Limekiller!

On the one hand, Jack would have wished to prolong his meal in hopes that perhaps the Duckersons might tire of waiting and so depart without his having to make any statement positive or negative. And on the one hand, the nature of his meal was not such as to encourage him to prolong it at all. Although not precisely a feinshmecker, or gourmet — a tour of duty out of the Royal Canadian Naval base at Esquimault had cured him of any tendency towards finickly eating, as what tour of duty out of what naval base wouldn’t? — he was not invariably averse to complaining about some dish particularly deficient in edibility: wherever. But tonight’s waiter on-duty at the Grand Shanghai bore upon his very scrutable countenance such a look of deepest melancholy, reflective perhaps of a time there was e’er China’s woes began (say, about the 3rd century before the Christian Era) that Limekiller’s heart, not the very hardest article at all times, smote and prevented him.

So, by and by, and after the final cup of tea (the nature of which might well have caused riots and/or wall posters in either China), he shoved away his dinnerware and faced The Question.

“Now what about our luttle trup, Mr. Limekuller?”

“Momma nye been lookin forward to it oh ever since we heard aboutcher piece a propitty fer sale down there, Mr. Limeskinner.” ‘

“Flower Bight,’ now I think that’s ever such a nice lul name, whut kine da flowers would they be, Mr. Limekuller.”

Jack indicated vaguely they’d be all kinds of flowers such as one finds in these parts (“In season, of course,” he added); he did not feel up to explaining that the Bight was supposedly named for one Flowers, perhaps originally Flores, perhaps not, who had either hanged someone for piracy there long long ago, or had been hanged by someone there for the same crime, or even perhaps both, though probably not simultaneously: then again, considering the Hidalgoan Method of Historical Construction, Flowers (or Flores: names had a way of changing here as they crossed the Spanish River in either direction) had merely perhaps complained of being charged sixpence more for a bag of nails than he considered right, Mahn be no better nor a pirate! the complaint may have gone; what time he or someone next to he in a dram shop or punch house at that moment may have echoed, Mahn should be honed, dom pirate! and someone else, hearing or likelier half-hearing may have lurched away home, via a longish sea-voyage and replied at its end to What News? with Flowers, he hong one pirate, or even, for by that time all details would have become mazy and muzzy, One pirate, he hong Flowers. there were enough men named Flowers to go around; and by the time the story had been told either way and not even very often, it would have become fact. If I tell you three times, it is true, was a basic principle of the Hidalgoan Method of Historical Construction. - And, very often, If I tell me three times… or maybe only one or two times would have done. It often did; and not only in Hidalgo.

“Momma nye we been looking fra nice place to build us a place to spend the real cold months —” Jack knew those months and winters.

“Oh them cold wunters, they wuill kull us if we don’t git away and put a locum in charge from anyway December through March —" And Doctor added, gloomily, Not that finding a good locums was a very easy thing nowadays. (Particularly, Jack thought, one who was fully aware of everything involved by your subluxations of your third vertebrar: suddenly he could stand no more of it.)

“Folks, I have some particular business to attend to in a half an hour or so, and after that it will be too late to get in touch with you. Can I talk to you again in the morning? The, ah,” he hastily took a quick peek into his private life, “later morning?