The management declined to make use of ol' Uncle George's properties while he remained in town for fear that he might have occasion to use them himself, and thus bring about some slight unpleasantness in their hitherto delightful relations. Meanwhile the members of the company fidgeted and chafed under the delay.
A rehearsal attempted in Canes' barn was, for some unknown reason, a decided frost. Then they tried Stucky Richards' barn, which was right next door to ol' Uncle George's; and although things went somewhat better there, they lacked the zest of the initial performance.
Stucky's properties, as far as they went, were above criticism; his workbench made an excellent bar; his broken chairs were deliciously hopeless; his cuspidor was admitted by all to be much better than ol' Uncle George's; his bottles and glassware were vastly superior; but there he stopped.
He had no cider press, and no means of getting one. He had no cider; and worst of all he had no spigot-equipped cask without which no disreputable saloon can exist.
But this was not all that troubled the Ten Knights in a Barroom company. Professional jealousy crept in to plague their once placid ranks. By secretly consulting the faded poster in Severn's blacksmith shop (from which he had adapted the name for his production) Sube learned that he had overlooked a character. The next time the company assembled he attempted to rectify his error.
"Say, you kids," he began; "we made a mistake about one thing. You can't all be Old Soaks. Somebody's got to be a little ragged girl that pleads with her drunken father to come home with her. Now who's goin' to be the little girl?"
Cathead thought he scented a conspiracy, and wishing to be on the safe side, volunteered to take the part of the drunken father.
"Not on your life!" cried Sube. "Somebody's got to be a little girl, and you'd make the best one of anybody here. Wouldn't he, kids?"
Stucky and Cottontop were positive that Cathead would make an ideal girl, and they so expressed themselves. But Cathead thought otherwise.
"I won't be a girl! I ain't goin' to be a girl! I never been one and I ain't ever goin' to be one!" he insisted.
"Now looka here, Cathead--" Gizzard began pleadingly.