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

me over a chair.

The next morning, after an early breakfast, we went to bid the Chippertons good-bye. We intended to walk to the dépôt, and so wanted to start early. I was now cutting down all extra expenses.

"Ready so soon!" cried Uncle Chipperton, appearing at the door of his room. "Why, we haven't had our breakfast yet."

"We have to make an early start, if we go by the morning train," said I, "and we wanted to see you all before we started."

"Glad to see you at any hour of the night or day,—always very glad to see you; but I think we had better be getting our breakfast, if the train goes so early."

"Are you going to start to-day?" I asked, in surprise.[279]

"Certainly," said he. "Why shouldn't we? I bought a new suit of clothes yesterday, and my wife and Corny look well enough for travelling purposes. We can start as well as not, and I'd go in my green trousers if I hadn't any others. My dear," he said, looking into the room, "you and Corny must come right down to breakfast."

"But perhaps you need not hurry," I said. "I don't know when the train for Mobile starts."

"Mobile!" he cried. "Who's going to Mobile? Do you suppose that we are? Not a bit of it. When I proposed that trip, I didn't propose it for Mrs. Chipperton, or Corny, or myself, or you, or Rectus, or Tom, or Dick, or Harry. I proposed it for all of us. If all of us cannot go, none of us can. If you must go north this morning, so must we. We've nothing to pack, and that's a comfort. Nine o'clock, did you say? You may go on to the dépôt, if you like, and we'll eat our breakfasts, take a carriage, and be there in time."

They were there in time, and we all went north together.

We had a jolly trip. We saw Charleston, and Richmond, and Washington, and Baltimore, and Philadelphia; and at last we saw Jersey City, and our folks waiting for us in the great dépôt of the Pennsylvania railroad.

When I saw my father and mother and my sister Helen standing there on the stone foot-walk, as the cars rolled in, I was amazed. I hadn't expected them. It was all right enough for Rectus to expect[280] his father and mother, for they lived in New York, but I had supposed that I should meet my folks at the station in Willisville. But it was a capital idea in them to come to New York. They said they couldn't wait at home, and besides, they wanted to see and know the Chippertons, for we all seemed so bound together, now.

Well, it wasn't hard to know the Chippertons. Before we reached the hotel where my folks were staying, and where we all went to take luncheon together, any one would have thought that Uncle Chipperton was really a born brother to father and old Mr. Colbert. How he did talk! How everybody talked! Except Helen. She just sat and listened and looked at Corny—a girl who had been shipwrecked, and had been on a little raft in the midst of the stormy billows. My mother and the two other ladies cried a good deal, but it was a sunshiny sort of crying, and wouldn't have happened so often, I think, if Mrs. Chipperton had not been so ready to lead off.

After luncheon we sat for two or three hours in one of the parlors, and talked, and talked, and talked. It was a sort of family congress. Everybody told everybody else what he or she was going to do, and took information of the same kind in trade. I was to go to college in the fall, but as that had been pretty much settled long ago, it couldn't be considered as news. I looked well enough, my father said, to do all the hard studying that was needed; and the professor was anxiously waiting to put me through a course of training for the happy lot of Freshman.[281]

"But he's not going to begin his studies as soon as he gets home," said my mother. "We're going to have him to ourselves for a while." And I did not doubt that. I hadn't been gone very long, to be sure, but then a ship had been burned from under me, and that counted for about a year's absence.

Corny's fate had been settled, too, in a general way, but the discussion that went on about a good boarding-school for her showed that a particular settlement might take some time. Uncle Chipperton wanted her to go to some school near his place on the Hudson River, so that he could drive over and see her every day or two, and Mrs. Colbert said she thought that that wouldn't do, because no girl could study as she ought to, if her father was coming to see her all the time, and Uncle Chipperton wanted to know what possible injury she thought he would do his daughter by going to see her; and Mrs. Colbert said, none at all, of course she didn't mean that, and Mrs. Chipperton said that Corny and her father ought really to go to the same school, and then we all laughed, and my father put in quickly, and asked about Rectus. It was easy to see that it would take all summer to get a school for Corny.

"Well," said Mr. Colbert, "I've got a place for Sammy. Right in my office. He's to be a man of business, you know. He never took much to schooling. I sent him travelling so that he could see the world, and get himself in trim for dealing with it. And that's what we have to do in our business. Deal with the world."[282]

I didn't like this, and I don't think Rectus did, either. He walked over to one of the windows, and looked out into the street.

"I'll tell you what I think, sir," said I. "Rectus—I mean your son Samuel, only I shall never call him so—has seen enough of the world to make him so wide awake that he sees more in schooling than he used to. That's my opinion!"

I knew that Rectus rather envied my going to college, for he had said as much on the trip home; and I knew that he had hoped his father would let him make a fresh start with the professor at our old school.

"Sammy," cried out Mrs. Colbert,—"Sammy, my son, do you want to go to school, and finish up your education, or go into your father's office, and learn to be a merchant?"

Rectus turned around from the window.

"There's no hurry about the merchant," he said. "I want to go to school and college, first."

"And that's just where you're going," said his mother, with her face reddening up a little more than common.

Mr. Colbert grinned a little, but said nothing. I suppose he thought it would be of no use, and I had an idea, too, that he was very glad to have Rectus determine on a college career. I know the rest of us were. And we didn't hold back from saying so, either.

Uncle Chipperton now began to praise Rectus, and he told what obligations the boy had put him under in Nassau, when he wrote to his father, and had that suit[283] about the property stopped, and so relieved him—Uncle Chipperton—from cutting short his semi-tropical trip, and hurrying home to New York in the middle of winter.

"But the suit isn't stopped," said Mr. Colbert. "You don't suppose I would pay any attention to a note like the one Sammy sent me, do you? I just let the suit go on, of course. It has not been decided yet, but I expect to gain it."

At this, Uncle Chipperton grew very angry indeed. It was astonishing to see how quickly he blazed up. He had supposed the whole thing settled, and now to find that the terrible injustice—as he considered it—was still going on, was too much for him.

"Do you sit there and tell me that, sir?" he exclaimed, jumping up and skipping over to Mr. Colbert. "Do you call yourself——"

"Father!" cried Corny. "Keep perfectly cool! Remain just where you are!"

Uncle Chipperton stopped as if he had run against a fence. His favorite advice went straight home to him.

"Very good, my child," said he, turning to Corny. "That's just what I'll do."

And he said no more about it.

Now, everybody began to talk about all sorts of things, so as to seem as if they hadn't noticed this little rumpus, and we agreed that we must all see each other again the next day. Father said he should remain in the city for a few days, now that we were all here, and Uncle Chipperton did not intend to go to[284] his country-place until the weather was warmer. We were speaking of several things that would be pleasant to do together, when Uncle Chipperton broke in with a proposition:

"I'll tell you what I am going to do. I am going to give a dinner to this party. I can't invite you to my house, but I shall engage a parlor in a restaurant, where I have given dinners before (we always come to New York when I want to give dinners—it's so much easier for us to come to the city than for a lot of people to come out to our place), and there I shall give you a dinner, to-morrow evening. Nobody need say anything against this. I've settled it, and I can't be moved."

As he couldn't be moved, no one tried to move him.

"I tell you what it is," said Rectus privately to me. "If Uncle Chipperton is going to give a dinner, according to his own ideas of things in general, it will be a curious kind of a meal."

It often happened that Rectus was as nearly right as most people.[285]

CHAPTER XXIII. UNCLE CHIPPERTON'S DINNER.

The next day was a busy one for father and mother and myself. All the morning we were out, laying in a small stock of baggage, to take the place of what I had lost on the "Tigris." But I was very sorry, especially on my sister Helen's account, that I had lost so many things in my trunk which I could not replace, without going back myself to Nassau. I could buy curiosities from those regions that were ever so much better than any that I had collected; but I could not buy shells that I myself had gathered, nor great seed-pods, like bean-pods two feet long, which I had picked from the trees, nor pieces of rock that I myself had brought up from a coral-reef.

But these were all gone, and I pacified Helen by assuring her that I would tell her such long stories about these things that she could almost see them in her mind's eye. But I think, by the way she smiled, that she had only a second-rate degree of belief in my[286] power of description. She was a smart little thing, and she believed that Corny was the queen of girls.

While I am speaking of the "Tigris" and our losses, I will just say that the second boat which left the burning steamer was never heard from.

We reached our hotel about noon, pretty tired, for we had been rushing things, as it was necessary for father to go home early the next day. On the front steps we found Uncle Chipperton, who had been waiting for us. He particularly wanted to see me. He lunched with us, and then he took me off to the place where he was to have his dinner, at six o'clock that evening. He wanted to consult with me about the arrangements of the table; where each person should sit, and all that sort of thing. I couldn't see the use in this, because it was only a kind of family party, and we should all be sure to get seated, if there were chairs and places enough. But Uncle Chipperton wanted to plan and arrange everything until he was sure it was just right. That was his way.

After he had settled these important matters, and the head-waiter and the proprietor had become convinced that I was a person of much consequence, who had to be carefully consulted before anything could be done, we went down stairs, and at the street-door Uncle Chipperton suddenly stopped me.

"See here," said he, "I want to tell you something. I'm not coming to this dinner."

"Not—coming!" I exclaimed, in amazement.

"No," said he, "I've been thinking