"Goodness gracious gallop! Why don't you sing a chantey over me, I
want to know? You'd think I was a bale of jute being snaked out of a
ship's hold. Good land!"
"There, there, Prudence!" exclaimed Cap'n Ira. "You're safe, after
all! It--it was something awful!"
"I cal'late it was," rejoined the old woman rather bitterly. "And I
didn't get them oats, after all."
"I'll 'tend to all that, Aunt Prue," said Tunis.
"If it hadn't been for that dratted Queen of Sheby"--Cap'n Ira
glared malevolently at the rather surprised-looking countenance of
the gray mare in her box--"you wouldn't have got into that jam."
"If it hadn't been for you taking that dose of snuff when I was
expecting nothing of the kind, I wouldn't have dove into that feed
box, Ira, and you know it very well."
"I swan!" admitted her husband in a feeble voice. "I forgot again,
didn't I?"
"I don't know as you forgot, but I know you mighty near sneezed your
head off. You'll be the death of me some day, Ira, blowin' up that
way. I wonder I didn't jump clean through the bottom of that feed
box when I was just reaching down to get a measure of oats."
"Aunt Prue," Tunis interposed, "why do you keep the little tad of
feed you have to buy for Queenie in this big old chest?"
"There!" Cap'n Ira hastened to rejoin, glad likewise to turn the
trend of conversation.
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