But I warn you all that a
time 's coming when you're going to feel sick whenever you think of this
day." And away he went.
"All right, doctor," says the king, kinder mocking him; "we'll try and
get 'em to send for you;" which made them all laugh, and they said it was
a prime good hit.
CHAPTER XXVI.
WELL, when they was all gone the king he asks Mary Jane how they was off
for spare rooms, and she said she had one spare room, which would do for
Uncle William, and she'd give her own room to Uncle Harvey, which was a
little bigger, and she would turn into the room with her sisters and
sleep on a cot; and up garret was a little cubby, with a pallet in it.
The king said the cubby would do for his valley--meaning me.
So Mary Jane took us up, and she showed them their rooms, which was plain
but nice. She said she'd have her frocks and a lot of other traps took
out of her room if they was in Uncle Harvey's way, but he said they
warn't. The frocks was hung along the wall, and before them was a
curtain made out of calico that hung down to the floor. There was an old
hair trunk in one corner, and a guitar-box in another, and all sorts of
little knickknacks and jimcracks around, like girls brisken up a room
with. The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for
these fixings, and so don't disturb them. The duke's room was pretty
small, but plenty good enough, and so was my cubby.
That night they had a big supper, and all them men and women was there,
and I stood behind the king and the duke's chairs and waited on them, and
the niggers waited on the rest. Mary Jane she set at the head of the
table, with Susan alongside of her, and said how bad the biscuits was,
and how mean the preserves was, and how ornery and tough the fried
chickens was--and all that kind of rot, the way women always do for to
force out compliments; and the people all knowed everything was tiptop,
and said so--said "How DO you get biscuits to brown so nice?" and "Where,
for the land's sake, DID you get these amaz'n pickles?" and all that kind
of humbug talky-talk, just the way people always does at a supper, you
know.
And when it was all done me and the hare-lip had supper in the kitchen
off of the leavings, whilst the others was helping the niggers clean up
the things. The hare-lip she got to pumping me about England, and blest
if I didn't think the ice was getting mighty thin sometimes. She says:
"Did you ever see the
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