old left-over livery-stable in the backwoods I'd 'a' thought you were crazy! They tell me they're pretty nearly all like that in New York now; but they'll have to go some to beat this one! It was certainly what you might call spicy. Yes, sir, some rancid!"
"Comedy?" Mr. Wackstle asked.
"No, it didn't seem meant to be. They came out with these things lookin' as serious as a postman in a blizzard: that's what made the gallery laugh, I guess. No; you wouldn't call it a comedy, though the hero of it ran off with his daughter-in-law, a right good-lookin' actress; but she took an overdose of laudanum or something and died, so it didn't seem meant for a comedy."
"What was the name of it?"
"Peculiar name," Tinker replied. "Pasturage—something like 'The Pasturage Scene.' No; that wasn't it, not 'Pasturage.' I remember—they called it 'The Pastoral Scene.' That's it. High-brow name; but when you come to what some of 'em said in it—oh, Boy! not so high-brow!"
The flush upon the outraged playwright's cheek had deepened. He sat scorching with rage and the desire to kill. This, then, was what an unspeakable Tinker saw in a work of art that had cost its creator
