"Call me that once more and I'll heave you through the window," snapped Shandon. "If you've got anything to say, say it. I'm going to bed."
"Don't mind me," Dart hastened to say. "It won't bother me at all. What I was going to say was this: Here I've come all the way from New York—"
"No doubt because you were run out!"
"Just through a sense of gratitude. What can I do to show that gratitude has been the only worry to keep my appetite down to capacity? I've been here a week, ain't I? Well, the first thing after I got rested up which has been about four days now, I begun thinking about that. And it come to me like this: Old Red's got troubles; he needs a friend that would live in a temperance town just to help him. Here's a place for Willie Dart to fit in and do some good!"
Shandon groaned.
"If you start in—"
"I've started already," beamed Dart. "I ain't had much time for fine work, yet, and I don't know the play quite as well as I might, but I've been planting little seeds of kindness promiscuous."
"What do you mean?" frowned Shandon.
"Now don't go to getting excited. I'm going to tell you, ain't I? First place, the day I got into these forests primeval, I run across a fairy that could be Mrs. Willie Dart in a minute if I wasn't sworn to single harness by my dad on his dying bed down in Argentine."
"Last time he died it was in Nova Scotia," remarked Shandon drily. "Go ahead."