Читать книгу Dear Enemy - Jean Webster - Страница 25

SUPERINTENDENT'S OFFICE, JOHN GRIER HOME,

April 4.

THE PENDLETON FAMILY,

Palm Beach, Florida.

Dear Sir and Madam:

I have weathered my first visitors' day, and made the trustees a beautiful speech. Everybody said it was a beautiful speech—even my enemies.

Mr. Gordon Hallock's recent visit was exceptionally opportune; I gleaned from him many suggestions as to how to carry an audience.

"Be funny."—I told about Sadie Kate and a few other cherubs that you don't know.

"Keep it concrete and fitted to the intelligence of your audience."—I watched the Hon. Cy, and never said a thing that he couldn't understand.

"Flatter your hearers."—I hinted delicately that all of these new reforms were due to the wisdom and initiative of our peerless trustees.

"Give it a high moral tone, with a dash of pathos."—I dwelt upon the parentless condition of these little wards of Society. And it was very affecting—my enemy wiped away a tear!

Then I fed them up on chocolate and whipped cream and lemonade and tartar sandwiches, and sent them home, expansive and beaming, but without any appetite for dinner.

I dwell thus at length upon our triumph, in order to create in you a happy frame of mind, before passing to the higeous calamity that so nearly wrecked the occasion.

"Now follows the dim horror of my tale,

And I feel I'm growing gradually pale,

For, even at this day,

Though its smell has passed away,

When I venture to remember it, I quail!"

You never heard of our little Tammas Kehoe, did you? I simply haven't featured Tammas because he requires so much ink and time and vocabulary. He's a spirited lad, and he follows his dad, a mighty hunter of old—that sounds like more Bab Ballads, but it isn't; I made it up as I went along.

We can't break Tammas of his inherited predatory instincts. He shoots the chickens with bows and arrows and lassoes the pigs and plays bull-fight with the cows—and oh, is very destructive! But his crowning villainy occurred an hour before the trustees' meeting, when we wanted to be so clean and sweet and engaging.

It seems that he had stolen the rat trap from the oat bin, and had set it up in the wood lot, and yesterday morning was so fortunate as to catch a fine big skunk.

Singapore was the first to report the discovery. He returned to the house and rolled on the rugs in a frenzy of remorse over his part of the business. While our attention was occupied with Sing, Tammas was busily skinning his prey in the seclusion of the woodshed. He buttoned the pelt inside his jacket, conveyed it by a devious route through the length of this building, and concealed it under his bed where he thought it wouldn't be found.

Then he went—per schedule—to the basement to help freeze the ice-cream for our guests. You notice that we omitted ice-cream from the menu.

In the short time that remained we created all the counter-irritation that was possible. Noah (negro furnace man) started smudge fires at intervals about the grounds. Cook waved a shovelful of burning coffee through the house. Betsy sprinkled the corridors with ammonia. Miss Snaith daintily treated the rugs with violet water. I sent an emergency call to the doctor who came and mixed a gigantic solution of chlorid of lime. But still, above and beneath and through every other odor, the unlaid ghost of Tammas's victim cried for vengeance.

The first business that came up at the meeting, was whether we should dig a hole and bury, not only Tammas, but the whole main building. You can see with what finesse I carried off the shocking event, when I tell you that the Hon. Cy went home chuckling over a funny story, instead of grumbling at the new superintendent's inability to manage boys.

We've our ain bit weird to dree!

As ever,

S. McBRIDE.