ready to do anything to please him. She hesitates the eighth of a second
and takes another look at these men. I imagine she says to herself about
John Tom, 'Seems to be a gentleman, if his hair don't curl.' And Mr.
Peters she disposes of as follows: 'No ladies' man, but a man who knows
a lady.'

"So we all rambled down to the camp as neighborly as coming from a
wake. And there she inspects the wagon and pats the place with her hand
where the kid used to sleep, and dabs around her eyewinkers with her
handkerchief. And Professor Binkly gives us 'Trovatore' on one string of
the banjo, and is about to slide off into Hamlet's monologue when one of
the horses gets tangled in his rope and he must go look after him, and
says something about 'foiled again.'

"When it got dark me and John Tom walked back up to the Corn Exchange
Hotel, and the four of us had supper there. I think the trouble started
at that supper, for then was when Mr. Little Bear made an intellectual
balloon ascension. I held on to the tablecloth, and listened to him
soar. That redman, if I could judge, had the gift of information. He
took language, and did with it all a Roman can do with macaroni. His
vocal remarks was all embroidered over with the most scholarly verbs and
prefixes. And his syllables was smooth, and fitted nicely to the joints
of his idea. I thought I'd heard him talk before, but I hadn't. And it
wasn't the size of his words, but the way they come; and 'twasn't his
subjects, for he spoke of common things like cathedrals and football
and poems and catarrh and souls and freight rates and sculpture. Mrs.
Conyers understood his accents, and the elegant sounds went back and
forth between 'em. And now and then Jefferson D. Peters would intervene
a few shop-worn, senseless words to have the butter passed or another
leg of the chicken.