“Run. Bid her cook the lot. There’ll be none too many.”
“But, Auntie, dear! They cost fifty cents a-piece. Six whole dollars for one single breakfast? Besides the potatoes and bread and other stuff! Six dollars a meal, eighteen dollars a day, how long will what is left of three hundred dollars last, after we pay for Billy, as you said we must?”
This was on the morning after the Colonel’s first call at the Water Lily. This had been a prolonged one because of—Billy. That wise animal saw no stable anywhere about and, having been petted beyond reason by his loving, sad-hearted master, decided that he dared not—at his time of life—sleep out of doors. At least that was the way James Barlow understood it, and no persuasion on the part of his new friends could induce the mule to remain after the Colonel started for home.
“Tie him to the end of the wharf,” suggested Gerald.
“That would be cruel. He might fall into the water in his sleep. We don’t want two to do that in one day,” protested Dorothy.
At that point Billy began to bray; so mournfully and continuously that Mrs. Calvert sent word:
“Stop that beast! We shan’t be able to sleep a wink if he keeps that noise up!”
The Colonel paused once more. His departure had been a succession of pauses, occasioned by two things: one that the lazy man never walked when he could ride; the other, that he could not bring himself to part from his “only faithful friend.” The result was that he had again mounted the stubborn beast and disappeared in the darkness of his melon-patch.
Now he was back again, making his mount double himself up on the ground and so spare his rider the trouble of getting off in the usual way.
“My hearties! Will you see that, lads?” demanded Melvin, coming down the bank with his towels over his arm. He had promptly discovered a sheltered spot, up stream, where he could take his morning dip, without which his English training made him uncomfortable. “Pooh! He’s given the mule and himself with it! He’s fun for a day, but we can’t stand him long. I hope Mrs. Calvert will give him his ‘discharge papers’ right away.”