Part 29 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: In the top of the tea wagon, was Babbitt.]

”Oh, stop him, stop him!” screams one of the women, that I figures out must be the daughter.

”Stop 'im! Stop 'im!” yells the other. She looked like one of the maids.

”I'm no backstop,” thinks I to myself. ”Besides, this is a family affair.”

I'd have hated to have blocked that run, too; for it was doin' me a lot of good, just watchin' it and thinkin' of the b.u.mps Babbitt was gettin', with his head down among the bottles.

I follows along on the outside though, and in a minute or so I sees what the Commodore was aimin' at. Out to one side was a cute little fish-pond, about a hundred feet across, and he was makin' a bee line for that. It was down in a sort of hollow, with nice smooth turf slopin'

clear to the edge.

When the Commodore gets half-way down he gives the cart one last push, and five seconds later Mr. Babbitt, with his head still stuck in the wagon, souses into the water like he'd been dropped from a balloon. The old boy stays just long enough to see the splash, and then he keeps right on goin' towards New York.

At that I jumps the stone wall and prepares to do some quick divin', but before I could fetch the pond Babbitt comes to the top, blowin' muddy water out of his mouth and thres.h.i.+n' his arms around windmill fas.h.i.+on.

Then his feet touches bottom and he finds he ain't in any danger of bein' drowned. The wagon comes up, too, and the first thing he does is to grab that. By the time I gets there he was wadin' across with the cart, and the women had made up their minds there wa'n't any use fainting.

”Babbitt,” says the Commodore's daughter, ”explain your conduct instantly. What were you doing standing on your head in that tea-wagon?”

”Please, ma'am, I--I forget,” splutters Babbitt, wipin' the mud out of his eyes.

”You forget!” says the lady. And say, anyone that knew the old Commodore wouldn't have to do any guessin' as to who her father was. ”You forget, do you? Well, I want you to remember. Out with it, now!”

”Yes, ma'am,” says Babbitt, tryin' to prop up his wilted collar. ”I'd just give him his first dose for the day, and I'd dodged the gla.s.s, when somethin' catches me from behind, throws me into the tea-wagon, and off I goes. But that dose counts, don't it, ma'am? He got it down.”

I sees how it was then; Babbitt had been gettin' a commission for every gla.s.s of the medicated stuff he pumped into the Commodore.

”Will you please run after my father and tell him to come back,” says the lady to me.

”Sorry,” says I, ”but I'm no antelope. You'd better telegraph him.”

I didn't stay to see any more, I was that sore on the whole crowd. But I hoped the old one would have sense enough to clear out for good.

I didn't hear any more from my neighbors all day, but after supper that night, just about dusk, somebody sneaks in through the back way and wabbles up to the veranda where I was sittin'. It was the old Commodore.

He was about all in, too.

”Did--did I drown him?” says he.

”You made an elegant try,” says I; ”but there wasn't water enough.”

”Thank goodness!” says he. ”Now I can die calmly.”

”What's the use dyin'?” says I. ”Ain't there no thin' else left to do but that?”

”I've got to,” says he. ”I can't live on that cursed stuff they've been giving me, and if I eat anything else I'm done for. The specialist said so.”

”Oh, well,” says I, ”maybe he's made a wrong guess. It's your turn now.

Suppose you come in and let me have Mother Whaley broil you a nice juicy hunk of steak?”

Say, he was near starved. I could tell that by the way he looked when I mentioned broiled steak. He shook his head, though. ”If I did, I'd die before morning,” says he.