“Well, what do you think of that!” Polly gasped. “You're the first rube I ever saw that hadn't.” She was looking at him as though he were a curiosity.
“So I'm a rube!” Douglas shook his head with a sad, little smile and good-naturedly agreed that he had sometimes feared as much.
“That's what we always calls a guy like you,” she explained ingenuously, and added hopefully: “Well, you MUST a' seen our parade—all the pikers see that—IT don't cost nothin'.”
“I'm afraid I must also plead guilty to the charge of being a piker,” Douglas admitted half-sheepishly, “for I did see the parade.”
“Well, I was the one on the white horse right behind the lion cage,” she began excitedly. “You remember?”
“It's a little confused in my mind—” he caught her look of amazement, “just AT PRESENT,” he stammered, feeling her wrath again about to descend upon him.
“Well, I'm the twenty-four sheet stand,” she explained.
“Sheet!” Mandy shrieked from her corner.
“Yes—the billboards—the pictures,” Polly said, growing impatient at their persistent stupidity.
“She sure am a funny talkin' thing!” mumbled Mandy to herself, as she clipped the withered leaves from a plant near the window.