We got away from there then. She cut up too rough altogether. I can’t tell you what she said—I ain’t got the words. She went up to the house, an’ we seen the farm-hand harnessin’ up the horse, an’ we reckoned she was goin’ to drive into town straight away an’ take out a summons agenst Dave Regan. An’ jest then Dave hisself comes ridin’ past—jest when he was most wanted, as usual. He always rode fast past Mrs Hardwick’s nowadays, an’ never stopped there, but Billy shouted after him:
“Hullo, Dave! I want to speak to yer,” shouts Billy. An’ Dave yanks his horse round.
“What is it, Billy?” he says.
“Look here, Dave,” says Billy. “You had your little joke about the chimbly, an’ we had our little joke about the fish an’ Mrs Hardwick, so now we’ll call it quits. A joke’s a joke, but it can go too far, an’ this one’s gettin’ too red-hot altogether. So we’ve fixed it up with Mrs Hardwick.”
“What fish an’ what joke?” says Dave, rubbin’ his head. “An’ what have yer fixed up with Mrs Hardwick? Whatever are yer talkin’ about, Billy?”
So Billy told him all about us sendin’ the stinkin’ fish to Mrs Hardwick by Tommy, an’ sayin’ Dave sent ’em—Dave rubbin’ the back of his neck an’ starin’ at Billy all the time. “An’ now,” says Billy, “I won’t say anything about them bullicks; but I went up and seen Mrs Hardwick this mornin’, an’ told her the whole truth about them fish, an’ how you knowed nothin’ about it, an’ I apologized an’ told her we was very sorry; an’ she says she was very sorry too on your account, an’ wanted to see yer. I promised to tell yer as soon as I seen yer. It ought to be fixed up. You ought to go right up to the house an’ see her now. She’s awfully cut up about it.”
“All right,” says Dave, brightenin’ up. “It was a dirty, mean trick anyway to play on a cove; but I’ll go up an’ see her.” An’ he went there ’n’ then.
An’ about fifteen minutes arterwards he comes boltin’ back from the house one way an’ his horse the other. The horse acted as if it had a big scare, an’ so did Dave. Billy went an’ ketched Dave’s horse for him, an’ I got Dave a towel to wipe the dirty dish-water off of his face an’ out of his hair an’ collar, an’ I give him a piece of soap to rub on the places where he’d been scalded.
“Why, the woman must be ravin’ mad,” I says. “Whatever did yer say to her this time, Dave? Yer allers gettin’ inter hot water with her.”
“I didn’t say nothin’,” says Dave. “I jest went up laughin’ like, an’ says, ‘How are yer, Mrs Hardwick?’ an’ she ups an’ lets me have a dish of dirty wash-up water, an’ then on top of that she let fly with a dipper of scaldin’-hot, greasy water outer the boiler. She’s gone clean ravin’ mad, I think.”