“Yes, be up early, my boy,” interrupted Bonaparte, smiling. “I am to be master of this farm now; and we shall be good friends, I trust, very good friends, if you try to do your duty, my dear boy.”
Waldo turned to go, and Bonaparte, looking benignly at the candle, stretched out one unstockinged foot, over which Waldo, looking at nothing in particular, fell with a heavy thud upon the floor.
“Dear me! I hope you are not hurt, my boy,” said Bonaparte. “You’ll have many a harder thing than that though, before you’ve gone through life,” he added consolingly, as Waldo picked himself up.
The lean Hottentot laughed till the room rang again; and Tant Sannie tittered till her sides ached.
When he had gone the little maid began to wash Bonaparte’s feet.
“Oh, Lord, beloved Lord, how he did fall! I can’t think of it,” cried Tant Sannie, and she laughed again. “I always did know he was not right; but this evening any one could see it,” she added, wiping the tears of mirth from her face. “His eyes are as wild as if the devil was in them. He never was like other children. The dear Lord knows, if he doesn’t walk alone for hours talking to himself. If you sit in the room with him you can see his lips moving the whole time; and if you talk to him twenty times he doesn’t hear you. Daft-eyes; he’s as mad as mad can be.”
This repetition of the word mad conveyed meaning to Bonaparte’s mind. He left off paddling his toes in the water.
“Mad, mad? I know that kind of mad,” said Bonaparte, “and I know the thing to give for it. The front end of a little horsewhip, the tip! Nice thing; takes it out,” said Bonaparte.
The Hottentot laughed, and translated.
“No more walking about and talking to themselves on this farm now,” said Bonaparte; “no more minding of sheep and reading of books at the same time. The point of a horsewhip is a little thing, but I think he’ll have a taste of it before long.” Bonaparte rubbed his hands and looked pleasantly across his nose; and then the three laughed together grimly.