“A musical phonologist, sir, at your service.” [[151]]
“Wal,” the lock tender spit, “I’ve got a pianny.”
“I could imagine that to be the case, sir. For it has been my experience that where there is music in the home, the countenances therein always have a nobler mien. And as I approached you, sir, and gazed into your kindly countenance, I said to myself——”
“Shet up, I tell you. Land of Goshen! Sech a talker! If I was compelled to live in the same house with you I’d wear ear pads, by gum.”
“I grieve, sir, if I have bored you.”
“I’ve got a pianny, as I jest said. Bought it at a sale two years ago fur twenty-two dollars an’ a quarter. A good pianny, too. One of them four-legged kind. Since my wife’s death I hain’t had no use fur it. Bin tryin’ to sell it.” The speaker got to his feet. “Come in,” he invited, holding the shotgun in the hollow of his left arm, “an’ take a look at it. An’ if you kin fix it up so I kin sell it fur what I’ve got in it, I’ll give you your supper an’ a night’s lodgin’.”
We stared at one another as the two men disappeared from our sight. The warty-nosed man’s conduct, like his presence here, filled us with bewilderment. [[152]]
There was a stovepipe hole in the floor of our prison. And as the two men came into the room below us, we got around the hole in a circle, unmindful now of the heat in our interest in what was going on below us. [[153]]