“Unless they’re going to spend the night there,” I says. The swallows had begun, and I could hear the sparrows beginning to swarm in the trees in the courthouse yard. Every once in a while a bunch of them would come swirling around in sight above the roof, then go away. They are as big a nuisance as the pigeons, to my notion. You cant even sit in the courthouse yard for them. First thing you know, bing. Right on your hat. But it would take a millionaire to afford to shoot them at five cents a shot. If they’d just put a little poison out there in the square, they’d get rid of them in a day, because if a merchant cant keep his stock from running around the square, he’d better try to deal in something besides chickens, something that dont eat, like plows or onions. And if a man dont keep his dogs up, he either dont want it or he hasn’t any business with one. Like I say if all the businesses in a town are run like country businesses, you’re going to have a country town.
“It wont do you any good if they have broke up,” I says. “They’ll have to hitch up and take out to get home by midnight as it is.”
“Well,” he says, “They enjoy it. Let them spend a little money on a show now and then. A hill farmer works pretty hard and gets mighty little for it.”
“There’s no law making them farm in the hills,” I says, “Or anywhere else.”
“Where would you and me be, if it wasn’t for the farmers?” he says.
“I’d be home right now,” I says, “Lying down, with an ice pack on my head.”
“You have these headaches too often,” he says. “Why dont you have your teeth examined good? Did he go over them all this morning?”
“Did who?” I says.
“You said you went to the dentist this morning.”