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Updated: July 6, 2025
"Never you mind. Rare ohs for meddlers, and pump-handle sauce, perhaps; and look here, you sir, you come when we halt to-night and I'll mend some of them rags. You're a disgrace." "Ain't worse than the rest of the fellows," said Tom, grinning. "The Colonel's horse went down 's morn'." "Oh, dear, dear!" cried the woman excitedly; "is he hurt?" "Broke both his knees, and bled ever so."
The rusty creaking of a pump-handle and a spatter of water upon the red-tiled courtyard showed that somebody else was astir, and a few steps farther he beheld a brawny, sandy-haired man gasping wildly under severe self-infliction at the pump. "Everything ready, George?" he asked quietly. "Yes, sir," said the man, straightening up suddenly and touching his forehead.
"Shake hands with Miss Messiter, Missou," was the formula, the name alone varying to suit the embarrassed gentlemen in leathers. Each of them in turn presented a huge hand, in which her little one disappeared for the time, and was sawed up and down in the air like a pump-handle.
Occasionally there would toddle a child with jug or pail, and then the crooked little storekeeper would come forward and work the pump-handle. Among others came Pollie Lumm plump, pretty, pink and sixteen. Girard pumped for her, too. He got into the habit of pumping for her. If he was busy, she would wait. Pollie Lumm was a sort of cousin to Sallie Lunn. Neither had intellect to speak of.
But he fights fair, and this hitting below the belt was too much for him. He was raging up and down the hall like a wild man when Boyle came in. 'Mr. Boyle, he roared, rushing up to him and seizing him by the hand and working it like a pump-handle in a fire, 'it was a most iniquitous proceeding!
Then she went upstairs and I read a little till I had enough of reading, and I thought I'd go to the towpath, but first, as I was thirsty, I thought I'd get a glass and take a drink at the pump. But when I tried to pump, the pump-handle just went up in the air, and wouldn't pump up any water! And just as I tried it again, I heard somebody say, "That pump handle oughter been left up in the air.
He hastily summoned to his mind Kabel's charities and the mean clothes and gray hair of the women who formed his congregation at the early-service, Lazarus with his dogs, and his own long coffin, and also the beheading of various people, Werther's Sorrows, a small battlefield, and himself how pitifully here in the days of his youth he was struggling and tormenting himself over the clause of the will just three more jerks of the pump-handle and he would have his water and the house.
In so doing he released the red pump-handle, lost his balance, struggled wildly to regain it, and then collapsed with a terrible sense of failure and ignominy, right into the open jaws, as it were, of the avenging dog! He had a fancy that something cool and kind was licking his hand.... It felt like the tongue of a friendly dog. He seemed to have been dreaming about dogs.
But when he had made six strokes, he loathed the pencil violently, got up, and went away, hurried off to a club where he could play cards or billiards, to a place where he could flirt with a barmaid who was no more to him than the brass pump-handle she drew. He was very thin and lantern-jawed. He dared not meet his own eyes in the mirror; he never looked at himself.
"'Pears to me you take my arm for a pump-handle," said he. "Couldn't you show your gratitood some other way? It's just possible I may want to use my arm ag'in some time." The young man desisted, but invited Dick most cordially to come up and stop a week with him at his country home, assuring him that he wouldn't charge him anything for board. "All right!" said Dick.
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