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Updated: May 14, 2025
And there was Ump with his thumbs against the fetlocks of the Bay Eagle, and Jud trying to get his copper skin into the half-dried shirt, and the hugged El Mahdi staring away at the brown hills as though he were everlastingly bored. I climbed up into the saddle to keep from executing a fiddler's jig, and thereby proving that I suffered deeply from the curable disease of youth.
But the Bay Eagle will never wear a tight throat-latch or a pinchin' brow-band, or a rough bit, or a short headstall, while old Mr. Ump warms the saddle seat." The hunchback was squirming around, craning his long neck. If the Bay Eagle were dry, water must be had, and no delay about it. Love for this mare was Ump's religion. I laughed and pointed down the road.
The girl he was engaged to at Clapton Hill tried to get it out of him, and threw him over partly because he refused, and partly because, as she said, he fairly gave her the "'ump."
Roy withdrew to the fastnesses of the kitchen, re-formed his lines and approached from another quarter. "If I was Mr. Ward," he opened, jerking his thumb toward Ump, "I'd give it to you when you got in." The hunchback poured out his coffee, held up the saucer with both hands and blew away the heat. "What for?" he grunted, between the puffings. "What for?" said Roy.
And Gwendolyn took a more firm hold of the lip-case. After a moment the little old gentleman began to speak very low: "We shan't be able to steal away. She's watching us out of the back of her head!" "Yes. I can see 'em shine!" "I believe that when she rolled her eyes from one face to the other it made that rumbley sound." "Scares me," whispered Gwendolyn. "Ump!" he grunted.
She recognized it the high-keyed, monotonous cry of a man who often hurried past with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. Now it startled her. It filled her with foreboding. "Uxtra! Uxtra! A-a-all about the lubble-lubble-lubble in ump Street!" Street! What street? Gwendolyn strained her ears to catch the words. What if it were the street where her fath "Uxtra! Uxtra!" cried the voice again.
We sat for a long time, listening to the choke and snarl of the water as it crowded along under the bridge. Then we fell to a sort of whispering talk. "Quiller," he began, "do you believe that story about the Dwarfs buildin' the bridge?" "Ump don't," I answered. "Ump says it's a cock-and-bull story, and there never were any Dwarfs except once in a while a bad job like him."
Even now, when I see a great chemist who knows all about some drug; a great surgeon who knows all about the body of a man; or a great oculist who knows all about the human eye, I must class the hunchback with them. Ump explored El Mahdi's shoes, pulled at the calks, picked at the nails, and prodded into the frog of the foot to see if there was any tendency to gravel.
"Ho! ho," he roared; "is every shingle on the meetin'-house dry?" Then he marked the hunchback sitting by the wall, and pointed his finger at him. "Come, there, you camel, wet your hump." That a fight was on, I had not the slightest doubt in the world. I caught my breath in a gasp. I saw Jud loosen his arm in his coat-sleeve. Ump was as sensitive as any cripple, and he was afraid of no man.
But if yer does it again, yer'll give me the blooming 'ump." I passed hurriedly on. It was not for a stranger to intrude on anything so intimate. "Halt! Stop, I mean." The ring of choristers in khaki and blue flannel faced with cotton wool looked at their conductor, a sergeant in the Glosters, with intense and painful concentration.
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