“‘Well, I’m not as apprised in the anatomy of them as some,’ says Uncle Emsley, ‘but I reckon you take a sifter of plaster of Paris and a little dough and saleratus and corn meal, and mix ’em with eggs and buttermilk as usual. Is old Bill going to ship beeves to Kansas City again this spring, Jud?’ “That was all the pancake specifications I could get that night. I didn’t wonder that Jackson Bird found it uphill work. So I dropped the subject and talked with Uncle Emsley for a while about hollow-horn and cyclones. And then Miss Willella came and said ‘Good-night,’ and I hit the breeze for the ranch. “About a week afterward I met Jackson Bird riding out of Pimienta as I rode in, and we stopped on the road for a few frivolous remarks. “‘Got the bill of particulars for them flapjacks yet?’ I asked him. “‘Well, no,’ says Jackson. ‘I don’t seem to have any success in getting hold of it. Did you try?’ “‘I did,’ says I, ‘and ’twas like trying to dig a prairie dog out of his hole with a peanut hull. That pancake receipt must be a jookalorum, the way they hold on to it.’ “‘I’m most ready to give it up,’ says Jackson, so discouraged in his pronunciations that I felt sorry for him; ‘but I did want to know how to make them pancakes to eat on my lonely ranch,’ says he. ‘I lie awake at nights thinking how good they are.’ “‘You keep on trying for it,’ I tells him, ‘and I’ll do the same. One of us is bound to get a rope over its horns before long. Well, so-long, Jacksy.’ “You see, by this time we were on the peacefullest of terms. When I saw that he wasn’t after Miss Willella, I had more endurable contemplations of that sandy-haired snoozer. In order to help out the ambitions of his appetite I kept on trying to get that receipt from Miss Willella. But every time I would say ‘pancakes’ she would get sort of remote and fidgety about the eye, and try to change the subject. If I held her to it she would slide out and round up Uncle Emsley with his pitcher of water and hip-pocket howitzer. “One day I galloped over to the store with a fine bunch of blue verbenas that I cut out of a herd of wild flowers over on Poisoned Dog Prairie. Uncle Emsley looked at ’em with one eye shut and says: “‘Haven’t ye heard the news?’ “‘Cattle up?’ I asks. “‘Willella and Jackson Bird was married in Palestine yesterday,’ says he. ‘Just got a letter this morning.’ “I dropped them flowers in a cracker-barrel, and let the news trickle in my ears and down toward my upper left-hand shirt pocket until it got to my feet. “‘Would you mind saying that over again once more, Uncle Emsley?’ says I. ‘Maybe my hearing has got wrong, and you only said that prime heifers was 4.80 on the hoof, or something like that.’ “‘Married yesterday,’ says Uncle Emsley, ‘and gone to Waco and Niagara Falls on a wedding tour. Why, didn’t you see none of the signs all along? Jackson Bird has been courting Willella ever since that day he took her out riding.’