“Who’s going to be Sandy Claws?” asks Dirty.
“Nobody!” snaps Magpie. “Them things are out of date. We’re just steppin’ along ahead of them ancient has-beens, yuh betcha. Nobody can go home from this celebration and say we had the same old stuff.”
“Be —— lucky if they has the use of their vocal cords ten days afterwards,” opines Dirty. “Piperock’s Merry Christmas has always knocked —— out of Happy New Year’s. I suppose you’ll frame up a death trap and charge us a dollar apiece to get butchered for a Piperock Holiday.”
“This is goin’ to be free,” states Magpie.
“Just like a suicide,” sighs Dirty.
“Since when was you and Ike Harper invited to this meetin’?” asks Wick. “’Pears to me——”
“We’re going out,” says I, “but before we erases ourselves from your presence we’d like to orate open and free that we will not be part, parcel nor accessory to anything pertaining to or being of a Piperock entertainment. We will not do this nor that, and neither will we do thus and so. We will toil not and neither will we spin to any extent. Our hearts are hard and our minds are made up like a mule’s.”
“Better wait until you’re asked,” advises Magpie.
“No trouble to sound a warning,” says Dirty Shirt.
“You’d ask in vain, Magpie,” says I.