Golden Stories Part 45

answered the Frenchman. "My Ju-Ju eat up his Ju-Ju. He very sick. If I choose, he die."

"Ugh!" grunted the king, when this explanation was vouchsafed, apparently impressed.

"Tell His Majesty my Ju-Ju stronger than his own Ju-Ju. If he no sign treaty, eat up his Ju-Ju," Raguet went on.

A flow of language came from the king's lips.

"His Majesty say, he bring his Ju-Ju, see whose greater," said the interpreter.

Vaguely aware that treachery was impending, but crazed now by the falling mangoes, Peters left them palavering and followed the trail. All at once he emerged into a tiny clearing and stood blinking at a fire, round which a group of men--priests, as he knew, from their buffalo horns and crane feathers--were reclining, hammering upon tom-toms and shouting in various stages of intoxication. The firelight blinded their eyes. Peters stood still uncertainly. Then his eyes fell upon a sawed-off tree-trunk, in the hollow of which lay something wrapped in a white cloth, surrounded with snake-skins. He had come by this secret road into the actual presence of the great Ju-Ju.

Curiously he inserted his hand, lifted the object out, and examined it.

Inside was something of a strange, yet familiar shape, oval, and flattened at the ends. He lifted it out of its wrappings, and there, in his hand, he saw a can, bearing the legend:

GREENAWAY'S BEST JAM.

He looked at it in solemn and holy meditation; then, sitting down, he drew the can-opener from his tunic and wiped it clean upon his sleeve.

After awhile a babel of sound broke in upon his ears. Men had come running up, brandis.h.i.+ng spears, stopped, flung themselves upon the ground prostrate in front of him. The priests were there, frantically abasing themselves; Mtetanyanga, his opera hats rolling, unheeded, on the ground. Their cries ceased; they veiled their eyes. Then from the dust came the feeble tones of the interpreter.

"His Majesty say, you eat him Ju-Ju--yours greatest Ju-Ju, he want to sign treaty."

But Peters, waving the empty can over his head, shouted:

"I've eaten jam, I've eaten jam! It's pineapple--and I don't care!"

XII

WHEN FATHER WORKED

A Suburban Story

By CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM

"H'everybody works but Fadher, H'and 'e sets 'round h'all diy----"

THUS in chorus shrilled the infant Cadges like the morning stars singing together, but still more like the transplanted little c.o.c.kneys they were.

The placid brow of Mr. Thomas Cadge was darkened with disapproval, he s.h.i.+fted his stubby brier pipe to the other corner of his mouth, edged a little from his seat on the sunny front stoop and, craning his neck around the corner of his house, revealed an unwashed area extending from collarbone to left ear.

"Shet up, you kids!" he barked. "Wot for? Becos I say so, that's why. I don't like that song, 'taint fit for Sunday."

With a soothing consciousness that he had upheld the sacred character of the Sabbath, Mr. Cadge settled back to the comfort of his sun-bath and smoke. But he had scarcely emitted three puffs before the piping voice of Arabella Cadge was again wafted to his ears. She sang solo this time, and the selection was of a semi-devotional nature, more in keeping with the day:

"Oh fadher, dear fadher, come 'ome wid me now, De clock on de steeple strikes----"

"Shet up, drat you!" again commanded her parent. "If I has to get up and go arter you----"

The balance of this direful threat may never be known, for at that moment Mr. Job Snavely, garbed in the black broadcloth which he wore one day out of seven, paused in front of Mr. Cadge's door and bade him good morning.

"Mornin'," responded the ruffled father.

"Your little girl is quite a song bird," continued Mr. Snavely, with his usual facility in making well-meant small-talk more irritating than a hurled brick.

"She sings too much," commented Mr. Cadge, shortly, "I likes people wot knows when to 'old their tongues."

"Very true, very true!" amiably replied Mr. Snavely, "but for all that, there is nothing sweeter than the artless babble of babes; I declare it almost brought the tears to my eyes when I heard them prattling, 'Everybody works but father,' it is so very, very appro----"

Mr. Snavely checked himself abruptly, for the light in the small, green eyes of Thomas Cadge was baleful, and his square jaw protruded menacingly. The kindly critic of music had a vague feeling that the subject might be changed to advantage.

"Been to church this morning, I suppose?" he inquired briskly with the a.s.surance of a man just returning from that duty.

"No I 'asn't," retorted Cadge, "and wot's more the old woman 'asn't, and the kids 'asn't neither. 'Cos why? 'Cos in this 'ere free country of yours, a laboring man can't make a living for 'is family, workin' 'ard as I does, Sundays, nights, and h'all the time. The missus and the kids stays from church 'cos their duds ain't fit, and I stays 'ome 'cos I've got to work like a slave to pay you for seven dollars' worth of spoiled vegetables and mouldy groceries. That's the reason I works on Sundays, if you've got to know."

"Work on Sundays!" gasped the grocer. "Work! work?" and he stared at the reclining figure of Mr. Cadge in unfeigned astonishment.

"Yes, work. This 'ere construction company wot's doing the job of grading this vacant block, employs me to sort of look after things, their shovels, scoops, and the like. A kind of private police officer, I am," he concluded, drawing himself up a little and puffing into the air.

"And when are you on duty?" asked Mr. Snavely.

"Nights," replied Cadge, "nights and Sundays, when the tools ain't in use."

"I hope they pay you well for it?"

"Ah, but they don't. 'Ow much do you think I get for stayin' awake nights and doin' without my church on Sunday? Three measly dollars a week and the rent of this 'ere 'ouse, if you can call it a 'ouse."

It would have been difficult to determine just what name to give the residence of Mr. Thomas Cadge. It would hardly be called a cottage, though not because it was more s.p.a.cious than the name implied; nor was it a piano-box, in spite of the fact that a piano would have fitted snugly within its walls, for no manufacturer would have trusted a valuable instrument in so flimsy a sh.e.l.l. It was not a real-estate office, as the sign which decorated its entire front proclaimed it to be, for through a jagged hole in the window facing the street projected a rusty iron stovepipe, which was wired to the facade of the building, and emitted the sooty smoke that had almost totally obscured and canceled the legend, "Suburban Star Realty Syndicate."

Moreover, a litter of tin cans, impartially distributed at the front and back doors, indicated the domestic use to which this temporary office had been put. A smell of steaming suds that pervaded the place likewise indicated the manner in which Mrs. Cadge eked out her lord's stipend.

This impression was confirmed by the chorus of irrepressible little Cadges proclaiming:

"Mother tikes in was.h.i.+n', H'and so does sister h'Ann, H'everybody works at our 'ouse, But my old----"

--a burst of melody which was abruptly checked with a tomato can hurled like a hand-grenade by their unmusical father.

"Look here, Cadge," said Mr. Snavely, with the air of proprietors.h.i.+p one adopts to hopeless debtors, "three dollars a week is not going to keep your family, to say nothing of paying up that seven dollars. I can't carry you forever, you know. Why don't you get a daylight job?"

"Ah, that is easy enough said," protested that injured individual.

"'Aven't I tramped the streets day after day, lookin' for work?"

"Them as 'as a good paying business don't know wot it means to look for a job," pursued Cadge bitterly.

"Yes they do," a.s.serted the grocer cheerfully. "I was given work at sweeping floors in the very store I now own. The fact is, I am sorry for you, Cadge, and I have been looking around to get you a job."

Mr. Cadge seemed depressed.