The Sugar Pot

"Land of hope and glory, mother of the free, How shall we extol thee, who are born of thee?" sang out Vera Lynn's voice from the gramophone in the corner. The cool night air drifted through the open door, playing with bits of loose paper and petals that had fallen from the vase of flowers on the table. On the wall the clock ticked and outside a frog was croaking, he had been getting slower and slower over the last half hour and was sounding very tired indeed. 
"You know" said the Moose leaning back into his armchair. "If you were to ask a large number of people questions such as A: Why are things the way they are? and B: Why do they think this is so? Both answers would be more or less the same, are you with me?" He turned and looked at me with his head on the side. I thought for a moment, "I am" I said nodding "Though to be fair, I don't think there's any other way that people come to conclusions really, they assemble what they know in a way that makes sense to them and form their opinions from this without realising they're forming opinions from their own opinions and so on"
The Moose chuckled and walked over to the window, tapping his pipe on the sill. "I say..." he said after a moment swinging both windows outwards and peering into the dark. I looked up from the old yellow newspaper I was reading "What is it?" "Oh I just thought I saw something..." the Moose shrugged and leant on his elbows and blew rings of smoke out the window. I went back to my newspaper. The song came to an end and all that could be heard was the lazy frog croaking and the Moose noisily puffing his pipe which I found annoying after 24 seconds. "Listen to this" I said standing up holding the newspaper under the light to read "Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, was safely delivered of a Prince at 9:14 p.m. today. Her Royal Highness and her son are both doing well." The Moose raised an eyebrow, "I suspect that newspaper may be a wee bit old" he said turning around to lean out the window again. I put the newspaper down and walked over to the gramophone, took the record off, put it in its sleeve and searched for another one to play. "You know what?" I said looking through the records "No I do not" said the Moose, "Well, I just feel like listening to Vera Lynn again, don't you?" "Not in the least" "Why not? What's she ever done to make you hate her so?" "Shhhh!" The Moose motioned to be quiet and beckoned me over to the window. I walked over and looked out and then back at the Moose and said "What?" with my nonplussed face. The Moose pointed to a bush half a stones throw away, after a moment I saw it shake and then two eyes caught the light. "Heavens to Murgatroyd!" gasped the Moose. The next few moments were rather long and hard to count as the Moose, the two shining eyes in the bush and I stared at one another. "We can see you, you know" said the Moose and the eyes blinked and then the body they belonged to stood up. It was a man in white overalls and a black bowtie, "What were you doing in that bush?" asked the Moose "Why are you wearing white overalls with that black bowtie?" I asked, the Moose elbowed me. Still the man said nothing, "Maybe he can't talk?" suggested the Moose "Maybe he can't hear us?" I also suggested. The Moose shook his head to that, "No he can hear us, I'll ask him if he wants some sugar cubes. Would you like some sugar cubes?" The man smiled and walked toward the window wiping his hands on the legs of his overalls "Indeed I would, indeed I would" said the man smiling sheepishly, "Get him some sugar cubes my good chum" said the Moose turning to me, I grabbed a screw driver and walked over the the loose board in the floor, levered it up and took out the sugar pot (If you're wondering why we keep a sugar pot in the universally recognised safest of places it's because it's make of gold and inlaid with jewels) and walked over to the window. "Careful he doesn't snatch it from you, run off to sell it on the black market and live off the money for the rest of his life in luxurious comfort" whispered the Moose in my ear, apparently too loudly for the man in overalls (who was a good man but had lost his wife in a shopping mall and finding life very hard had quit his job and taken to searching for bird eggs under bushes which he sold to Lombards and Chinese egg collectors) jumped up and snatched the sugar pot made of gold (and inlaid with jewels) and ran off selling it on the black market whereupon he lived off the money in luxurious comfort for the rest of his life. The Moose tapped his pipe on the window sill and  scratched the top of his head, his eyes slowly getting larger and larger. I fell back into my chair on the newspaper then stood up and put the newspaper on the coffee table and fell back into my chair again. No one said anything. I swallowed loudly and my stomached made strange noises for next fifteen minutes while I tried holding my breath and squeezing my arms against my stomach to make it be quiet. The frog stopped croaking, presumably he'd passed out. I looked at my finger nails; they were all short and neat so I smoothed out a crease on my pants and then tried touching my nose with my tongue wondering if I'd ever tried to do it before and if not why. The Moose took a big breath then let it out for the next forty three seconds which was very annoying and made me want to hit him with bats. I watched a little moth hurling itself at the lightbulb and wondered what on earth it could possibly hope to achieve from doing this strange thing.