CHAPTER VIII.
The Boy Dresses Up in His Sunday Clothes and Tells the Captain He Is Ready to Die—The Crew Throw a Steer Overboard to Feed a School of Sharks—The Boy Produces His New Electric Battery—The Bad Boy Makes a Trip to France to Meet His Pa.
I never slept a wink that night after the phosphorus episode, which I painted the wild steer so it looked like a four-legged ghost, and scared the crew so they nearly deserted the ship, because the captain ordered, as I supposed, that I be cast overboard the next morning, to give the sharks a meat sandwich, and all night I tried to prepare myself for death, though I could not help thinking that in some way I would escape.
The next morning I got up and collected all the shoes of the officers and got a blacking brush and began blacking them. Soon there was trouble, because every man missed his shoes, and they began to hunt for them, and they found me working at the shoes and singing, “Pull for the shore, brother,” and such pious hymns.
I was dressed up in my Sunday clothes, and when the captain got his shoes he wanted to know what was the meaning of my sudden industry, and the funeral aspect all around, and I told him I had heard him tell the crew to chuck me overboard, and I was preparing myself for death, and I gave him a letter to mail to Pa, after I was gone, and told the captain I was ready. “Why, you dumb fool,” said the captain, “it was not you I meant to throw overboard, but that phosphorus steer that we killed last night. They are hauling it up out of the hold now with the tackle. We will save you for a worse fate.”
Well, I never felt so happy in my life as I did when that dead steer came up through the hatchway, and was launched over the side, and when I saw the flock of sharks jump on the steer and begin to hunt for the tenderloin, I let out a yell for joy that sounded like the cry of a timber wolf.
Then I got what was coming to me. The captain gave me a swat across the jaw for making noise enough to scare the crew into mutiny, the mate gave me a kick when I started for the cook’s galley, and several of the under officers hit me, and by the time I got my apron on to help cook dinner I was bruised and mad, and decided to get even with the captain. I am a peaceful citizen until somebody walks on my frame, then I become a terror to the foe.
When we began to fry the beef for dinner I told one of the crew that it was a shame to feed men on steer meat, when the steer had died in its stall of Texas fever or rhinderpest, and before we got the meat cooked, ready for the dinner of the officers and crew, every man but the officers had talked over the dead steer, and resolved that they would not eat it, and when they sat down to the table, and I began to bring in the meat, they all looked like a mob of anarchists ready to murder somebody, and I helped all I could by saying in a whisper, “This is perfectly good meat, but this is a good day to fast, and you will live longer.” The officers at the other end of the cabin were eating the steer all right, but the crew never touched it, confining themselves to the bread and coffee, and pretty soon one of the crew proposed that they show their displeasure by taking the meat and throwing it at the officers.
Well, if I live a million years I will never have so much fun again. About thirty men got up and grabbed the meat I had put on their plates, and began to throw it at the captain and mate, and all the officers, and of all the greasy mess I ever saw, that was the worst. The captain got up on a chair and pulled a revolver, and asked what was the cause of the assault, and was going to shoot, when the crew drew revolvers and told him that if he pulled a trigger they would annihilate every officer on the boat, and take charge of it themselves, and run it into the first port. He said the crew could stand anything except eating diseased cattle, and that they drew the line at steers that had died of rhinderpest.
The Captain Got Up on a Chair and Pulled a Revolver and Was Going to Shoot.
The captain was stunned, and said the beef flying through the air was good, and he got it from cold storage in Baltimore, and asked that a committee go with him down in the hold and see the evidence, and a committee was appointed to go down and see about it.
When they came back they were satisfied, and the captain asked them how they got the idea the meat was bad, and when it came to that I felt as though some one would squeal on me, and as I started to make a get away, and hide somewhere until the storm blew over, one of the crew took me by the neck and said to the captain, “This young man told us about the meat.”
The captain told the fellow that had me collared to take me to his cabin, and he came in pretty mad, and called in a few officers, and they were getting ready to kill me, when I thought of the little electric battery in my pistol pocket.
It is one I got in St. Louis to scare people with. I can turn a button, and the battery will send electricity into my arm and through my body, and I turned the dingus, and felt the electricity going through me like ginger ale up your nose, and when they had got ready to maul me I began to weep, and told the captain I was no saint, but I wanted a quiet life, and all the fun I could have, and I asked him as a special favor to allow me to shake his hand before I died, as I knew my earthly career was about done for, and by that time the battery was buzzing, and I reached out my hand to shake his. He gave me his hand, and when I began to squeeze his hand the electricity went up his arm so he turned pale, and I hung on and he yelled to the officers to take me off, as I was killing him, and the sweat stood out on his face.
I Gave Him a Squeeze That Sent a Shock Through Him That Loosened His Teeth.
The mate grabbed hold of me and I gave him my other hand and he began to dance, and the three of us were as full of electricity as a trolley wire. I hung on and made them get down on their knees and swear they would not lick me, and then I let go of them and began to weep again, and they were sorry for me.
Then they made me tell them who I was, and that I was going to France to meet Pa, and monkey with air ships, and when they were sure I was Peck’s Bad Boy they said I could have the free run of the ship and that I had the right to play all the tricks on anybody that I wanted to.
They made me show them how I worked my little pocket battery and then they wanted me to shake hands with all the crew so they got the whole bunch in the cabin and the captain said they had been entertaining an angel unawares, and that I was the original Bad Boy, who had traveled all over Europe and met the crowned heads, and he wanted to introduce me to each member of the crew personally, as a distinguished guest who honored the ship by being on board. Then he began to pass them up to be shook by the great and only.
The first fellow to put out his hand was a Greek, who drew a knife on me once because the coffee was weak, and I gave him a squeeze that sent a shock through his system that loosened his teeth, and when the captain alluded to me as the angel child who was loaded for fear, and who had a charmed life that could not be destroyed by knives or guns, the Greek looked at me in a respectful way as though he didn’t want to have any more truck with me.
Then a big Welshman came up and shook my hand, and when I gave him the third degree he let go and jumped out of the window of the cabin, on deck, and began to use language that was equal to Russian, and then a Swede came bowing to me, thinking I must be at least a crown prince, and when I squeezed his hand he looked at his fingers and his arm, and trembled and squirmed and said, “Ah tank a got yim yams,” and he lit out in a hurry.
A small Irishman came next, and as he was the one who promised to cut my ears off to serve on toast, I gave him the limit, and he curled up like a German dockshound and laid down to the mat, making motions with his mouth as though he was repeating poetry, and he said, “Kape away from me, ye hoodoo,” and he crawled out so quick it almost broke the door.
The captain and mate laughed every time I shook hands with any of the crew, and when I had paralyzed them all, and got them so scared they would come to me if I whistled, and eat out of my hand, the captain said I was worth more towards maintaining discipline on the boat than a whole police force, and he wanted me to do something every day to keep the crew from being lonely, so that night at supper time I charged all of the steel knives and forks with electricity and got two nigger chasers ready for business.
It was to be the last night before we landed in France, and I was prepared to make it a meal long to be remembered. I sat next to the captain, and that brought me right close to the crew’s table, and when the crew filed in and took their places, they all looked at me as though I was the devil instead of an “angel child.”
I had a match all ready and when the supper was put on and the crew grabbed their knives and forks they were shocked real hard, and they dropped them and yelled something like the swear words of each nationality, and then I put my nigger chasers down on the floor, headed for the crew’s table, and lit the fuse.
Well, you know how nigger chasers will chase. Gee, but they went under the crew’s table, smoking and hissing, the sparks flew, and the brave crew got up and run out on deck yelling “fire,” and “murder,” and “dam that boy,” and the man in charge of the fire hose turned it into the cabin and drowned everything out, and the crew run away and hid, and when things cleared off the captain said, “Boy, I like a joke as well as anybody, but you have overdone this thing, and I am mighty glad we land tomorrow, and you can go to your Pa and his confounded airships, and may the Lord have mercy on him.”
Then we went to bed, and I expected some of the crew would stab me before morning, but I guess they were too much rattled.
Gee, but I am dying to see Pa, and help him spend government money for eatings, seems as though I haven’t had a square meal since my chum and I struck that community near St. Louis, as escaped balloonaticks.
Pa has had the hardest time of his life in Paris, and if I ever pitied a man it was Pa.
You see, that last fly in the airship pretty near caused him to cash in his chips, and go over the long road to the hereafter, cause he got blood poison from the thorns that run into him where he landed in the top limbs of the thornapple tree, and he sprained his arm and one hind leg while being taken down with a derrick, and then before we left the country town for Paris he drank some goat’s milk, which gave him ptomaine poison in his inside works, and a peasant woman who sewed up his pants where they were torn on the tree pricked him with a needle, and he swelled up so he was unable to sit in a car seat, and his face was scratched by the thorns of the tree and there were blotches all over him, so when we got to Paris the health officers thought he had smallpox and sent him to a pest house, and they wouldn’t let me in, but vaccinated me and turned me loose, and I went to the hotel and told about where Pa was, and all about it, and they put our baggage in a sort of oven filled with sulphur and disinfected it, and stole some of it, and they made me sleep in a dog kennel, and for weeks I had to keep out of sight, until Pa was discharged from the hospital, and the friends of Pa out at the airship club in the country got Pa’s airship that he bought for a government out of the tree and took it to the club and presented a bill for two hundred dollars, and I only had seven dollars, so they held it for ransom.
Pa’s Face Was Scratched So They Sent Him to the Pest House.
Gee, but I worried about Pa!
Well, one day Pa showed up at the hotel looking like he had been in a railroad wreck, and he was so thin his clothes had to be pinned up with safety pins, and he had spent all his money, and was bursted.
The man who hired Pa in Washington to go abroad and buy airships for the government told Pa to use his own money for a month or two and then draw on the secretary of the treasury for all he needed, so before Pa went to the hospital he drew on his government for ten thousand dollars, and when he came back there was a letter for him from the American Consul in Paris telling him to call at the office, so Pa went there and they arrested him on the charge of skull dugging. They said he had no right to draw for any money on the government at Washington. Pa showed his papers with the big seal on, and the consul laughed in Pa’s face, and Pa was hot under the collar and wanted to fight, but they showed him that the papers he had were no good, and that he had been buncoed by some fakir in Washington who got five hundred dollars from Pa for securing him a job as government agent, and all his papers authorized him to do was to travel at his own expense, and to buy all the airships he wanted to with his own money, and Pa had a fit. All the money he had spent was a dead loss, and all he had to show for it was a punctured airship, which he was afraid to ride in.
Pa swore at the government, at the consul, and at the man who buncoed him, and they released him from arrest, when he promised that he would not pose any more as a government agent, and we went back to the hotel.
“Well, this is a fine scrape you have got me in,” says Pa, as we went to our room.
“What in thunder did I have to do about it?” says I, just like that. “I wasn’t with you when you framed up this job and let a man in Washington skin you out of your money by giving you a soft snap which has exploded in your hands. Gee, Pa, what you need is a maid or a valet, or something that will hold on to your wad.” Pa said he didn’t need anybody to act as a guardian to him, cause he had all the money he needed in his letter of credit to the American Express Company in Paris, and he knew how to spend his money freely, but he did hate to be buncoed and made the laughing stock of two continents.
So Pa and I went down to the Express Office, and Pa gave the man in charge a paper and the grand hailing sign of distress, and he handed out bags of gold and bales of bills, and Pa hid a lot in his leather belt, and put some in his pockets, and said, “Come on, Henry, and we will see this town, and buy it if we like it.”
Well, we went out after dark and took in the concert halls and things, and Pa drank wine and I drank nothing but ginger ale, and women who waited on us sat in Pa’s lap and patted his bald head, and tried to feel in his pockets, but Pa held on to their wrists and told them to keep away, and he took one across his knees and slapped her across the pajamas with a silver tray, and I thought Pa was real saucy.
A head waiter whispered to me and wanted to know what ailed the old sport, and I told him Pa was bitten with a wolf in our circus last year, and we feared he was going to have hydrophobia, and always when these spells come on the only thing to do was to throw him into a tank of water, and I should be obliged to them if they would take Pa and duck him in the fountain in the center of the café, and save his life.
Pa was making up with the girl he had paddled with the silver tray, buying champagne for her and drinking some of it himself out of her slipper, when the head waiter called half a dozen Frenchmen who were doing police duty, and told them to duck Pa in the fountain, and they grabbed him by the collar and the pants and made him walk turkey towards the fountain, and he held on to the girl, and the Frenchmen threw Pa and the girl into the brink with a flock of ducks, and they went under water, and Pa came up first yelling murder, and then the girl came up hanging to Pa’s neck, and she gave a French yell of agony, and Pa gave the grand hailing sign of distress, and yelled to know if there was not an American present that would protect an American citizen from the hands of a Paris mob. The crowd gathered around the circular fountain basin and one drunken fellow jumped in the water and was going to hold Pa’s head under water while the girl found his money, when Pa yelled “Hey, Rube,” the way they do in a circus when there is a fight, and by ginger it wasn’t a second before half a dozen old circus men that used to belong to the circus when Pa was manager in the States made a rush for the fountain, knocked the Frenchmen galley west, and pulled Pa out of the water and let him drain off, and they said, “Hello, old man, how did you happen to let them drown you?” and Pa saw who the boys were and he hugged them, and invited them to all take something and then go to his hotel.
After Pa Had Been Ducked in the Fountain They Charged for Two Ducks He Killed by Falling on Them.
When Pa paid the check for the drinks they charged in two ducks they said Pa killed in the tank by falling on them. But Pa paid it and was so tickled to meet the old circus boys that he gave the girl he went in swimming with a twenty-franc note, and after staying until along towards morning we all got into and on top of a hack and went to the hotel and sat up till daylight talking things over.
We found the circus boys were on the way to Germany to go with the Hagenbach outfit to South Africa to capture wild animals for circuses, and when Pa told the boss, who was one of Hagenbach’s managers, about his airship and what a dandy thing it would be to sail around where the lions and tigers live in the jungle, and lasso them, from up in the air, out of danger, he engaged Pa and me to go along, and I guess we will know all about Africa pretty soon.
The next day we went out to the club where Pa keeps his airship, with the boss of Hagenbach’s outfit and a cowboy that used to be with Pa’s circus, to practice lassoing things. They got out the machine and Pa steered it, and the boss and I were passengers, and the cowboy was on the railing in front with his lariat rope, and we sailed along about fifty feet high over the farms, until we saw a big goat. The cowboy motioned for Pa to steer towards the goat, and when we got near enough the cowboy threw the rope over the goat’s horns and tightened it up, and Mr. Goat came right along with us, bleating and fighting. We led the goat about half a mile over some fences, and finally came down to the ground to examine our catch, and we landed all right, and Hagenbach’s boss said it was the greatest scheme that ever was for catching wild animals, and he doubled Pa’s salary, and said we would pack up the next day and go to the Hagenbach farm in Germany and take a steamer for South Africa in a week.
They were talking it over, and the cowboy had released the goat, when that animal made a charge with his head on our party. He struck Pa below the belt, butted the boss in the trousers until he laid down and begged for mercy, stabbed the cowboy with his horns, and then made a hop, skip and jump for the gas bag, burst a hole in it, and when the gas began to escape the goat’s horns got caught in the gas bag and the goat died from the effects of the gas, and we were all glad until about fifty peasant women came across the fields with agricultural implements, and were going to kill us all.
Pa said, “Well, what do you know about that?” but the women were fierce and wanted our blood. The boss could talk French and he offered to give them the goat to settle it, but they said it was their goat anyway, and they wanted blood or damages.
Pa said it was easier to give damages than blood, and just as they were going to cut up the gas bag the boss settled with them for about twenty dollars, and hired them to haul the airship to the nearest station, and we shipped it to Berlin, and got ready to follow the next day.
Pa says we will have a high old time in Africa. He says he wants to ride up to a lion’s den in his airship and dare the fiercest lion to come out and fight, and that he wouldn’t like any better fun than to ride over a royal Bengal tiger in the jungle, and reach down and grab his tail, and make him snarl like a tom cat on a fence in the alley.
He talks about riding down a herd of elephants, and picking out the biggest ones, and roping them; and the way Pa is going to scare rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses and make them bleat like calves is a wonder.
I think Pa is the bravest man I ever saw, when he tells it, but I noticed when we had that goat by the horns and he was caught in a barbed wire fence, so the airship had to slow down until he came loose, Pa turned as pale as a sheet, and when the goat bucked him in the stomach Pa’s lips moved as though he was praying. Well, anyway, this trip to Africa to catch wild animals is going to show what kind of sand there is in all of us.
CHAPTER IX.
The Bad Boy Arrives in France—The Boy’s Pa Is Suspected of Being an Anarchist—The Boy Finds Pa Seated at a Large Table Bragging About America—He Told Them the Men in America Were All Millionaires and Unmarried.
The greatest relief I ever experienced was getting off of that cattle ship, which I did somewhere in France, because the ship had become so foul smelling that one had to stay on deck to breathe, and there was no more fun to have, cause the officers and crew got on to me, and everyone expected to be blown up or electrocuted if they got near to me, and the last three days they wouldn’t let me eat in the cabin or sleep in my hammock, so I had to go down with the cattle and eat hot bran mash, and sleep in the hay. Gee, but when you eat hot bran mash for a few days you never want to look at breakfast food again as long as you live.
I traded my electric battery to a deck hand for a suit case, and so I looked like a tourist, because I went to a hotel and got a square meal, and had a porter paste some hotel ads. on my suit case, and I took a train for Paris, looking for Pa, cause I knew he wouldn’t be far away from the bullyvards.
I left my baggage at a hotel where we stopped when we were in Paris before, and the man who spoke shattered English told me Pa was rooming there, but he was not around much, because he was being entertained by the American residents, and had some great scheme that took him away on secret expeditions often, and they thought he was either an anarchist or grafter, and since the assassination of the king and crown prince of Portugal the police had overhauled his baggage in his room several times, but couldn’t find anything incriminating, so I had my baggage sent to Pa’s room, and went out to find Pa, and pick up something that would throw suspicion on him if he showed any inclination to go back on me when I found him.
It was getting along towards dark when I walked down a bullyvard where Pa used to go when we were in Paris before, and as I came to a café where there was a sign, English spoken, I saw a crowd out on the sidewalk surrounding tables, eating and drinking, and there was one big table with about a dozen men and women, Americans, Frenchmen and other foreigners, listening to an elderly man bragging about America, and I saw it was Pa, but he was so changed that but for his bald head and chin whiskers I would not have known him.
He had on French clothes, one of those French silk hats that had a flat brim and a bell crown, and he had a moustache that was pointed at the ends and was waxed so it would put your eyes out.
Pa was telling them that all the men in America were millionaires and unmarried, and that all of them came abroad to spend money and marry foreign ladies, to take them back to America and make queens of them, and he looked at a French woman across the table with goo-goo eyes, and she said to the man next to her, “Isn’t he a dear, and what a wonder he is not married before,” and Pa smiled at her and put his hand on his watch chain, on which there hung gold nuggets as big as walnuts, and he fixed a big diamond in his scarf, so the electric light would hit it plenty.
They ate and drank and the party began to break up, when Pa and the beautiful woman were alone at the table, and they hunched up closer together, and Pa was talking sweet to her, and telling her that all wives in America had special trains on railroads, and palaces in New York, and at Newport and in Florida, and yachts and gold mines, and she could be the queen of them all if she would only say the word, and she was just going to say the word, or something, and had his fat, pudgy hand in both of hers, and was looking into his eyes with her own liquid eyes, and seemed ready to fall into his arms, when I got up behind him and lighted a giant fire cracker and put it under his chair and just as the fuse was sputtering, I said, “Pa, ma wants you at the hotel,” and the fireworks went off, the woman threw a fit and Pa raised up out of the smoke and looked at me and said, “Now, where in hell did you come from just at this time?” and the head waiter took the woman into a private room to bring her out of her fit, the waiters opened the windows to let the smoke out, and the crowd stampeded, and the police came in to pull the place and find the anarchist who threw the bomb, and Pa took me by the hand and we walked up the sidewalk to a corner, and when we got out of sight of the crowd Pa said, “Hennery, your ma ain’t here, is she?” in a pitiful tone, and I said no she wasn’t along with me this trip, and Pa said, “Hennery, you make me weary,” and we walked along to the hotel, Pa asking me so many questions about home that it was a like a catekism.
The Fireworks Went Off—the Woman Threw a Fit, and Pa Raised Out of the Smoke.
When we got to the hotel and went to Pa’s room and I told him what I had been doing since he abandoned me, he said he was proud of me, and now he had plenty of work and adventure for me to keep him in.
He said he had tried several airships, by having someone else go up in them, and that he was afraid to go up in one himself, and he seemed glad that I had been ballooning around home, and he said he could use me to good advantage.
I asked him about the woman he was talking to about marriage, and he said that was all guff, that she had a husband who had invented a new airship, and he was trying to get title to it for use in America, for war purposes, and that the only way to get on the right side of these French women was to talk about marriage and money, because for money any of them would leave their husbands on fifteen minutes’ notice. He said he had arranged for a trial of the airship the next day, from a place out in the country, and that I could go up with the inventor of the ship and see how it worked and report, so we went to bed and I slept better than I had since I shipped on the cattle ship.
In the morning while we were taking baths and preparing for breakfast, I found that Pa had been flying pretty high on government money, and he had all kinds of gold and paper money and bonds, and he made people think he owned most of America.
Pa asked me how the people at home looked upon his absence, and if they advanced any theories as to the cause of his being abroad, and I told him that everybody from the President down to Rockefeller knew about what he was out looking after, and that when I left Bob Evans at Fortress Monroe he told me to tell Pa to send a mess of airships to him so he would meet them when he got to San Francisco, as he wanted to paralyze the Japs if they got busy around the fleet, which pleased Pa, and he said, “Just tell the people to wait, and I will produce airships that can fight battles in the clouds, but it will take time.”
Then we went out in the country about a dozen miles, and met the inventor and his wife, and the inventor filled a big balloon that looked like a weiner sausage with gas that he made over a fire out in a field, and the inventor and I got on a bamboo frame under the balloon, and he turned on the gasoline that runs the wheel for steering, and they cut her loose and we went up about fifty feet and sailed around the country a half mile either way and watched Pa and the wife of the inventor as they sat under a tree and talked politics.
We came back after a while and Pa was proud of me for having so much nerve, and I told him the government at home was complaining because Pa didn’t go up in the airships, cause they said he couldn’t buy airships intelligently unless he tried them out, and that if he didn’t look out they would send some expert out to take his place and spend the money, and as we were landed on the ground I dared Pa to get on the frame and go up with us for a little spin, and he was afraid the woman would think he was a coward if he didn’t, so he got up and straddled the ridge pole of the bamboo frame, and said he would take a whirl at it if it killed him. The balloon thing couldn’t quite lift all of us, so I got off and give her a lift, and up she went with the inventor steering, and Pa hanging on for dear life and saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”
Up She Went with the Inventor Steering, and Pa Hanging On for Dear Life.
I have seen some scared men in my life, but when the machine got up about as high as a house, so Pa couldn’t get off, and the woman waved a handkerchief at Pa, he swallowed his Adam’s apple and said, “Let her go Gallagher,” and Gallagher, the Frenchman, let her go.
Well, you’d a died to see the thing wobble and see Pa cling on with his feet and hands. For about a quarter of a mile she went queer, like a duck that has been wing-tipped, and then she began to descend.
First she passed over a lot of cows that women were milking, and the cows stampeded one way and the women the other way, and the women were scared more than the cows, cause when they got out from under the ship they prayed, but the cows didn’t.
Then the ship struck a field where about forty women were piling onions on the ground, and it just scattered women and onions all over the field, and of all the yelling you ever heard that was the worst.
Pa yelled to them that if he ever got off that hay rack alive he would pay the damages, and he thought he was swearing at them. Then the worst thing possible happened. The airship went up over a tree, and Pa was scared and he grabbed a limb and let go of the bamboo, and there he was in the top of a thornapple tree. The balloon went over all right, and the inventor steered it away to where it started from, and the woman and I watched Pa. The thorns were about two inches long and more than a hundred of them got into Pa and he yelled all kinds of murder, and then the women who owned the cows and onions the ship had wrecked surrounded the tree with hoes and rakes and pitchforks, and they made such a frantic noise that Pa did not dare to come down out of the tree. So Pa told us to take the train back to Paris and send the American Consul and the police and a hook and ladder company to get him down and protect him.
I told Pa I didn’t want to go off and leave him to be killed by strange women, and maybe eaten by wolves before morning, but he said, “Don’t talk back to me, you go and send that patrol wagon and the hook and ladder truck, and be quick about it or I won’t do a thing to you when I catch you.”
So we went and put the airship in a barn and went back to town and turned in a police and fire alarm to rescue Pa. The chief said there was no use in going out there in the country before morning, because the women couldn’t get up the thornapple tree and Pa couldn’t get down. So I went to bed and dreamed about Pa all night, and had a perfectly lovely time.