you'd care to know, and they're waitin' for me now to come back and converse some more with 'em. One of 'em is Charles M. Wacks'le—I mean Wackstle. You've heard of Charles—I mean Charles Wackstle—haven't you, Mamma?"
"No. I have not."
"It's because you don't read the papers, then. Why, Charles M. Wack—Wackstle was general manager west of the Alleghenies for the Mutual Protective for fourteen years. He and the other gentleman I been with are as fine a small body of men as you can find in the whole United States from the Great Lakes to the Gulf, from the pine forests of the great State of Maine to the silver strands"
"Stop talking like that," his wife commanded sharply. "That's the way you came home talking the last time you disgraced yourself this way, three years ago, on election night."
"'Election night'?" He repeated the words slowly and gently. "'Disgraced myself'?"
"You did! And now you haven't got any more sense than to talk about finding a 'fine small body of men' in the United States, when they're out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean! It shows pretty well what you've been doing all afternoon, I guess."
