CHAPTER VI.
JOHN HENRY^S TWO QUEENS.
"Well!" said Clara J., after a painful pause, "why don't you go and welcome your Aunt Eliza?"
Aunt Lize would be the central figure in a hot old time if she went where I wished her at that moment.
Somebody had tied both my feet to the floor.
I had visions of two excited females lambasting me with umbrellas and demanding their property back.
Completely at a loss I sank into a chair, feeling as bright and chipper as a poached egg.
I felt that I belonged just about as much as a knothole does in a barb-wire fence.
In that few minutes Bunch was more than revenged.
I was on the pickle boat for sure.
Sailing! sailing! over the griddle, me!
Scientists tell us that when a man is drowning every detail of his lifetime passes before him in the fraction of a second.
Well, that moving picture gag was worked on me, without the aid of a bathing suit.
When I awoke, Clara J. was saying, "Possibly it would look better if I went with you. Wait just a moment, till I get this apron off—there! come along!"
I arose, and with delightful unanimity the chair arose also, clinging like a passionate porusplaster to my pantaloons.
"Mercy'" exclaimed Clara J., "that little villain, Tacks, has been making molasses candy!"
"It strikes me," I said, trying hard to be calm, "that after making the candy he decided to make a monkey of me. Darn the blame thing, it won't let go! I suppose I've got to be a perpetual furniture mover the rest of my life!"
Just then Uncle Peter came bubbling into the kitchen, talking in short explosions like a bottle of vichy, and I collaborated with the chair in a hasty squatty-vous!
"Two women on the piazza," he fizzed; "been talking to them an hour and all I could get out of them was 'yes' and 'no.' Not bad looking, but profoundly dumb."
"Hush!" said Clara J., glancing uneasily at me and then back at
Uncle Peter, as she raised a warning finger to her lips.
"Oh, they can't hear me," the old gentleman went on; "John, you better go out and see them. They have a card with your name written on it. I'm no lady's man, anyhow."
"Do they look like queens?" Clara J. asked, uneasily.
"Well, they aren't exactly Cleopatras, but not bad, not bad!" he gurgled.
"Is one older than the other?" Clara J. cross-questioned.
"Might be mother and daughter," Uncle Peter fancied.
"It's surely Bunch's bunch," I groaned inwardly, wondering how I'd look galloping across the country with a kitchen chair trailing along behind.
"Uncle Peter, it must be John Henry's Aunt Eliza and cousin Julia. He expects them, don't you, John?" Clara J. explained. "We shall be ready to welcome them in just a little while;" here she glanced cautiously at the chair. "In the meantime you show them into the spare room and say that John will see them very soon."
The old gentleman eyed me suspiciously and retired without a word.
I'm afraid Uncle Peter found it hard to take.
With the kind assistance of the carving knife Clara J. removed all of me from the chair, with the exception of a few feet of trousers, and I made a quick change of costume.
A few minutes later I joined her in the parlor, where the scene was set for my finish. I picked out a quiet spot near the piano to die.
Uncle Peter was enjoying every minute of it.
He hurried off to escort the visitors to the parlor and a moment later Aunt Martha bustled in.
"Are they here?" she asked breathlessly.
"How did you know they were coming?" inquired Clara J. in surprised tones.
"How did I know!" exclaimed Auntie; "why I sent them!"
Every hand was against me. The parachute had failed to work and I was dropping on the rocks.
Faintly and far away I could hear the ambulance coming at a gallop.
Sweet spirits of ammonia, but I was up against it!
It was plainly evident to me that Aunt Martha knew the awful relatives of Bunch, and that the old lady was camping on my trial. Yes; there she stood, old Aunt Nemesis, glaring at me from behind her spectacles.
I decided to die without going over near the piano.
"Where are they?" I could hear Aunt Martha asking in the same tone of voice I was certain the Roman Emperor used when just about to frame up a finale for a few Christians from over the Tiber.
"Uncle Peter has gone for them; we put them in the spare room," answered Clara J.
"What! in the spare room!" gasped Aunt Martha, collapsing in a chair just as Uncle Peter appeared in the doorway, bowing low before the visitors, who stalked clumsily into the parlor.
For some reason or other Clara J. omitted the formality of springing forward and greeting my relatives effusively, so she simply said, "You are very welcome, Aunt Eliza and cousin Julia!"
"Great heavens! what does this mean?" shrieked Aunt Martha. "It cannot be possible that these two women are relatives of yours, John! Why, I engaged them both in an intelligence office; one for the kitchen, the other as parlor maid!"
"Sure not," I chirped, in joy-freighted accents, as I grasped the glorious situation. "They aren't my relatives and never were. The more I look at them the more convinced I am that there's no room for them to perch on my family tree. I disown them both. Back to the woods with the Swede imposters!"
I win by an eyelash.
I was so happy I went over to the mantel and began to bite the bric-a-brac.
Clara J. didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so she compromised by giggling at Uncle Peter, who sat on the piano stool whirling himself around rapidly and muttering, "any kind of exercise is good exercise."
Aunt Martha stared around the room from one to another in speechless amazement, while the two innocent causes of all the trouble stood motionless, with their noses tip-tilted to the ceiling.
Presently Aunt Martha broke the spell just as I was about to eat a cut-glass vase in the gladness of my heart.
"Go to the kitchen!" she said sharply to the newcomers, whereupon they both turned in unison and looked the old lady all over. Finally they decided to discharge Aunt Martha, for the oldest member of the troupe folded her arms decisively and said, "Sure, it ain't in any lunatic asylum I'll be afther livin', bless th' Saints! If yez have a sinsible moment left in your head will yez give us th' car fare back to th' city, and it'll be a blessed hour for me whin I plants me feet on th' ferryboat, so it will!"
Uncle Peter checked the fiery course of the piano stool and began to make his double chin do a gurgle, whereupon the youngest of the two female impersonators handed him a glare that put out his chuckle and he started the piano stool again at the rate of 45 revolutions per minute.
"Th' ould buffalo over there showed us up to th' spare room, thinkin' to be funny," she who was fated never to be our cook, went on, "and if I wasn't in a daffy house and him nothin' but a bug it's the weight of that chair he'd feel over his bald spot. Th' ould goosehead, to set us down on th' porch and talk to us for an hour about th' landshcape and th' atmusphere, and to ask me, a respectable lady, what kind of exercise I was partial to! It's a Hiven's own blessin' I didn't hand him a poke in th' slats, so it is!"
Uncle Peter, with palpably assumed indifference, slid off the piano stool and faded behind the furthermost window curtain, while I went up to the belligerent visitor and said, "On your way, Gismonda; the referee gives the fight to you; here's the gate receipts!"
With this I handed her a ten-spot which she looked at suspiciously and said, "If ever I get that ould potato pounder over in New York it's exercise I'll give him! Sure, I'll run him from th' Bat'hry to Harlem widout a shtop for meals, bad cess to him!"
Having delivered this parting knock at Uncle Peter, the queen of the kitchen flounced out of the house, followed by the younger one who had played only a thinking part in the strenuous scene.
Aunt Martha still sat motionless in the chair, quite on the verge of tears, when Clara J. went over to her and said, "Why didn't you tell me you were going after servants, Auntie?"
"I wanted to surprise you," the old lady replied, plaintively.
"They were to be my contribution to the household."
"You handed us a surprise, all right; didn't she, Uncle Peter?" I chirped in with a view to laughing off the whole affair, but just then a series of startling shrieks caused us all to rush for the piazza.
At the gate we beheld a kicking, struggling mass of lingerie and bad dialect, which presently resolved itself into the forms of my temporary relatives who were now busily engaged in macadamizing the roadway with their heads.
Then Tacks came yelling on the scene: "I thought maybe they was female burglars so I stretched a wire acrost the gate and they was in such a hurry getting away that they never noticed it till it was too everlastingly late!"
Before we could remonstrate with the Boy-Disaster he let another whoop out of him and darted off in the direction of the barn.
That whoop brought the two wire-tappers to their feet and after they both shook their fists eagerly in our direction they started in frenzied haste for the depot.
As they scurried frantically out of our neighborhood Uncle Peter smiled blandly and murmured, "For lecturers, female reformers and all those who lead a sedentary life there's nothing like exercise!"
Putting my arm around Clara J.'s waist I whispered, "Didn't I tell you it was one of Bunch's put-up jobs? He's jealous because I'm so happy out here with you, that's all! As for the telegram, forget it!"
"All right, John," said Clara J., "but nevertheless that same telegram gave you a busy day, didn't it?"
"It surely did, but it was only because I hated to have you worried," I answered as she went in the house to console Aunt Martha.
I sat down in a chair expecting every moment to have the Prince of
Liars come up and congratulate me.
Humming a tune quietly to himself Uncle Peter watched the flying squadron disappear in a bend of the road, then he sat down near me and said, "John, you're worried about something and I've a pretty fair idea what it is. This property is too big a load for you to carry, eh?"
From the depths of my heart I replied, "It certainly is!"
"Well," said the old gentleman, "it surely has made a hit with me. I never struck a place I liked half as well as this. How would you like to sell it to me, then you and Clara J. could live with us, eh? Come on, now, what d'ye say?"
I sat there utterly unable to say anything.
"What did it cost you; come on, now, John?" the old fellow urged.
"Oh, about $14,000," I whispered, picking out the first figure I could think of.
"It's worth it and more, too," he said. "I'll give you $20,000 for it—say the word!"
"Well, if you insist!" I replied, weakly; and the next minute he danced off to write me a check.
In the tar barrel every time I opened my mouth! Hard luck was certainly putting the wrapping paper all over me.
Well, the only thing to do now was to hustle up to town in the morning and inform Bunch that I had sold his property.
I felt sure he'd be tickled to a stand-still—not!