The Coming of Bill Part 59

"Honest, I'm not strong enough. It ain't as if we was a vaudeville team that had got to rehea.r.s.e."

"What's rehea.r.s.e?"

Steve changed the subject.

"Say, kid, ain't you feeling like you could bite into something? I got an emptiness inside me as big as all outdoors. How about a mouthful of cereal and a shirred egg? Now, for the love of Mike," he went on quickly, as his G.o.dson opened his mouth to speak, "don't say 'What's shirred?' It's something you do to eggs. It's one way of fixing 'em."

"What's fixing?" inquired William Bannister brightly.

Steve sighed. When he spoke he was calm, but determined.

"That'll be all the dialogue for the present," he said. "We'll play the rest of our act in dumb show. Get a move on you, and I'll take you out in the bubble--the automobile, the car, the chug-chug wagon, the thing we came here in, if you want to know what bubble is--and we'll scare up some breakfast."

Steve's ignorance of the locality in which he found himself was complete; but he had a general impression that farmers as a cla.s.s were people who delighted in providing breakfasts for the needy, if the needy possessed the necessary price. Acting on this a.s.sumption, he postponed his trip to the nearest town and drove slowly along the roads with his eyes open for signs of life.

He found a suitable farm and, applying the brakes, gathered up William Bannister and knocked at the door.

His surmise as to the hospitality of farmers proved correct, and presently they were sitting down to a breakfast which it did his famished soul good to contemplate.

William Bannister seemed less enthusiastic. Steve, having disposed of two eggs in quick succession, turned to see how his young charge was progressing with his repast, and found him eyeing a bowl of bread-and-milk in a sort of frozen horror.

"What's the matter, kid?" he asked. "Get busy."

"No paper," said William Bannister.

"For the love of Pete! Do you expect your morning paper out in the woods?"

"No paper," repeated the White Hope firmly.

Steve regarded him thoughtfully.

"I didn't have this trip planned out right," he said regretfully. "I ought to have got Mamie to come along. I bet a hundred dollars she would have got next to your meanings in a second. I pa.s.s. What's your kick, anyway? What's all this about paper?"

"Aunty Lora says not to eat bread that doesn't come wrapped up in paper," said the White Hope, becoming surprisingly lucid. "Mamie undoes it out of crinkly paper."

"I get you. They feed you rolls at home wrapped up in tissue-paper, is that it?"

"What's tissue?"

"Same as crinkly. Well, see here. You remember what we was talking about last night about germs?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's one thing germs never do, eat bread out of crinkly paper.

You want to forget all the dope they shot into you back in New York and start fresh. You do what I tell you and you can't go wrong. If you're going to be a regular germ, what you've got to do is to wrap yourself round that bread-and-milk the quickest you can. Get me? Till you do that we can't begin to start out to have a good time."

William Bannister made no more objections. He attacked his meal with an easy conscience, and about a quarter of an hour later leaned back with a deep sigh of repletion.

Steve, meanwhile had entered into conversation with the lady of the house.

"Say, I guess you ain't got a kid of your own anywheres, have you?"

"Sure I have," said the hostess proudly. "He's out in the field with his pop this minute. His name's Jim."

"Fine. I want to get hold of a kid to play with this kid here. Jim sounds pretty good to me. About the same age as this one?"

"For the Lord's sake! Jim's eighteen and weighs two hundred pounds."

"Cut out Jim. I thought from the way you spoke he was a regular kid.

Know any one in these parts who's got something about the same weight as this one?"

The farmer's wife reflected.

"Kids is pretty scarce round here," she said. "I reckon you won't get one that I knows of. There's that Tom Whiting, but he's a bad boy. He ain't been raised right."

"What's the matter with him?"

"I don't want to speak harm of no one, but his father used to be a low prize-fighter, and you know what they are."

Steve nodded sympathetically.

"Regular plug-uglies," he said. "A friend of mine used to have to mix with them quite a lot, poor fellah! He used to say they was none of them truly refined. And this kid takes after his pop, eh? Kind of sc.r.a.ppy kid, is that it?"

"He's a bad boy."

"Well, maybe I'd better look him over, just in case. Where's he to be found?"

"They live in the cottage by the big house you can see through them trees. His pop looks after Mr. Wilson's prize dawgs. That's his job."

"What's Wilson?" asked the White Hope, coming out of his stupor.

"You beat me to it by a second, kid. I was just going to ask it myself."

"He's one of them rich New Yawkers. He has his summer place here, and this Whiting looks after his prize dawgs."

"Well, I guess I'll give him a call. It's going to be lonesome for my kid if he ain't got some one to show him how to hit it up. He's not used to country life. Come along. We'll get into the bubble and go and send your pop a telegram."

"What's telegram?" asked William Bannister.

"I got you placed now," said Steve, regarding him with interest.

"You're not going to turn into an amba.s.sador or an artist or any of them things. You're going to be the greatest district attorney that ever came down the pike."

Chapter XIV

The Sixty-First Street Cyclone