Читать книгу The Jingo - George Randolph Chester - Страница 6

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The Princess Betsy Ann made marvelous progress in the American language. The king being much occupied with the spring sowing, and Prince Onalyon with the oversight of the public granaries, and Tedoyah with helping bubbling little neighbor, Toopy Polecon, to break in her new pet donkey, the care of Jimmy Smith in his brightest waking hours was left to the princess; and she came from his apartments every evening, tauntingly proud with an overflow of strange new words, which even Onalyon was bound to admit were forceful and expressive.

On the first evening she produced, at the dinner-table, "water" and "bowl" and "bed" and "chair," and an entire first-aid-to-the-injured list. On the second day she was in lofty possession of "rain" and "wind" and "sun" and "cloud" and "sky" and "trees" and "flowers," and such abstract matters of interest. On the third day she was the sparkling bearer of "cheeks" and "eyes" and "lips" and "hair" and "chin" and "wrist" and "hand" and "fingers," and such intimate words that had a bearing on concrete appreciation. When, however, on the fourth day, she somewhat pinkly introduced and explained the word "blush", Prince Onalyon thought it time to interfere; and even the king, considering the matter very gravely and sensibly, decided that he would take lessons in American at the same time Bezzanna did.

"Oh, will you?" she cried, delighted with the suggestion. "Really, Jimmy will be glad of it. He likes you. He calls you every day by the name he first gave you: Thanks Old Scout; but he can't seem to remember Onalyon's name at all. He calls him Onion!" And she was very gleeful about it. "I wonder what Onion means."

"Nothing in particular, I suppose," guessed the prince, displeased without quite knowing why. "No doubt it's mere dullness of comprehension on his part."

"Nothing doing!" promptly denied Bezzanna, in excellent American. "He's the most intelligent man in the world, I guess. That's why I'm so crazy to talk American--so he can tell me all he knows."

"It seems that he has been telling you a great deal already," suggested the prince jealously. "How did you come to learn the word 'blush'?"

Bezzanna illustrated the word immediately.

"It is none of your particular business!" she flamed, testing the temperature of her carmine cheeks with the back of her hand. There was no reason that she should not have told the innocent circumstance by which she came into possession of "blush," but she utterly denied the prince's right to inquire into the matter; besides, her refusal drove him distracted; and she liked to see him mentally wriggle. It was very curious.

"I'm going to put off breaking in that donkey until Jimmy is well," announced Tedoyah enviously. "I want to learn American, too; and you'll have to make room for Toopy. I think Jimmy knows a whole lot about games. I had a ball in his room last night and he took it in his hand as if it belonged there. His eyes just snapped. He has fine eyes!"

"Blue," murmured Bezzanna dreamily, in American.

The prince looked at her savagely.

"It seems that all Isola is to take lessons from this stranger," he criticized. "I wonder what I could learn from him?"

"Almost everything," suggested Bezzanna slyly. "He's going to make glass for me as soon as he is well."

"Glass!" repeated the king inquiringly.

"Glass!" she reiterated in a triumphant treble. "I told you there was such a thing, and you said that I was silly for wanting impossible things. Glass is the substance you can see through. It's like sheets of clear ice that won't melt. You use it for windows to see out of without letting the rain in, and for cups to drink out of, and to put round the candles so they won't blow out but will still give light, and in place of water or a gold plate to see how pretty you are."

She caught her lip and her face flushed when she said that. Tedoyah burst into sudden boisterous laughter and pointed an accusing finger at her.

"That's when you got the word 'blush,'" he charged, rocking with laughter and clapping his hands.

She tried to make an indignant retort upon that, but for the first time in her life her tongue was attacked with the paralysis of confusion; and, feeling her face turning more and more scarlet, and burning as if it were aflame, she jumped from her chair and hurried from the table and the room.

The prince was naturally outraged.

"I don't see how you can make such a mistake," he protested to the king. "There are no friendships so dangerous as those that spring up in a sick-room."

"Prince!" warned Aunt Gee-gee, bristling.

The king had been laughing almost as heartily as Tedoyah, but now he turned on Onalyon a frowning brow.

"I don't understand you!" he sternly reproved. "Leaving out of the question Bezzanna, who is not to be criticized by any person outside of her immediate family, I estimate this stranger to be a gentleman. If he is not we know what to do with him; but, meantime, I can not find it in my heart to blame him for intimating that Bezzanna is pretty. She is."

"She is to be my wife!" asserted Onalyon stiffly.

The king studied that statement cautiously before he made a reply, while Aunt Gee-gee watched him anxiously.

"We all hope so," he admitted at last; "but at the same time we must bear in mind that the Princess Bezzanna has never agreed to it."

"It does not seem to me that she receives much encouragement in that matter except from myself," retorted the prince.

"You are both hasty and unjust," responded the king. "I have urged her many times and recently, pointing out not only the political need of such a union, but your personal desirability. I must warn you, however, that if she does not choose to make this alliance I shall do nothing to force her inclinations."

Onalyon frowned.

"And I must warn you," he returned, "that if she makes any other choice the politics of Isola may not be so placid as at present."

"You mean that you might contest the throne?" asked the king quietly.

"I dare him to try it!" declared Tedoyah, suddenly injecting himself into an argument that had too much fascination for him to resist. "We'll give you the most excitement you ever had in your life!"

Both the king and the prince laughed heartily; but Aunt Gee-gee bent on him a kindly glance.

"I don't want you to laugh at me," protested Tedoyah, now half angry with both of them. "I am a boy in most things, I guess; but when you talk of war I am a man!"

"You may remain a boy a few years longer then," laughed the king, "for we do not anticipate any immediate war. Frankly, however, Onalyon, I do not see why any one should wish to become king of Isola. It is a tedious position, bringing no great reward, filled with the settlement of petty disputes and with the accounting of petty affairs, and paid only by the self-approval which results from a duty passably done."

"That is your own fault," chided Onalyon, betraying a grievance which he had held secret for a long time. "There was a period when the court of Isola was conducted with sufficient magnificence to make it the pride of her people; when to be king meant more than to be a mere public accountant and domestic adviser."

"And you would bring back that period of reckless magnificence?" queried the king, studying him.

"Absolutely; but on the more brilliant scale made possible by our advance in the arts and sciences."

The king pondered carefully and selected his words with great caution.

"Do you realize the cost of what you suggest?" he wanted to know. "You are aware that, in the reign of Xantobah, starvation and war followed his ten years of waste!"

"Xantobah was a bad manager, I will admit," acknowledged the prince. "What I would propose would be not only an era of magnificence, but one of prosperity also. I would have a hundred servants in the palace to-morrow if I were king, and start every artisan in Isola laboring on luxuries for the consumption and use of the court. The stagnation would cease in an hour. I think I shall try it myself."

"Then I should dislike to see you on the throne," announced the king gravely, and arose.

The prince, also rising, looked at him in frowning calculation, but checked the speech that was on his lips.

"I suppose that, as long as there are men, there will be radical differences of opinions," he observed instead, and laughed lightly. "I wonder if I shall be able to find Bezzanna."

"Nobody ever knows," laughed the king. "Will you come in with us to visit the stranger?"

"No, thank you," declined Onalyon. "I want to find Bezzanna; and then I want to pack up a few of my more portable possessions and take Aunt Zheneezha with me--if she'll come."

"You're not going home?" protested the king hospitably.

"I think I really should become acquainted with my own people," laughed the prince, and lounged away.

"Do you suppose he will fight us?" inquired Tedoyah eagerly.

"Nonsense!" reproved the king, as they walked into the hall and turned up the winding stone stairway.

"I believe he will," persisted the boy. "I wish he would!"

"It's a poor form of excitement," stated the king.

"It isn't because of the excitement exactly, though I should enjoy that," replied Tedoyah; "but I truly think it's the only way to settle the argument. If we don't have it out now they will in fifty years from now--or maybe less; and, as long as it's bound to come, we might as well have the fun of it as anybody."

"I'm afraid men go to war with no better reason than that," smiled the king. "Frankly, Tedoyah," and pausing, with one hand at Jimmy Smith's door, he laid the other affectionately upon his brother's shoulder "frankly, I am dying of inaction myself, and am as eager for activity and excitement as you could possibly be. Since the death of the queen, whom I shall never replace, leaves me without heirs and without heart, I am frantic for some legitimate outlet for my strength; but, merely to provide that outlet, I do not care to destroy our homes and devastate our fields, and kill our best men!"