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They don't have a chance." That night he dreamt of a campfire and coyotes calling in the night. Two girls with clear Asian faces and long black hair were waiting at a bus stop on King Street. One was about fourteen, carrying school books; the other was several years older, heavier. Joe stopped at Coco's, ordered coffee, and tried to describe the girls in a notebook.
He has scarcely vanished when a third party, "happy to catch us just at dinner-time," is announced; he comes with a mouthful of lies, and a pocketful of trash, and seeing that we are beginning to wince, is retiring, but suddenly recollecting himself, pulls up at the door to ask whether it be true that we have not bought Coco's Augustus, since, if we have been so lucky as to purchase it, Coco has in that case cheated him by pretending to have received nothing for it.
"The mountain wooded to the peak, the lawns And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven, The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes, The lightning flash of insect and of bird, The lustre of the long convolvuluses That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows And glories of the broad belt of the world, All these he saw; but what he fain had seen He could not see, the kindly human face, Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl, The league-long roller thundering on the reef, The moving whisper of huge trees that branch'd And blossom'd in the zenith, or the sweep Of some precipitous rivulet to the wave, As down the shore he ranged, or all day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet shafts of sunrise but no sail."
Spike's excitement vented itself in a rush of words. "Gee, boss! There's bin doin's to-night fer fair. Me coco's still buzzin'. Sure t'ing! Why, say, when I was to Sir Tummas' dressin'-room dis afternoon " "What!" "Surest t'ing you know. Just before de storm come on, when it was all as dark as could be. Well, I was " Jimmy interrupted. "In Sir Thomas's dressing-room! What the "
Old Coco's gentle trot was soon heard on the drive, and Perrine saw her blind grandfather returning to his home. She gave herself a real wash with eau de Cologne as well as soap, a delicious perfume soap. It was not until the clock on the mantle shelf struck eight that she went down. She wondered how she would find the dining room. She did not have to look for it, however.
Spike went to the door, opened it, and looked up and down the passage. "Mr. Chames," he said, in a whisper, shutting the door, "there's bin doin's to-night for fair. Me coco's still buzzin'. Say, I was to Sir Thomas' dressin' room " "What! What were you doing there?" Spike looked somewhat embarrassed. He grinned apologetically, and shuffled his feet. "I've got dem, Mr. Chames," he said.
Coco's black beard, standing at the bedside with a false "Augustus," was the first object that presented itself on waking, and the last pull of the bell at night was followed by the apparition of a mysterious figure in a cloak, with a small sack, full, not of truffles, but of "Lucernæ," just exhumed, and still smelling damp, from the lamp-teeming earth of Pozzuoli.
All Tuzzi's frauds, all Coco's falsehoods tell, And all the Beckers all the rogues shall sell; How many sick some sapient quack at Rome Helps not to England, but their longer home; How many Couriers forge the scoundrel tale; How many Maids their mistress' fame assail; How many English girls, by foreign arts Seduced, have smiled on needy 'Knaves of Hearts! Or left our church, in spite of solemn 'caves, To score off sins by rosaries and aves!
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