"I do know from my governess, Madam Fournet, and I will write it all
down for you, my Buzz, for whom I feel so much gratitude for help," I
answered with quickness.
"Stow the gratitude and write 'em all out. It will take us about an
hour but it is good to keep calicoes waiting occasionally," he said,
and did thereupon seat himself beside the table and draw to himself
the two sheets of paper, while I quickly wrote out the table of French
weights and measurements translated into English.
I did very much enjoy that hour in which my Buzz labored with a pencil
and a great industry while I called to him the list of long figures
and then verified as he showed me the units upon the page in the
French language. He made jokes at me between workings while he
attended his cigarette and we, together, had much laughter.
"There are just three places where these figures disagree and I have
marked them carefully, L'Aiglon," he said as at last he laid down both
pieces of the paper. "These French specifications and figures that
floored you, represent the ideal mule in bulk and these United States
figures promise the same multitude in scrub. I thought as much. You
just run in there to Bill with them and then forget you ever saw them,
and we'll be on our way to the girls in ten minutes. Bobby, I mean it
when I say that men in your and my positions of trust just forget
facts and figures the minute we get out of sight of our chiefs. And we
forget the chiefs too, believe me. Now run along and come out to the
car on the same trot."
"Is it of honor not to tell to the Gouverneur Faulkner that you
assisted me in this task, my Buzz?" I asked of him with anxiety.
"No need to tell him--it's all in the same office and will come to me
for filing. Don't say anything that will bring on talk that keeps us
from Sue and the gang. Just run!" With which advice my kind Buzz
disappeared through the door into the office of my Uncle, the General
Robert, as I softly opened the door of the room of the Gouverneur
Faulkner and entered into his presence. And in that presence I found
also my Uncle, the General Robert, in a very grave consultation with
the Gouverneur Faulkner.
"The papers completed, Your Excellency," I said in a very low and meek
tone of my voice as I laid the papers beside him on the table and
prepared to take the running departure that my Buzz had commanded of
me.
"Bless my soul, are you here and at work, young man? I thought you
were asleep after all that gallivanting, and was just preparing to
blow you up out of bed over the telephone," exclaimed my Uncle, the
General Robert, with great fierceness of manner but also a great
pleasure of eyes at the sight of me in the character of such a nice
Secretary to the Gouverneur of Harpeth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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