“’I was going to put something like that to him myself, only I couldn’t think of it,’ says Doc Martingale, edging up and looking quite restrained and nervous in the arms.  I was afraid of the doc.  I was afraid he was going to blemish Wilfred a couple of times right there.

“‘An accomplishment or a vice?  Answer yes or no!’ orders the judge in a hard voice.

“The poet looks round at ’em and attempts to laugh merrily, but he only does it from the teeth out.

“‘Laugh on, my proud beauty!’ says Ben Button.  Then he turns to the bunch.  ‘What we really ought to do,’ he says, ’we ought to make a believer of him right here and now.’

“Even then, mind you, the husbands would have lost their nerve if Ben hadn’t took the lead.  Ben didn’t have to live with their wives so what cared he?  Wilfred Lennox sort of shuffled his feet and smiled a smile of pure anxiety.  He knew some way that this was nothing to cheer about.

“‘I got it,’ says Jeff Tuttle with the air of a thinker.  ’We’re cramping the poor cuss here.  What he wants is the open road.’

“‘What he really wants,’ says Alonzo, ’is about six bottles of my pure, sparkling beer, but maybe he’ll take the open road if we show him a good one.’

“‘He wants the open road—­show him a good one!’ yells the other husbands in chorus.  It was kind of like a song.

“‘I had meant to be on my way,’ says Wilfred very cold and lofty.

“‘You’re here to-day and there to-morrow,’ says Ben; ’but how can you be there to-morrow if you don’t start from here now?—­for the way is long and lonely.’

“‘I was about to start,’ says Wilfred, getting in a couple of steps toward the door.

“‘’Tis better so,’ says Ben.  ’This is no place for a county recorder’s son, and there’s a bully road out here open at both ends.’

“They made way for the poet, and a sickening silence reigned.  Even the women gathered about the door of the other room was silent.  They knew the thing had got out of their hands.  The men closed in after Wilfred as he reached the steps.  He there took his soft hat out from under his coat where he’d cached it.  He went cautiously down the steps.  Beryl Mae broke the silence.

“‘Oh, Mr. Price,’ says she, catching Alonzo by the sleeve, ’do you think he’s really sincere?’

“‘He is at this moment,’ says Alonzo.  ’He’s behaving as sincerely as ever I saw a man behave.’  And just then at the foot of the steps Wilfred made a tactical error.  He started to run.  The husbands and Ben Sutton gave the long yell and went in pursuit.  Wilfred would have left them all if he hadn’t run into the tennis net.  He come down like a sack of meal.

“‘There!’ says Ben Sutton.  ’Now he’s done it—­broke his neck or something.  That’s the way with some men—­they’ll try anything to get a laugh.’

“They went and picked the poet up.  He was all right, only dazed.