“The nex' mornin' was fine an' nice,” continued Pomona, “an' after our
breakfast had been brought to us, we went out in the grounds to take a
walk. There was lots of trees back of the house, with walks among 'em,
an' altogether it was so ole-timey an' castleish that I was as happy as
a lark.
“'Come along, Earl Miguel,' I says; 'let us tread a measure 'neath these
mantlin' trees.'
“'All right,' says he. 'Your Jiguel attends you. An' what might our
noble second name be? What is we earl an' earl-ess of?'
“'Oh, anything,' says I. 'Let's take any name at random.'
“'All right,' says he. 'Let it be random. Earl an' Earl-ess Random. Come
along.'
“So we walks about, I feelin' mighty noble an' springy, an' afore long
we sees another couple a-walkin' about under the trees.
“'Who's them?' says I.
“'Don't know,' says he, 'but I expect they're some o' the other
boarders. The man said he had other boarders when I spoke to him about
takin' us.'
“'Let's make-believe they're a count an' count says I. 'Count an'
Countess of--'
“'Milwaukee,' says he.
“I didn't think much of this for a noble name, but still it would do
well enough, an' so we called 'em the Count an' Countess of Milwaukee,
an' we kep' on a meanderin'. Pretty soon he gets tired an' says he was
agoin' back to the house to have a smoke because he thought it was time
to have a little fun which weren't all imaginations, an' I says to him
to go along, but it would be the hardest thing in this world for me to
imagine any fun in smokin'. He laughed an' went back, while I walked on,
a-makin'-believe a page, in blue puffed breeches, was a-holdin' up my
train, which was of light-green velvet trimmed with silver lace.
Pretty soon, turnin' a little corner, I meets the Count and Countess of
Milwaukee. She was a small lady, dressed in black, an' he was a big fat
man about fifty years old, with a grayish beard. They both wore little
straw hats, exac'ly alike, an' had on green carpet-slippers.
“They stops when they sees me, an' the lady she bows and says
'good-mornin',' an' then she smiles, very pleasant, an' asks if I was
a-livin' here, an' when I said I was, she says she was too, for the
present, an' what was my name. I had half a mind to say the Earl-ess
Random, but she was so pleasant and sociable that I didn't like to seem
to be makin' fun, an' so I said I was Mrs. De Henderson.
“'An' I,' says she, 'am Mrs. General Andrew Jackson, widow of the
ex-President of the United States. I am staying here on business
connected with the United States Bank. This is my brother,' says she,
pointin' to the big man.
“'How d'ye do?' says he, a-puttin' his hands together, turnin' his toes
out an' makin' a funny little bow. 'I am General Tom Thumb,' he says
in a deep, gruff voice, 'an' I've been before all the crown-ed heads of
Europe, Asia, Africa, America an' Australia,--all a's but one,--an' I'm
waitin' here for a team of four little milk-white oxen, no bigger than
tall cats, which is to be hitched to a little hay-wagon, which I am to
ride in, with a little pitch-fork an' real farmer's clothes, only
small. This will come to-morrow, when I will pay for it an' ride away to
exhibit. It may be here now, an' I will go an' see. Good-bye.'
“'Good-bye, likewise,' says the lady. 'I hope you'll have all you're
thinkin' you're havin', an' more too, but less if you'd like it.
Farewell.' An' away they goes.
“Well, you may be sure, I stood there amazed enough, an' mad too when I
heard her talk about my bein' all I was a-thinkin' I was. I was sure my
husband--scarce two weeks old, a husband--had told all. It was too bad.
I wished I had jus' said I was the Earl-ess of Random an' brassed it
out.
“I rushed back an' foun' him smokin' a pipe on a back porch. I charged
him with his perfidy, but he vowed so earnest that he had not told these
people of our fancies, or ever had spoke to 'em, that I had to believe
him.
“'I expec',' says he, 'that they're jus' makin'-believe--as we are.
There aint no patent on make-believes.'
“This didn't satisfy me, an' as he seemed to be so careless about it I
walked away, an' left him to his pipe. I determined to go take a walk
along some of the country roads an' think this thing over for myself.
I went aroun' to the front gate, where the woman of the house was
a-standin' talkin' to somebody, an' I jus' bowed to her, for I didn't
feel like sayin' anything, an' walked past her.
“'Hello!' said she, jumpin' in front of me an' shuttin' the gate.
'You can't go out here. If you want to walk you can walk about in the
grounds. There's lots of shady paths.'
“'Can't go out!' says I. 'Can't go out! What do you mean by that?'
“'I mean jus' what I say,' said she, an' she locked the gate.
“I was so mad that I could have pushed her over an' broke the gate, but
I thought that if there was anything of that kind to do I had a husband
whose business it was to attend to it, an' so I runs aroun' to him to
tell him. He had gone in, but I met Mrs. Jackson an' her brother.
“'What's the matter?' said she, seein' what a hurry I was in.
“'That woman at the gate,' I said, almost chokin' as I spoke, 'wont let
me out.'
“'She wont?' said Mrs. Jackson. 'Well, that's a way she has. Four times
the Bank of the United States has closed its doors before I was able to
get there, on account of that woman's obstinacy about the gate. Indeed,
I have not been to the Bank at all yet, for of course it is of no use to
go after banking hours.'
“'An' I believe, too,' said her brother in his heavy voice, 'that she
has kept out my team of little oxen. Otherwise it would be here now.'
“I couldn't stand any more of this an' ran into our room where my
husband was. When I told him what had happened, he was real sorry.
“'I didn't know you thought of going out,' he said, 'or I would have
told you all about it. An' now sit down an' quiet yourself, an' I'll
tell you jus' how things is.' So down we sits, an' says he, jus' as
carm as a summer cloud, 'My dear, this is a lunertic asylum. Now, don't
jump,' he says; 'I didn't bring you here, because I thought you was
crazy, but because I wanted you to see what kind of people they was who
imagined themselves earls and earl-esses, an' all that sort o' thing,
an' to have an idea how the thing worked after you'd been doing it a
good while an' had got used to it. I thought it would be a good thing,
while I was Earl Jiguel and you was a noble earl-ess, to come to a place
where people acted that way. I knowed you had read lots o' books about
knights and princes an' bloody towers, an' that you knowed all about
them things, but I didn't suppose you did know how them same things
looked in these days, an' a lunertic asylum was the only place where
you could see 'em. So I went to a doctor I knowed,' he says, 'an' got
a certificate from him to this private institution, where we could stay
for a while an' get posted on romantics.'
“'Then,' says I, 'the upshot was that you wanted to teach a lesson.'
“'Jus' that,' says he.
“'All right,' says I; 'it's teached. An' now let's get out of this as
quick as we kin.'
“'That'll suit me,' he says, 'an' we'll leave by the noon train. I'll go
an' see about the trunk bein' sent down.'
“So off he went to see the man who kept the house, while I falls to
packin' up the trunk as fast as I could.”
“Weren't you dreadfully angry at him?” asked Euphemia, who, having a
romantic streak in her own composition, did not sympathize altogether
with this heroic remedy for Pomona's disease.
“No, ma'am,” said Pomona, “not long. When I thought of Mrs. General
Jackson and Tom Thumb, I couldn't help thinkin' that I must have looked
pretty much the same to my husband, who, I knowed now, had only been
makin'-believe to make-believe. An' besides, I couldn't be angry very
long for laughin, for when he come back in a minute, as mad as a March
hare, an' said they wouldn't let me out nor him nuther, I fell to
laughin' ready to crack my sides.
“'They say,' said he, as soon as he could speak straight, 'that we can't
go out without another certificate from the doctor. I told 'em I'd go
myself an' see him about it but they said no, I couldn't, for if they
did that way everybody who ever was sent here would be goin' out the
next day to see about leavin'. I didn't want to make no fuss, so I told
them I'd write a letter to the doctor and tell him to send an order
that would soon show them whether we could go out or not. They said
that would be the best thing to do, an so I'm goin' to write it this
minute,'--which he did.
“'How long will we have to wait?' says I, when the letter was done.
“'Well,' says he, 'the doctor can't get this before to-morrow mornin',
an' even if he answers right away, we won't get our order to go out
until the next day. So we'll jus' have to grin an' bear it for a day an'
a half.'
“'This is a lively old bridal-trip,' said I,--'dry falls an' a lunertic
asylum.'
“'We'll try to make the rest of it better,' said he.
“But the next day wasn't no better. We staid in our room all day, for we
didn't care to meet Mrs. Jackson an' her crazy brother, an' I'm sure we
didn't want to see the mean creatures who kept the house. We knew well
enough that they only wanted us to stay so that they could get more
board-money out of us.”
“I should have broken out,” cried Euphemia. “I would never have staid
an hour in that place, after I found out what it was, especially on a
bridal trip.”
“If we'd done that,” said Pomona, “they'd have got men after us, an'
then everybody would have thought we was real crazy. We made up our
minds to wait for the doctor's letter, but it wasn't much fun. An' I
didn't tell no romantic stories to fill up the time. We sat down an'
behaved like the commonest kind o' people. You never saw anybody sicker
of romantics than I was when I thought of them two loons that called
themselves Mrs. Andrew Jackson and General Tom Thumb. I dropped Miguel
altogether, an' he dropped Jiguel, which was a relief to me, an' I took
strong to Jonas, even callin' him Jone, which I consider a good deal
uglier an' commoner even than Jonas. He didn't like this much, but said
that if it would help me out of the Miguel, he didn't care.
“Well, on the mornin' of the next day I went into the little front room
that they called the office, to see if there was a letter for us yet,
an' there wasn't nobody there to ask. But I saw a pile of letters under
a weight on the table, an' I jus' looked at these to see if one of 'em
was for us, an' if there wasn't the very letter Jone had written to the
doctor! They'd never sent it! I rushes back to Jone an' tells him, an'
he jus' set an' looked at me without sayin' a word. I didn't wonder he
couldn't speak.
“'I'll go an' let them people know what I think of 'em,' says I.
“'Don't do that,' said Jone, catchin' me by the sleeve. 'It wont do no
good. Leave the letter there, an' don't say nothin' about it. We'll stay
here till afternoon quite quiet, an' then we'll go away. That garden
wall isn't high.'
“'An' how about the trunk?' says I.
“'Oh, we'll take a few things in our pockets, an' lock up the trunk, an'
ask the doctor to send for it when we get to the city.'
“'All right,' says I. An' we went to work to get ready to leave.
“About five o'clock in the afternoon, when it was a nice time to take a
walk under the trees, we meandered quietly down to a corner of the back
wall, where Jone thought it would be rather convenient to get over. He
hunted up a short piece of board which he leaned up ag'in the wall, an'
then he put his foot on the top of that an' got hold of the top of the
wall an' climbed up, as easy as nuthin'. Then he reached down to help me
step onto the board. But jus' as he was agoin' to take me by the hand:
'Hello!' says he. 'Look a-there!' An' I turned round an' looked, an' if
there wasn't Mrs. Andrew Jackson an' General Tom Thumb a-walkin' down
the path.
“'What shall we do?' says I.
“'Come along,' says he. 'We aint a-goin' to stop for them. Get up, all
the same.'
“I tried to get up as he said, but it wasn't so easy for me on account
of my not bein' such a high stepper as Jone, an' I was a good while
a-gettin' a good footin' on the board.
“Mrs. Jackson an' the General, they came right up to us an' set down on
a bench which was fastened between two trees near the wall. An' there
they set, a-lookin' steady at us with their four little eyes, like four
empty thimbles.
“'You appear to be goin' away,' says Mrs. Jackson.
“'Yes,' says Jone from the top of the wall. We're a-goin' to take a
slight stroll outside, this salu-brious evenin'.'
“'Do you think,' says she, 'that the United States Bank would be open
this time of day?'
“'Oh no,' says Jone, 'the banks all close at three o'clock. It's a good
deal after that now.'
“'But if I told the officers who I was, wouldn't that make a
difference?' says she. 'Wouldn't they go down an' open the bank?'
“'Not much,' says Jone, givin' a pull which brought me right up to the
top o' the wall an' almost clean down the other side, with one jerk. 'I
never knowed no officers that would do that. But,' says he, a kind o'
shuttin' his eyes so that she shouldn't see he was lyin', 'we'll talk
about that when we come back.'
“'If you see that team of little oxen,' says the big man, 'send 'em
'round to the front gate.'
“'All right,' says Jone; an' he let me down the outside of the wall as
if I had been a bag o' horse-feed.
“'But if the bank isn't open you can't pay for it when it does come,' we
heard the old lady a-sayin' as we hurried off.
“We didn't lose no time agoin' down to that station, an' it's lucky we
didn't, for a train for the city was comin' jus' as we got there, an' we
jumped aboard without havin' no time to buy tickets. There wasn't many
people in our car, an we got a seat together.
“'Now then,' says Jone, as the cars went abuzzin' along, 'I feel as if
I was really on a bridal-trip, which I mus' say I didn't at that there
asylum.'
“An' then I said: 'I should think not,' an' we both bust out a-laughin',
as well we might, feelin' sich a change of surroundin's.
“'Do you think,' says somebody behind us, when we'd got through
laughin', 'that if I was to send a boy up to the cashier he would either
come down or send me the key of the bank?'
“We both turned aroun' as quick as lightnin', an' if there wasn't them
two lunertics in the seat behind us!
“It nearly took our breaths away to see them settin' there, staring at
us with their thimble eyes, an' a-wearin' their little straw hats, both
alike.
“'How on the livin' earth did you two got here?' says I, as soon as I
could speak.
“'Oh, we come by the same way you come--by the tem-per-ary stairs,' says
Mrs. Jackson. 'We thought if it was too late to draw any money to-night,
it might be well to be on hand bright an' early in the mornin'. An' so
we follered you two, as close as we could, because we knew you could
take us right to the very bank doors, an' we didn't know the way
ourselves, not never havin' had no occasion to attend to nothin' of this
kind before.'
“Jone an' I looked at each other, but we didn't speak for a minute.
“'Then,' says I, 'here's a pretty kittle o' fish.'
“'I should kinder say so,' says Jone. 'We've got these here two
lunertics on our hands, sure enough, for there ain't no train back to
Pokus tonight, an' I wouldn't go back with 'em if there was. We must
keep an eye on 'em till we can see the doctor to-morrow.'
“'I suppose we must,' said I, 'but this don't seem as much like a
bridal-trip as it did a while ago.'
“'You're right there,' says Jone.
“When the conductor came along we had to pay the fare of them two
lunertics, besides our own, for neither of 'em had a cent about 'em.
When we got to town we went to a smallish hotel, near the ferry, where
Jone knowed the man who kep' it, who wouldn't bother about none of us
havin' a scrap of baggage, knowin' he'd get his money all the same, out
of either Jone or his father. The General an' his sister looked a kind
o' funny in their little straw hats an' green carpet-slippers, an' the
clerk didn't know whether he hadn't forgot how to read writin' when the
big man put down the names of General Tom Thumb and Mrs. ex-President
Andrew Jackson, which he wasn't ex-President anyway, bein' dead; but
Jone he whispered they was travelin' under nommys dess plummys (I told
him to say that), an' he would fix it all right in the mornin'. An' then
we got some supper, which it took them two lunertics a long time to eat,
for they was all the time forgettin' what particular kind o' business
they was about, an' then we was showed to our rooms. They had two rooms
right across the hall from ours. We hadn't been inside our room five
minutes before Mrs. General Jackson come a-knockin' at the door.
“'Look a-here,' she says to me, 'there's a unforeseen contingency in my
room. An' it smells.'
“So I went right in, an' sure enough it did smell, for she had turned on
all the gases, besides the one that was lighted.
“'What did you do that for?' says I, a-turnin' them off as fast as I
could.
“'I'd like to know what they're made for,' says she, 'if they isn't to
be turned on.'
“When I told Jone about this he looked real serious, an' jus' then a
waiter came upstairs an' went into the big man's room. In a minute he
come out an' says to Jone an' me, a-grinnin':
“'We can't suit him no better in this house.'
“'What does he want?' asks Jone.
“'Why, he wants a smaller bed,' says the waiter. 'He says he can't sleep
in a bed as big as that, an' we haven't none smaller in this house,
which he couldn't get into if we had, in my opinion,' says he.
“'All right,' says Jone. 'Jus' you go downstairs, an' I'll fix him.' So
the man goes off, still a-grinnin'. 'I tell you what it is,' says Jone,
'it wont do to let them two lunertics have rooms to themselves. They'll
set this house afire or turn it upside down in the middle of the night,
if they has. There's nuthin' to be done but for you to sleep with the
woman an' for me to sleep with the man, an' to keep 'em from cuttin' up
till mornin'.'
“So Jone he went into the room where General Tom Thumb was a-settin'
with his hat on, a-lookin' doleful at the bed, an' says he:
“'What's the matter with the bed?'
“'Oh, it's too large entirely,' says the General. 'It wouldn't do for
me to sleep in a bed like that. It would ruin my character as a genuine
Thumb.'
“'Well,' says Jone, 'it's nearly two times too big for you, but if you
an' me was both to sleep in it, it would be about right, wouldn't it?'
“'Oh yes,' says the General. An' he takes off his hat, an' Jone says
good-night to me an' shuts the door. Our room was better than Mrs.
General Jackson's, so I takes her in there, an' the fust thing she does
is to turn on all the gases.
“'Stop that!' I hollers. 'If you do that again,--I'll--I'll break the
United States Bank tomorrow!'
“'How'll you do that?' says she.
“'I'll draw out all my capital,' says I.
“'I hope really you wont,' says she, 'till I've been there,' an' she
leans out of the open winder to look into the street, but while she
was a-lookin' out I see her left hand a-creepin' up to the gas by the
winder, that wasn't lighted. I felt mad enough to take her by the feet
an' pitch her out, as you an the boarder,” said Pomona, turning to me,
“h'isted me out of the canal-boat winder.”
This, by the way, was the first intimation we had had that Pomona knew
how she came to fall out of that window.
“But I didn't do it,” she continued, “for there wasn't no soft water
underneath for her to fall into. After we went to bed I kep' awake for
a long time, bein' afraid she'd get up in the night an' turn on all the
gases and smother me alive. But I fell asleep at last, an' when I woke
up, early in the mornin', the first thing I did was to feel for that
lunertic. But she was gone!”