“Eh?” I say.
What is the matter with the Madame? Is she making fun of somebody whom she ought to hold in a respect almost amounting to awe? Feeling that I ought to assert myself I gently hint that this is my affair, and her help is uncalled for in the matter of book-making; that her own department is wide enough for all her energies; and that—
But here Chum interrupts in that strix-like way of his which always so commands attention that one must listen whether or no.
This young man is possessed of a family heirloom in the shape of several hundred traditions of a more or less mythical grandfather. Some of these tales are distinctly poetical, while none of them are prosy. It is one of the traditions coined in the ingenious brain of this talented old gentleman with which we are now regaled, apropos of the matter in hand.
The old gentleman, it appears, was once—but let his heir-apparent—
“Who,” the Madame interrupts maliciously, “has very little hair apparent.”
“Let him,” I say, ignoring the insinuation, “tell his own story.”
“Why it was this way, as you very justly remark. The old gentleman was once captured by the Indians, who, instead of scalping him, decided to make him a beast of burden. They, therefore, loaded him down with cooking utensils, the most prominent article of which was the useful, but heavy frying-pan known in the vernacular as ‘skillet.’ Each Indian deposited upon my grandfather’s venerable and enduring back, his skillet. The old gentleman dare not protest, but meekly submitted and trudged off under his Atlas-like burden. After two hours hard marching, however, he resolved to argue the question, so he shouted imperatively,
“‘Halt!’
“The Indians paused in wonder. The venerable victim climbed upon a fallen tree and delivered his famous forensic effort, as follows: