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“Is it my poor brother’s dear good friend and physician? I—” |
“Keep your hands off of me!” says the doctor. “You talk like an Englishman, don’t you? It’s the worst imitation I ever heard. You Peter Wilks’s brother! You’re a fraud, that’s what you are!” |
Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey ’d showed in forty ways that he was Harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and begged him not to hurt Harvey’s feelings and the poor girl’... |
“I was your father’s friend, and I’m your friend; and I warn you as a friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as he calls it. He is the thinnest ... |
Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She says: |
“Here is my answer.” She hove up the bag of money and put it in the king’s hands, and says, “Take this six thousand dollars, and invest for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don’t give us no receipt for it.” |
Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the hare-lip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. The doctor says: |
“All right; I wash my hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a time ’s coming when you’re going to feel sick whenever you think of this day.” And away he went. |
“All right, doctor,” says the king, kinder mocking him; “we’ll try and get ’em to send for you;” which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit. |
CHAPTER XXVI. |
Well, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she’d give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was... |
So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she’d have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey’s way, but he said they warn’t. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down... |
That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and I stood behind the king and the duke’s chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, an... |
And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest if I didn’t think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says: |
“Did you ever see the king?” |
“Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have—he goes to our church.” I knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to our church, she says: |
“What—regular?” |
“Yes—regular. His pew’s right over opposite ourn—on t’other side the pulpit.” |
“I thought he lived in London?” |
“Well, he does. Where would he live?” |
“But I thought you lived in Sheffield?” |
I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says: |
“I mean he goes to our church regular when he’s in Sheffield. That’s only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths.” |
“Why, how you talk—Sheffield ain’t on the sea.” |
“Well, who said it was?” |
“Why, you did.” |
“I didn’t nuther.” |
“You did!” |
“I didn’t.” |
“You did.” |
“I never said nothing of the kind.” |
“Well, what did you say, then?” |
“Said he come to take the sea baths—that’s what I said.” |
“Well, then, how’s he going to take the sea baths if it ain’t on the sea?” |
“Looky here,” I says; “did you ever see any Congress-water?” |
“Yes.” |
“Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?” |
“Why, no.” |
“Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath.” |
“How does he get it, then?” |
“Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water—in barrels. There in the palace at Sheffield they’ve got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can’t bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. They haven’t got no conveniences for it.” |
“Oh, I see, now. You might a said that in the first place and saved time.” |
When she said that I see I was out of the woods again, and so I was comfortable and glad. Next, she says: |
“Do you go to church, too?” |
“Yes—regular.” |
“Where do you set?” |
“Why, in our pew.” |
“Whose pew?” |
“Why, ourn—your Uncle Harvey’s.” |
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