Captain June
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 4
But when June picked himself up and turned about, he found a very curious looking man sitting up glaring at him. He had a long pointed nose, and fierce little eyes that glowed like red hot cinders, and a drooping white mustache so long that it almost touched the lapels of his shabby French uniform.
“What do you mean by falling over me like that?” he demanded indignantly.
“I—I—thought you was somebody else,” June faltered lamely.
The man glared more fiercely than ever: “You were looking for some one! You were sent here to watch someone! Who did you think I was? Answer me this moment.”
He had caught June by the arm and was glaring at him so savagely that June blurted out in terror.
“I thought you was the Sleeping Beauty.”
For a moment, suspicion lingered in the man’s face, then his eyes went to and his mouth went open, and he laughed until June thought he would never get the wrinkles smoothed out of his face again.
“The Sleeping Beauty, eh?” he said. “Well, whom do you think I am now?”
June smiled in embarrassment. “I know who you look like,” he said, half doubtfully.
“Who?”
“The White Knight,” said June.
“Who is he?”
“In ‘Alice in Wonderland,’” explained June. Then when he saw the man’s look of perplexity, he added incredulously, “Didn’t you never hear of ‘Alice in Wonderland’?”
The man shook his head.
June was astounded; he didn’t know that such ignorance existed in the world.
“Didn’t you never go to school?” he asked sympathetically.
“Oh yes, a little,” said the man, with a funny smile, “but tell me about this White Knight.”
June sat down quite close to him and began confidentially:
“He was the one that met Alice in the wood. Don’t you remember just before she was going to be queen? He kept falling off his horse first on one side and then on the other, and he would have to climb up again by the mouse traps.”
“The mouse traps, on horse-back?”
“Yes, the Knight was afraid the mice might come and he didn’t want them to run over him. Besides he invented the mouse traps and course, you know, somebody had to use them.”
“Of course,” said the man taking June’s hand and looking at it as a person looks at something that he has not seen for a very long time.
“He invented lots of things,” went on June earnestly, “bracelets for the horse’s feet to keep off shark-bites, and something else to keep your hair from falling out.”
“Eh! what’s that?” said his companion rubbing his hand over his own bald head.
June’s eyes twinkled. “You ought to train it up on a stick,” he said, “like a vine. That was what the White Knight said, that hair fell off because it hung down. It couldn’t fall up, could it?”
At this they both had a great laugh and the man said:
“So I am the White Knight, am I?”
“Just your mustache,” said June; “it was when you was mad that you looked like him most. You’re lots gooder looking than the picture. What’s your real name?”
“Monsieur Garnier, —no, Carré,” he corrected himself quickly. “What is your name?”
“June,” then he added formally, “Robert Rogers Royston, Junior’s the rest of it.”
“How did you come here?” asked Monsieur.
June told him at length; it was delightful to find some one beside Seki San who understood English, and it was good fun to be telling all about himself just as if he were some other little boy.
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