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Jimmy's route was on the north side, which he regretted, as it was in the district where a number of the friends of his former life resided. His delivery schedule, however, and the fact that his point of contact with the homes of his customers was at the back door relieved him of any considerable apprehension of being discovered by an acquaintance.
Finally, when he succeeded, he flung the saddle on the ground, and the horse, feeling relieved of his burden, first shook himself violently, and then expressed his comfort again and again in deep chest-tones. During all this time Jimmy's eyes had been fastened on the stranger's spurs, and a peculiar feeling of incredulity gradually filled his mind. Silver, indeed! He could not fool him!
Violet hadn't got the bearing of Jimmy's question. "Oh, you couldn't mistake her," she said, "any more than you could in this room, now." "Do you mean," John asked, "that she might have recognized us?" "They can't," said Violet, "across the footlights, can they?" Jimmy nodded. "In a little theater like that," he said, "anywhere in the house. But it seems she didn't recognize you."
"It was neither fish nor flesh nor bone," she declared; "and a rabbit is flesh and bone." "Then it's boun' to be a apple," was Jimmy's next guess; "that ain't no flesh and blood and it's good to eat." "An apple can't run alone," she triumphantly answered. "Give it up? Well, it was an egg and it hatched to a chicken. Now, Florence, you ask one."
It was the week of the international crisis, and European mobilization was occupying Jimmy's mind to the exclusion of other matters. Still, you could hardly suppose that it was the crisis that was taking him up to London. I remember thinking he had run away from Charlie Thesiger, because he bored him.
He may have felt like that about it. I put no limits to Jimmy's imagination; but I suspected him of throwing out these airy fancies as a veil to cover the preposterous nature of his ambition. It was also the year when he began to talk about motor-cars and think about motor-cars and dream about motor-cars at night.
Altogether we had a lively week. To interfere in the fights only prolonged them; and, to add to the general hubbub, the servant question had opened up again. Jimmy's Nellie, who had been simmering for some time, suddenly rebelled, and refused to consider herself among the rejected.
"Prove it!" replied Herb, promptly. "What is this bright idea?" "Well, you know that just about this time they cook nice, hot doughnuts down at Mattatuck's bakery. Delicious doughnuts! Um, yum!" and Jimmy's round countenance assumed a rapturous expression. "And the idea was, that you'd go down there and blow the crowd to hot doughnuts, was it?" queried Joe. "Blow, nothing!" exclaimed Jimmy.
As Jimmy's father was taking the crestfallen chaingang to the blacksmith shop to have their fetters removed, they had to pass by the livery stable; and Sam Lamb, bent double with intoxicating mirth at their predicament, yelled: "Lordee! Lordee! Y' all sho' is de outlandishest kids 'twixt de Bad Place an' de moon."
She certainly excelled in "rounding-up goat," riding the old Billy like a race-horse; and with Rosy filling the position of housemaid to perfection, Jimmy's Nellie proving invaluable in her vigorous treatment of the rejected and the wood-heap gossip filling in odd times, life so far as it was dependent on black folk was running on oiled wheels: the house was clean and orderly, the garden flourished; and as the melons grew apace, throwing out secondary leaves in defiance of Cheon's prophecies, Billy Muck grew more and more enthusiastic, and, usurping the position of Chairman of the Directors, he inspired the shareholders with so much zeal that the prophecies were almost fulfilled through a surfeit of watering.