“About five o'clock in the afternoon, when it was a nice time to take a
walk under the trees, we meandered quietly down to a corner of the back
wall, where Jone thought it would be rather convenient to get over. He
hunted up a short piece of board which he leaned up ag'in the wall, an'
then he put his foot on the top of that an' got hold of the top of the
wall an' climbed up, as easy as nuthin'. Then he reached down to help me
step onto the board. But jus' as he was agoin' to take me by the hand:
'Hello!' says he. 'Look a-there!' An' I turned round an' looked, an' if
there wasn't Mrs. Andrew Jackson an' General Tom Thumb a-walkin' down
the path.
“'What shall we do?' says I.
“'Come along,' says he. 'We aint a-goin' to stop for them. Get up, all
the same.'
“I tried to get up as he said, but it wasn't so easy for me on account
of my not bein' such a high stepper as Jone, an' I was a good while
a-gettin' a good footin' on the board.
“Mrs. Jackson an' the General, they came right up to us an' set down on
a bench which was fastened between two trees near the wall. An' there
they set, a-lookin' steady at us with their four little eyes, like four
empty thimbles.
“'You appear to be goin' away,' says Mrs. Jackson.
“'Yes,' says Jone from the top of the wall. We're a-goin' to take a
slight stroll outside, this salu-brious evenin'.'
“'Do you think,' says she, 'that the United States Bank would be open
this time of day?'
“'Oh no,' says Jone, 'the banks all close at three o'clock. It's a good
deal after that now.'
“'But if I told the officers who I was, wouldn't that make a
difference?' says she. 'Wouldn't they go down an' open the bank?'
“'Not much,' says Jone, givin' a pull which brought me right up to the
top o' the wall an' almost clean down the other side, with one jerk. 'I
never knowed no officers that would do that. But,' says he, a kind o'
shuttin' his eyes so that she shouldn't see he was lyin', 'we'll talk
about that when we come back.'
“'If you see that team of little oxen,' says the big man, 'send 'em
'round to the front gate.'
“'All right,' says Jone; an' he let me down the outside of the wall as
if I had been a bag o' horse-feed.
“'But if the bank isn't open you can't pay for it when it does come,' we
heard the old lady a-sayin' as we hurried off.
“We didn't lose no time agoin' down to that station, an' it's lucky we
didn't, for a train for the city was comin' jus' as we got there, an' we
jumped aboard without havin' no time to buy tickets. There wasn't many
people in our car, an we got a seat together.
“'Now then,' says Jone, as the cars went abuzzin' along, 'I feel as if
I was really on a bridal-trip, which I mus' say I didn't at that there
asylum.'
“An' then I said: 'I should think not,' an' we both bust out a-laughin',
as well we might, feelin' sich a change of surroundin's.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account