The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Twain Mark - Страница 41
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»-they bein' partickler friends o' the diseased. That's why they're invited here this evenin'; but tomorrow we want ALL to come-everybody; for he respected everybody, he liked everybody, and so it's fitten that his funeral orgies sh'd be public.»
And so he went a-mooning on and on, liking to hear himself talk, and every little while he fetched in his funeral orgies again, till the duke he couldn't stand it no more; so he writes on a little scrap of paper, «OBSEQUIES, you old fool,» and folds it up, and goes to goo-gooing and reaching it over people's heads to him. The king he reads it and puts it in his pocket, and says:
«Poor William, afflicted as he is, his HEART'S aluz right. Asks me to invite everybody to come to the funeral-wants me to make 'em all welcome. But he needn't a worried-it was jest what I was at.»
Then he weaves along again, perfectly ca'm, and goes to dropping in his funeral orgies again every now and then, just like he done before. And when he done it the third time he says:
«I say orgies, not because it's the common term, because it ain't
—obsequies bein' the common term-but because orgies is the right term. Obsequies ain't used in England no more now-it's gone out. We say orgies now in England. Orgies is better, because it means the thing you're after more exact. It's a word that's made up out'n the Greek ORGO, outside, open, abroad; and the Hebrew JEESUM, to plant, cover up; hence inTER. So, you see, funeral orgies is an open er public funeral.»
He was the WORST I ever struck. Well, the iron-jawed man he laughed right in his face. Everybody was shocked. Everybody says, «Why, DOCTOR!» and Abner Shackleford says:
«Why, Robinson, hain't you heard the news? This is Harvey Wilks.»
The king he smiled eager, and shoved out his flapper, and says:
«Is it my poor brother's dear good friend and physician? I-«
«Keep your hands off of me!» says the doctor. «YOU talk like an Englishman, DON'T you? It's the worst imitation I ever heard. YOU Peter Wilks's brother! You're a fraud, that's what you are!»
Well, how they all took on! They crowded around the doctor and tried to quiet him down, and tried to explain to him and tell him how Harvey 'd showed in forty ways that he WAS Harvey, and knowed everybody by name, and the names of the very dogs, and begged and BEGGED him not to hurt Harvey's feelings and the poor girl's feelings, and all that. But it warn't no use; he stormed right along, and said any man that pretended to be an Englishman and couldn't imitate the lingo no better than what he did was a fraud and a liar. The poor girls was hanging to the king and crying; and all of a sudden the doctor ups and turns on THEM. He says:
«I was your father's friend, and I'm your friend; and I warn you as a friend, and an honest one that wants to protect you and keep you out of harm and trouble, to turn your backs on that scoundrel and have nothing to do with him, the ignorant tramp, with his idiotic Greek and Hebrew, as he calls it. He is the thinnest kind of an impostor-has come here with a lot of empty names and facts which he picked up somewheres, and you take them for PROOFS, and are helped to fool yourselves by these foolish friends here, who ought to know better. Mary Jane Wilks, you know me for your friend, and for your unselfish friend, too. Now listen to me; turn this pitiful rascal out-I BEG you to do it. Will you?»
Mary Jane straightened herself up, and my, but she was handsome! She says:
«HERE is my answer.» She hove up the bag of money and put it in the king's hands, and says, «Take this six thousand dollars, and invest for me and my sisters any way you want to, and don't give us no receipt for it.»
Then she put her arm around the king on one side, and Susan and the hare-lip done the same on the other. Everybody clapped their hands and stomped on the floor like a perfect storm, whilst the king held up his head and smiled proud. The doctor says:
«All right; I wash MY hands of the matter. But I warn you all that a time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this day.» And away he went.
«All right, doctor,» says the king, kinder mocking him; «we'll try and get 'em to send for you;« which made them all laugh, and they said it was a prime good hit.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it. The king said the cubby would do for his valley-meaning me.
So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they warn't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.
That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there, and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was, and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried chickens was-and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop, and said so-said «How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?» and «Where, for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?» and all that kind of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you know.
And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says:
«Did you ever see the king?»
«Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have-he goes to our church.» I knowed he was dead years ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to our church, she says:
«What-regular?»
«Yes-regular. His pew's right over opposite ourn-on t'other side the pulpit.»
«I thought he lived in London?»
«Well, he does. Where WOULD he live?»
«But I thought YOU lived in Sheffield?»
I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get choked with a chicken bone, so as to get time to think how to get down again. Then I says:
«I mean he goes to our church regular when he's in Sheffield. That's only in the summer time, when he comes there to take the sea baths.»
«Why, how you talk-Sheffield ain't on the sea.»
«Well, who said it was?»
«Why, you did.»
«I DIDN'T nuther.»
«You did!»
«I didn't.»
«You did.»
«I never said nothing of the kind.»
«Well, what DID you say, then?»
«Said he come to take the sea BATHS-that's what I said.»
«Well, then, how's he going to take the sea baths if it ain't on the sea?»
«Looky here,» I says; «did you ever see any Congress-water?»
«Yes.»
«Well, did you have to go to Congress to get it?»
«Why, no.»
«Well, neither does William Fourth have to go to the sea to get a sea bath.»
«How does he get it, then?»
«Gets it the way people down here gets Congress-water-in barrels. There in the palace at Sheffield they've got furnaces, and he wants his water hot. They can't bile that amount of water away off there at the sea. They haven't got no conveniences for it.»
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