A Jolly Fellowship by Frank Richard Stockton (best management books of all time TXT) 📗
- Author: Frank Richard Stockton
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"Oh, you couldn't keep him here now," said Corny. "He's just wild to be off. The man who sued him is a horrid person, and father says that if he don't go right back, the next thing he'll hear will be that old Colbert will be trying to get a foot instead of four inches."
"Old Colbert!" ejaculated Rectus, "I guess that must be my father."
If I had been Rectus, I don't think I should have been so quick to guess anything of that kind about my father; but perhaps he had heard things like that before. He took it as coolly as he generally took everything.[189]
Corny was as red as a beet.
"Your father!" she exclaimed. "I don't believe it. I'll go this very minute and see."
Rectus was right. The stingy hankerer after what Corny called four inches of dirt was his father. Mr. Chipperton came up to us and talked about the matter, and it was all as plain as daylight. When he found that Mr. Colbert was the father of Rectus, Mr. Chipperton was very much surprised, and he called no more names, although I am sure he had been giving old Colbert a pretty disagreeable sort of a record. But he sat down by Rectus, and talked to him as if the boy were his own father instead of himself, and proved to him, by every law of property in English, Latin, or Sanscrit, that the four inches of ground were legally, lawfully, and without any manner of doubt, his own, and that it would have been utterly and absolutely impossible for him to have built his house one inch outside of his own land. I whispered to Rectus that the house might have swelled, but he didn't get a chance to put in the suggestion.
Rectus had to agree to all Mr. Chipperton said—or, at least, he couldn't differ with him,—for he didn't know anything on earth about the matter, and I guess he was glad enough when he got through. I'm sure I was. Rectus didn't say anything except that he was very sorry that the Chipperton family had to go home, and then he walked off to his room.
In about half an hour, when I went upstairs, I found Rectus had just finished a letter to his father.
"I guess that'll make it all right," he said, and he[190] handed me the letter to read. It was a strictly business letter. No nonsense about the folks at home. He said that was the kind of business letter his father liked. It ran like this:
Dear Father: Mr. Chipperton has told me about your suing him. If he really has set his house over on four inches of your lot, I wish you would let it stand there. I don't care much for him, but he has a nice wife and a pleasant girl, and if you go on suing him the whole lot of them will leave here to-morrow, and they're about the only people I know, except Gordon. If you want to, you can take a foot off any one of my three lots, and that ought to make it all right.
"Have you three lots?" I asked, a good deal surprised, for I didn't know that Rectus was a property-owner.
"Yes," said he; "my grandmother left them to me."
"Are they right next to your father's lot, which Chipperton cut into?"
"No, they're nowhere near it," said Rectus.
I burst out laughing.
"That letter wont do any good," I said.
"You'll see," said Rectus, and he went off to mail it.
I don't know what kind of a business man Mr. Chipperton was, but when Rectus told him that he had written a letter to his father which would make the thing all right, he was perfectly satisfied; and the next day we all went out in a sail-boat to the coral-reef, and had a splendid time, and the "Tigress" went off without any Chippertons. I think Mr. Chipperton put the whole thing down as the result of his lecture to Rectus up in the silk-cotton tree.[191]
CHAPTER XV. A STRANGE THING HAPPENS TO ME.For several days after our hot chase after Priscilla, we saw nothing of this ex-emissary. Indeed, we began to be afraid that something had happened to her. She was such a regular attendant at the hotel-door-market, that people were talking about missing her black face and her chattering tongue. But she turned up one morning as gay and skippy as ever, and we saw her leaning against the side of one of the door-ways of the court in her favorite easy attitude, with her head on one side and one foot crossed over the other, which made her look like a bronze figure such as they put under kerosene lamps. In one hand she had her big straw hat, and in the other a bunch of rose-buds. The moment she saw Corny she stepped up to her.
"Wont you buy some rose-buds, missy?" she said. "De puttiest rose-buds I ever brought you yit."
Corny looked at her with a withering glare, but Priscilla didn't wither a bit. She was a poor hand at withering.[192]
"Please buy 'em, missy. I kep' 'em fur you. I been a-keepin' 'em all de mornin'."
"I don't see how you dare ask me to buy your flowers!" exclaimed Corny. "Go away! I never want to see you again. After all you did——"
"Please, missy, buy jist this one bunch. These is the puttiest red-rose buds in dis whole town. De red roses nearly all gone."
"Nearly all gone," said I. "What do you mean by telling such a fib?"—I was going to say "lie," which was nearer the truth (if that isn't a bull); but there were several ladies about, and Priscilla herself was a girl. "You know that there are red roses here all the year."
"Please, boss," said Priscilla, rolling her eyes at me like an innocent calf, "wont you buy dese roses fur missy? They's the puttiest roses I ever brought her yit."
"I guess you've got a calcareous conscience, haven't you?" said Rectus.
Priscilla looked at him, for a moment, as if she thought that he might want to buy something of that kind, but as she hadn't it to sell, she tried her flowers on him.
"Please, boss, wont you buy dese roses fur——"
"No," said Rectus, "I wont."
And we all turned and walked away. It was no use to blow her up. She wouldn't have minded it. But she lost three customers.
I said before that I was the only one in our party who liked fishing, and for that reason I didn't go[193] often, for I don't care about taking trips of that kind by myself. But one day Mr. Burgan and the other yellow-legs told me that they were going to fish in Lake Killarney, a lovely little lake in the interior of the island, about five miles from the town, and that if I liked I might go along. I did like, and I went.
I should have been better pleased if they had gone there in a carriage; but this wouldn't have suited these two fellows, who had rigged themselves up in their buck-skin boots, and had all the tramping and fishing rigs that they used in the Adirondacks and other sporting places where they told me they had been. It was a long and a warm walk, and trying to find a good place for fishing, after we got to the lake, made the work harder yet. We didn't find any good place, and the few fish we caught didn't pay for the trouble of going there; but we walked all over a big pineapple plantation and had a splendid view from the highest hill on the whole island.
It was pretty late in the afternoon when we reached home, and I made up my mind that the next time I went so far to fish, in a semi-tropical country, I'd go with a party who wore suits that would do for riding.
Rectus and Corny and Mrs. Chipperton were up in the silk-cotton tree when I got home, and I went there and sat down. Mrs. Chipperton lent me her fan.
Corny and Rectus were looking over the "permission paper" which the English governor had given us.
"I guess this isn't any more use, now," said Corny, "as we've done all we can for kings and[194] queens, but Rectus says that if you agree I can have it for my autograph book. I never had a governor's signature."
"Certainly, you can have it," I said. "And he's a different governor from the common run. None of your State governors, but a real British governor, like those old fellows they set over us in our colony-days."
"Indeed!" said Mrs. Chipperton, smiling. "You must be able to remember a long way back."
"Well, you needn't make fun of this governor," said Corny, "for he's a real nice man. We met him to-day, riding in the funniest carriage you ever saw in your life. It's like a big baby-carriage for twins, only it's pulled by a horse, and has a man in livery to drive it. The top's straw, and you get in in the middle, and sit both ways."
"Either way, my dear," said Mrs. Chipperton.
"Yes, either way," continued Corny. "Did you ever see a carriage like that?"
"I surely never did," said I.
"Well, he was in it, and some ladies, and they stopped and asked Rectus and I how we got along with our queen, and when I told them all about it, you ought to have heard them laugh, and the governor, he said, that Poqua-dilla shouldn't suffer after we went away, even if he had to get all his pepper-pods from her. Now, wasn't that good?"
I admitted that it was, but I thought to myself that a good supper and a bed would be better, for I was awfully tired and hungry. But I didn't say this.
I slept as sound as a rock that night, and it was[195] pretty broad daylight when I woke up. I don't believe that I would have wakened then, but I wanted to turn over and couldn't, and that is enough to make any fellow wake up.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in the worst fix I had ever been in in my life. I couldn't move my arms or my legs, for my arms were tied fast to my body, at the elbows and wrists, and my feet and my knees were tied together. I was lying flat on my back, but I could turn my head over to where Rectus' bed stood—it was a small one like mine—and he wasn't there. I sung out:
"Rectus!" and gave a big heave, which made the bed rattle. I was scared.
In a second, Rectus was standing by me. He had been sitting by the window. He was all dressed.
"Don't shout that way again," he said, in a low voice, "or I'll have to tie this handkerchief over your mouth," and he showed me a clean linen handkerchief all folded up, ready. "I wont put it so that it will stop your breathing," he said, as coolly as if this sort of thing was nothing unusual. "I'll leave your nose free."
"Let me up, you little rascal!" I cried. "Did you do this?"
At that he deliberately laid the handkerchief over my mouth and fastened it around my head. He was careful to leave my nose all right, but I was so mad that I could scarcely breathe. I knew by the way he acted that he had tied me, and I had never had such a trick played on me before. But it was no use to be[196] mad. I couldn't do anything, though I tugged and twisted my very best. He had had a good chance to tie me up well, for I had slept so soundly. I was regularly bandaged.
He stood by me for a few minutes, watching to see if I needed any more fixing, but when he made up his mind that I was done up securely, he brought a chair and sat down by the side of the bed and began to talk to me. I never saw anything like the audacity of the boy.
"You needn't think it was mean to tie you, when you were so tired and sleepy, for I intended to do it this morning, any way, for you always sleep sound enough in the mornings to let a fellow tie you up as
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