The Merryweathers Part 5

The barrel went down, and I went up."

"_Oh!_ Colonel Ferrers!"

"Up to the ceiling, I give you my word. High room, too, great warehouse, twenty feet if it was one. There I hung, and there I swung, a spectacle for G.o.ds and men."

"What _did_ you do?" asked Mrs. Merryweather, as soon as she could control her laughter. "Dear friend, it is most heartless to laugh, but how can we help it? How did you ever get down? did you have to wait till the men came back?"

"No, madam. My pride would not allow that. I learned my lesson, or a part of it, while I hung there like Mahomet's coffin; I learned that Gravitation did not trouble itself about superior young men; but I did not learn all that there was to learn; that took the sequel. Well, I hung there, as I say, revolving slowly; centrifugal force, you understand; I was really exemplifying the workings of natural forces; interesting demonstration, if there had been any one there to see. My crumb of comfort was that there was no one. I must get down before those men came back from dinner; that was the one thing necessary in the world at that moment. I measured the s.p.a.ce of the trap as I swung; I prided myself on my correct eye; you see I was a most complete a.s.s: I have seen only a few completer. I thought I could jump down astride of the trap, so to speak, and get no harm. I came down the rope, hand over fist, till I got to the end of it; only about six feet between me and safety: then I jumped."

"And did you--"

"No, my dear madam, I did not. I went down into the cellar, on top of the barrel, and I carry the mark of the edge of that barrel on my shoulders to this day, and shall to my latest day. And the moral of this story," the Colonel concluded, glancing up into the depths of the great hemlock, "the moral, my young friends, is: wait till you know something before you decide that you know everything."

When the laughter had subsided, Mr. Merryweather said: "Your story, Colonel, reminds me of a sc.r.a.pe that Roger and I once got into, years ago. No, it wasn't Roger, it was my brother Will. My children all know it, but it may be new to you and our other guests. It happened when we were out sailing one day, on this very pond. The water was pretty low that year, and we got over into a cove on the north side, where we seldom went, and didn't know the ground thoroughly. Indeed, in very low water, one is apt to find that one doesn't know any ground thoroughly.

New ledges and rocks are constantly cropping out--as you shall hear.

Well, we were sailing along in fine style, before a fair wind, when suddenly--we ran aground."

"On the sh.o.r.e?" asked the Colonel.

"No; on a rock. It was getting dark, and we could not see very well, but I could see a nose of rock, and it looked like the end of a ledge. 'I'll get out and shove her off!' said I. I sounded with an oar, and found the water barely ankle-deep on the ledge. So I took off my shoes and stockings, rolled up my trousers a little, and stepped in--up to my neck!"

"Ha! ha!" roared the Colonel. "Ho! ho! that was sport. I wish I had seen you."

"Wait a moment!" said the Chief. "The picture is not ready for exhibition yet. When Will had got through laughing at me, he went to work--I found I could not stir the boat alone--he went to work and got ready. Stripped to the skin--he had on a new suit, and was something of a dandy in those days--stepped carefully overboard--and landed in water three inches deep."

"Merryweather, you are making this up!"

"Indeed I am not, my dear sir. There we stood, I up to my chin, he with his toes under water, and laughed till we were so weak that we had to go ash.o.r.e and sit down before we had strength to push that boat off. There is my Roland for your Oliver, Colonel. And now, Miranda, I think we are ready for your game. Come down, boys!"

The boys came scrambling down, still laughing over the stories, and soon all were seated on the carpet of dry, fragrant pine-needles. The girls had found some oak-leaves ("It is my belief," said Mr. Merryweather, "that if Bell went to a picnic in a coal-mine or on a sand-bank, she would still manage to find oak-leaves somewhere!"), and were busily twining garlands for the heads of the company.

"Are we all ready?" asked Mrs. Merryweather. "Well! my game--a very simple one--is called _Vocabulary_. It came from my reading the other day an admirable little book written by a wise professor, in which he deplores the poverty of our vocabularies, and makes a suggestion for our enlarging them. He advises us to add two or three words to our list every week. The first time we use a new word, he says, it will be embarra.s.sing to us and, it may be, amusing to our hearers; but if we have courage and patience, we shall be doing a good work not only for ourselves, but for all our generation and the generations that are to come. Well, this naturally appealed to me, and I was thinking of proposing it to you all this evening; and then, as we were driving over, it occurred to me that it might be made into a rather amusing game."

"Miranda," said her husband, "is there anything in life that you do _not_ think can be made into a rather amusing game? But go on!"

"Dear Mammy!" said Phil. "Do you remember when you and I both had the toothache, and you thought it might be amusing to count the jumps and see how many there were in a minute?"

"Well, so it would have been," said his mother, "if we had only had a little more fort.i.tude. Now if you are all going to laugh at me, you shall not learn the game."

"Oh, we will be good!" exclaimed the Merryweathers. "We truly will."

"The game of _Vocabulary_," said Mrs. Merryweather, "is played thus.

One--I, for example--begins to tell a story. I say, 'I went out to walk this morning, and I met--' there I stop short, and you, in turn, give a verb synonymous, more or less, with 'met.' This goes around the circle till some one cannot find a verb, and that some one must continue the story, stopping at any word he likes. I fear this is not very clear; perhaps we can ill.u.s.trate it best playing it. I will begin as I suggested. I went out to walk this morning, and on my way I met--" she stopped.

"Encountered!" said Mr. Merryweather.

"Approached!" said the Colonel.

"Ran up against!" said Gerald.

"Fell afoul of!" said Phil.

"Fell in with!" said Bell.

"Peggy, you come next."

"Oh! I can't!" cried poor Peggy. "They have said everything; Mrs.

Merryweather, I can't _ever_ play anything of this kind, you know. I am too stupid."

"Nonsense, my child; you are not in the least stupid. If you cannot think of a word, go on with the story."

"But I don't know how!" cried Peggy, her eyes growing large and round, with a look that Gertrude and Margaret knew only too well. The tears were not far behind those round blue eyes; and Margaret hastened to the rescue. "You met a man, dear!" she whispered. "That is all you need say."

"Well--I met a man!" said Peggy, with a gasp.

"Person!"

"Individual!"

"Anthropoid ape!"

"Masculine mortal!"

"Chump!"

"I object to the definition!" said Mrs. Merryweather. "In case of a false definition, the falsifier takes up the thread. Go on, Jerry."

"This man (he _was_ a chump, you'll see!) was so ugly that not a crow dared to stay in the same county with him, and so disagreeable that it gave one spasms to look at him; also, he had not the manners to take off his hat--" he stopped short.

"Cap!"

"Hood!"

"Helmet!"

"Bonnet!"

"Head-dress!"

"Tam-o'-shanter!"

"Mitre!"

"Tiara!"

"Fez!"

"Turban!"