“They are the bane of my life,” cried Joel, shaking them viciously. “You can’t think how I just detest this poll of mine, Mrs. Benson. Why that idiot of a doctor didn’t shave it all, I don’t see.”
“I wouldn’t let him, sir,” said Mrs. Benson. “And he said the cut on the head wasn’t what troubled him; you were exhausted with all you’d done. It’s only a wonder that you pulled through at all.”
“Nonsense!” exploded Joel. “Well, now, don’t you tell my family all this stuff when they come.”
“I’m going to tell your family everything and all there is to it,” declared little Mrs. Benson obstinately. “I’m a-going to tell them, if ’twas the last word I’d ever speak, how that precious deary took care of the old woman, and got her where she could be saved by you and Jim. And they’re going to hear what you did, and that nothing would have been of any earthly use if it hadn’t been for you. They shall hear it, every blessed word, sir. And after there wasn’t so much as a rat left aboard, and you’d seen the captain and Jim off, you jumped for your life, and was struck by a floating spar. There, and there, and there!” she cried.
“Mrs. Benson, dear Mrs. Benson,” began Joel.
“You won’t get me to say I won’t,” cried the little old lady, “because I will tell them every single thing that you did, and what folks said, and the whole. There again, sir.”
“Jim, get the barber!” roared Joel at him in great dismay. So the barber, a thin, dapper little man, soon appeared with all his paraphernalia; and presently Joel’s black curls were sprawling all over the floor, little Mrs. Benson on her knees picking them up, and patting them, and doing them up in a clean old handkerchief to lay away in her lavender drawer with the rest of her treasures.
And in the midst of it all, in walked Polly and Jasper, Ben and David, while the three children were here, there, and everywhere.
And on the morrow, the doctor being obliged to say that Joel was perfectly able to go, having recovered in a remarkable manner, all the party bade good-by to little Mrs. Benson and “son Henry” and his family, and off they hurried to Rome; Jim being proud as possible—for wasn’t he the Rev. Mr. Pepper’s body-servant, to remain so, and go back home with them?
“I like that house,” said King, looking back at the ironmonger’s red brick dwelling, on the stoop of which was drawn up the little old lady and her son the ironmonger and all his family, “a great deal better than I do the hotel. I wish I could have stayed over night there; it’s got lots of things in the big front room I didn’t have a chance to see.”