“I’ll take jolly good care you don’t,” said her father. “Monkeys are most mischievous brutes, and they disagree with every other animal near them. By the way, has Dan seen your new pet?”
“Yes. They had quite a romp in the morning-room. You see I had to read Jack’s letter to both Tibbie and Dan before I introduced Rikki.”
“I wish you wouldn’t allude to Captain Stanhope as ‘Jack.’ It argues a familiarity which does not exist.”
“If you are speaking of the young gentleman who hailed you after church to-day, I should say you were justified in that remark,” put in Schwartz.
That showed the man’s bad taste; but it told me something more. Since the morning, his manner towards the Guv’nor had altered. People say I am cruel when I play with a mouse, forgetting that I must practice every tricky twist and sidelong spring or I shall not be able to kill mice at all. However that may be, I can recognize the trait when I see it in others, and Schwartz looked and talked like a man who has another man under his thumb. Although her father may speak sharply to Minkie at times, he very strongly resents such a liberty being taken by an outsider. Perhaps he thought Schwartz regarded the allusion to a monkey as a personal matter. At any rate, when the parrot told Evangeline to go and boil her head there was a laugh, and the incident passed.
Of course, I knew Minkie far too well to believe that she meant to let Schwartz say what he liked, but I did not expect her to drop such a bombshell on the table as she produced after the pudding appeared.
“Talking of monkeys, Mr. Schwartz,” she said when there was a pause in the conversation, “are there many in West Africa?”
“Swarms,” he replied, rather snappy, because he noticed that Minkie gave his name the German sound, which is funnier than our English way of saying it.
“Do they worship them?”
“No, they eat them.”