Читать книгу Harper's Young People, January 25, 1881 - Various - Страница 1

BY JAMES OTIS

Chapter VII

AN ACCIDENT AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Toby's experience of the evening was very similar to that of the afternoon, save that he was so fortunate as not to take any more bad money in payment for his goods. Mr. Jacobs scolded and swore alternately, and the boy really surprised him in the way of selling goods, though he was very careful not to say anything about it, but made Toby believe that he was doing only about half as much work as he ought to do. Toby's private hoard of money was increased that evening by presents, ninety cents, and he began to look upon himself as almost a rich man.

When the performance was nearly over, Mr. Jacobs called to him to help in packing up; and by the time the last spectator had left the tent, the worldly possessions of Messrs. Lord and Jacobs were ready for removal, and Toby allowed to do as he had a mind to, so long as he was careful to be on hand when old Ben was ready to start.

Toby thought that he would have time to pay a visit to his friends the skeleton and the fat woman, and to that end started toward the place where their tent had been standing; but to his sorrow he found that it was already being taken down, and he only had time to thank Mrs. Treat and to press the fleshless hand of her shadowy husband as they entered their wagon to drive away.

He was disappointed, for he had hoped to be able to speak with his new-made friends a few moments before the weary night's ride commenced; but failing in that, he went hastily back to the monkeys' cage. Old Ben was there getting things ready for a start; but the wooden sides of the cage had not been put up, and Toby had no difficulty in calling the aged monkey up to the bars. He held one of the fat woman's doughnuts in his hand, and he said, as he passed it through to the animal:

"I thought perhaps you might be hungry, Mr. Stubbs, and this is some of what the skeleton's wife give me. I hain't got very much time to talk with you now; but the first chance I can get away to-morrow, an' when there hain't anybody 'round, I want to tell you something."

The monkey had taken the doughnut in his hand-like paws, and was tearing it to pieces, eating small portions of it very rapidly.

"Don't hurry yourself," said Toby, warningly, "for Uncle Dan'l always told me the worst thing a feller could do was to eat fast. If you want any more, after we start, just put your hand through the little hole up there near the seat, an' I'll give you all you want."

From the look on his face, Toby confidently believed the monkey was going to make some reply; but just then Ben shut up the sides, separating Toby and Mr. Stubbs, and the order was given to start.

Toby clambered up on to the high seat, Ben followed him, and in another instant the team was moving along slowly down the dusty road, preceded and followed by the many wagons with their tiny swinging lights.

"Well," said Ben, when he had got his team well under way; and felt that he could indulge in a little conversation, "how did you get along to-day?"

Toby related all of his movements, and gave the driver a faithful account of all that had happened to him, concluding his story by saying, "That was one of Mrs. Treat's doughnuts that I just gave to Mr. Stubbs."

"To whom?" asked Ben, in surprise.

"To Mr. Stubbs – the old fellow here in the cart, you know, that's been so good to me."

Toby heard a sort of gurgling sound, saw the driver's body sway back and forth in a trembling way, and was just becoming thoroughly alarmed, when he thought of the previous night, and understood that Ben was only laughing in his own peculiar way.

"How did you know his name was Stubbs?" asked Ben, after he had recovered his breath.

"Oh, I don't know that that is his real name," was the quick reply; "I only call him that because he looks so much like a feller with that name that I knew at home. He don't seem to mind because I call him Stubbs."

Ben looked at Toby earnestly for a moment, acting all the time as if he wanted to laugh again, but didn't dare to for fear he might burst a blood-vessel, and then he said, as he patted him on the shoulder, "Well, you are the queerest little fish that I ever saw in all my travels. You seem to think that that monkey knows all you say to him."

"I'm sure he does," said Toby, positively. "He don't say anything right out to me, but he knows everything I tell him. Do you suppose he could talk if he tried to?"

"Look here, Mr. Toby Tyler," and Ben turned half around in his seat, and looked Toby full in the face, as to give more emphasis to his words, "are you heathen enough to think that that monkey could talk if he wanted to?"

"I know I hain't a heathen," said Toby, thoughtfully, "for if I had been, some of the missionaries would have found me out a good while ago; but I never saw anybody like this old Mr. Stubbs before, an' I thought he could talk if he wanted to, just as the Living Skeleton does, or his wife. Anyhow, Mr. Stubbs winks at me; an' how could he do that if he didn't know what I've been sayin' to him?"

"Look here, my son," said Ben, in a most fatherly fashion, "monkeys hain't anything but beasts, an' they don't know how to talk any more than they know what you say to 'em."

"Didn't you ever hear any of them speak a word?"

"Never. I've been in a circus, man an' boy, nigh on to forty years, an' I never seen nothin' in a monkey more'n any other beast, except their awful mischiefness."

"Well," said Toby, still unconvinced, "I believe Mr. Stubbs knew what I said to him, anyway."

"Now don't be foolish, Toby," pleaded Ben. "You can't show me one thing that a monkey ever did because you told him to."

Just at that moment Toby felt some one pulling at the back of his coat, and looking around, he saw it was a little brown hand, reaching through the bars of the air-hole of the cage, that was tugging away at his coat.

"There!" he said, triumphantly, to Ben. "Look there. I told Mr. Stubbs if he wanted anything more to eat, to tell me, an' I would give it to him. Now you can see for yourself that he's come for it," and Toby took a doughnut from his pocket, and put it into the tiny hand, which was immediately withdrawn. "Now what do you think of Mr. Stubbs knowing what I say to him?"

"They often stick their paws up through there," said Ben, in a matter-of-fact tone. "I've had 'em pull my coat in the night till they made me as nervous as ever any old woman was. You see, Toby, my boy, monkeys is monkeys; an' you mustn't go to gettin' the idea that they're anything else, for it's a mistake. You think this old monkey in here knows what you say? Why, that's just the cuteness of the old fellow; he watches you to see if he can't do just as you do, an' that's all there is about it."

Toby was more than half convinced that Ben was putting the matter in its proper light, and he would have believed all that had been said if, just at that moment, he had not seen that brown hand reaching through the hole to clutch him again by the coat.

The action seemed so natural, so like a hungry boy who gropes in the dark pantry for something to eat, that it would have taken more arguments than Ben had at his disposal to persuade Toby that his Mr. Stubbs could not understand all that was said to him. Toby put another doughnut in the outstretched hand, and then sat silently, as if in a brown-study over some difficult problem.

For some time the ride was made in silence. Ben was going through all the motions of whistling without uttering a sound, a favorite amusement of his, and Toby's thoughts were far away in the humble home he had scorned, with Uncle Daniel, whose virtues had increased with every mile of distance which had been put between them, and whose faults had decreased in a corresponding ratio.

Toby's thoughtfulness had made him sleepy, and his eyes were almost closed in slumber, when he was startled by a crashing sound, was conscious of a sense of being hurled from his seat by some great force, and then he lay senseless by the side of the road, while the wagon remained a perfect wreck, from out of which a small army of monkeys were escaping. Ben's experienced ear had told him at the first crash that his wagon was breaking down, and without having time to warn Toby of his peril, he had leaped clear of the wreck, keeping his horses in perfect control, thus averting any more trouble. It was the breaking of one of the axles which Toby had heard just before he was thrown from his seat, and when the body of the wagon had come down upon the hard road, the entire structure had been wrecked.

The monkeys, thus suddenly released from their confinement, had scampered off in every direction, and, by a singular chance, Toby's aged friend started for the woods in such a direction as to bring him directly upon the boy's senseless body. As the monkey came up to Toby he stopped, through the well-known curiosity of his kind, and began to examine the body carefully, prying into each pocket he could reach, and trying to open the half-closed eyelids in order to peep in under them.

Fortunately for Toby, he had fallen upon a mud-bank, and was only stunned for the moment, having received no serious bruises, even though he had been thrown such a distance. The attentions bestowed upon him by the monkey served the purpose of bringing him to his senses; and after he had looked around him in the gray light of the coming morning, it would have taken far more of a philosopher than ever old Ben was to have persuaded the boy that monkeys did not possess reasoning faculties.

The monkey was picking at his ears, nose, and mouth, as monkeys always do when they get an opportunity, and the expression of his face was as grave as possible. Toby firmly believed that the monkey's face showed sorrow at his fall, and he believed that the attentions which were being bestowed upon him were for the purpose of learning whether he had been injured or not.

"Don't worry, Mr. Stubbs," said Toby, anxious to reassure his friend, as he sat upright and looked about him. "I didn't get hurt any, but I would like to know how I got 'way over here."

It really seemed as if the monkey was pleased to know that his little friend was not hurt, for he seated himself on his haunches, and his face expressed the liveliest pleasure that Toby was well again – or at least that was the way the boy interpreted the look.

By this time the news of the accident had been shouted ahead from one team to the other, and all hands were hurrying to the scene for the purpose of rendering some aid. As Toby saw them coming, he also saw a number of small forms, looking something like men, hurrying past him, and for the first time he understood how it was that the aged monkey was at liberty, and knew that those little dusky forms were the other occupants of the cage escaping to the woods.

"See there, Mr. Stubbs! see there!" he exclaimed, quickly, pointing toward the fugitives; "they're all going off into the woods. What shall we do?"

The sight of the runaways seemed to excite the old monkey quite as much as it had the boy. He jumped to his feet, chattered in the most excited way, screamed two or three times as if he was calling them back, and then started off in vigorous pursuit.

"Now he's gone too," said Toby, disconsolately, believing the old fellow had run away from him; "I didn't think Mr. Stubbs would treat me this way."

[to be continued.]