It was stated there that elephants were singularly susceptible to the soothing influence of music.
“Have you got your flute along, ’Quarius?” squalled Avery.
The human weather-vane pulled it out and waved it.
“Then, for the Lord’s sake, hurry acrost here with it. You may save lives and property.”
It was at that moment that Squire Phin realised that something out of the ordinary was occurring on his premises. He came out of the kitchen-door just in time to behold “Figger-Four” and “Hard-Times” hustling around the corner of the barn. A moment later he heard the melancholy and wavery notes of the flute, and hurried into the barn by the way of the tie-up door just in time to witness the climax of Avery’s attempt at elephant-taming.
“Figger-Four” was holding Uncle Wharff at the big door almost by main force, and the old man, in spite of his fright, was trying his best to play. But his goggling eyes were too busy with the distracted Imogene, who was now occupied with her last leg-chain, which was attached to an upright beam supporting an end of the scaffold. Amidst her hollow roarings the feeble tones of the flute wailed like a cricket’s chirpings in a tornado.
If anything were needed to add to the exasperation of the desolated Imogene it was this mocking presence in the barn-door. With a last plunge she pulled the beam from under the scaffold and made for the door, sweeping her trunk at the men in her path. But the dragging log impeded her for a moment until she shook it out of the bight of chain. Avery and Uncle Wharff rolled over the driveway and crawled under the barn, and Imogene strode down across the field pursuing the horses.
“Perhaps I didn’t play the right tune,” the Squire heard “Hard-Times” gasp under the bam in reply to an angry growl from Avery. But he didn’t wait to interrogate them. That elephant was abroad, evidently with mind determined on mischief, and he felt that his first duty was to secure a band of elephant hunters in the village and start them on the trail.
When he turned into the street from the yard the parrot vigorously snapped a bar of his cage and yelled after him, “Hey, Rube!”
This final and unconscious touch of satire was too much for Squire Phin’s sense of the ludicrous. He turned in his tracks and surveyed the old homestead behind the poplars.