"Perhaps we had better go into the back parlor; it is cooler there, and we won't disturb father, who wants to think about something."
So she and Mr. Travers went into the back parlor, and shut the door, and talked very loud at first about a whole lot of things, and then quieted down, as they always did.
"IT HAD SHUT UP LIKE A JACKKNIFE."
I was in the front parlor, reading Robinson Crusoe, and wishing I could go and do likewise—like Crusoe, I mean; for I wouldn't go and sit quietly in a back parlor with a girl, like Mr. Travers, not if you were to pay me for it. I can't see what some fellows see in Sue. I'm sure if Mr. Martin or Mr. Travers had her pull their hair once the way she pulls mine sometimes, they wouldn't trust themselves alone with her very soon.
All at once we heard a dreadful crash in the back parlor, and Mr. Travers said Good something very loud, and Sue shrieked as if she had a needle run into her. Father and mother and I and the cook and the chambermaid all rushed to see what was the matter.
The chair that I had mended, and that Sue had taken away from me, had broken down while Mr. Travers was sitting in it, and it had shut up like a jackknife, and caught him so he couldn't get out. It had caught Sue too, who must have run to help him, or she never would have been in that fix, with Mr. Travers holding her by the wrist, and her arm wedged in so she couldn't pull it away.
Father managed to get them loose, and then Sue caught me and shook me till I could hear my teeth rattle, and then she ran up stairs and locked herself up; and Mr. Travers never offered to help me, but only said, "I'll settle with you some day, young man," and then he went home. But father sat down on the sofa and laughed, and said to mother:
"I guess Sue would have done better if she'd have let the boy keep his chair."
I'm very sorry, of course, that an accident happened to the chair, but I've got it up in my room now, and I've mended it again, and it's the best chair you ever sat in.