sofa is Alonzo
Price singing 'My Wild Irish Rose' in a very noisy tenor.

"Well, sir, I could have basted that fool Bush Jones with one of his own
dray stakes. That man's got an intellect just powerful enough to take
furniture from one house to another if the new address ain't too hard
for him to commit to memory. That's Bush Jones all right! He has the
machinery for thinking, but it all glitters as new as the day it was put
in. So he'd come a mile out of his way with these two riots--and people
off somewhere wondering where that last load of things was!

"The ladies all affected to ignore this disgraceful spectacle, with
Henrietta sinking her nails into her bloodless palms, but the men broke
out and cheered a little in a half-scared manner and some of 'em went
down to help the newcomers climb out. Then Ben had words with Bush Jones
because he wanted him to wait there and take 'em back to town when the
party was over and Bush refused to wait. After suffering about twenty
seconds in the throes of mental effort I reckon he discovered that he
had business to attend to or was hungry or something. Anyway, Ben paid
him some money finally and he drove off after calling out 'Good-night,
all!' just as if nothing had happened.

"Alonzo and Ben Sutton joined the party without further formality. They
didn't look so bad, either, so I saw my crooked work had done some good.
Lon quit singing almost at once and walked good and his eyes didn't
wabble, and he looked kind of desperate and respectable, and Ben was
first-class, except he was slightly oratorical and his collar had melted
the way fat men's do. And it was funny to see how every husband there
bucked up when Ben came forward, as if all they had wanted was some one
to make medicine for 'em before they begun the war dance. They mooched
right up round Ben when he trampled a way into the flushed group about
Wilfred.

"'At last the well-known stranger!' says Ben cordially, seizing one of
Wilfred's pale, beautiful hands. 'I've been hearing so much of you,
wayward child of the open road that you are, and I've just been reading
your wonderful verses as I sat in my library. The woods and the hills
for your spirit untamed and the fire of youth to warm your
nights--that's the talk.' He paused and waved Wilfred's verses in a fat,
freckled hand. Then he looked at him hard and peculiar and says: 'When
you going to pull some of it for us?'

"Wilfred had looked slightly rattled from the be