"What's the matter with you, Fred Chase?"
"Don't know. Guess you haven't got the right tune."
Willy stopped short in "Come, Philander," and turned it into "Hail, Columbia;" but it made no difference. "Roy's Wife," or "Fy! let us a' to the wedding," was as good as anything else. Fred took long steps or short steps, just as it happened, and Willy never had understood, and could not understand now, what did ail Fred's feet; it was very tiresome, indeed.
"Look here: what tune have I been whistling now? See if you know?"
"Why, that's—that's—some kind of a dancing tune. Can't think. O, yes; 'Old Hundred.'"
"Fred Chase!" thundered Willy; "that's 'Yankee Doodle!' Anybody that don't know Yankee Doodle must be a fool!"
"Why, look here now: I know Yankee Doodle as well as you do, Will Parlin, only you didn't whistle it right!"
At another time Willy would have been quick to laugh at such an absurd remark; but now, tired as he was, it made him downright angry. He stopped whistling, and did not speak again for five minutes. Meanwhile he began to grow very sleepy.
"Wish we were going to battle," said Fred at last, for the sake of breaking the silence. "I'd like to be in a good fight; that is, if they had decent music. I could march to a fife and drum first rate."
"Could, hey! Then why didn't you ever do it?"