United States or Palau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
What are you talkin' about? Why, Louada Murilla, I never even knowed what the Portygee's name was, except that I called him Joe. A skipper don't lo'd his mem'ry with that sculch any more'n he'd try to find names for the hens in the deck-coop. "I made a mistake," he continued, after a time, "in not havin' it cleaned up, decks washed, and everything clewed snug at the time of it.
"It's good liniment, and I need some more for your toe, Aaron," pleaded his wife, putting her worsted out of her lap. "I'll chop that toe off and use it for cod bait before I'll cure it by buying any more liniment off'm him," the Cap'n retorted. "You jest keep your settin', Louada Murilla. I'll tend to your fam'ly end after this." He struggled up and began to hop toward the end of the piazza.
"Hiram, dear," pleaded his wife, "please let the man go. Louada Murilla and I know now what a scalawag he is, and we know how we've misjudged both you and Cap'n Sproul, and we'll spend the rest of our lives showin' you that we're sorry. But let him go! If you make any such uproar as you're talkin' of it will all come out that he made your wives believe that you were bad men.
"It was all a matter of discipline. But you can't prove it to land-sharks. If they git me into their clutches I'm a goner." His pistols hung on the wall where Louada Murilla had suspended them, draped with the ribbons of peace. "There's only one thing to do," he whispered, huskily, pointing at the weapons with quivering finger. "I'll shoot 'em in the legs, jest to hold 'em up.
"Louada Murilla," went on the Cap'n, taking his huge fists out of his pockets and cocking them on his knees, not belligerently, but in a mildly precautionary way, "told me that you had been engaged to a woman named Phar Phar " "Oh, give her any name to suit ye!" snarled the Colonel. "That's what ye're doin' with wimmen round here."
"Yes, s'r, it was a speech, Louada Murilla," he declared that evening, as he sat again in their sitting-room with his stockinged feet to the blaze of the Franklin. "I walked that platform like it was a quarter-deck, and my line of talk run jest as free as a britches-buoy coil. And when I got done, they was up on the settees howlin' for me.
He snapped up Louada Murilla with scant courtesy when she tried to give him the history of Smyrna's most famous organization, and timorously represented to him the social eminence he had attained. "It isn't as though you didn't have money, and plenty of it," she pleaded. "You can't get any more good out of it than by spending it that way.
When he hove in sight of his own house he saw Louada Murilla on the porch, gazing off at the smoke of the fire and evidently luxuriating in the consciousness that it was her husband who was that day leading the gallant forces of the Ancients. As he stared wildly, home seemed his haven and the old house his rock of safety.
You've lived among them here all your life, Louada Murilla, and I s'pose you've got more or less wonted to 'em. But if I hadn't squirmed and thrashed round a little durin' the time I've lived here, after marryin' you and settlin' down among 'em, they'd have et me, honey, money, hide, and hair. As it is, they've got their little lunch off'm me. I haven't thrashed round enough till till yistiddy."
Louada Murilla admitted three men, who marched in solemnly, one behind the other, all beaming with great cordiality. Cap'n Sproul, not yet out of the doldrums, simply glowered and grunted as they took seats. Then one of them, whom Sproul knew as Ludelphus Murray, the local blacksmith, arose and cleared his throat with ominous formality. "It's best to hammer while the iron is hot, Cap'n," he said.
Word Of The Day