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Page 82
"Say, did you ever crack open a wormy English walnut? That's what
that house was like. There wasn't enough furniture in it to fill an
eight-dollar flat. Some old horsehair lounges and three-legged chairs
and some framed ancestors on the walls were all that met the eye. But
when Colonel Allyn comes in, the place seemed to light up. You could
almost hear a band playing, and see a bunch of old-timers in wigs and
white stockings dancing a quadrille. It was the style of him,
although he had on the same shabby clothes I saw him wear at the
station.
"For about nine seconds he had me rattled, and I came mighty near
getting cold feet and trying to sell him some plate-glass. But I got
my nerve back pretty quick. He asked me to sit down, and I told him
everything. I told him how I followed his daughter from Cincinnati,
and what I did it for, and all about my salary and prospects, and
explained to him my little code of living--to be always decent and
right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more
than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent
limit. At first I thought he was going to throw me out of the window,
but I kept on talking. Pretty soon I got a chance to tell him that
story about the Western Congressman who had lost his pocket-book and
the grass widow--you remember that story. Well, that got him to
laughing, and I'll bet that was the first laugh those ancestors and
horsehair sofas had heard in many a day.
"We talked two hours. I told him everything I knew; and then he began
to ask questions, and I told him the rest. All I asked of him was to
give me a chance. If I couldn't make a hit with the little lady, I'd
clear out, and not bother any more. At last he says:
"'There was a Sir Courtenay Pescud in the time of Charles I, if I
remember rightly.'
"'If there was,' says I, 'he can't claim kin with our bunch. We've
always lived in and around Pittsburgh. I've got an uncle in the real-
estate business, and one in trouble somewhere out in Kansas. You can
inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in old Smoky Town,
and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across that story
about the captain of the whaler who tried to make a sailor say his
prayers?' says I.
"'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,' says the
colonel.
"So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a
customer. What a bill of glass I'd sell him! And then he says:
"'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed
to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting
and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I
will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally
connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.'
So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh?
Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the
super-annuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my
valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was in the town.
"Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie
alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story.
"'It's going to be a fine evening,' says I.
"'He's coming,' says she. 'He's going to tell you, this time, the
story about the old negro and the green watermelons. It always comes
after the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was
another time,' she goes on, 'that you nearly got left--it was at
Pulaski City.'
"'Yes,' says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the
step, and I nearly tumbled off.'
"'I know,' says she. 'And--and I--I was afraid you had, John A. I
was afraid you had.'
"And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows."
IV
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