“Well,” responded the traveling man, “I bet a new hat that this dish of prunes is the same mess that was on the table when I was here a month ago”
The landlord replied hotly that it was not the same; that he served fresh prunes at every meal.
“Hold on,” interrupted the drummer; “now that I come to think of it I can decide that bet myself. When I was here before I dropped a half dollar in the dish.”
With that he picked up a spoon, drove it into the prunes, and fished out the fifty-cent piece he had secretly dropped in a few minutes before.
The old man, amazed, glared at those prunes for a moment and, growing red in the face with rage, picked up the dish, went out to the kitchen and cussed the cook for a week.
This landlord was a widower and had a very handsome daughter, whom he treated shamefully. He forced her to work early and late, wait on the table, do chamber work, help in the laundry, etc. He would not allow her to wear anything better than a common gingham dress, nor could she go anywhere nor get acquainted with anybody. She wanted an enlarged picture of her dead mother, and when she asked her father for permission to order it, instead of consenting he slapped her in the face. All this in the presence of Aleck, who happened to be there at the time.
Aleck immediately left the house, but when he returned the next day it was to present the girl with a large crayon portrait of her mother, the picture being enclosed in a handsome frame.
The two met in the parlor every evening after that, the old man being apparently oblivious of what was going on, and the upshot of it all was that on the following Sunday night they eloped to a neighboring town and were married. Aleck went back to his father’s gallery, and is there today with his wife.
The old landlord did not try to make trouble for them, but turned all his wrath on me. He swore I was to blame for the whole thing, threatened to shoot me, to have me arrested, and everything else.
I denied, point blank, having had anything to do with the affair; but I do not mind now acknowledging that Aleck did consult me, that I advised him to make the run, and loaned him an extra twenty dollars to get away with.