"Huddesley's arrival raised the tone of our neighbourhood appreciably," said the doctor, with a laugh. Doctor Vardaman's men were a byword in the community. Men of every colour and nationality had drifted through his hands; it was a long procession of lazy, drunken, thieving rascality, or honesty so abysmally stupid and incompetent as to be equally worthless. "I'll never let him go, now I've got him," said the old gentleman. "I have a fellow-feeling for all you ladies that keep house. Rather than lose him, I'd give him everything I own even unto the half of my substance." "He'll git more'n that 'fore he's through with ye," said Mrs. Botlisch. "You young Taylor feller,"--she always called J. B. and in fact all the young men that frequented the house, by the last name--"you'd better git that bottle o' rye away from Johns. He's had about enough, 'f _I'm_ any jedge--an' I reckon I'd oughter be, all th' drunks I've handled----" "Pioneer times, pioneer times," said the colonel, hastily. "Er--um--the ice to Mr. Johns, Sam." "When Mirandy's pa useter came home loaded," pursued the old woman, unmoved, "many's the time I've shet him in th' woodshed, him hollerin' bloody murder--'Let him holler!' says I. Time mornin' come I'd git him under th' pump--oh my, yes, I've had lots of experience." "Pioneer times," said Colonel Pallinder again desperately. (But J. B. _did_ take the bottle away from Teddy's neighbourhood.) "Pioneer days! Good God, gentlemen, when I think of what men and women had to contend with then, I'm ashamed, yes, ashamed of the luxuries we live in. You were saying, Doctor----" "About--ahem--oh--ah--yes, about Huddesley," said the doctor, who had not been saying anything. "I can't always make the fellow out--I'm rather puzzled----" "Speakin' o' puzzles," said old Mrs. Botlisch, "I was goin' to tell ye that one 'bout th' English feller that the guide was takin' 'roun' Niagry Falls. After they had gone down under th' Falls, an' out to Goat Island, and everywheres else, ye know, he took an' wrote in th' visitors' book, 'Why am I like Desdemona?' (That's the white girl that goes off with a nigger in th' play, ye know). He wrote just that: 'Why am I like Desdemona?' Th' answer is: 'Becuz----'" This time, in spite of an outburst of coughing that threatened serious results to Doctor Vardaman, in spite of a fusillade of loud irrelevant talk from the colonel, in spite even of Teddy Johns' quite unintentionally falling over a chair, this time, I say, we all heard the answer! CHAPTER THIRTEEN