Jack Chanty. Footner Hulbert

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ barge, and to stare.

      Next, Andy was seated on the box, while Mary, kneeling behind him, produced her scissors.

      "If you don't sit still you'll get the top of your cars cut off!" she said severely.

      But sitting still was difficult under the taunts from ashore.

      "Jutht you wait till I git aholt of you," lisped the toothless one, proving that the language of unregenerate youth is much the same on the far-off Spirit River as it is on the Bowery.

      Jack returned to the raft and unstrapped the banjo case. "Be a good boy and I'll sing you a song," he said, presumably to Andy, but looking at Mary meanwhile.

      At the sound of the tuning-up the infant Buddha in long pants gravely arose stern foremost, and reseated himself at the edge of the barge, where he could get a better view of the player.

      Jack chose another rollicking air, but a new tone had crept into his deep voice. He sang softly, for he had no desire to bring others down the bank to interrupt his further talk with Mary.

      "Oh, the pretty, pretty creature!

       When I next do meet her

       No more like a clown will I face her frown,

       But gallantly will I treat her,

       But gallantly will I treat her,

       Oh, the pretty, pretty creature!"

      The infant Buddha condescended to smile, and to bounce once or twice on his fundament by way of applause. Andy sat as still as a surprised chipmunk. Colin was sorry now that he had cut himself off from the barge. As for the boy's big sister, she kept her eyes veiled, and plied the scissors with slightly languorous motions of the hands. Even a merry song may work a deal of sentimental damage under certain conditions. And the sun shone, and the bright river moved down.

      "Thank you," she said, when he had come to the end. "We never have music here."

      Jack wondered where she had learned her pretty manners.

      The hair-cutting was concluded. Andy sprang up looking like a little zebra with alternate dark and light stripes running around his head, and a narrow bang like a forelock in the middle of his forehead. Jack put away the banjo, and Andy, seeing that there was to be no more music, set off in chase of Colin. The two of them disappeared over the bank. Mary gathered up towels, soap, comb, and scissors preparatory to following them.

      "Don't go yet," said Jack eagerly.

      "I must," she said, but lingering. "There is much to be done before the steamboat comes."

      "She's only expected," said Jack of the knowledge born of experience. "It'll be a week before she comes."

      Mary displayed no great eagerness to be gone.

      A bold idea had been making a covert shine in Jack's eyes during the last minute or two. It suddenly found expression. "Cut my hair," he blurted out.

      She started and blushed. "Oh, I—I couldn't cut a man's hair," she stammered.

      "What's the difference?" demanded Jack with a great parade of innocence. "Hair is just hair, isn't it?"

      "I couldn't," she repeated naïvely. "It would confuse me so!"

      The thought of her confusion was delicious to him. He was standing below her on the raft. "Look," he said, lowering his head. "It needs it. I'm a sight!"

      Since in this position he could not see her face, she allowed her eyes to dwell for a moment on the tawny silken sheaves that he exhibited. Such bright hair was wonderful to her. It seemed to her as if the sun itself was netted in its folds.

      "I—I couldn't," she repeated, but weakly.

      He swung about and sat on the edge of the barge. "Make out I am your other little brother," he said insinuatingly. "I can't see you, so it's all right. Just one little snip to see how it goes!"

      The temptation was too great to be resisted. She bent over, and the blades of the scissors met. In her agitation she cut a wider swath than she intended and a whole handful of hair fell to the deck.

      "Oh!" she cried remorsefully.

      "Now you'll have to do the whole thing," said Jack quickly. "You can't leave me looking like a half-clipped poodle."

      With a guilty look over her shoulder she drew up the box and sat down behind him. Gibbie, the youngest of the Cranstons, was a solemn and interested spectator. Jack thrilled a little and smiled at the touch of her trembling fingers in his hair. At the same time he was not unaware of the decorative value of his luxuriant thatch, and it occurred to him he was running a considerable risk of disfigurement at her hands.

      "Not so short as Andy's," he suggested anxiously.

      "I will be careful," she said.

      The scissors snipped busily, and the rich yellow-brown hair fell all around the deck. Mary eyed it covetously. One shining twist of it dropped in her lap. He could not see her. In a twinkling it was stuffed inside her belt.

      Meanwhile Jack continued to smile with softened eyes. "Hair-cutting was never like this," he murmured. He was tantalized by the recollection of her voice, and he cast about in his mind for something to lead her to talk more freely. "You were not here when I came through two years ago," he said.

      "I was away at school," she said.

      "Where?"

      "The mission at Caribou Lake."

      "Did you like it there?"

      He felt the shrug in her finger-tips. "It is the best there is," she said quietly.

      "It's a shame!" said Jack. There was a good deal unspoken here. "A shame you should be obliged to associate with those savages," he implied, and she understood.

      "Have you ever been outside?" he asked.

      "No," she said.

      "Would you like to go?"

      "Yes, with somebody I liked," she said in her simple way.

      "With me?" he asked in the off-hand tone that may be taken any way the hearer pleases.

      Her simplicity was not dullness. "No," she said quickly. "You would tell me funny lies about everything."

      "But you would laugh, and you would like it," he said.

      She had nothing to say to this.

      "Outside they have regular shops for shaving and cutting hair," he went on. "Barber-shops they are called."

      "I know," she said offended. "I read."

      "I'll bet you didn't know there was a lady barber in Prince George."

      "Nice kind of lady!" she said.

      The obvious retort slipped thoughtlessly СКАЧАТЬ