He drew his chair up closer to the stove and began: "Jest
after I was a roundin' Cape Horn the fourth time, I believe,--yis, yis,
le'me see--twenty times I've rounded the Horn,--wall, this ere, I reckon,
was somewhere nigh about the fourth time."
Scarcely had Grandpa arranged the merest preliminaries of his tale when
ominous footsteps were heard returning along the way whither Grandma and
Madeline had so recently departed, and he was interrupted by a strangely
calm though authoritative voice from behind the door; "Pa!"
"Wall, wall, ma! what ye want, ma?" exclaimed Grandpa, turning his head
aside, with a slight shade of annoyance on his face.
No answer immediately forthcoming, that wofully illusory smile returned
again to his features. He moved still nearer to the stove, and was just
at the point of resuming the thread of his narrative when--
"Bijonah Keeler!" came from behind the door in accents still calm,
indeed, but freighted with a significance which words have faint power to
express.
"Yis, yis, ma! I'm a coming, ma!" replied Grandpa, rising hastily and
shuffling toward the door; "I'm a coming, ma! I'm a coming!"
The door opened wide enough to receive him, and then closed upon him in
all his ignominy.
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