come along and eat
'em,--and when she has them kind of delusions, she cries out in her
sleep and tosses around and maybe knocks down a couple of steel beams or
busts in a row of box-stalls or something trivial like that. Then, right
on top of them petty annoyances, McGuire some days previous has made the
mistake of feeding Emily peanuts, which peanuts, as he then finds out,
is her favourite tidbit.

"'Gents,' says McGuire to me and Windy Jordan, 'I shore did make the
error of my life when I done that act of kindness. I merely meant them
peanuts as a special treat, but Emily figures it out that they're the
start of a fixed habit,' he says. 'Ever since then, if I forget to bring
her in her one five-cent bag of peanuts per diem, per day, she calls
personally to inquire into the oversight. She waits very patient and
ladylike until about eleven o'clock in the morning, and if I ain't made
good by then, she just pulls up her leg hobble by the roots and drops in
on me to find out what's the meaning of the delay.

"'She ain't never rough nor overbearing, but it interferes with trade
for me to be sitting here in my office at the front of the stable
talking business with somebody, and all of a sudden the front half of
the largest East Indian elephant in the world shoves three or four
thousand pounds of herself in at that side door and begins waving her
trunk around in the air, meanwhile uttering fretful, complaining sounds.
I've lost two or three customers that way,' he says. 'They get right up
and go away sudden,' he says, 'and they don't never come back no more,
not even for their hats and umbrellas. They send for 'em.

"'That ain't the worst of it,' he says. Yesterday,' he says, 'I rented
out my whole string of coaches and teams for a burial turnout over here
on McDougal Street. Being as it's a big occasion, I'm driving the first
carriage containing the sorrowing family of deceased. Naturally, with a
job like that on my hands, I don't think about Emily at all; my mind's
all occupied up with making the affair pass off in a tasty and pleasant
fashion for all concerned. Well, the cortege is just leaving the late
residence of the remainders, when around the corner comes bulging Emily,
followed at a suitable distance by eight or nine thousand of the
populace. She's missed me, and she wants her peanuts, and she's been
trailing me; and now, by heck, she's found me.

"'Emily gives a loud, glad snort of recognition, wheels herself a