Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West
"
As they came out from dinner they observed the porters wheeling several
big trunks up the east corridor. The end of each trunk was lettered:
"A. Jones."
"Well," said Beth, with an amused smile, "he intends to stay a while,
anyhow. You'll have a chance to meet him yet, Maud."
"I'm glad of that," answered Maud, "for I am anxious to calculate the
worth of the life I helped to save. Your reports are ambiguous, and I am
undecided whether you are taking the boy seriously or as a joke. From
your description of his personal appearance, I incline to the belief that
under ordinary circumstances I would not look twice at Mr. Jones, but
having been partly instrumental in preserving him to the world, I
naturally feel a proprietary interest in him."
"Of course," said Flo. "He's worth one look, out of pure curiosity; but
it would be dreadful to have him tagging you around, expressing his
everlasting gratitude."
"I don't imagine he'll do that," observed Patsy Doyle. "A. Jones strikes
me as having a fair intellect in a shipwrecked body, and I'll wager a
hatpin against a glove-buttoner that he won't bore you. At the same time
he may not interest you--or any of us--for long, unless he develops
talents we have not discovered. I wonder why he doesn't use his whole
name. That mystic 'A' puzzles me."
"It's an English notion, I suppose," said Mrs. Montrose.
"But he isn't English; he's American."
"Sangoese," corrected Beth.
"Perhaps he doesn't like his name, or is ashamed of it," suggested
Uncle John.
"It may be 'Absalom,'" said Flo. "We once knew an actor named Absalom,
and he always called himself 'A. Judson Keith.' He was a dignified chap,
and when we girls one day called him 'Ab,' he nearly had hysterics."
"Mr. Werner had hysterics to-day," asserted Maud, gravely; "but I didn't
blame him. He sent out a party to ride down a steep hill on horseback, as
part of a film story, and a bad accident resulted. One of the horses
stepped in a gopher hole and fell, and a dozen others piled up on him,
including their riders.
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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