
And again Bill Vanderhook laughed.
“Aha!—your Astral Mate got a move on him that time. Go ask him if he has any fresh data on affinities. Ask him how he likes this newest attraction.”
“Brute!”—and, dashing past her husband, the distracted lady rushed to the rescue of her primordial mate. She flung herself wildly into the workshop from which she had been so long excluded.
The picture presented to her gaze as she crossed the threshold struck terror to her soul. All at once Mrs. Vanderhook felt weak as boiled water. She clasped her hands in frantic protest.
“Get onto his curves” bawled Bill. “What d’ye think of your Lonnie Bird now? He’s off his perch, ain’t he? Never miss a Mystic when he moults. And here’s your Lonnie Lammie—at shearing time. Here’s your little piggy-wiggy on a hook. Here’s your-r-r-r”—and the angry husband wound himself up in a knot of words and spluttered off into monosyllabic ravings.
Angry and frightened and bewildered by the very unusual scene, Mrs. Vanderhook staggered, moaned a couple of times, and crumpled up over against a big empty packing case.
It would have been a braver woman who could look unmoved upon the revenge of the Kankakee druggist.
In the center of a long, narrow room strewn with jugs, jars, bottles and chemical apparatus, whirled a small and curious cylinder, a little black machine that gave off a trail of glittering sparks upon the brilliant atmosphere, a tiny monster that sang and purred and whizzed in its dizzy revolutions.