"Bones": Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' CountryWallace, Edgar
History
"Bones": Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country
Wallace, Edgar
Africa -- History -- 1884-1918 -- Fiction; Great Britain -- Colonies -- Africa -- Administration -- Fiction; Short stories, English
It is unfortunate that Hamilton's sister--that innocent purveyor of home
news--had no glimpse of the correspondence, and that other recipients of
his confidence are not in touch with the writer of these chronicles.
Whatever he wrote, with what fervour he described his wanderings in the
forest no one knows, but certainly he wrote to some purpose.
"What the dickens are all these parcels that have come for you for?"
demanded his superior officer, eyeing with disfavour a mountain of
brown paper packages be-sealed, be-stringed, and be-stamped.
Bones, smoking his pipe, turned them over.
"I don't know for certain," he said, carefully; "but I shouldn't be
surprised if they aren't clothes, dear old officer."
"Clothes?"
"For Henry," explained Bones, and cutting the string of one and tearing
away its covering revealed a little mountain of snowy garments. Bones
turned them over one by one.
"For Henry," he repeated; "could you tell me, sir, what these things are
for?"
He held up a garment white and small and frilly.
"No, sir, I can't," said Hamilton stiffly, "unless like the ass that you
are you have forgotten to mention to your friends that Henry is a
gentleman child."
Bones looked up at the blue sky and scratched his chin.
"I may have called him 'her,'" he confessed.
There were, to be exact, sixteen parcels and each contained at least one
such garment, and in addition a very warm shawl, "which," said Hamilton,
"will be immensely useful when it snows."
With the aid of his orderly, Bones sorted out the wardrobe and the
playthings (including many volumes of the
Oh-look-at-the-rat-on-the-mat-where-is-the-cat? variety), and these he
carried to his hut with such dignity as he could summon.
That evening, Hamilton paid his subordinate a visit. Henry, pleasingly
arrayed in a pair of the misdirected garments with a large bonnet on his
head, and seated on the floor of the quarters contentedly chewing Bones'
watch, whilst Bones, accompanying himself with his banjo, was singing a
song which was chiefly remarkable for the fact that he was ignorant of
the tune and somewhat hazy concerning the words.
"Did you ever take a tum-ty up the Nile,
Did you ever dumpty dupty in a camp,
Or dumpty dumpty on m--m----
Or play it in a dumpty dumpty swamp."
He rose, and saluted his senior, as Hamilton came in.
"Exactly what is going to happen when Sanders comes back?" asked
Hamilton, and the face of Bones fell.
"Happen, sir? I don't take you, sir--what _could_ happen--to whom, sir?"
"To Henry," said Hamilton.
Henry looked up at that moment with a seraphic smile.
"Isn't he wonderful, sir?" asked Bones in hushed ecstasy; "you won't
believe what I'm going to tell you, sir--you're such a jolly old
sceptic, sir--but Henry knows me--positively recognizes me! And when you
remember that he's only four months old--why, it's unbelievable."
"But what will you do when Sanders comes--really, Bones, I don't know
whether I ought to allow this as it is."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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