Rudder Grange Part 26

"'That woman at the gate,' I said, almost chokin' as I spoke, 'wont let me out.'

"'She wont?' said Mrs. Jackson. 'Well, that's a way she has. Four times the Bank of the United States has closed its doors before I was able to get there, on account of that woman's obstinacy about the gate. Indeed, I have not been to the Bank at all yet, for of course it is of no use to go after banking hours.'

"'An' I believe, too,' said her brother in his heavy voice, 'that she has kept out my team of little oxen. Otherwise it would be here now.'

"I couldn't stand any more of this an' ran into our room where my husband was. When I told him what had happened, he was real sorry.

"'I didn't know you thought of going out,' he said, 'or I would have told you all about it. An' now sit down an' quiet yourself, an' I'll tell you jus' how things is.' So down we sits, an' says he, jus' as carm as a summer cloud, 'My dear, this is a lunertic asylum. Now, don't jump,' he says; 'I didn't bring you here, because I thought you was crazy, but because I wanted you to see what kind of people they was who imagined themselves earls and earl-esses, an' all that sort o' thing, an' to have an idea how the thing worked after you'd been doing it a good while an' had got used to it. I thought it would be a good thing, while I was Earl Jiguel and you was a n.o.ble earl-ess, to come to a place where people acted that way. I knowed you had read lots o' books about knights and princes an' b.l.o.o.d.y towers, an' that you knowed all about them things, but I didn't suppose you did know how them same things looked in these days, an' a lunertic asylum was the only place where you could see 'em. So I went to a doctor I knowed,' he says, 'an' got a certificate from him to this private inst.i.tution, where we could stay for a while an' get posted on romantics.'

"'Then,' says I, 'the upshot was that you wanted to teach a lesson.'

"'Jus' that,' says he.

"'All right,' says I; 'it's teached. An' now let's get out of this as quick as we kin.'

"'That'll suit me,' he says, 'an' we'll leave by the noon train. I'll go an' see about the trunk bein' sent down.'

"So off he went to see the man who kept the house, while I falls to packin' up the trunk as fast as I could."

"Weren't you dreadfully angry at him?" asked Euphemia, who, having a romantic streak in her own composition, did not sympathize altogether with this heroic remedy for Pomona's disease.

"No, ma'am," said Pomona, "not long. When I thought of Mrs. General Jackson and Tom Thumb, I couldn't help thinkin' that I must have looked pretty much the same to my husband, who, I knowed now, had only been makin'-believe to make-believe. An' besides, I couldn't be angry very long for laughin, for when he come back in a minute, as mad as a March hare, an' said they wouldn't let me out nor him nuther, I fell to laughin' ready to crack my sides.

"'They say,' said he, as soon as he could speak straight, 'that we can't go out without another certificate from the doctor. I told 'em I'd go myself an' see him about it but they said no, I couldn't, for if they did that way everybody who ever was sent here would be goin' out the next day to see about leavin'. I didn't want to make no fuss, so I told them I'd write a letter to the doctor and tell him to send an order that would soon show them whether we could go out or not. They said that would be the best thing to do, an so I'm goin' to write it this minute,'--which he did.

"'How long will we have to wait?' says I, when the letter was done.

"'Well,' says he, 'the doctor can't get this before to-morrow mornin', an' even if he answers right away, we won't get our order to go out until the next day. So we'll jus' have to grin an' bear it for a day an'

a half.'

"'This is a lively old bridal-trip,' said I,--'dry falls an' a lunertic asylum.'

"'We'll try to make the rest of it better,' said he.

"But the next day wasn't no better. We staid in our room all day, for we didn't care to meet Mrs. Jackson an' her crazy brother, an' I'm sure we didn't want to see the mean creatures who kept the house. We knew well enough that they only wanted us to stay so that they could get more board-money out of us."

"I should have broken out," cried Euphemia. "I would never have staid an hour in that place, after I found out what it was, especially on a bridal trip."

"If we'd done that," said Pomona, "they'd have got men after us, an'

then everybody would have thought we was real crazy. We made up our minds to wait for the doctor's letter, but it wasn't much fun. An' I didn't tell no romantic stories to fill up the time. We sat down an'

behaved like the commonest kind o' people. You never saw anybody sicker of romantics than I was when I thought of them two loons that called themselves Mrs. Andrew Jackson and General Tom Thumb. I dropped Miguel altogether, an' he dropped Jiguel, which was a relief to me, an' I took strong to Jonas, even callin' him Jone, which I consider a good deal uglier an' commoner even than Jonas. He didn't like this much, but said that if it would help me out of the Miguel, he didn't care.

"Well, on the mornin' of the next day I went into the little front room that they called the office, to see if there was a letter for us yet, an' there wasn't n.o.body there to ask. But I saw a pile of letters under a weight on the table, an' I jus' looked at these to see if one of 'em was for us, an' if there wasn't the very letter Jone had written to the doctor! They'd never sent it! I rushes back to Jone an' tells him, an'

he jus' set an' looked at me without sayin' a word. I didn't wonder he couldn't speak.

"'I'll go an' let them people know what I think of 'em,' says I.

"'Don't do that,' said Jone, catchin' me by the sleeve. 'It wont do no good. Leave the letter there, an' don't say nothin' about it. We'll stay here till afternoon quite quiet, an' then we'll go away. That garden wall isn't high.'

"'An' how about the trunk?' says I.

"'Oh, we'll take a few things in our pockets, an' lock up the trunk, an'

ask the doctor to send for it when we get to the city.'

"'All right,' says I. An' we went to work to get ready to leave.

"About five o'clock in the afternoon, when it was a nice time to take a walk under the trees, we meandered quietly down to a corner of the back wall, where Jone thought it would be rather convenient to get over. He hunted up a short piece of board which he leaned up ag'in the wall, an'

then he put his foot on the top of that an' got hold of the top of the wall an' climbed up, as easy as nuthin'. Then he reached down to help me step onto the board. But jus' as he was agoin' to take me by the hand: 'h.e.l.lo!' says he. 'Look a-there!' An' I turned round an' looked, an' if there wasn't Mrs. Andrew Jackson an' General Tom Thumb a-walkin' down the path.

"'What shall we do?' says I.

"'Come along,' says he. 'We aint a-goin' to stop for them. Get up, all the same.'

"I tried to get up as he said, but it wasn't so easy for me on account of my not bein' such a high stepper as Jone, an' I was a good while a-gettin' a good footin' on the board.

"Mrs. Jackson an' the General, they came right up to us an' set down on a bench which was fastened between two trees near the wall. An' there they set, a-lookin' steady at us with their four little eyes, like four empty thimbles.

"'You appear to be goin' away,' says Mrs. Jackson.

"'Yes,' says Jone from the top of the wall. We're a-goin' to take a slight stroll outside, this salu-brious evenin'.'

"'Do you think,' says she, 'that the United States Bank would be open this time of day?'

"'Oh no,' says Jone, 'the banks all close at three o'clock. It's a good deal after that now.'

"'But if I told the officers who I was, wouldn't that make a difference?' says she. 'Wouldn't they go down an' open the bank?'

"'Not much,' says Jone, givin' a pull which brought me right up to the top o' the wall an' almost clean down the other side, with one jerk. 'I never knowed no officers that would do that. But,' says he, a kind o'

shuttin' his eyes so that she shouldn't see he was lyin', 'we'll talk about that when we come back.'

"'If you see that team of little oxen,' says the big man, 'send 'em 'round to the front gate.'

"'All right,' says Jone; an' he let me down the outside of the wall as if I had been a bag o' horse-feed.

"'But if the bank isn't open you can't pay for it when it does come,' we heard the old lady a-sayin' as we hurried off.

"We didn't lose no time agoin' down to that station, an' it's lucky we didn't, for a train for the city was comin' jus' as we got there, an' we jumped aboard without havin' no time to buy tickets. There wasn't many people in our car, an we got a seat together.

"'Now then,' says Jone, as the cars went abuzzin' along, 'I feel as if I was really on a bridal-trip, which I mus' say I didn't at that there asylum.'

"An' then I said: 'I should think not,' an' we both bust out a-laughin', as well we might, feelin' sich a change of surroundin's.

"'Do you think,' says somebody behind us, when we'd got through laughin', 'that if I was to send a boy up to the cas.h.i.+er he would either come down or send me the key of the bank?'

"We both turned aroun' as quick as lightnin', an' if there wasn't them two lunertics in the seat behind us!

"It nearly took our breaths away to see them settin' there, staring at us with their thimble eyes, an' a-wearin' their little straw hats, both alike.