Kitabı oku: «Mr. Jacobs: A Tale of the Drummer, the Reporter, and the Prestidigitateur», sayfa 3
CHAPTER IV
We called upon Miss Eastinhoe the following day. She was playing with a half-tamed young tiffin, a charming little beast, with long gray fur and bright twinkling eye, mischievous and merry as a gnome's. He was a gift of Mr. Jacobs to the lady. He cost nothing.
"Are you spoken for?" Miss Eastinhoe asked, her eyes opening a moment and meeting his, but falling again instantly with a change of color.2
"Miss Eastinhoe," he said, quietly, "you know I am a man of muscle, and that I have three wives."
"Oh, I had forgotten!" she said; "I forgot about your wives."
"Among primitive people, and persons in pinafores," I interposed, "marriage is a social law."
"You surprise me, Mr. Briggs," she said, with an air of childlike simplicity.
I felt that I had put a plug into my end of the conversation.
"We will play polo next week," said Mr. Jacobs. "Meanwhile, let us visit a Certain Mighty Personage."
CHAPTER V
"We will go at four," said Jacobs, coming into my room after tiffin. "I said three this morning, but it is not a bad plan to keep natives waiting."
"Why do we go?" I inquired, languidly.
"The Certain Mighty Personage has a prisoner whom I wish to purchase."
"Who is it?"
Leaning over until his mouth almost touched my ear, he whispered quietly:
"Number One."
"The devil, you say!" I ejaculated, surprised out of grammar and decorum by the startling news.
"Are you thinking of marrying Miss Eastinhoe?" I demanded, after a pause of some tiffins.
"Yes," he answered, "if her settlements are satisfactory."
Arrived at the residence of the Certain Mighty Personage, we were received in a jemadar where a sahib charpoyed the sowans and tiffined the maharajah.
"I'll have you exposed in the newspapers," said Jacobs, sternly, to the Certain Mighty Personage, "if you do not deliver into my hands, before the dark half of the next moon, the man Number One."
The Uncertain Mighty Personage signed a contract to that effect, with extreme reluctance, and with many forcible remarks disrespectful to both the ancestors and posterity of Jacobs.
"What do you want of Number One?" I inquired, as we rode away.
"He is the only man alive that can keep a plated watch from turning black in this accursed climate."
"But why did you bring me along, when you didn't need me?"
"To frighten him with the threat of the Calcutta Jackal. Besides, how else could you tell the story?"
