He said a lot more about the carter, and the carter's family for some generations back, and the carter's prospects in the future life. Binks is not exactly a cussing man, but he gave a very fair imitation of one—it would do till a real cusser came around.
We heard him, but we heeded not. We just lay there and smiled blandly at the Milky Way. We had reached the point where we didn't care a darn if the race of carters became utterly extinct, and we were extinguished with them. All we wanted was to be left alone.
Binks, however, was indomitable. That man's energy was positively terrifying. He got us on our feet, put our coat on us in spite of our feeble resistance, stuck one end of that fatal saw in our hand, and dragged us two miles or more through the bush and the darkness to the street-car. With the help of the conductor he lifted us on and propped us up in the end of a seat. We remember that we moaned when they took the handle of the saw away from us. We had grown attached to it.
We don't recall much about the trip on the car, except hearing the conductor tell Binks that people who couldn't carry liquor any better than we seemed able to do shouldn't be allowed to have any. He said that sort of thing was what started Prohibition movements. And Binks agreed with him!
When we got to Bink's house, the dinner had long since been burned to a crisp, and Mrs. Binks registered about six hundred pounds pressure on her temper-gauge. It was a terrible meal. We don't remember what we ate, or whether we ate at all. All we know is that when it was over, we stumbled right over to our hat and then back to Mrs. Binks.
"Goo' night—lovely time," we said. "Hope you're the same!"
Binks saw us to the door. As a matter of fact, we had started to walk into the fire-place. He seemed to feel the need of some explanation.
"Sorry, old man, about that infernal carter," he said, "but tell you what we'll do. Some day next week we'll stroll out to the lot and have the fun of loading up, and then...."
We are not quite clear what it was that we said to Binks, but we must have said something fairly significant, for neither Binks nor his wife has spoken to us since.
Of course, we are sorry that Binks and his wife feel that way about it. But after all the first law of life is self-preservation, and we can't afford to run that sort of risk again. We didn't heal up for a week or more after that dreadful grapple with the cross-cut saw. In fact, we had some notion of going to a surgeon and having the bites cauterized.