Short stories, American; United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"The friendly cow all red and white,
I love with all my heart:
She gives me cream with all her might,
To eat with apple-tart Robert Louis Stevenson."
Becky's tears ceased. "Be there cows in the Central Park?" she
demanded.
"Sure," said Patrick.
"Und what kind from cream will he give us? Ice cream?"
"Sure," said Patrick again.
"Let's go," cried the emotional chaperon. A passing stranger turned the
band in the general direction of the menagerie and the reality of the
cow brought the whole "memory gem" into strange and undreamed reality.
Gaily they set out through new and always beautiful ways; through
tunnels where feet and voices rang with ghostly boomings most pleasant
to the ear; over bridges whence they saw--in partial proof of Isaac
Borrachsohn's veracity--"mans und ladies ridin'." Of a surety they rode
nothing more exciting than horses, but that was, to East Side eyes, an
unaccustomed sight, and Eva opined that it was owing, probably, to the
shortness of their watch that they saw no lions and tigers similarly
amiable. The cows, too, seemed far to seek, but the trees and grass and
flowers were everywhere. Through long stretches of "for sure country"
they picked their way, until they came, hot but happy, to a green and
shady summerhouse on a hill. There they halted to rest, and there
Ignatius Aloysius, with questionable delicacy, began to insist once more
upon the full measure of his bond.
"We ain't seen the rubber-neck-boat-birds," he complained. "Und we ain't
had no rides on nothings."
"You don't know what is polite," cried Eva, greatly shocked at this
carping spirit in the presence of a hard-worked host. "You could to
think shame over how you says somethings like that on a party."
"This ain't no party," Ignatius Aloysius retorted. "It's a 'scursion. To
a party somebody _gives_ you what you should eat; to a 'scursion you
_brings_ it. Und anyway, we ain't had no rides."
"But we heard a holler," the guest of honor reminded him. "We heard a
fierce, big holler from a lion. I don't know do I need a ride on
something what hollers. I could to have a fraid maybe."
"Ye wouldn't be afraid on the boats when I hold yer hand, would ye?"
Patrick anxiously inquired, and Eva shyly admitted that, thus supported,
she might not be dismayed. To work off the pride and joy caused by this
avowal, Patrick mounted the broad seat extending all around the
summerhouse and began to walk clatteringly upon it. The other pilgrims
followed suit and the whole party stamped and danced with infinite
enjoyment. Suddenly the leader halted with a loud cry of triumph and
pointed grandly out through one of the wistaria-hung openings. Not De
Soto on the banks of the Mississippi nor Balboa above the Pacific could
have felt more victorious than Patrick did as he announced:
"There's the water-lake!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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