When he saw that it amused me, he was as pleased as Punch, and quite jolly. All his melancholy had gone. He read that will over and over again to himself, and seemed thoroughly to enjoy it; and I’m quite sure that he felt awfully sorry that he couldn’t get all the people called together and have it read to them without his being dead, so that he could hear them laugh at what he called his “wheezes.”
He said that he was sure his will would be a great success, and it put him in a good humour for the rest of the day, and he quite enjoyed his dinner, which, you may be sure, wasn’t roast pork or salmon, as he had ordered; but a nice fried sole, and a boiled chicken, and a semolina pudding, which I knew wouldn’t hurt him, and I wouldn’t let him have the champagne, pretending that we were quite out of the only brand he cared for.
After dinner he smoked a cigar by himself, and then he came down into our bar-parlour and smoked a pipe.
Several of our regular customers knew him, through his having been with us before, and they remembered him, so he joined in the conversation, which got on foreign parts; and, as he was known to travel abroad a good deal, they asked him questions about the places he had seen.
I will say this for Mr. Saxon: he never wanted much encouragement to start him off talking, and when he did begin he went on.
I’m quite sure that it wasn’t all true what he told the people in our bar-parlour. He couldn’t help exaggerating, if it was to save his life; but I believe the stories he told were founded on fact, only he made them as wonderful as he could.
He had been in the winter to Africa, and he told us of a very wonderful adventure he had with a lion. It seems he was very anxious to kill a lion and bring it home with him. So one day that he heard a lion had been seen in the mountains near where he was, he went off on a hunting expedition and camped out in the open air. The first night he thought it was very jolly; but when he woke up in the morning he found he had got the rheumatics so fearfully that he could hardly move. So he told the Arabs, who were with him, to go hunting, and he would stop in the tent and rub himself with liniment, as he couldn’t walk till the rheumatics went off.
The Arabs went off to look for the lion, and soon after they had gone Mr. Saxon heard a curious noise, and looking up, he saw a great big lion coming stealthily towards him.
He was awfully frightened, and picked up his gun and went as white as death, and waited for the animal to come on. When it began to move, he noticed it was rather lame, and moved very slowly, so he aimed at it and fired; but not being a good marksman, the shot went a long way over the lion’s head.
Then he felt so frightened, he said, that he was quite paralyzed, and he fired again; but the bullet didn’t go near the lion.