why Dick told me we had a carryall at Wyanoke besides the seventeen carriages.”
“Oh, you saw Dick, then? Why didn’t you take his horse and make him get you a saddle somewhere? By the way, Dick had an adventure this morning. Out by the Garland gate he was waylaid by a man dressed all in white ‘jes’ like a ghos’,’ Dick says, with a sword and two pistols. The fellow tried to take the mail{34} bag away from him, but Dick, who is quick-witted, struck him suddenly, made his horse jump the gate, and galloped away.”
{34}
“Aunt Polly,” said the young man with a quizzical look on his face, “would you mind sending for Dick to come to me? I very much want to hear his story at first hands, for now that I am to be master of Wyanoke, I don’t intend to tolerate footpads and mail robbers in the neighborhood. Please send for Dick. I want to talk with him.”
Aunt Polly sent, but Dick was nowhere to be found for a time. When at last he was discovered in a fodder loft, and dragged unwillingly into his new master’s presence, the look of consternation on his face was so pitiable that Arthur Brent decided not to torture him quite so severely as he had intended.
“Dick,” he said, “I want you to get me some cherries, will you?”
“ ‘Cou’se I will, Mahstah,” answered the boy, eagerly and turning to escape.
“Wait a minute, Dick. I want you to bring me the cherries on a china plate, and give me one of the gold forks to eat them with. Then go to the carriage-house and have all seventeen of my carriages brought up here for me to look at. Tell the hostlers to send me one or two{35} hundred of the horses, too. There! Go and do as I tell you.”
{35}
“What on earth do you mean, Arthur?” asked Aunt Polly, who never had quite understood the whimsical ways of the young man. “I tell you there is only one carriage—”
“Never mind, Aunt Polly. Dick understands me. He and I had an interview out there by the Garland gate this morning. Mail robbers will not trouble him again, I fancy, now that his ‘Yankee Master’ is ‘in position,’ as he puts it. But please, Aunt Polly, send some one with a wagon to the Court House after my trunks.”{36}
{36}
III DR. ARTHUR BRENT
ARTHUR BRENT had been born
Prev.
Back
Top