California, Southern -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction; Petroleum industry and trade -- Fiction; Political fiction
But just then the Chinese spectre flitted past, and Harvey got up and
made an effort to catch him, and failing, caught hold of a lamp-stand,
slightly taller than himself. It was not built like the lamp-posts that
he was used to clutching on street-corners; it started to fall, and
Bunny leaped and caught it, and Harvey cried, in alarm, “Look out,
you’re upsettin it!”
Then a funny thing happened. Bunny had noticed at the dinner-table a
well-groomed man of the big Western type, polite and unobtrusive; the
superintendent of the estate, and one of the few who kept sober. Now it
appeared that among the duties of superintendent at a monastery was that
of the old-fashioned “bouncer” of the Bowery saloon. He came up, and
quietly slipped his arm about Harvey Manning; and the latter, evidently
having been there before, set up an agonized wail, “I d’wanna go to bed!
I woan go to bed! Dammit, Anderson, lemme lone! If I go to bed now I
wake up in the mornin an I can’t have a drink till evenin an I go
crazy!”
Against that horrible fate poor Harvey fought frantically; but
apparently the material inside the shoulders of Mr. Anderson’s dresscoat
was not the ordinary tailor’s padding, and the weeping victim was
helpless as in the grip of a boa-constrictor. He went along, even while
proclaiming loudly that he wouldn’t. “I’ll get up again, I tell you! I
woan be treated like a baby! I woan come this damn place again! It’s an
outrage! I’m a grown man an I got a right get drunk if I wanna—” and so
his weeping voice died into the elevator!
“Mr. Ross,” said Vee Tracy, “there are two cries that one hears at
Hollywood parties. The first is, I don’t want to go to bed; and the
second is, I do.”
X
When Bunny made his appearance on Sunday morning, he had the Monastery
all to himself. He breakfasted, and read the papers, which had been
delivered from the nearest railroad station; then he went for a stroll,
and renewed his acquaintance with the “reds” in the eagle cage. He
walked down towards the ocean, and discovered a combination of
fire-break and bridle-path, leading over the hills along the coast. He
followed this for a couple of miles, until it led down to a long stretch
of beach. The owner of the Monastery had erected a barrier here, with
signs warning the public to keep out; there was a gate with a spring
lock, and on the inside a board with keys hanging on it, and
instructions to take one with you, so that you could return. Bunny did
this, and continued his walk down the beach.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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