Stevey Todd, here, he got too interested in helping Bill along in his
career, and fattening him up to a high standard. But Bill's digestion
was never good. He died rather young.
Stevey Todd has cooked for me so long, that it's got to the point
that other victuals than Stevey Todd's seem unfriendly strangers,
likely to be hostile. I claim that, as a cook, Stevey's a bold and
skilful one, and enterprising. But outside the galley he's a backward
man and caution's his motto, and in argument he's, as you might say,
a gradual man. His nature, as differing there from Flannagan's, might
be seen in this way. For when Bill was dead, Flannagan and Stevey
Todd each wanted to marry Madame Bill, and their notions of it were
as different as sharks are different from mud-turtles, Flannagan's
notion mainly resembling a shark's, as follows. He says:
"Popo," he says, pretty quick, "Bill's off. Here's to him, an' may
his ghost weigh two hundred and fifty. I'm on," he says. "Whin shall
it be?"
Then a madder woman than Madame Bill was seldom seen, for she threw
Montezuma's crown at Flannagan, and chased him under the tent ropes
with the gilt-headed and feather-tufted spear of the Queen of the
Caribbeans, which ruined an eighteen-dollar crown and stuck Flannagan
vicious in the shoulder-blade with the spear.
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