Читать книгу Roy Blakeley's Motor Caravan - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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That man’s name was Archibald Abbington, and he talked dandy, just as if he had learned it out of a book. One of those other people told us that his right name was Henry Flynn. I felt sorry for them, that’s one sure thing. And, oh, boy, but those were two peachy dogs they had. The thing those dogs did mostly was to chase Eliza. Miss Le Farge, she was the one that played Eliza. They never let anybody feed the dogs except her, so they’d be sure to chase her.

Harry said, “Why don’t you let them chase some of these squashes away? They stand around gaping just as if they never saw a human being before. How far is Grumpy’s Cross-roads anyway?”

Mr. Abbington said, “It’s a matter of a hundred miles or thereabout.” Gee, he was crazy about that word thereabout. Then he said that they had a contract with Major Grumpy to give their first performance the next afternoon at the Grand Army reunion, but he didn’t know what they would do because they were stranded.

Harry was awful nice to him. He said, “Well, it looks as if you were in a kind of a tight place, Archy, and I wish we could help you out. We’re reproducing the good old times, too, as you might say, with our overland caravan. These are boy scouts who are taking care of our commissary department and this is their gallant leader, Roy Blakeley. How about it, Roy? Do you think we could squeeze in a good turn, just to vary the monotony? You’re the boss of that end of the outfit. It would mean driving all night instead of stopping to camp as we meant to do. Let’s look on the map and see where Grumpy’s Cross-roads is, anyway.”

I said, “The more the merrier; I don’t care where it is or how long it takes us to get there. We’ll take you. That’s our middle name, doing good turns.”

“We give shows ourselves sometimes,” Pee-wee said. “We have a movie apparatus and we give movie shows. But one thing, we’ve never been stranded.”

Brent said in that funny way of his, “But we hope to be, sometime; we can’t expect to have everything at once.”

Mr. Abbington said, awful dignified like, “We have been stranded many times, sir. I can assure you it is not pleasant, especially when one of our company is ill.”

Gee whiz, I could see plain enough that one of them wasn’t feeling good; that was the one they called Miss De Voil—she played Topsy. Maybe the squashes disagreed with her, hey?

Harry said, “Well, it’s up to you kids, Roy. Grumpy’s Cross-roads is east, so it isn’t exactly out of our way, only we’ll have to hit into a pretty punk road and there’ll be no sleeping around the camp-fire to-night. What do you say?”

Mr. Abbington and all the rest of those people looked at us kids awful anxious, sort of. Gee, it made me feel sorry for them. All of a sudden Pee-wee piped up. He said, “Camp-fires aren’t the principal things in scouting; good turns come first. Anyway, once I heard that actors always help each other and maybe, kind of, you might say we’re actors, because sometimes we give shows.”

Mr. Abbington said, “I am delighted to hear that, my young friend. Let me ask you what you have played.”

“He plays the harmonica when nobody stops him,” Westy said.

I said, “Oh, sure, he’s a peachy actor; he plays dominoes and tennis and tiddle-de-winks. The most stirring part he ever plays is when he stirs his coffee.”

Miss Le Farge said to another one of those ladies, “Oh, isn’t he just too cute?”

So then we helped them get all their stuff into the van. They had a tent and a lot of other things. Harry whispered to me that he guessed they hadn’t had any supper and he said he was afraid if we didn’t give them something to eat the man that played the slave driver wouldn’t have strength enough to whip Uncle Tom the next afternoon. Brent said maybe even Uncle Tom wouldn’t have strength enough to stand up and be whipped. He said, “We’d better feed them up.”

So we made a fire in the grove right alongside the road so as not to interfere with Miss De Voil, who was lying on one of the mattresses in the van. We told the ladies that they could have the van all to themselves that night so they could get good and rested. I fried some bacon for them and heated some beans and we got water out of the railroad station.

Gee whiz, the water was the only thing about that railroad that was running.