I’m cookin’ supper when Magpie shows up, and the blasted idiot is grinning from ear to ear. He pours coffee over his potatoes and puts sugar on his bacon and then begins to talk.
“The rhythm,” says he, “the rhythm of nature is a wonderful thing, Ike.”
“Yes,” says I. “It must be.”
“The breeze of Spring; the waving of the branches of a tree. True poetry, Ike. The human form divine is the only thing capable of expressin’ these here e-motions.”
I takes out my gun and puts it beside my plate.
“Magpie, there’s a curse on you, and you might as well spill it all now. I’m not interested a danged bit, but any old time you starts out bobbin’ from flower to flower I knows what’s comin’. Spread your hand.”
Magpie smiles at me and then shoves back from the table.
“Ike, here’s where we jump fifty years ahead of Paradise and Curlew. We has hung to the old order of things too long. We has become moth-eaten and stale. Don’t yuh know we have?”
“Anything would—hung up for fifty years, Magpie.”
“We still dance quadrilles and waltzes, the same of which went out of style with flint-lock muskets. Now, we sheds the scales off our eyes and comes out of our shells into the dawn of a brighter day. Piperock entereth a reign of classical dancing, Ike.