Читать книгу Jinny the Carrier - Israel Zangwill - Страница 25

“I’ll be no submissive wife,

No, not I——”

He lost his temper. “Oh, you needn’t make such a fuss over yourself. I dare say I can find plenty of wives—with my connexion.”

“Among pigs?” she said sweetly. She jumped down and began to light the lamp. “This is your getting-out place.”

“It’s nothing of the sort—I go on to the bridge.”

“Impossible. My horse is lame.”

“I know all about that.” And snatching up the reins she had dropped, “Gee-up!” he called suddenly.

But Methusalem knew better.

“You’ll never get home that way,” said Jinny, smiling.

“Then how the hell——?” he began furiously.

“Shanks’s mare,” she reminded him again. “That’s not lame.”

He gave her a long, nasty look as though meditating the law of the stronger. But he tried pleading first.

“By the time I walk home, my mother’ll have locked up; thinking I’m sitting up with a patient.”

“There’s the poorhouse!”

He winced. “You’ve got to carry me,” he said sullenly, “or I’ll have the law on you.”

“There’s no law to make me carry aught save goods.” And she sang on carelessly:

“Should a humdrum husband say,

That at home I ought to stay——”

The little voice, rippling through those demure lips, wellnigh stung him to close her mouth with the masterful gag of kisses, but a remnant of sanity warned him not to spoil a fine animal practice by a scandal. Besides Jinny had her whip, and what was still more formidable, her horn.

“I’ll be even with you for this!” And jumping down, he strode off furiously.

“Hullo! Mr. Skindle! Hullo!”

“Keep away from me!” It was at once an appeal and a warning.

“Don’t you want your case of instruments? Not that you’ll be in time to kill those poor horses to-night.”

With an unsmothered oath he turned back and clambered into the interior, upsetting Nip’s basket in his fury; the result of which neglect to let sleeping dogs lie was that the unsagacious animal mounted growling guard over the instrument-case, as before a burglar.

“You’d best get it for me,” he said sullenly. “And by the way, how much do I owe you?”

“Never mind,” she said blandly, handing him his burden. “You promised to be even with me.”

“The little vixen!” he thought, as he trudged towards a farm where he remembered doctoring a horse. “She ought to be put in the ducking-pond! What a lucky escape!”