"Adeler, Max - Frictional Electricity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Adeler Max)

"'No you don't!' says I; 'I'm no old offender nor a young offender. I'm a
perfeckly honest Baptist plumber, and I kin prove it, too.'
"'How kin you prove it?' says the officer.
"'By William Jones,' says I, 'who is a-setting in that kitchen right next door,
a-wooing the hired girl.'
"I was bold about it, sir, because I knowed William Jones daresn't strike at me
while the officer was there.
"'We'll see about that, says the officer, and in he goes to Mr. Muffitt's yard
next door and comes back with William Jones. I have no use for a man like
William Jones. What do you think he does, sir? Why, he looks me over, from head
to foot, in a blank sort of a way, and then, turning to the policeman, he says:
'I don't know the man, officer; never seen him before'; then that low-down
plumber walks out and leaves me there and goes back, and in a minute I hear him
and Bella Dougherty a-laughing worse than ever.
"'I thought not,' says the officer, slipping the handcuffs on me, 'and so now
you come right along.' And Friend Amelia looked mournful at me and says to me
she would come around regular and read Barclay to me in my cell after I was
convicted.
"And so, sir, to make a long story short, I was took up before the magistrate
and held for burglary, and my mate, George Watkins, went my bail and so I was
let go.
"I might stop here, sir, but I must tell you that the following Thursday I met
William Jones up a kind of a blind alley where I was working, while he was
working in a house on the opposite side. He had me in a corner where there was
no chance to run, so I put on a bold face and went right up to him and says:
"'William, there's been some differences betwixt us, but I'm not the man to bear
grudges and I forgive you."
"'What's that?' says he, savage.
"'Why,' says I, 'the whole thing is just one of them unpleasant
misunderstandings'; and then I started to explain to him about the Huxley
Institute theory of frictional electricity and the aurora borealis.
"I can't tell what he said, sir, in reply, with reference to the aurora
borealis, because I'm a decent man and never use no low language; but suddenly
he jumped on me, and the first thing I knowed I was being lifted in the
ambulance and fetched to this yer hospital. Was it right, sir, do you think, for
William Jones to strike me foul, like that, while I was trying to state my case
to him? No, sir. But that's not the worst of it. Last Tuesday word came to me
that Bella Dougherty had throwed me over and is going to marry William Jones on
Decoration Day! Think of that, sir!" and Mordecai Barnes turned his head upon
his pillow and moaned.
Turning again toward me, he was about to resume his statement, when suddenly he
exclaimed:
"Why, there's Aunt Maggie."
A woman of fifty years, nicely clad, came to the bedside and said to him coldly:

"Is that you, Mordecai Barnes?"
"Yes, Aunt Maggie."
"I'm ashamed of you, Mordecai Barnes," said she; "ashamed of you. It served you
right. You got just what was comin' to you. I wish William had banged you
worse."