Jones dresses up
as a monk, Bull Durham claims he's rigged out already as a vice-bishop,
and I'm to be a chicken, 'cause I'm dealing vintage eggs in the
cotillon. All the same, I'm left there alone for hours, and it's only
when they comes back with a cocktail that I'll consent to dressing up as
a chicken--which in passing out through that lil' window is some
crowded. We proceeds up street, me toting eggs, and practising
chicken-talk, and it seems the general public is surprised.

So we comes to the Masonic Hall, which is all lights, and band, and
fashionable persons rigged out in fancy dress, dancing the _horse
doover_. I got the name from Bull, who says that the next turn is my day
boo in the omlet cotillion. Seems it's all arranged, too. Affable Jones
lines up the ladies on the left, the dudes on the right, all the length
of the hall. Bull marches up the middle, spurs trailin' behind him, and
there's me dressed as a chicken, with a basket of eggs, wondering
whether this here cow-boy is the two persons I see, or only the one I
can hear. Band's playing soft, Affable serves out tin spoons to the
dudes, and I deals each a decorated egg, laying it careful in the bowl
of the spoon, till there's only a few left over, and I'm safe along with
Bull.

So far everybody seems pleased. Bull whispers in my ear, "Make for the
back door, you son of a sea cook," which offends one, being true; waves
an egg at the band for silence, and calls out, "Ladies and gents." From
the back door I seen how all the dudes has to stand dead still for fear
of dropping an egg.

"Ladies," says Bull, "has any of you seen a live mouse? On the way up
among you, seems I've dropped my mouse, and it's climbing skirts for
solitude."

Then there's shrieks, screams, ladies throwing themselves into the arms
of them dudes, eggs dropping squash, eggs going bang, Bull throwing eggs
at every man not otherwise engaged, and such a stink that all the lights
goes out. I'm grabbed by the scruff of the chicken, run out through the
back door, and slung on the back of a horse. Bull's yelling "Ride! Ride!
Git a move on!" He's flogging the horses with his quirt, he's yelling at
me: "Ride, or we'll be lynched!"

My mouth's full of feathers, chicken's coming all to pieces--can't
ride--daresn't fall off. So on the whole I dug the chicken's spurs into
Mr. Horse, and rode like a hurricane in a panic. All of which reminds me
that the hinder parts of an imitation bird is comfor