affairs. "Call out Mayor Morrison."

"Haud yer havers, ye keckling loon! Whaur's yer een for the tickit
gillie?" The old paymaster jabbed indignant thumb over his shoulder to
indicate the big clock on the wall.

"I can't hear what you say on account of these ear-pads, and it doesn't
make any difference what you say, Andy! This is the day when all rules are
off." He was fully conscious that he had the ears of all those in the
room. He braced back. With an air of a functionary calling on the
multitude to make way for royalty he declaimed, "Call His Honor Mayor
Morrison at once to this room for a conference with the Honorable Jodrey
Wadsworth Corson, United States Senator. I am here to announce that
Senator Corson is on the way."

Mac Tavish narrowed his eyes; he whittled his tone to a fine point to
correspond, and the general effect was like impaling a puffball on a
rat-tail file. "If ye hae coom sunstruck on a January day, ye'd best stick
a sopped sponge in the laft o' yer tar-pail bonnet. Sit ye doon and speir
the hands o' the clock for to tell when the Morrison cooms frae the mill."

The colonel banged the flat of his hand on the ledge outside the wicket.
"It isn't an elephant this time, Mac Tavish. It's a United States Senator.
Act on my orders, or into the mill I go, myself!"

The old man slid down from the stool, a paperweight in each hand. "Only
o'er my dead body will ye tell him in yer mortal flesh. Make the start to
enter the mill, and it's my thocht that ye'll tell him by speeritual
knocks or by tipping a table through a meejum!"