"What's that?" I says.

"Major General McCulloch," he says. "Why, I believe you stayed totea! Why, I haven't fetched that in three months!"

"Why not?"

"0h," he says, "why, you see, the venerable ecclesiastic he's afraidI'd want to come to breakfast too. He skinnyks I am a grasshopper and aburden."

I thought it looked like a promising conversation, and climbed onthe fence beside him, and took a look at him in the starlight.