“It’s the old army game!” squealed the parrot, in nerve-racking rasp.
Ivory Buck arose, yanked the bottom off the cage, caught the squawking bird, wrung his neck, tossed him into the middle of the road, and then, sucking his bleeding finger, went on writing the copy for his advertisement.
SUPPER WITH NATICA
By Robert E. MacAlarney
It isn’t at all pleasant to burn one’s fingers, but it’s worth while burning them now and then, if you have to be scorched to be near a particularly attractive fire; at least I’ve found it that way. All of which leads me to Natica Drayton—Melsford that was.
I think I’m the only one of the crew she dragged at her heels who hasn’t forgot about things and gone off after other game; some of them have been lashed to the burning stake of pretty uncomfortable domesticity, too. As for me—well, I’ve simply gone on caring, and I think I shall always go on.
Does she know it? Of course she knows it; always has known it, ever since that first summer at Sacandaga. Not that I’ve been ass enough to say anything after the first time. I’m only an ordinary sort of chap when it comes to intuition, but somehow I’ve never plucked up the cheek to do any talking about my own miserable self; not since she let me down as gently as she could, while I paddled her back from Birch Point to the canoe house, with Elephant Mountain ragged-backed in the moon-haze. For the life of me I couldn’t tell you what it was she said. There was the drip of water from the paddle as I lifted it, stroke after stroke; the tiny hiss of smother at the prow, and twisted through it all, like a gathering string, Natica Melsford’s voice, letting me down easy—as easily as she could.
After I had made fast, I remember feeling that somehow the moonlight had turned things extremely cold; and I reached for my sweater that lay in the stern. I also laughed a great deal too much around the logs at the bungalow fire, and then drank a deal more than too much at the clubhouse before turning in. Maybe it was cowardly to sneak back to town a couple of days later, “on business,” of course—a shabby excuse for a chap that doesn’t dabble in business more than I do. But I honestly needed to go to get back my equilibrium. I got it, though, and I’ve kept it pretty continuously. And this much is enough for that. Natica Melsford is the only interesting bit about this story, and let’s get back to her.