Says his name's Bull Durham. Surely I seen that name on lil' sacks of tobacco. Bull owns up this baccy's named after his father. And surely his old man must be pretty well fixed. "That's so," says Bull, blushing to show he's modest "Ye see, kid, the old man's a bishop. Yes, Bishop of Durham, of course. Lives over to London, England. Got a palace thar, and a pew in the House of Lords. I'll be a lord when he quits. I'm the Honorable Bull by rights, although I hate to have the boys in camp know that—make 'em feel real mean when all of 'em rides as well as me, or almost, and some can rope even better."
"And you is the young of a real lord!"
"Sure. I'll have to be a bishop, too, when I comes into the property. I'm a sort of vice-bishop, sonny. D'ye see these yere gloves? They got a string to tie 'em at the back, 'cause I been inducted. I got an entail I'll show you in camp, and a pair of hereditaments."
"Vice-bishop," says I, "is that like bo's'n's mate? I never hear tell of a bishop's mate."
"He mates in two moves," says Bull, "baptism and conflamation."
"But," says I, so he just shuts me up, saying I may be ignorant, but that ain't no excuse for being untruthful.
Well, his talk made me small and mean as a starved cat, but that was nothing to the emotions at the other end of me when he got me on one of them horses. I wanted to walk. Walk! The most shameful things he knew was walking and telling lies. If I walked he'd have nothing more to do with me. I rode till we got to the ferry.
You know in books how there's a line of stars acrost the page to show the author's grief. I got 'em bad by the time we rode into Invicta City. Draw the line right thar:
* * * * * *
We're having supper at the Palladium, and I'm pretty nigh scared. The goblets is all full of pink and white serviettes, folded up into fancy designs, which come undone if you touched. There's a menu to say what's coming, in French so you don't know what you're eating, and durned if I can find out whether to tackle an a la mode with fingers or a spoon. Bull says it's only French for puckeroo, a sort of four-legged burrowing bird which inhabits silver mines, but if I don't like that, the lady will fetch me a foe par. Well, I orders one, and by the lady's face I see I done wrong, even before she complains to the manager. I'm surely miserable to think I've insulted a lady.