The Little Lady of the Big House / Маленькая хозяйка большого дома. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Джек Лондон
ebbed away like a shadow through the open French windows.
At six-thirty, sharp to the minute[4], he was back with a larger tray. Dick Forrest put away the proofs, reached for a book entitled Commercial Breeding of Frogs, and prepared to eat. The breakfast was simple yet fairly substantial – more coffee, a half grape-fruit, two soft-boiled eggs made ready in a glass with a dab of butter and piping hot, and a sliver of bacon, not over-cooked, that he knew was of his own raising and curing.
By this time the sunshine was pouring in through the screening and across the bed. On the outside of the wire screen clung a number of house-flies, early-hatched for the season and numb with the night’s cold. As Forrest ate he watched the hunting of the meat-eating yellow-jackets[5]. Sturdy, more frost-resistant than bees, they were already on the wing and preying on the benumbed flies. Despite the rowdy noise of their flight, these yellow hunters of the air, with rarely ever a miss, pounced on their helpless victims and sailed away with them. The last fly was gone ere Forrest had sipped his last sip of coffee, marked Commercial Breeding of Frogs with a match, and taken up his proofsheets.
After a time, the liquid-mellow cry of the meadowlark, first vocal for the day, caused him to desist. He looked at the clock. It marked seven. He set aside the proofs and began a series of conversations by means of the switchboard, which he manipulated with a practiced hand.
“Hello, Oh Joy,” was his first talk. “Is Mr. Thayer up?… Very well. Don’t disturb him. I don’t think he’ll breakfast in bed, but find out… That’s right, and show him how to work the hot water. Maybe he doesn’t know… Yes, that’s right. Plan for one more boy as soon as you can get him. There’s always a crowd when the good weather comes on… Sure. Use your judgment. Good-bye.
“Mr. Hanley?… Yes,” was his second conversation, over another switch. “I’ve been thinking about the dam on the Buckeye. I want the figures on the gravel-haul and on the rock-crushing… Yes, that’s it. I imagine that the gravel-haul will cost anywhere between six and ten cents a yard more than the crushed rock. That last pitch of hill is what eats up the gravel-teams. Work out the figures. …No, we won’t be able to start for a fortnight. …Yes, yes; the new tractors, if they ever deliver, will release the horses from the plowing, but they’ll have to go back for the checking… No, you’ll have to see Mr. Everan about that. Good-bye.”
And his third call:
“Mr. Dawson? Ha! Ha! Thirty-six on my porch right now. It must be white with frost down on the levels. But it’s most likely the last this year… Yes, they swore the tractors would be delivered two days ago… Call up the station agent. …By the way, you catch Hanley for me. I forgot to tell him to start the ‘rat-catchers’ out with the second instalment of fly-traps… Yes, pronto[6]. There were a couple of dozen roosting on my screen this morning… Yes… Good-bye.”
At this stage, Forrest slid out of bed in his pajamas, slipped his feet into the slippers, and strode through the French windows to the bath, already drawn by Oh My. A dozen minutes afterward, shaved as well, he was back in bed, reading his frog book while Oh My, punctual to the minute, massaged his legs.
They were the well-formed legs of a well-built, five-foot-ten man who weighed a hundred and eighty pounds. Further, they told a tale of the man. The left thigh was marred by a scar ten inches in length. Across the left ankle, from instep to heel, were scattered half a dozen scars the size of half-dollars. When Oh My prodded and pulled the left knee a shade too severely, Forrest was guilty of a wince[7]. The right shin was colored with several dark scars, while a big scar, just under the knee, was a positive dent in the bone. Midway between knee and groin was the mark of an ancient three-inch gash, curiously dotted with the minute scars of stitches.
A sudden, joyous nicker from without put the match between the pages of the frog book, and, while Oh My proceeded partly to dress his master in bed, including socks and shoes, the master, twisting partly on his side, stared out in the direction of the nicker. Down the road, through the swaying purple of the early lilacs, ridden by a picturesque cowboy, paced a great horse, glinting ruddy in the morning sun-gold, flinging free the snowy foam of his mighty fetlocks, his noble crest tossing, his eyes roving afield, the trumpet of his love-call echoing through the springing land.
Dick Forrest was smitten at the same instant with joy and anxiety – joy in the glorious beast pacing down between the lilac hedges; anxiety in that the stallion might have awakened the girl who laughed from the round wooden frame on his wall. He glanced quickly across the two-hundred-foot court to the long, shadowy jut of her wing of the house. The shades of her sleeping-porch were down. They did not stir. Again the stallion nickered, and all that moved was a flock of wild canaries, upspringing from the flowers and shrubs of the court, rising like a green-gold spray of light flung from the sunrise.
He watched the stallion out of sight through the lilacs, seeing visions of fair Shire colts mighty of bone and frame and free from blemish[8], then turned, as ever he turned to the immediate thing, and spoke to his body servant.
“How’s that last boy, Oh My? Showing up?”
“Him pretty good boy, I think,” was the answer. “Him young boy. Everything new. Pretty slow. All the same time by him show up good.”
“Why? What makes you think so?”
“I call him three, four morning now. Him sleep like baby. Him wake up smiling just like you. That very good.”
“Do I wake up smiling?” Forrest queried.
Oh My nodded his head violently.
“Many times, many years, I call you. Always your eyes open, your eyes smile, your mouth smile, your face smile, you smile all over, just like that, right away quick. That very good. A man wake up that way got plenty good sense. I know. This new boy like that. Bime by, pretty soon, he make fine boy. You see. His name Chow Gam. What name you call him this place?”
Dick Forrest meditated.
“What names have we already?” he asked.
“Oh Joy, Ah Well, Ah Me, and me; I am Oh My,” the Chinese rattled off. “Oh Joy him say call new boy – ”
He hesitated and stared at his master with a challenging glint of eye.
Forrest nodded.
“Oh Joy him say call new boy ‘Oh Hell.’”
“Oh ho!” Forrest laughed in appreciation. “Oh Joy is a josher. A good name, but it won’t do. There is the Missus. We’ve got to think another name.”
“Oh Ho, that very good name.”
Forrest’s exclamation was still ringing in his consciousness so that he recognized the source of Oh My’s inspiration.
“Very well. The boy’s name is Oh Ho.”
Oh My lowered his head, ebbed swiftly through the French windows, and as swiftly returned with the rest of Forrest’s clothes-gear, helping him into undershirt and shirt, tossing a tie around his neck for him to knot, and, kneeling, putting on his leggings and spurs. A Baden Powell hat[9] and a quirt completed his appareling – the quirt, Indian-braided of rawhide, with ten ounces of lead braided into the butt that hung from his wrist on a loop of leather.
But Forrest was not yet free. Oh My handed him several letters, with the explanation that they had come up from the station the previous night after Forrest had gone to bed. He tore the right-hand ends across and glanced at the contents of all but one with speed. The latter he dwelt upon for a moment, with an irritated indrawing of brows, then swung out the phonograph from the wall, pressed the button that made the cylinder revolve, and swiftly dictated, without ever a pause for word or idea:
“In reply to yours of March 14, 1914, I am indeed sorry to learn that you were hit with hog cholera[10]. I am equally sorry that you have seen fit
sharp to the minute – (
yellow-jackets – (
pronto – (
was guilty of a wince – (
free from blemish – (
A Baden Powell hat – (
hog cholera – (