Charming Billy Boyle was, to put it mildly, enjoying his enforced vacation very much. To tell the plain truth and tell it without the polish of fiction, he was hilariously moistened as to his gullet and he was not thinking of quitting yet; he had only just begun.
He was sitting on an end of the bar in the Hardtip Saloon, his hat as far back on his head as it could possibly be pushed with any hope of its staying there at all. He had a glass in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and he was raking his rowels rhythmically up and down the erstwhile varnished bar in buzzing accompaniment, the while he chanted with much enthusiasm: "How old is she, Billy boy, Billy boy? How old is she, charming Billy? Twice six, twice seven, Forty-nine and eleven--"
The bartender, wiping the bar after an unsteady sheepherder, was careful to leave a generous margin around the person of Charming Billy who was at that moment asserting with much emphasis: "She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."
"Twice-six's-twelve, 'n' twice-seven's-four-r-teen, 'n' twelve 'n' fourteen's--er--twelve--'n'--fourteen--" The unsteady sheepherder was laboring earnestly with the problem. "She ain't no spring chicken, she ain't!" He laughed tipsily, and winked up at the singer, but Billy was not observing him and his mathematical struggles. He refreshed himself from the glass, leaving the contents perceptibly lower--it was a large, thick glass with a handle, and it had flecks of foam down the inside--took a pull at the cigarette and inquired plaintively: "Can she brew, can she bake, Billy boy, Billy boy? Can she brew, can she bake, charming Billy?"
Another long pull at the cigarette, and then the triumphant declaration: "She can brew n' she can bake, She can sew n' she can make-- She's a young thing, and cannot leave her mother."
"She ain't s' young!" bawled the sheepherder, who was taking it all very seriously. "Say them numbers over again, onc't. Twelve-'n'-fourteen--"
"Aw, go off and lay down!" advised Charming Billy, in a tone of deep disgust. He was about to pursue still farther his inquiry into the housewifely qualifications of the mysterious "young thing," and he hated interruptions.
"Can she make a punkin pie, Billy boy, Billy boy? Can she make a punkin pie, charming Billy?"
The door opened timidly and closed again, but he did not see who entered. He was not looking; he was holding the empty, foam-flecked glass behind him imperatively, and he was watching over his shoulder to see that the bartender did not skimp the filling and make it two-thirds foam. The bartender was punctiliously lavish, so that a crest of foam threatened to deluge the hand of Charming Billy and quite occupied him for the moment. When he squared himself again and buzzed his spurs against the bar, his mind was wholly given to the proper execution of the musical gem.