The Dulcimer Boy by Tor Seidler

Author:Tor Seidler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1979-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Eustace Carbuncle, Esq.

The Hill Above Rigglemore

New England

Then he curled up in the hammock. In spite of his exhaustion he had to cover his ears to sleep, for the clapping and shouting were still rising from the inn below and the street outside.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE NEXT MORNING, William awoke from a wonderful dream in which he was just outside the Carbuncles’ picket fence, about to enter the gate. That night was much like the night before, with the crowd spilling over onto the street. The morning after, he awoke troubled, this time from a dream in which he was sitting contentedly on a little stage, playing the dulcimer without giving his brother a thought.

One afternoon in the kitchen, while the cook was preparing the evening’s chowder, William managed to slip into the trash can and bury himself under the broken clam shells. The half-hanged sailor, however, dug him out before the trash was taken to the street. Another day he slipped a stirring spoon under his shirt. Late that night, after writing his nightly letter, he inserted the spoon into a crack in the wall of his room and started to pry. The boards, however, creaked, and the half-hanged sailor came in and confiscated the spoon.

After a midnight show, when the crowd had risen for its ovation, William tucked the dulcimer under his arm and leaped off the stage. He tunneled his way through the forest of legs toward the door. But suddenly he was hoisted into the air. A pair of sailors had lifted him onto their shoulders. Everyone wanted to touch him. He began to be bounced from one set of shoulders to the next. He hugged the dulcimer, fearing for it with all his heart.

Suddenly he was safe in a pair of arms, the instrument unsplintered. He stared up into a wind-weathered face, the face of the fisherman who sat almost every night at the corner table. The man walked back to the bar, smiling calmly at the people in his way, and set him on a bar stool.

“Will you please take me away from here?” William asked.

“Away, matey? When you sing so lovely every night?”

The innkeeper came around the bar and thanked the fisherman for coming to the rescue.

Summer arrived. The audiences came earlier and earlier until the street outside The Tumble Inn was regularly crowded by five o’clock. The innkeeper raised the cover charge and spruced up the establishment, for now he was catering not only to sailors but to people from all over the great city: bakers, bankers, musicians from the New England Conservatory of Music, even ladies and gentlemen from Park Row. Finally The Tumble Inn was written up in the newspapers.

One evening in early September, when the talk along the waterfront was of hurricanes brewing far out to sea, a particularly salty crew pushed its way into the inn and managed to take over one of the back tables for the nine o’clock show. Their talk was rowdy. Their ship had just docked after

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