Читать книгу Captain Jinks, Hero - Ernest Howard Crosby - Страница 9

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LESS my soul! I nearly forgot," exclaimed Colonel Jinks, as he came back into the store. "To-morrow is Sam's birthday and I promised Ma to bring him home something for a present. Have you got anything for a boy six years old?"

"Let me see," answered the young woman behind the counter, turning round and looking at an upper shelf. "Why, yes; there's just the thing. It's a box of lead soldiers. I've never seen anything like them before"—and she reached up and pulled down a large cardboard box. "Just see," she added as she opened it. "The officers have swords that come off, and the guns come off the men's shoulders; and look at the——"

"Never mind," interrupted the colonel. "I'm in a hurry. That'll do very well. How much is it?"

And two minutes later he went out of the store with the box in his hand and got into his buggy, and was soon driving through the streets of Homeville on his way to his farm.

No one had ever asked Colonel Jinks where he had obtained his title. In fact, he had never put the question to himself. It was an integral part of his person, and as little open to challenge as his hand or his foot. There are favored regions of the world's surface where colonels, like poets, are born, not made, and good fortune had placed the colonel's birthplace in one of them. For the benefit of those of my readers who may be prejudiced against war, and in justice to the colonel, it should be stated that the only military thing about him was his title. He was a mild-mannered man with a long thin black beard and a slight stoop, and his experience with fire-arms was confined to the occasional shooting of depredatory crows, squirrels, and rats with an ancient fowling-piece. Still there is magic in a name. And who knows but that the subtle influence of the title of colonel may have unconsciously guided the searching eyes of the young saleswoman among the Noah's arks and farmyards to the box of lead soldiers?

The lad for whom the present was intended was a happy farmer's boy, an only child, for whom the farm was the whole world and who looked upon the horses and cows as his fellows. His little red head was constantly to be seen bobbing about in the barnyard among the sheep and calves, or almost under the horses' feet. The chickens and sparrows and swallows were his playmates, and they seemed to have no fear of him. The black colt with its thick legs and ruffled mane ran behind its gray dam to hide from every one else, but it let Sam pat it without flinching. The first new-hatched chicken which had been given to him for his very own turned out to be a rooster, and when he found that it had to be taken from him and beheaded he was quite inconsolable and refused absolutely to feast upon his former friend. But with this tenderness of disposition Sam had inherited another still stronger trait, and this was a deep respect for authority, and such elements of revolt as revealed themselves in his grief over his rooster were soon stifled in his little heart. He bowed submissively before the powers that be. From the time when he first lisped he had called his parents "Colonel Jinks" and "Mrs. Jinks." His mother had succeeded with great difficulty in substituting the term "Ma" for herself, but she could not make him address his father as anything but "Colonel," and after a time his father grew to like it. No one knew how Sam had acquired the habit; it was simply the expression of an inherently respectful nature. He reverenced his father and loved his father's profession of farmer. His earliest pleasure was to hold the reins and drive "like Colonel Jinks," and his earliest ambition was to become a teamster, that part of the farm work having peculiar attractions for him.

In the afternoon on which we were introduced to the Colonel, Sam was watching on the veranda for his father's return, and was quick to spy the parcel under his arm, and many were the wild guesses he made as to its contents. The Colonel left it carelessly upon the hall table, and Sam could easily have peeped into it, but he would as soon have thought of cutting off his hand.

"What's in that box in the hall, Colonel Jinks?" he asked in an embarrassed voice at supper, as he fingered the edge of the tablecloth and looked blushingly at his plate.

"Oh, that?" replied his father with a wink—"that's a bombshell." And a bombshell indeed it proved to be for the Jinks family.

The box was put upon a table in the room in which little Sam slept with his parents, and he was told that he could have it in the morning. He was a long time going to sleep that night, trying to imagine the contents of the mysterious box. Not until he had quite made up his mind that it was a farmyard did he finally drop off. At the first break of day Sam was out of bed. With bare feet he walked on tiptoe across the cold bare floor and seized the precious box. He lifted the lid at one corner and put in his hand and felt what was there, and tried to guess what it could be. Perhaps it was a Noah's Ark; but no, if those were people there were too many of them. He would have to give it up. He took off the cover and looked in. It was not a farmyard, at any rate, and the corners of his mouth became tremulous from disappointment. No, they were soldiers. But what did he want of soldiers? He had heard of such things, but they had never been anything in his life. He had never seen a real soldier nor heard of a toy-soldier before, and he did not quite know what they were for. He crept back to bed crestfallen, his present in his arms. Sitting up in bed he began to investigate the contents of the box. It was a complete infantry battalion, and beautiful soldiers they were. Their coats were red, their trousers blue, and they wore white helmets and carried muskets with bayonets fixed. Sam began to feel reconciled. He turned the box upside-down and emptied the soldiers upon the counterpane. Then he noticed that they were not all alike. There were some officers, who carried swords instead of rifles. He began to look for them and single them out, when his eye was caught by a magnificent white leaden plume issuing from the helmet of one of them. He picked up this soldier, and the sight of him filled him with delight. He was taller and broader than the rest, his air was more martial—there was something inspiring in the way in which he held his sword. His golden epaulets were a miracle of splendor, but it was the plume, the great white plume, that held the boy enthralled. A ray of light from the morning sun, reflected by the window of the stable, found its way through a chink in the blind and fell just upon this plume. The effect was electric. Sam was fascinated, and he continued to hold the lead soldier so that the dazzling light should fall on it, gazing upon it in an ecstasy.