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第14章 Playing Courier(6)

We had lost our good rooms,but we got some others which were pretty scattering,but would answer.I judged things would brighten now,but the Head of the Expedition said,“Send up the trunks.”It made me feel pretty cold.There was a doubtful something about that trunk business.I was almost sure of it.I was going to suggest—

But a wave of his hand sufficiently restrained me,and I was informed that we would now camp for three days and see if we could rest up.

I said all right,never mind ringing;I would go down and attend to the trunks myself.I got a cab and went straight to Mr.Charles Natural's place,and asked what order it was I had left there.

“To send seven trunks to the hotel.”

“And were you to bring any back?”

“No.”

“You are sure I didn't tell you to bring back seven that would be found piled in the lobby?”

“Absolutely sure you didn't.”

“Then the whole fourteen are gone to Zurich or Jericho or somewhere,and there is going to be more debris around that hotel when the Expedition—”

I didn't finish,because my mind was getting to be in a good deal of a whirl,and when you are that way you think you have finished a sentence when you haven't,and you go mooning and dreaming away,and the first thing you know you get run over by a dray or a cow or something.

I left the cab there—I forgot it—and on my way back I thought it all out and concluded to resign,because otherwise I should be nearly sure to be discharged.But I didn't believe it would be a good idea to resign in person;I could do it by message.So I sent for Mr.Ludi and explained that there was a courier going to resign on account of incompatibility or fatigue or something,and as he had four or five vacant days,I would like to insert him into that vacancy if he thought he could fill it.When everything was arranged I got him to go up and say to the Expedition that,owing to an error made by Mr.Natural's people,we were out of trunks here,but would have plenty in Zurich,and we'd better take the first train,freight,gravel,or construction,and move right along.

He attended to that and came down with an invitation for me to go up—yes,certainly;and,while we walked along over to the bank to get money,and collect my cigars and tobacco,and to the cigar shop to trade back the lottery tickets and get my umbrella,and to Mr.Natural's to pay that cab and send it away,and to the county jail to get my rubbers and leave p.p.c.cards for the Mayor and Supreme Court,he described the weather to me that was prevailing on the upper levels there with the Expedition,and I saw that I was doing very well where I was.

I stayed out in the woods till 4p.m.,to let the weather moderate,and then turned up at the station just in time to take the three-o'clock express for Zurich along with the Expedition,now in the hands of Ludi,who conducted its complex affairs with little apparent effort or inconvenience.

Well,I had worked like a slave while I was in office,and done the very best I knew how;yet all that these people dwelt upon or seemed to care to remember were the defects of my administration,not its creditable features.They would skip over a thousand creditable features to remark upon and reiterate and fuss about just one fact,till it seemed to me they would wear it out;and not much of a fact,either,taken by itself—the fact that I elected myself courier in Geneva,and put in work enough to carry a circus to Jerusalem,and yet never even got my gang out of the town.I finally said I didn't wish to hear any more about the subject,it made me tired.And I told them to their faces that I would never be a courier again to save anybody's life.And if I live long enough I'll prove it.I think it's a difficult,brain-racking,overworked,and thoroughly ungrateful office,and the main bulk of its wages is a sore heart and a bruised spirit.

1891

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