【英文原著类】DANNY’S OWN STORY(丹尼自传).pdf

DANNY'S OWN STORY
DANNY'S OWN STORY
BY DON MARQUIS
TO MY WIFE
1
DANNY'S OWN STORY
CHAPTER I
HOW e not to have a last name is a question that has always had
more or less aggervation mixed up with it. I might of had one jest as
well as not if Old Hank Walters hadn't been so all-fired, infernal bull-
headed about things in gineral, and his wife Elmira a blame sight worse,
and both of em ready to row at a minute's notice and stick to it
forevermore.
Hank, he was considerable of a lusher. One Saturday night, when he
come home from the vil- lage in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket
that was setting on his front steps. Then he got up and drawed back his
foot unsteady to kick it plumb into e. Jest then he hearn
Elmira opening the door behind him, and he turned his head sudden. But
the kick was already started into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it.
And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and steps on himself. That
basket lets out a yowl.
"It's kittens," says Hank, still setting down and staring at that there
basket. All of which, you understand, I am a-telling you from hearsay, as
the lawyers always asts you in court.
Elmira, she sings out:
"Kittens, nothing! It's a baby!"
And she opens the basket and looks in and it was me.
"Hennerey Walters," she says -- picking me up, and shaking me at him
like I was a crime, "Hen- nerey Walters, where did you get this here
baby?" She always calls him Hennerey when she is getting ready to give
him fits.
Hank, he scratches his head, for he's kind o' confuddled, and thinks
mebby he really has brought this basket with him. He tries to think of all
the places he has been that night. But he can't think of any place but Bill
Nolan's saloon. So he says:
"Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all day." And then he kind
o' rouses up a little bit, and gets surprised and says:
"That a BABY you got there, Elmira?" And then he says, dignified:
"So fur as that's consarned, Elmira