“I would like to have had a look at that horse, sweet.”

“So we got the horse-doctor again, and he said that what the poor animal wanted was a hypodermic injection of morphia to calm his nerves.  He told Patrick to get a machine for placing the morphia under the horse’s skin.  But Patrick said that he could do it without the machine.  So one day he got the morphia, and began to bore a hole in the horse with a gimlet.”

“A gimlet, Emma?”

“An ordinary gimlet.  But it seemed unpleasant to the horse, and so he kicked Patrick through the partition, breaking three of his ribs.  Then I got the doctor to perform the operation properly, and the horse after that appeared right well, excepting that Patrick said that he had suddenly acquired an extraordinary propensity for standing on his head.”

“He is the first horse that ever wanted to do that, love.”

“Patrick said not.  He told me about a man he worked for in Oshkosh who had a team of mules which always stood on their heads when they were not at work.  He said all the mules in Oshkosh did.  So Patrick tied a heavy stone to our horse’s tail to Balance him and keep him straight.  And this worked to a charm until I took the horse to church one Sunday, when, while a crowd stood round him looking at him, he swung his tail around and brained six boys with the stone.”

“Brained them, love?”

“Well, I didn’t see them myself, but Patrick told me, when I came out of church, that they were as good as dead.  And he said he remembered that that Oshkosh man used to coax his mules to stand on their legs by letting them hear music.  It soothed them, he said.  And so Patrick got a friend to come around and sit in the stall and calm our horse by playing on the accordion.”

“Did it make him calmer?”

“It seemed to at first; but one day Patrick undertook to bleed him for the blind staggers, and he must have cut the horse in the wrong place, for the poor brute fell over on the accordion person and died, nearly killing the musician.”

“The horse is dead, then?  Where is the bill?”

“I’ll read it to you: 

THE BILL.

Horse-doctor’s fees                     $125 50
Paregoric for cough                       80 00
Galvanic battery                          10 00
Repairing stable                          12 25
Potts’ cow, pigs, apple trees and baby   251 00
Damage to door-knobs, etc.               175 00
Louisa’s hymn-book                           25
Gimlet and injections                     15 00
Repairing Patrick’s ribs                 145 00
Music on accordion                        21 00
Damages to player                        184 00
Burying six boys                         995 00
---------
$2,014 00

“That is all, love, is it?”

“Yes.”

Then Mr. Butterwick folded the bill up and went out into the back yard to think.  Subsequently, he told me that he had concluded to repudiate the unpaid portions of the bill, and then to try to purchase a better horse.  He said he had heard that Mr. Keyser, a farmer over in Lower Merion, had a horse that he wanted to sell, and he asked me to go over there with him to see about it.  I agreed to do so.