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“It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to be sorry they was going out of this region! And I believed they was sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don’t ever tell me any more that a nigger ain’t got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played that thing it would fool anybody. ... |
“In the bank for to be collected. Where would it be?” |
“Well, that’s all right then, thank goodness.” |
Says I, kind of timid-like: |
“Is something gone wrong?” |
The king whirls on me and rips out: |
“None o’ your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y’r own affairs—if you got any. Long as you’re in this town don’t you forgit that—you hear?” Then he says to the duke, “We got to jest swaller it and say noth’n’: mum’s the word for us.” |
As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and says: |
“Quick sales and small profits! It’s a good business—yes.” |
v |
The king snarls around on him and says: |
“I was trying to do for the best in sellin’ ’em out so quick. If the profits has turned out to be none, lackin’ considable, and none to carry, is it my fault any more’n it’s yourn?” |
“Well, they’d be in this house yet and we wouldn’t if I could a got my advice listened to.” |
The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around and lit into me again. He give me down the banks for not coming and telling him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way—said any fool would a knowed something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed himself awhile, and said it all c... |
CHAPTER XXVIII. |
By-and-by it was getting-up time. So I come down the ladder and started for down-stairs; but as I come to the girls’ room the door was open, and I see Mary Jane setting by her old hair trunk, which was open and she’d been packing things in it—getting ready to go to England. But she had stopped now with a folded gown in... |
“Miss Mary Jane, you can’t a-bear to see people in trouble, and I can’t—most always. Tell me about it.” |
So she done it. And it was the niggers—I just expected it. She said the beautiful trip to England was most about spoiled for her; she didn’t know how she was ever going to be happy there, knowing the mother and the children warn’t ever going to see each other no more—and then busted out bitterer than ever, and flung up... |
“Oh, dear, dear, to think they ain’t ever going to see each other any more!” |
“But they will—and inside of two weeks—and I know it!” says I. |
Laws, it was out before I could think! And before I could budge she throws her arms around my neck and told me to say it again, say it again, say it again! |
I see I had spoke too sudden and said too much, and was in a close place. I asked her to let me think a minute; and she set there, very impatient and excited and handsome, but looking kind of happy and eased-up, like a person that’s had a tooth pulled out. So I went to studying it out. I says to myself, I reckon a body... |
“Miss Mary Jane, is there any place out of town a little ways where you could go and stay three or four days?” |
“Yes; Mr. Lothrop’s. Why?” |
“Never mind why yet. If I’ll tell you how I know the niggers will see each other again inside of two weeks—here in this house—and prove how I know it—will you go to Mr. Lothrop’s and stay four days?” |
“Four days!” she says; “I’ll stay a year!” |
“All right,” I says, “I don’t want nothing more out of you than just your word—I druther have it than another man’s kiss-the-Bible.” She smiled and reddened up very sweet, and I says, “If you don’t mind it, I’ll shut the door—and bolt it.” |
Then I come back and set down again, and says: |
“Don’t you holler. Just set still and take it like a man. I got to tell the truth, and you want to brace up, Miss Mary, because it’s a bad kind, and going to be hard to take, but there ain’t no help for it. These uncles of yourn ain’t no uncles at all; they’re a couple of frauds—regular dead-beats. There, now we’re ove... |
It jolted her up like everything, of course; but I was over the shoal water now, so I went right along, her eyes a-blazing higher and higher all the time, and told her every blame thing, from where we first struck that young fool going up to the steamboat, clear through to where she flung herself on to the king’s breas... |
“The brute! Come, don’t waste a minute—not a second—we’ll have them tarred and feathered, and flung in the river!” |
Says I: |
“Cert’nly. But do you mean before you go to Mr. Lothrop’s, or—” |
“Oh,” she says, “what am I thinking about!” she says, and set right down again. “Don’t mind what I said—please don’t—you won’t, now, will you?” Laying her silky hand on mine in that kind of a way that I said I would die first. “I never thought, I was so stirred up,” she says; “now go on, and I won’t do so any more. You... |
“Well,” I says, “it’s a rough gang, them two frauds, and I’m fixed so I got to travel with them a while longer, whether I want to or not—I druther not tell you why; and if you was to blow on them this town would get me out of their claws, and I’d be all right; but there’d be another person that you don’t know about who... |
Saying them words put a good idea in my head. I see how maybe I could get me and Jim rid of the frauds; get them jailed here, and then leave. But I didn’t want to run the raft in the daytime without anybody aboard to answer questions but me; so I didn’t want the plan to begin working till pretty late to-night. I says: |
“Miss Mary Jane, I’ll tell you what we’ll do, and you won’t have to stay at Mr. Lothrop’s so long, nuther. How fur is it?” |
“A little short of four miles—right out in the country, back here.” |
“Well, that’ll answer. Now you go along out there, and lay low till nine or half-past to-night, and then get them to fetch you home again—tell them you’ve thought of something. If you get here before eleven put a candle in this window, and if I don’t turn up wait till eleven, and then if I don’t turn up it means I’m go... |
“Good,” she says, “I’ll do it.” |
“And if it just happens so that I don’t get away, but get took up along with them, you must up and say I told you the whole thing beforehand, and you must stand by me all you can.” |
“Stand by you! indeed I will. They sha’n’t touch a hair of your head!” she says, and I see her nostrils spread and her eyes snap when she said it, too. |
“If I get away I sha’n’t be here,” I says, “to prove these rapscallions ain’t your uncles, and I couldn’t do it if I was here. I could swear they was beats and bummers, that’s all, though that’s worth something. Well, there’s others can do that better than what I can, and they’re people that ain’t going to be doubted a... |
I judged we had got everything fixed about right now. So I says: |
“Just let the auction go right along, and don’t worry. Nobody don’t have to pay for the things they buy till a whole day after the auction on accounts of the short notice, and they ain’t going out of this till they get that money; and the way we’ve fixed it the sale ain’t going to count, and they ain’t going to get no ... |
“Well,” she says, “I’ll run down to breakfast now, and then I’ll start straight for Mr. Lothrop’s.” |
“’Deed, that ain’t the ticket, Miss Mary Jane,” I says, “by no manner of means; go before breakfast.” |
“Why?” |
“What did you reckon I wanted you to go at all for, Miss Mary?” |
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