Miss B⸺, our guest and new acquaintance, was guided by etiquette and started to eat her asparagus with a knife and fork, but Gus changed her mind. Now Gus is a careless sort of fellow. When he surrounds a plate of grub he is like time and tide. He waits for no man. He simply surrounds his lips, arms, fingers and what-not in mad haste to consume everything on the table. He is oblivious to anything or anyone else. So Gus grabbed the butt end of a big stock of asparagus and sipped the tip of the vegetable in much the same fashion as a steam suction hose cleaned the streets of Paris in our soldier days. But Miss B⸺ was game. In manner demure, she nervously grasped a luscious piece within her slender fingers. Blushingly, she placed the tender morsel between her pearly teeth. She was a game little girlie, despite her embarrassment. The warm butter slobbered over her but, to her credit, may it be said, she went through the ordeal much like a seasoned veteran.
At this writing, I am glad to say, our angel is rapidly becoming accustomed to backwood etiquette and she now can eat away at any size asparagus just as well—well, almost as efficiently as Gus. I said almost. It would be impossible, I believe, to equal his record.
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At last, thank God, Mrs. Bill admits I have one good quality—that of being tender-hearted. I overheard her telling Gus that I was so tender of heart that I wouldn’t kill a poor, defenseless fly, or even beat a carpet.
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Pedro, famous pedigreed bull of the Whiz Bang farm, has quite a reputation as a county fair prize winner. Gus, the hired man, decided he’d make a few extra dollars one week while I was “tooting it up” in Minneapolis, so he started charging admission to the many who came to view the noble animal.
A visitor approached Gus the first day of admission charges and inquired as to the cost for himself, wife and nine children, for viewing the bull.
“Not a cent,” promptly replied our faithful man. “Come right in; I want Pedro to see you.”
* * *