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قراءة كتاب The Stingy Receiver

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‏اللغة: English
The Stingy Receiver

The Stingy Receiver

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دار النشر: Project Gutenberg
الصفحة رقم: 6

the very meager bedroom adjoining it. 38And with a quarter of a ton's worth of wood and wire plunked down thus in the exact center of my office it leaves me, I assure you, an extraordinarily limited amount of elbow-space unless it be a sort of running track that still survives around the extreme edges of the room. And moreover the piano is of rosewood, as you doubtless already know, and all inlaid with cherubim and seraphim snarled up in wreaths of lavender roses. Now Botany I admit, is distinctly out of my line. But the cherubim and seraphim are certainly very weird anatomically.

"And not knowing one note from another,—as indeed I remember telling you quite plainly at an earlier date, well,—excuse me if I seem harsh," he exploded all over again, "but whatever in the world would I do with a piano?"

As ingenuously insolent as a child's retort came Mrs. Tome Gallien's almost immediate reply.

"Yes! What would you do? That's just exactly it! I thought I'd get a rise out of you!" said Mrs. Tome Gallien. "Across my dulled horizon a whole heap of most diverting 39speculations have suddenly begun to flash and brighten. 'Whatever in the world' would you do with a piano?"

"I can at least return it to the warerooms," wrote the Young Doctor with significant brevity.

"Oh, no, you can't!" telegraphed Mrs. Tome Gallien. "Apropos slight defect and large mark-down merchandise rated non- returnable."

While he was yet fuming over this message Mrs. Tome Gallien's special delivery letter overtook her telegram.

"Don't struggle," urged Mrs. Tome Gallien. "After all, my dear young antagonist, when it comes right down to brass tacks, it isn't so much a question of just what you are going to do with the piano as it is of—just what the piano is going to do with you. Because of course, do something it certainly will! And the madder you get of course the more it will do! And the madder you get of course the sooner it will do it! And——

"Oh, lying here flat on my back in all this damp, salty, sea- green stillness,—tides coming, tides going,—sands shifting,—sea-weeds 40floating,—my whole wild heedless Past resolves itself into one single illuminating conviction. It's the giving people appropriate gifts that stultifies their characters so, pampering their vanities, and clogging alike both their impulses and their ink! Yes, sir!

"Why, goodness, Man! If I had crocheted you slippers would it have joggled you one iota out of the rut of your daily life? Or would even the latest design in operating tables have quickened one single heart-beat of your snug, self-sufficient young body? Or for forty stethoscopes do you imagine for one tiny instant that you would have written me twice in five days?

"But if one can only make a person mad instead of glad! Now that's the real kindness! So invigorating! So educative! So poignantly reconstructive! Because if there's one shining mark in the world that Adventure loves it's a—shining mad person. Even you, for instance! Having made no place in your particular rut for 'quarter of a ton of wood and wire' the advent of such a weightage is just plain naturally bound to crowd you out of your rut. And whoever side-steps his 41rut for even an instant? Well, truly, I think you deserved just a wee bit of crowding.

"So Heigho, Cross Laddie! And rustle round as fast as you can to get yourself a new necktie or a hair-cut or a shine! 'Cause something certainly is going to happen to you! Happen right off, I mean! Even now perhaps! Even——"

With a grunt of disgust the Young Doctor jumped up and began to pace his office,—what was left of his office, I mean, around the extreme edges of the room. And the faster he paced the madder he grew.

"Oh, the fantasia of women!" he stormed. "The—the exaggeration!"

He was perfectly right—Mrs. Tome Gallien was often fantastic, and certainly quite exaggerative anent the present situation.

The threatened "adventure" did not happen at once! It didn't happen indeed for at least two hours!

Yet the fact remains, of course, that the big piano was at the bottom of the adventure. Science no doubt would have refuted the connection. But Fancy is no such fool. Surely 42if there hadn't been a big piano the Young Doctor would never have worked himself up into such a bad temper on that particular afternoon. And if he hadn't worked himself up into such a bad temper he never would have flounced himself out into the dreary February streets to try and "walk it off." And if he hadn't tried so hard to "walk it off" he never would have developed such a perfectly ravenous hunger. And if he hadn't developed such a perfectly ravenous hunger he never would have bolted at just exactly six o'clock for the brightest lighted restaurant in sight. And it was on the street right in front of the brightest lighted restaurant that the adventure happened.

Even Fancy, though, would never have boasted that it was anything except a very little adventure. Skies didn't fall, I mean, nor walls topple, nor bags of gold roll gaily to the Young Doctor's feet. Just a car stopped,—a great plain, clumsy everyday electric car, and from the front platform of it a girl with a suitcase in one hand, a hat box in the other, and goodness-knows-what tucked under one elbow, jumped down into the mud.

Even so the adventure would never have 43started if the goodness-knows-what hadn't slipped suddenly from the girl's elbow and exploded all over the street into a goodness-knows- how-many! It would have been funny of course if it hadn't been so clumsy. But even while deprecating the digital clumsiness of women, the Young Doctor leaped instinctively to the rescue. There were certainly enough things that needed rescuing! Toys they proved to be. And such a scattering! A brown plush coon under the wheels of a stalled automobile! A flamboyant red-paper rose bush trampled to pulp beneath a cart horse's hoofs! A tin steam engine cackling across a hobbly brick sidewalk! A green-feathered parrot disappearing all too quickly in a fox terrier's mouth! A doll here! A paint box there! And the girl herself standing perfectly helpless in the midst of it all blushing twenty shades of pink and still hanging desperately tight to the leather suitcase in one hand and the big hat box in the other.

"And it isn't at all that I am so—so stupid!" she kept explaining hectically. "But it is that when an accident occurs so in English I cannot think in English what to do! If I 44put down my suitcase!" she screamed, "a dog will bite it! And if I drop my box a trample might get it!"

It was not until the Young Doctor had succeeded in reassembling owner and articles on the safe edge of the curbing that he noticed for the first time how tall the girl was and how shiningly blonde. "Altogether too tall and too blonde to behave like such an idiot!" he argued perfectly illogically. With a last flare of courtesy he sought to end the incident. "Were you going to take another car?" He gestured toward her crowded hands.

"Oh, no," said the girl with a wave of her hat box. "I was going to that restaurant over there."

"Why so was I," said the Young Doctor very formally. "So if you wish I will take your suitcase for you. That will at least help a little."

Without further parleying they crossed the snowy street and still all a-blow and a-glow with the wintry night bore down upon the snug little restaurant like two young guests of the north wind. In fact as well as effect the 45room was brightly crowded and seemed to flare up like a furnace blast into their own chilled faces. A trifle dazzled by the glare

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