Like a whirlwind he was gone again.  Clara J. simply looked at me queerly and said, “The queens are here; treat them white, John!”

I felt as happy as a piece of cheese.

CHAPTER VI.

John Henry^S two queens.

“Well!” said Clara J., after a painful pause, “why don’t you go and welcome your Aunt Eliza?”

Aunt Lize would be the central figure in a hot old time if she went where I wished her at that moment.

Somebody had tied both my feet to the floor.

I had visions of two excited females lambasting me with umbrellas and demanding their property back.

Completely at a loss I sank into a chair, feeling as bright and chipper as a poached egg.

I felt that I belonged just about as much as a knothole does in a barb-wire fence.

In that few minutes Bunch was more than revenged.

I was on the pickle boat for sure.

Sailing! sailing! over the griddle, me!

Scientists tell us that when a man is drowning every detail of his lifetime passes before him in the fraction of a second.

Well, that moving picture gag was worked on me, without the aid of a bathing suit.

When I awoke, Clara J. was saying, “Possibly it would look better if I went with you.  Wait just a moment, till I get this apron off—­there! come along!”

I arose, and with delightful unanimity the chair arose also, clinging like a passionate porusplaster to my pantaloons.

“Mercy’” exclaimed Clara J., “that little villain, Tacks, has been making molasses candy!”

“It strikes me,” I said, trying hard to be calm, “that after making the candy he decided to make a monkey of me.  Darn the blame thing, it won’t let go!  I suppose I’ve got to be a perpetual furniture mover the rest of my life!”

Just then Uncle Peter came bubbling into the kitchen, talking in short explosions like a bottle of vichy, and I collaborated with the chair in a hasty squatty-vous!

“Two women on the piazza,” he fizzed; “been talking to them an hour and all I could get out of them was ‘yes’ and ‘no.’  Not bad looking, but profoundly dumb.”

“Hush!” said Clara J., glancing uneasily at me and then back at Uncle Peter, as she raised a warning finger to her lips.

“Oh, they can’t hear me,” the old gentleman went on; “John, you better go out and see them.  They have a card with your name written on it.  I’m no lady’s man, anyhow.”

“Do they look like queens?” Clara J. asked, uneasily.

“Well, they aren’t exactly Cleopatras, but not bad, not bad!” he gurgled.

“Is one older than the other?” Clara J. cross-questioned.

“Might be mother and daughter,” Uncle Peter fancied.

“It’s surely Bunch’s bunch,” I groaned inwardly, wondering how I’d look galloping across the country with a kitchen chair trailing along behind.