Chapter 26

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 king?"

"Who? William Fourth? Well, I bet I have -- he
goes to our church." I knowed he was dead years
ago, but I never let on. So when I says he goes to
our church, she says:

"What -- regular?"

"Yes -- regular. His pew's right over opposite
ourn -- on t'other side the pulpit."

"I thought he lived in London?"

"Well, he does. Where WOULD he live?"

"But I thought YOU lived in Sheffield?"

I see I was up a stump. I had to let on to get
choked with a