"It's Lem Parraday's whiskey that's doin' the singin'," explained the boy. "Hi tunket! Listen to that ditty, will ye?"
"'I wish't I was a rock
A-settin' on a hill,
A-doin' nothin' all day long
But jest a-settin' still,'"
roared Walky, who was letting the patient Josephus take his own gait up Hillside Avenue.
"For the Good Land o' Goshen!" cried Aunt 'Mira. "What's the matter o' that feller? Has he taken leave of his senses, a-makin' of the night higeous in that-a-way? Who ever told Walky Dexter 't he could sing?"
"It's what he's been drinking that's doing the singing, I tell ye," said her son.
"Poor Walky!" sighed Janice.
The expressman's complaint of his hard lot continued to rise in song:
"'I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep,
I wouldn't even wash;
I'd jest set still a thousand years,
And rest myself, b'gosh!'"
"Whoa, Josephus!"
He had pulled the willing Josephus (willing at all times to stop) into the open gateway of the old Day place. Marty went out on the porch to hail him.