mirror of
https://github.com/standardebooks/o-henry_short-fiction.git
synced 2024-12-07 10:37:39 +08:00
[Editorial] remove space before 'll
This commit is contained in:
parent
ed62c461fa
commit
7a22faf867
@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“Why, pa,” she answered, “I like all of ’em very well. I think <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Cunningham and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Jacks and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Harris are very nice young men. They are so frank and honest in everything they say to me. I haven’t known <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Vesey very long, but I think he’s a very nice young man, he’s so frank and honest in everything he says to me.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“Now, that’s what I’m gittin’ at,” says old Hinkle. “You’ve always been sayin’ you like people what tell the truth and don’t go humbuggin’ you with compliments and bogus talk. Now, suppose you make a test of these fellers, and see which one of ’em will talk the straightest to you.”</p>
|
||||
<p>“But how’ll I do it, pa?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, Ily; you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logansport. It wasn’t long, but it was all we could afford then. And your teacher said you didn’t have any voice, and it was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you ask the fellers what they think of your singin’, and see what each one of ’em tells you. The man that’ll tell you the truth about it’ll have a mighty lot of nerve, and ’ll do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“I’ll tell you how. You know you sing a little bit, Ily; you took music-lessons nearly two years in Logansport. It wasn’t long, but it was all we could afford then. And your teacher said you didn’t have any voice, and it was a waste of money to keep on. Now, suppose you ask the fellers what they think of your singin’, and see what each one of ’em tells you. The man that’ll tell you the truth about it’ll have a mighty lot of nerve, and’ll do to tie to. What do you think of the plan?”</p>
|
||||
<p>“All right, pa,” said Ileen. “I think it’s a good idea. I’ll try it.”</p>
|
||||
<p>Ileen and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Hinkle went out of the room through the inside doors. Unobserved, I hurried down to the station. Jacks was at his telegraph table waiting for eight o’clock to come. It was Bud’s night in town, and when he rode in I repeated the conversation to them both. I was loyal to my rivals, as all true admirers of all Ileens should be.</p>
|
||||
<p>Simultaneously the three of us were smitten by an uplifting thought. Surely this test would eliminate Vesey from the contest. He, with his unctuous flattery, would be driven from the lists. Well we remembered Ileen’s love of frankness and honesty—how she treasured truth and candor above vain compliment and blandishment.</p>
|
||||
|
@ -69,7 +69,7 @@
|
||||
<p>“On the way she tells me some of the wherefores. When he slashed her with the whip he told her he found out she was coming for the kid, and he was on the same train. <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conyers had been living with her brother, and they’d watched the boy always, as her husband had tried to steal him before. I judge that man was worse than a street railway promoter. It seems he had spent her money and slugged her and killed her canary bird, and told it around that she had cold feet.</p>
|
||||
<p>“At the hotel we found a mass meeting of five infuriated citizens chewing tobacco and denouncing the outrage. Most of the town was asleep by ten o’clock. I talks the lady some quiet, and tells her I will take the one o’clock train for the next town, forty miles east, for it is likely that the esteemed <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Conyers will drive there to take the cars. ‘I don’t know,’ I tells her, ‘but what he has legal rights; but if I find him I can give him an illegal left in the eye, and tie him up for a day or two, anyhow, on a disturbal of the peace proposition.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“<abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conyers goes inside and cries with the landlord’s wife, who is fixing some catnip tea that will make everything all right for the poor dear. The landlord comes out on the porch, thumbing his one suspender, and says to me:</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Ain’t had so much excitements in town since Bedford Steegall’s wife swallered a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with the buggy whip, and everything. What’s that suit of clothes cost you you got on? ’Pears like we’d have some rain, don’t it? Say, doc, that Indian of yorn’s on a kind of a whizz tonight, ain’t he? He comes along just before you did, and I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a cur’us kind of a hoot, and trotted off. I guess our constable ’ll have him in the lockup ’fore morning.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Ain’t had so much excitements in town since Bedford Steegall’s wife swallered a spring lizard. I seen him through the winder hit her with the buggy whip, and everything. What’s that suit of clothes cost you you got on? ’Pears like we’d have some rain, don’t it? Say, doc, that Indian of yorn’s on a kind of a whizz tonight, ain’t he? He comes along just before you did, and I told him about this here occurrence. He gives a cur’us kind of a hoot, and trotted off. I guess our constable’ll have him in the lockup ’fore morning.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“I thought I’d sit on the porch and wait for the one o’clock train. I wasn’t feeling saturated with mirth. Here was John Tom on one of his sprees, and this kidnapping business losing sleep for me. But then, I’m always having trouble with other people’s troubles. Every few minutes <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Conyers would come out on the porch and look down the road the way the buggy went, like she expected to see that kid coming back on a white pony with a red apple in his hand. Now, wasn’t that like a woman? And that brings up cats. ‘I saw a mouse go in this hole,’ says <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Cat; ‘you can go prize up a plank over there if you like; I’ll watch this hole.’</p>
|
||||
<p>“About a quarter to one o’clock the lady comes out again, restless, crying easy, as females do for their own amusement, and she looks down that road again and listens. ‘Now, ma’am,’ says I, ‘there’s no use watching cold wheel-tracks. By this time they’re halfway to—’ ‘Hush,’ she says, holding up her hand. And I do hear something coming ‘flip-flap’ in the dark; and then there is the awfulest war-whoop ever heard outside of Madison Square Garden at a Buffalo Bill matinée. And up the steps and on to the porch jumps the disrespectable Indian. The lamp in the hall shines on him, and I fail to recognize <abbr>Mr.</abbr> <abbr class="name">J. T.</abbr> Little Bear, alumnus of the class of ’91. What I see is a Cherokee brave, and the warpath is what he has been travelling. Firewater and other things have got him going. His buckskin is hanging in strings, and his feathers are mixed up like a frizzly hen’s. The dust of miles is on his moccasins, and the light in his eye is the kind the aborigines wear. But in his arms he brings that kid, his eyes half closed, with his little shoes dangling and one hand fast around the Indian’s collar.</p>
|
||||
<p>“ ‘Pappoose!’ says John Tom, and I notice that the flowers of the white man’s syntax have left his tongue. He is the original proposition in bear’s claws and copper color. ‘Me bring,’ says he, and he lays the kid in his mother’s arms. ‘Run fifteen mile,’ says John Tom—‘Ugh! Catch white man. Bring pappoose.’</p>
|
||||
|
@ -108,7 +108,7 @@
|
||||
<p>George, who had been headed in my direction, slowly swivelled around and faced his employer. “Bein’ a camp cook, I ain’t overburdened with hosses,” George enlightened us. “Therefore, I am going to try to borrow this feller’s here.”</p>
|
||||
<p>For the first time in four days my soul gave a genuine cheer. “If it’s for Lochinvar purposes, go as far as you like,” I said, grandly.</p>
|
||||
<p>The cook studied me a moment, as if trying to find an insult in my words. “No,” he replied. “It’s for mine and the young lady’s purposes, and we’ll go only three miles—to Hicksville. Now let me tell you somethin’, Ross.” Suddenly I was confronted with the cook’s chunky back and I heard a low, curt, carrying voice shoot through the room at my host. George had wheeled just as Ross started to speak. “You’re nutty. That’s what’s the matter with you. You can’t stand the snow. You’re getting nervouser, and nuttier every day. That and this Dago”—he jerked a thumb at the half-dead Frenchman in the corner—“has got you to the point where I thought I better horn in. I got to revolving it around in my mind and I seen if somethin’ wasn’t done, and done soon, there’d be murder around here and maybe”—his head gave an imperceptible list toward the girl’s room—“worse.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep anyone else from speaking. Then he plowed slowly through the drift of his ideas. “About this here woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely think about women. If she hadn’t happened in here durin’ this here snow, you’d never have given two thoughts to the whole woman question. Likewise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys go hustlin’ out, this here whole business ’ll clear out of your head and you won’t think of a skirt again until Kingdom Come. Just because o’ this snow here, don’t forget you’re living in the selfsame world you was in four days ago. And you’re the same man, too. Now, what’s the use o’ getting all snarled up over four days of stickin’ in the house? That there’s what I been revolvin’ in my mind and this here’s the decision I’ve come to.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He stopped, but he held up a stubby finger to keep anyone else from speaking. Then he plowed slowly through the drift of his ideas. “About this here woman. I know you, Ross, and I know what you reely think about women. If she hadn’t happened in here durin’ this here snow, you’d never have given two thoughts to the whole woman question. Likewise, when the storm clears, and you and the boys go hustlin’ out, this here whole business’ll clear out of your head and you won’t think of a skirt again until Kingdom Come. Just because o’ this snow here, don’t forget you’re living in the selfsame world you was in four days ago. And you’re the same man, too. Now, what’s the use o’ getting all snarled up over four days of stickin’ in the house? That there’s what I been revolvin’ in my mind and this here’s the decision I’ve come to.”</p>
|
||||
<p>He plodded to the door and shouted to one of the ranch hands to saddle my horse.</p>
|
||||
<p>Ross lit a stogy and stood thoughtful in the middle of the room. Then he began: “I’ve a durn good notion, George, to knock your confounded head off and throw you into that snowbank, if—”</p>
|
||||
<p>“You’re wrong, mister. That ain’t a durned good notion you’ve got. It’s durned bad. Look here!” He pointed steadily out of doors until we were both forced to follow his finger. “You’re in here for more’n a week yet.” After allowing this fact to sink in, he barked out at Ross: “Can you cook?” Then at me: “Can you cook?” Then he looked at the wreck of Etienne and sniffed.</p>
|
||||
|
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user