“I wish them blamenation tadpoles shed their voices along with their tails,” he grumbled, with an ear to the frogs in the marsh. “They ain’t quite so bad when they get big enough to trill, but that everlasting yipping makes me lonesome. I’m a good mind to toss up this tenpenny nail and salt codfish business and get back to the sawdust once more.”
There was a stir in a cage above his head, a parrot waddled down the bars, stood on his beak and yawped hoarsely:
“Crack ’em down, gents! The old army game!”
“If it wasn’t for you, Elkanah, I swear I should die of listening to nothing but frogs tuning up and swallows twittering and old fools swapping guff,” he went on, sourly, and then he suddenly cocked his ear, for a new note sounded faintly from the marsh.
“I never knew a bullfrog to get his bass as early as this,” he mused, and as he listened and peered, the old horse’s head came slowly bobbing around the alders at the bend of the road. Above the wailing of the distant accordion he caught a few words as the cart wabbled up the rise on its dished wheels:
Old horse Joe is ever faithful,
O-o-o, o-o-o—ever true.
We’ve been—o-o-o—wide world over,
O-o-o, o-o-o, toodle-oodle—through.
Then a medley of dronings, and finally these words were lustily trolled with the confidence of one who safely reaches the last line:
A bet-tur friend than old horse Joe.
“Whoa, there! Whup!” screamed the parrot, swinging by one foot.
“Ain’t you kind of working a friend to the limit and a little plus?” inquired Buck, sarcastically. The old horse had stopped before the emporium, legs spraddled, head down and sending the dust up in little puffs as he breathed.