"Then Ben Sutton come and stood in the doorway till he caught Wilfred's eye and beckoned to him. Wilfred pretended not to notice the first time, but Ben beckoned a little harder, so Wilfred excused himself to the six or eight ladies and went out. It seemed to me he first looked quick round him to make sure there wasn't any other way out. I was standing in the hall when Ben led him tenderly into the grillroom with two fingers. "'Here is our well-known poet and _bon vivant_,' says Ben to Alonzo, who had followed 'em in. So Alonzo bristles up to Wilfred and glares at him and says: 'All joking aside, is that one of my new shirts you're wearing or is it not?' "Wilfred gasped a couple times and says: 'Why, as to that, you see, the madam insisted--' "Alonzo shut him off. 'How dare you drag a lady's name into a barroom brawl?' says he. "'Don't shoot in here,' says Ben. 'You'd scare the ladies.' "Wilfred went pasty, indeed, thinking his host was going to gun him. "'Oh, very well, I won't then,' says Alonzo. 'I guess I can be a gentleman when necessary. But all joking aside, I want to ask him this: Does he consider poetry to be an accomplishment or a vice?' "'I was going to put something like that to him myself, only I couldn't think of it,' says Doc Martingale, edging up and looking quite restrained and nervous in the arms. I was afraid of the doc. I was afraid he was going to blemish Wilfred a couple of times right there. "'An accomplishment or a vice? Answer yes or no!' orders the judge in a hard voice. "The poet looks round at 'em and attempts to laugh merrily, but he only does it from the teeth out. "'Laugh on, my proud beauty!' says Ben Sutton. Then he turns to the bunch. 'What we really ought to do,' he says, 'we ought to make a believer of him right here and now.' "Even then, mind you, the husbands would have lost their nerve if Ben hadn't took the lead. Ben didn't have to live with their wives so what cared he? Wilfred Lennox sort of shuffled his feet and smiled a smile of pure anxiety. He knew some way that this was nothing to cheer about. "'I got it,' says Jeff Tuttle with the air of a thinker. 'We're cramping the poor cuss here. What he wants is the open road.' "'What he really wants,' says Alonzo, 'is about six bottles of my pure, sparkling beer, but maybe he'll take the open road if we show him a good one.' "'He wants the open road--show him a good one!' yells the other husbands in chorus. It was kind of like a song. "'I had meant to be on my way,' says Wilfred very cold and lofty. "'You're here to-day and there to-morrow,' says Ben; 'but how can you be there to-morrow if you don't start from here now?--for the way is long and lonely.' "'I was about to start,' says Wilfred, getting in a couple of steps toward the door. "''Tis better so,' says Ben. 'This is no place for a county recorder's son, and there's a bully road out here open at both ends.'