Page:Frank Stockton - Vizier of the two-horned Alexander.djvu/101

TWO-HORNED ALEXANDER me. "If thee likes," she said, with a smile, "thee is welcome to all the plain speech thee wants." And after that, when she spoke to me, she did not turn me out among the world's people.

"Now, you know," said Mr. Crowder, "that I 'm not going to play the part of an historian. That sort of discourse would bore me, and it would bore you. If there is any kind of thing that you would like to hear about, all you have to do is to ask me; and if you don't care to do this, I will tell you whatever comes up in my memory, without any regard to chronology or geography, just as I talked to you before. If I were to begin at the beginning and go straight along, even if I skipped ever so much, the story would—it would be a great deal too long."

I am sure that Mrs. Crowder and I both felt what he did not wish to say—that we were not likely to live to hear it all.

"There are a great many things I should like to ask thee," said Mrs. Crowder, speaking quickly, as if to change the subject of her thoughts; "but I believe I have