A Jolly Fellowship, Frank Richard Stockton [best way to read an ebook TXT] 📗

ridiculous figure, Mr. Chipperton, in his short[270] green trousers and his thin striped coat, with his arms around his daughter, and the fishing-pole tightly clasped to her back, while the poor little fish dangled and bobbed at every fresh hug.

Everybody on board was looking at them, and one of the little black boys, who didn't appear to appreciate sentiment, made a dash for the fish, unhooked it, and put like a good fellow. This rather broke the spell that was on us all, and Rectus and I ran on shore.

We did not ask any questions, we were too glad to see him. After he had put Corny on one side, and had shaken our hands wildly with his left hand, for his right still held the pole, and had tried to talk and found he couldn't, we called a carriage that had just come up, and hustled him and Corny into it. I took the pole from his hand, and asked him where he would go to. He called out the name of the hotel where we were staying, and I shut the door, and sent them off. I did not ask a word about Corny's mother, for I knew Mr. Chipperton would not be sitting on a post and fishing if his wife was dead.

I threw the pole and line away, and then Rectus and I walked up to the hotel. We forgot all about Celia, who was left to go home when she chose.

It was some hours before we saw the Chippertons, and then we were called into their room, where there was a talking and a telling things, such as I never heard before.

It was some time before I could get Mr. and Mrs. Chipperton's story straight, but this was about the[271] amount of it: They were picked up sooner than we were—just after day-break. When they left the ship, they rowed as hard as they could, for several hours, and so got a good distance from us. It was well they met with a vessel as soon as they did, for all the women who had been on the steamer were in this boat, and they had a hard time of it. The water dashed over them very often, and Mr. Chipperton thought that some of them could not have held out much longer (I wondered what they would have done on our raft).

The vessel that picked them up was a coasting schooner bound to one of the Florida Keys, and she wouldn't put back with them, for she was under some sort of a contract, and kept right straight on her way. When they got down there, they chartered a vessel which brought them up to Fernandina, where they took the steamer for Savannah. They were on the very steamer we passed in the inside passage. If we had only known that!

They telegraphed the moment they reached Fernandina, and proposed stopping at St. Augustine, but it was thought they could make better time by keeping right on to Fernandina. The telegram reached Savannah after we had left on the tug.

Mr. Chipperton said he got his fancy clothes on board the schooner. He bought them of a man—a passenger, I believe—who had an extra suit.

"I think," said Mr. Chipperton, "he was the only man on that mean little vessel who had two suits of clothes. I don't know whether these were his week[272]day or his Sunday clothes. As for my own, they were so wet that I took them off the moment I got on board the schooner, and I never saw them again. I don't know what became of them, and, to tell the truth, I haven't thought of 'em. I was too glad to get started for Savannah, where I knew we'd meet Corny, if she was alive. You see, I trusted in you boys."

Just here, Mrs. Chipperton kissed us both again. This made several times that she had done it. We didn't care so much, as there was no one there but ourselves and the Chippertons.

"When we got here, and found you had gone to look for us, I wanted to get another tug and go right after you, but my wife was a good deal shaken up, and I did not want to leave her; and Parker and Darrell said they had given positive orders to have you brought back this morning, so I waited. I was only too glad to know you were all safe. I got up early in the morning, and went down to watch for you. You must have been surprised to see me fishing, but I had nothing else to do, and so I hired a pole and line of a boy. It helped very much to pass the time away."

"Yes," said Rectus, "you didn't notice us at all, you were so much interested."

"Well, you see," said Mr. Chipperton, "I had a bite just at that minute; and, besides, I really did not look for you on such a little boat. I had an idea you would come on something more respectable than that."

"As if we should ever think of respectability at such a time!" said Mrs. Chipperton, with tears in her eyes.[273]

"As for you boys," said Mr. Chipperton, getting up and taking us each by the hand, "I don't know what to say to you."

I thought, for my part, that they had all said enough already. They had praised and thanked us for things we had never thought of.

"I almost wish you were orphans," he continued, "so that I might adopt you. But a boy can't have more than one father. However, I tell you! a boy can have as many uncles as he pleases. I'll be an uncle to each of you as long as I live. Ever after this call me Uncle Chipperton. Do you hear that?"

We heard, and said we'd do it.

Soon after this, lots of people came in, and the whole thing was gone over again and again. I am sorry to say that, at one or two places in the story, Mrs. Chipperton kissed us both again.

Before we went down to dinner, I asked Uncle Chipperton how his lung had stood it, through all this exposure.

"Oh, bother the lung!" he said. "I tell you; boys, I've lost faith in that lung,—at least, in there being anything the matter with it. I shall travel for it no more."[274]

CHAPTER XXII. LOOKING AHEAD.

"We have made up our minds," said Uncle Chipperton, that afternoon, "to go home and settle down, and let Corny go to school. I hate to send her away from us, but it will be for her good. But that wont be until next fall. We'll keep her until then. And now, I'll tell you what I think we'd all better do. It's too soon to go North yet. No one should go from the soft climate of the semi-tropics to the Northern or Middle States until mild weather has fairly set in there. And that will not happen for a month yet.

"Now, this is my plan. Let us all take a leisurely trip homeward by the way of Mobile, and New Orleans and the Mississippi River. This will be just the season, and we shall be just the party. What do you say?"

Everybody, but me, said it would be splendid. I had exactly the same idea about it, but I didn't say so, for there was no use in it. I couldn't go on a trip[275] like that. I had been counting up my money that morning, and found I would have to shave pretty closely to get home by rail,—and I wanted, very much, to go that way—although it would be cheaper to return by sea,—for I had a great desire to go through North and South Carolina and Virginia, and see Washington. It would have seemed like a shame to go back by sea, and miss all this. But, as I said, I had barely enough money for this trip, and to make it I must start the next day. And there was no use writing home for money. I knew there was none there to spare, and I wouldn't have asked for it if there had been. If there was any travelling money, some of the others ought to have it. I had had my share.

It was very different with Rectus and the Chippertons. They could afford to take this trip, and there was no reason why they shouldn't take it.

When I told them this, Uncle Chipperton flashed up in a minute, and said that that was all stuff and nonsense,—the trip shouldn't cost me a cent. What was the sense, he said, of thinking of a few dollars when such pleasure was in view? He would see that I had no money-troubles, and if that was all, I could go just as well as not. Didn't he owe me thousands of dollars?

All this was very kind, but it didn't suit me. I knew that he did not owe me a cent, for if I had done anything for him, I made no charge for it. And even if I had been willing to let him pay my expenses,—which I wasn't,—my father would never have listened to it.

So I thanked him, but told him the thing couldn't be[276] worked in that way, and I said it over and over again, until, at last, he believed it. Then he offered to lend me the money necessary, but this offer I had to decline, too. As I had no way of paying it back, I might as well have taken it as a gift. There wasn't anything he could offer, after this, except to get me a free pass; and as he had no way of doing that, he gave up the job, and we all went down to supper. That evening, as I was putting a few things into a small valise which I had bought,—as our trunks were lost on the "Tigris," I had very little trouble in packing up,—I said to Rectus that by the time he started off he could lay in a new stock of clothes. I had made out our accounts, and had his money ready to hand over to him, but I knew that his father had arranged for him to draw on a Savannah bank, both for the tug-boat money and for money for himself. I think that Mr. Colbert would have authorized me to do this drawing, if Rectus had not taken the matter into his own hands when he telegraphed. But it didn't matter, and there wasn't any tug-boat money to pay, any way, for Uncle Chipperton paid that. He said it had all been done for his daughter, and he put his foot down hard, and wouldn't let Rectus hand over a cent.

"I wont have any more time than you will have," replied Rectus, "for I'm going to-morrow."

"I didn't suppose they'd start so soon," I said "I'm sure there's no need of any hurry."

"I'm not going with them," said Rectus, putting a lonely shirt into a trunk that he had bought. "I'm going home with you."[277]

I was so surprised at this that I just stared at him.

"What do you mean?" said I.

"Mean?" said he. "Why, just what I say. Do you suppose I'd go off with them, and let you straggle up home by yourself? Not any for me, thank you. And besides, I thought you were to take charge of me. How would you look going back and saying you'd turned me over to another party?"