And next comes the circus to Red Gap, with old Pete, the Indian, going
down to it and getting crazy about elephants. And so that was how it
happened."

The lady now knitted in silence, appearing to believe that all had been
told.

I waited a decent interval, then said I was glad indeed to know how it
had all happened; that it was a great help to know how it had happened,
even if I must remain forever ignorant of what it was that had happened.
Of course I couldn't expect to be told that.

It merely brought more about mules. Five hundred dollars a span for mules
looked good until you remembered that you needed 'em worse than the other
party did. She had to keep her twenty span of old reliables because, what
with the sailors and section hands you got nowadays to do your haying,
you had to have tame mules. Give 'em any other kind and they'd desert the
ship the minute a team started to run. It cost too much for wagon
repairs.

Silence again.

I now said I had, it was true, heard much low neighbourhood scandal about
the Timmins man, but that I had learned not to believe all I heard about
people; there was too much prejudice in the world, and at least two sides
to every question.

This merely evoked the item that Timmins had bought him a thrift stamp
on the sole ground that it had such a pretty name; then came the wish
that she might have seen him dining in public at that rich hotel where