Jack simply curled up: “Wretched mistake somewhere,” he mumbled. “Awfully hot here—get you a glass of water,” and he rushed off. He dodged around Miss Moore, and made a flank movement which got him by Miss Curzon and safely to the door. He kept on; I followed.
I had to go to New York on business next day. Jack had already gone there, bought a ticket for Europe, and was just loafing around the pier trying to hurry the steamer off. I went down to see him start, and he looked so miserable that I’d have felt sorry for him if I hadn’t seen him look miserable before.
“Is it generally known, sir, do you think?” he asked me humbly. “Can’t you hush it up somehow?”
“Hush it up! You might as well say ‘Shoo!’ to the Limited and expect it to stop for you.”
“Mr. Graham, I’m simply heartbroken over it all. I know I shall never reach Liverpool. I’ll go mad on the voyage across, and throw myself overboard. I’m too delicately strung to stand a thing of this sort.”
“Delicate rats! You haven’t nerve enough not to stand it,” I said. “Brace up and be a man, and let this be a lesson to you. Good-by.”
Jack took my hand sort of mechanically and looked at me without seeing me, for his grief-dimmed eyes, in straying along the deck, had lit on that pretty little Southern baggage, Fanny Fairfax. And as I started off he was leaning over her in the same old way, looking into her brown eyes as if he saw a full-course dinner there.
“Think of your being on board!” I heard him say. “I’m the luckiest fellow alive; by Jove, I am!”
I gave Jack up, and an ex-grass widow is keeping him in order now. I don’t go much on grass widows, but I give her credit for doing a pretty good job. She’s got Jack so tame that he eats out of her hand, and so well trained that he don’t allow strangers to pet him.
I inherited one Jack—I couldn’t help that. But I don’t propose to wake up and find another one in the family. So you write me what’s what by return.