in her high, innocent voice had just said to the poet: 'But seriously
now, are you sincere?' and I was getting some plenty of that, when up
the road in the dusk I seen Bush Jones driving a dray-load of furniture.
I wondered where in time any family could be moving out that way. I
didn't know any houses beyond the club and I was pondering about this,
idly as you might say, when Bush Jones pulls his team up right in front
of the clubhouse, and there on the load is the two I had tried to lose.
In a big armchair beside a varnished centre table sits Ben Sutton
reading something that I recognized as the yellow card with Wilfred's
verses on it. And across the dray from him on a red-plush sofa is Alonzo
Price singing 'My Wild Irish Rose' in a very noisy tenor.

"Well, sir, I could have basted that fool Bush Jones with one of his own
dray stakes. That man's got an intellect just powerful enough to take
furniture from one house to another if the new address ain't too hard
for him to commit to memory. That's Bush Jones all right! He has the
machinery for thinking, but it all glitters as new as the day it was put
in. So he'd come a mile out of his way with these two riots--and people
off somewhere wondering where that last load of things was!

"The ladies all affected to ignore this disgraceful spectacle, with
Henrietta sinking her nails into her bloodless palms, but the men broke
out and cheered a little in a half-scared manner and some of 'em went
down to help the newcomers climb out. Then Ben had words with Bush Jones
because he wanted him to wait there and take 'em back to town when the
party was over and Bush refused to wait. After suffering about twenty
seconds in the throes of mental effort I reckon he discovered that he
had business to attend to or was hungry or something. Anyway, Ben paid
him some money finally and he drove off after calling out 'Good-night,
all!' just as if nothing had happened.