“What was I to do?” inquired Briggs, nervously worrying his short blond mustache. “When I arrived here I had made up my mind to fire the poet and arrange for the hatchery and patrol. The farther I walked through the dust of this accursed road, lugging my suit-case as you are doing now, the surer I was that I’d get rid of the poet without mercy. But——”
“Well?” inquired Wayne, astonished.
“But when I’d trudged some five miles up the stifling road I suddenly emerged into a wonderful mountain meadow. I tell you, George, it looked fresh and sweet as Heaven after that dusty, parching tramp—a mountain meadow deep with mint and juicy green grasses, and all cut up by little rushing streams as cold as ice. There were a lot of girls in pink sunbonnets picking wild strawberries in the middle distance,” he added thoughtfully. “It was picturesque, wasn’t it? Come, now, George, wouldn’t that give you pause?—eight girls in pink pajamas——”
“What!!!”
“And sunbonnets—a sort of dress reform of the poet’s.”
“Well?” inquired Wayne coldly.
“And there was the ‘house beautiful,’ mercifully screened by woods,” continued Briggs. “He calls it the house beautiful, you know.”
“Why not the beautiful house?” asked Wayne, still more coldly.
“Oh, he gets everything upside down. Guilford is harmless, you’ll see.” He began to whistle Fatinitza softly. There was a silence; then Wayne said:
“You interrupted your narrative.”