Jock pulled himself together.
"Well, I'll be blowed!" he sympathetically ejaculated, "Here where there ain't, what you might say, enough local color to more than touch up the noses of the Black Catters."
"Jock! Now, see if you'd know it." She read a scrappy description of the village. "Would you recognize it?"
"With a footnote, it would go." Jock was all attention. "But I have my doubts as to whether Pete Falstar will take kindly to his place of residence being classified as a human pig-sty. That's laying the local colour on, with a whitewash brush, don't you think? A little dirt and disorder don't seem to call for such language."
"That is artistic license." Constance explained.
"Well, you ought to pay high for that kind of license—but maybe you do. Go on."
"I handle my subject without gloves," Constance began again.
"By gosh! I'd keep 'em on when I was tackling pig-stys and such; but don't mind me."
"And here; see if you can guess who this is?
"'The sleek, fat proprietor looked oily within and oily without. He oozed oil on the community that he was demoralizing with his poisonous whiskey and doctored beer.'"