“You and me——” He began, but at that instant Imogene, who had heard his voice in the space before the barn, whirled from her attempt to squeeze through the tie-up and crashed out through the big doors. With screams the women jammed back into the entry and slammed the door. The men in the yard ran in all directions.
“Go back, Imogene!” the showman shouted wrathfully, but the anxious beast ambled sidewise toward him, waving her trunk appealingly.
He jumped at her and threw up his arms. She stopped and gazed reproachfully, and came toward him again.
“I say, she won’t hurt a soul,” he shouted, but the women kept up their clamour in the house, and the men were hidden in the dusk. Then his anger wreaked itself on the only thing in sight—and that was the amazed Imogene.
There was a pile of fitted wood in the yard, and he began to bombard her with it. She retreated a few steps, and then bowing her devoted head, received the missiles meekly, yet with an evident determination to stay that touched the showman’s heart.
“Poor old gal,” he muttered, “you’re worth all the rest put together. But there ain’t no Widder Snell goin’ to pass me and my bus’ness along to Cap Nymp’ Bodfish, and if this is the place where that old wharf-rat thinks he’s goin’ to nest in the sweet by-and-by—well, no man ever kicked me in the face and eyes of the public before!”
He set his teeth with obstinate resolve and walked up and rapped on the widow’s door. When it was not opened to him he pushed vigorously, and two women who had been holding it ran away into the sitting-room, screaming that the elephant was coming.
But it was only Hiram who appeared to the terrified widow, backed into a corner and surrounded by her retinue of comforters.
“Mis’ Snell,” said Hiram, bowing low and striving for an especial purpose of his own to put his best foot forward, “a man ain’t to be judged by first appearances nor while standin’ in a dooryard in the dark tryin’ to handle an elephant that’s been scared to death by tomrotted fools. Now, I can see that you’re a lady that’s used to the world and that’s too polite and ladylike to refuse to have an understand when a gentleman comes to you humbly like I do.”
He noted the little flush on the widow’s fair cheek and reflected that Captain Bodfish displayed eminent good taste.