“Crack ’em down, crack ’em down, gents!” squalled the parrot.
“If it wasn’t for Elkanah, there, to holler that to me, with an occasional ‘Hey, Rube!’ I couldn’t stay in this Godforsaken place fifteen minutes. There’s no one here that can talk about anything except ensilage and new-milk cows. Now what say? Store your old traps along o’ mine, squat down and take it comfortable. I reckon that you and me can find a few things to talk about that really amount to something!”
“I should hate to feel I was a burden on you, Ivory,” stammered Avery, gasping at the amazing generosity of this invitation. “If there’s any stutterers around here I might earn a little something on the side, perhaps.”
“Me with fifty thousand in the bank and letting a guest of mine graft for a living? Not by a blame sight!” snorted Buck. “You just climb out and shut up and help me unharness old Pollyponeezus here.”
Ten minutes afterward they had the canvas off the chariots and were inspecting them by lantern light, chattering old reminiscences and seeming almost to hear the “roomp-roomp” of the elephant and the snap of the ringmaster’s whip.
To the astonishment of Smyrna Corner, two plug hats, around which wreaths of cigar smoke were cozily curling, blossomed on the platform of the emporium next morning, instead of one. The old men had thirty years of mutual confidences to impart, and set busily at it, the parrot waddling the monotonous round of his cage overhead and rasping:
“Crack ’em down, gents! The old army game!”
In two weeks “Plug” Ivory and “Plug” Avery were as much fixtures in the Smyrna scenery as the town pump. Occasionally of an evening the wail of the snuffling accordion wavered out over the village. Buck, his head thrown back and his eyes closed, seemed to get consoling echoes of the past even from this lugubrious assault on Melody, and loungers hovered at a respectful distance. No one dared to ask questions, and in this respect the old men differed from the town pump as features in the scenery.
Before a month had passed the two had so thoroughly renewed their youth that they were discussing the expense of fitting out a “hit-the-grit” circus, and were writing to the big shows for prices on superannuated or “shopworn” animals.
It was voted that the dancing turkey and infant anaconda grafts were no longer feasible. Once on a time the crowds would watch a turkey hopping about on a hot tin to the rig-a-jig of a fiddle and would come out satisfied that they had received their money’s worth. A man could even exhibit an angleworm in a bottle and call it the infant anaconda, and escape being lynched. Brick Avery sadly testified to the passing of those glorious days.