“PIGS IS PIGS”
By Ellis Parker Butler
Mike Flannery, the Westcote agent of the Interurban Express Company, leaned over the counter of the express office and shook his fist. Mr. Morehouse, angry and red, stood on the other side of the counter, trembling with rage. The argument had been long and heated, and at last Mr. Morehouse had talked himself speechless. The cause of the trouble stood on the counter between the two men. It was a soap box across the top of which were nailed a number of strips, forming a rough but serviceable cage. In it two spotted guinea-pigs were greedily eating lettuce leaves.
“Do as you loike, then!” shouted Flannery, “pay for thim an' take thim, or don't pay for thim and leave thim be. Rules is rules, Misther Morehouse, an' Mike Flannery's not goin' to be called down fer breakin' of thim.”
“But, you everlastingly stupid idiot!” shouted Mr. Morehouse, madly shaking a flimsy printed book beneath the agent's nose, “can't you read it here-in your own plain printed rates? 'Pets, domestic, Franklin to Westcote, if properly boxed, twenty-five cents each.'” He threw the book on the counter in disgust. “What more do you want? Aren't they pets? Aren't they domestic? Aren't they properly boxed? What?”
He turned and walked back and forth rapidly; frowning ferociously.
Suddenly he turned to Flannery, and forcing his voice to an artificial calmness spoke slowly but with intense sarcasm.
“Pets,” he said “P-e-t-s! Twenty-five cents each. There are two of them. One! Two! Two times twenty-five are fifty! Can you understand that? I offer you fifty cents.”
Flannery reached for the book. He ran his hand through the pages and
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