Back to the Woods | Page 3

rooms? Where is it?" she inquired, all in
one breath.
Where was the blamed thing? What did it look like? How did I know?
She could search me. I could feel my ears getting red. Presently I
braced and mumbled, "No more details till the castle is completed, then
I'll coax you out there and let you revel."
"How soon will that be?" she asked, "To-morrow? Yes, John,
to-morrow?"
"No," I whispered croupily, "in--in about a week."
I wanted time to arrange my earthly affairs.
"Oh! lovely!" she said, and kissing me rushed away to break the news
to mother.
I felt like a rain check after the sun comes out.
Suddenly Hope tugged at my heart strings and I remembered that I had
a week in which to beat the ponies to a pulp and win out enough coin to
buy six Swiss Cheese cottages in the country.
Day after day I waded in among the jelly fish at the track but the best I
ever got was an $8 win.
Eight dollars wouldn't buy a dog house.
I was desperate. Every evening I had to sit around and listen while
Clara J. told Tacks or Uncle Peter or Aunt Martha or Mother what she
intended doing when we moved to the country.
They had it all cooked up. Uncle Peter and Aunt Martha were coming
to live with us and Tacks would be there to let us live with him.
Uncle Peter intended starting a garden truck farm in the back yard and
Tacks figured on building a chicken coop somewhere between the front
gate and the parlor.
Aunt Martha and Clara J. almost came to blows over the question of
milking the cow. Aunt Martha insisted that cows are milked by
machinery and Clara J. was equally positive that moral suasion is the
only means by which a cow can be brought to a show down.
In the meantime I was dying every half hour.
Finally the day preceding the long-talked of country excursion arrived

and I began to figure on the safest and least inexpensive methods of
suicide.
I went to the track in the afternoon and threw out enough gold dust to
paint our country home from cellar to attic--but never a sardine
showed.
Frostbitten and suffocated by the odor of burning money I crept into a
seat in the car and began to plan my finale.
Presently an elbow poked me in the ribs and I looked into the smiling
face of Bunch Jefferson.
"Still piking, eh?" he chuckled; "you wouldn't trail along after Your
Uncle Bunch and get next to the candy man, would you? Only $400 to
the good to-day. Am I the picker from Picklesburg, son of the old man
Pickwick?--well, I guess yes!"
Then in that desperate moment I broke down and confessed all to
Bunch. I told him how my haughty spirit disdained a tip and how in the
pride of my heart I doped the cards myself and fell in the well. I told
him of my feverish desire to beat the Bookmakers down through the
earth till they yelled for mercy, and I told him of my pitiful dilemma
and how I had to build a home in the country before noon to-morrow or
do a dog trot to the Bad lands.
Then Bunch began to laugh--a long, loud, discordant laugh which
ended in, "John, I'll help you make good!" and then I began to sit up
and notice things.
"I'm away head of this pitty-pat game at the Merry-go-Round," Bunch
went on, "and it so happens that recently I peeled the wrapper off my
roll and swapped it for a country home for my sister and her daughter.
She's a young widow, my sister is, and one of the loveliest little ladies
that ever came over the hill. And she has a daughter that's a regular
plate of peaches and cream."
Still I sat in darkness, and he went on:
"Now, my sister won't move out there for a day or two, so to-morrow,
promptly on schedule time, you lead your domestic fleet over the
sandbars to that house and point with pride to its various beauties--are
you wise?"
"But, Great Scott, man! it's not mine!" I gasped.
"Roll a small pill and get together," admonished Bunch, with a seraphic
smile. "Can't you figure the trick to win? All you have to do is to coax

your gang out there and then break the painful news to them that you've
suddenly discovered the place is haunted and that you're going to sell it
and buy a better bandbox--getting wise?"
"Bunch," I murmured, weakly, "you've saved my life, temporarily, at
least. Where is this palace?"
"Only forty minutes from the City Hall--any old City Hall," he
answered, "It's at