“Save me, husband!” cried my mother with pallid face. “We shall be put to some awful torture by these wild children of the forest.” A smile so gentle, and yet so calm, that it could not fail to be reassuring spread over my father’s features.
“Never fear!” said he, “I know them, I’ve been seeking them! What has been denied many a traveler stronger and bolder than I, has been accorded to a member of the Trump family in the most miraculous manner. When we return to Europe every Monarch, every learned society, will hasten to bind a medal on my breast, for, dear wife, your husband is the first white man to enter the land of the—”
“The—?” echoed my mother leaning forward and grasping her husband’s arm.
“Melodious Sneezers!”
“Melodious Sneezers?” repeated my mother with wide-opened eye, and amusement seated in every feature.
“Melo—”
But she could get no further. To my father’s infinite amusement, she fell a-sneezing most violently. In such rapid succession did the sneezes flow that it sounded exactly like a diminutive engine under full headway.
At last the fit seemed to have passed. “Melo—” but in vain; she could not reach the second syllable.
And now, in his turn, my father started off, slow at first but going faster and faster.
Strange to say their sneezing soon began to catch the ways of the country and blended thoroughly, keeping time in spite of their efforts to check it.