Short Fiction by O. Henry (librera reader txt) 📕

“We was back at Mrs. Avery’s hotel at the time she appointed. She was looking pretty and fine enough, as far as that went, to make any man let her name every officer in the country. But I hadn’t much faith in looks, so I was certainly surprised when she pulls out a document with the great seal of the United States on it, and ‘William Henry Humble’ in a fine, big hand on the back.

“ ‘You might have had it the next day, boys,’ says Mrs. Avery, smiling. ‘I hadn’t the slightest trouble in getting it,’ says she. ‘I just asked for it, that’s all. Now, I’d like to talk to you a while,’ she goes on, ‘but I’m awfully busy, and I know you’ll excuse me. I’ve got an Ambassadorship, two Consulates and a dozen other minor applications to look after. I can hardly find time to sleep at all. You’ll give my compliments to Mr. Humble when you get home, of course.’

“Well, I handed her the $500, which she pitched into her desk drawer without counting. I put Bill’s appointment in my pocket and me and Andy made our adieus.

“We started back for the Territory the same day. We wired Bill: ‘Job landed; get the tall glasses ready,’ and we felt pretty good.

“Andy joshed me all the way about how little I knew about women.

“ ‘All right,’ says I. ‘I’ll admit that she surprised me. But it’s the first time I ever knew one of ’em to manipulate a piece of business on time without getting it bungled up in some way,’ says I.

“Down about the edge of Arkansas I got out Bill’s appointment and looked it over, and then I handed it to Andy to read. Andy read it, but didn’t add any remarks to my silence.

“The paper was for Bill, all right, and a genuine document, but it appointed him postmaster of Dade City, Fla.

“Me and Andy got off the train at Little Rock and sent Bill’s appointment to him by mail. Then we struck northeast toward Lake Superior.

“I never saw Bill Humble after that.”

“As I have told you before,” said Jeff Peters, “I never had much confidence in the perfidiousness of woman. As partners or coeducators in the most innocent line of graft they are not trustworthy.”

“They deserve the compliment,” said I. “I think they are entitled to be called the honest sex.”

“Why shouldn’t they be?” said Jeff. “They’ve got the other sex either grafting or working overtime for ’em. They’re all right in business until they get their emotions or their hair touched up too much. Then you want to have a flat footed, heavy breathing man with sandy whiskers, five kids and a building and loan mortgage ready as an understudy to take her desk. Now there was that widow lady that me and Andy Tucker engaged to help us in that little matrimonial agency scheme we floated out in Cairo.

“When you’ve got enough advertising capital⁠—say a roll as big as the little end of a wagon tongue⁠—there’s money in matrimonial agencies. We had about $6,000 and we expected to double it in two months, which is about as long as a scheme like ours can be carried on without taking out a New Jersey charter.

“We fixed up an advertisement that read about like this:

“Charming widow, beautiful, home loving, 32 years, possessing $3,000 cash and owning valuable country property, would remarry. Would prefer a poor man with affectionate disposition to one with means, as she realizes that the solid virtues are oftenest to be found in the humble walks of life. No objection to elderly man or one of homely appearance if faithful and true and competent to manage property and invest money with judgment. Address, with particulars.

Lonely,

Care of Peters & Tucker, agents, Cairo, Ill.

“ ‘So far, so pernicious,’ says I, when we had finished the literary concoction. ‘And now,’ says I, ‘where is the lady.’

“Andy gives me one of his looks of calm irritation.

“ ‘Jeff,’ says he, ‘I thought you had lost them ideas of realism in your art. Why should there be a lady? When they sell a lot of watered stock on Wall Street would you expect to find a mermaid in it? What has a matrimonial ad got to do with a lady?’

“ ‘Now listen,’ says I. ‘You know my rule, Andy, that in all my illegitimate inroads against the legal letter of the law the article sold must be existent, visible, producible. In that way and by a careful study of city ordinances and train schedules I have kept out of all trouble with the police that a five dollar bill and a cigar could not square. Now, to work this scheme we’ve got to be able to produce bodily a charming widow or its equivalent with or without the beauty, hereditaments and appurtenances set forth in the catalogue and writ of errors, or hereafter be held by a justice of the peace.’

“ ‘Well,’ says Andy, reconstructing his mind, ‘maybe it would be safer in case the post office or the peace commission should try to investigate our agency. But where,’ he says, ‘could you hope to find a widow who would waste time on a matrimonial scheme that had no matrimony in it?’

“I told Andy that I thought I knew of the exact party. An old friend of mine, Zeke Trotter, who used to draw soda water and teeth in a tent show, had made his wife a widow a year before by drinking some dyspepsia cure of the old doctor’s instead of the liniment that he always got boozed up on. I used to stop at their house often, and I thought we could get her to work with us.

“ ’Twas only sixty miles to the little town where she lived, so I jumped out on the I.C. and finds her in the same cottage with the same sunflowers and roosters standing on the washtub. Mrs. Trotter fitted our ad first