Read Online The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen by Geraldine McCaughrean - Free Book Online Page B

stateroom to listen and clap.
    â€œThat’s what you want on your bow,” observed Elijah, nodding his head in time to the music even after the music had stopped. “Sing you into port. Gather a crowd. That’s what we had. I remember.”
    â€œWhen, Elijah?” asked Loucien.
    â€œWas a while back.”
    Told that they were hired, the Dixie Quartet (late of the Hamlin Wizard’s Oil, Blood and Liver Pills, and Cough Balsam Show) bowed smartly, like butlers taking orders for tea, and filed out of the room. It was not until they had climbed to the Texas to sign their contracts that they could be heard soft-shoe shuffling their joy across the roof.
    â€œThey never said they could dance!” said Tibbie delightedly, her dreams of ballerinas very nearly come true.
    When the next candidate came in, they were quick to tell him (before he could start roaring), “We already have one preacher on board, sir!” This man was dressed identically to the first—shoestring tie, black duster coat—except for his hat, which was low, as if it had ducked to avoid gunfire.
    â€œAlways room for both the cloth and me,” said the man, looking around the room with expert eyes. “Me, I’d set up down thar.” He pointed to the far end of the stateroom. “Put up screens. Discreet. Be sweet. No disturbance to either party. Ten percent to the house. Monte and faro. You know?”
    The children looked back at him blankly. “Is that like bloodletting?” asked Kookie, envisaging some terrible surgical procedure hidden from sight behind screens.
    The newcomer studied their faces with his head to one side. “Not unrelated,” he said. “I’ll happily skin a sucker anytime. Why don’t we call it five percent to the house, after all? Reckon that’s plenty for innocents like you.”
    â€œWhy don’t we call it time to leave ?” said Miss Loucien’s voice, and there was the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked. “I’ll have no gamblers on this boat, mister.”
    The gambler held his hands well away from his sides, as if to show he had nothing up his sleeves. “Clean! Clean! Nothing sharp about me! Nothing shady, lady.”
    But Loucien only advanced on him, the gun aimed at the waistband where he carried his playing cards in two leather pouches.
    â€œEnough, ma’am!” he protested. “I’m wise! I’m advised. But you won’t begrudge me a ticket as a fare-paying passenger? Carry me down to Mayhew? So long as I promise not to play on board, yes? Maybe I’ll find me a more obliging boat down there.”
    â€œY’ can walk downstream on the water, for all I care,” Loucien told him, “or take a lift with a bald eagle. Y’ ain’t sailing with us. I’m not carrying your breed as far as I can spit!”
    The gambler backed toward the door, grinning more broadly than any preacher. “What? A river paddler with no sport? That’s like a church with no steeple. People! What can I say? You’re fools to yourselves.” Skipping nimbly down the gangplank, he escaped with his dignity almost intact.
    Meanwhile, embarrassment hung in the stateroom wetter than the condensation on the walls. The crew of the Calliope , not liking to meet Miss Loucien’s blazing eye, looked at their feet, then slunk back to what they had been doing. Everett, though, studied his wife anxiously for signs that she might be ill. “Why particularly—” he began, taking the pistol out of her shaking hands.
    â€œ I won’t have them, I said! ” Loucien stamped her foot and sank her fists in under her cheekbones, which were burning red.
    The three children, embarrassed still to be there listening, were glad enough to look up and find that another hopeful had entered the room.
    â€œState your name and what you do and where you done it previous!” said Kookie. “Magic, is