Dido and Pa Read Online Free

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DERE SIMON BAK IN 1 MINIT, DIDO
    Then she walked out of the yard gate.
    Beyond the entrance, on the shadowy green, people were dancing in circles. Another bonfire had been lit in the middle of the large open space, and carts were parked round the edge; some boys were letting off fireworks, and several different groups of musicians were playing.
    But the hoboy music came from quite close at hand, from the big gnarled chestnut tree that grew on the hither side of the green, its high knuckled roots outlined against the light of the distant bonfire. A thin man was perched astride of one of the roots, and was playing on a musical instrument; Dido could not see his face, but the closer she approached him, the more certain she became that he was her father.
    "Pa!" she called softly. "Is that you? It's me—Dido!"
    The musician turned slowly toward her, lowering his instrument.
    "I beg your pardon?" he said. "I fear you are laboring
under a misapprehension. I am nobody's pa (thank heaven for that); my name is Boris Bredalbane, and I am a paid-up member of the National Union of Flint Chippers—"
    "Oh come off it, Pa, I can see you plain as plain; let alone I'd know your music if I heard it in Pernambuco. You ain't what's-his-name Bredalbane, you're Abednego Twite—"
    "
Hush!
" the thin man whispered imperatively, grasping her wrist and glancing warily around them. "Grass has eyes, bushes have noses, and trees have ears, my chickadee! And the name of
Twite
is just a touch unhealthy since the constables picked up Godwit and Pelmet and Wily and some of my erstwhile colleagues..."
    Indeed, Mr. Twite, Dido now observed, was wearing a ginger-colored wig and mustaches, which looked incongruous on top of his tall thinness; and from somewhere he had managed to procure a gaudy Scottish kilt and sporran, in which he did not look at ease; the kilt's hem dipped at the front, and the sporran had a tendency to slip round to the back.
    Mr. Twite finished the contents of a large pewter mug which sat beside him on the root—it smelled like organ grinder's oil. Then, grasping Dido's wrist even more tightly, he stooped to pick up a set of bagpipes with his other hand.
    "Gracious snakes, Pa, you taken to snake charming, then?" she inquired, observing the bagpipes.
    "Protec-
hic
-tive coloring, my jonquil," he whispered, and began to draw Dido farther away from the tavern, toward a high hedge that bordered the green.
    "Not that I amn't overjoyed to see you again, my sarsaparilla," he went on in a low tone as they drew farther off
into the shade. "Welcome as jewels to jackdaws, you be! In fact—to tell the truth—I was hoping for a sight of ye—"
    "Hoping for a sight of
me?
Why, Pa?" Though naturally pleased, Dido could not help being surprised and suspicious. When had her father ever wanted to see her? And she remembered him well enough to know that when he spoke about
truth,
it was time to watch out for the biggest lie of all.
    "Why, my duckling, for the sake of your poor suffering sister. Penelope."
    "Penny-lope?" gasped Dido, now really startled. "Why, what in the world's amiss with Penny? And if she does want me—which I can't hardly believe—it's the first time since Blue Moon Sunday.—'Sides, I thought she run off with a buttonhook salesman?"
    "Ah, me, ah, me!" Shaking his head, Mr. Twite continued to draw his daughter farther into the shadows. "These buttonhook salesmen—heartless scoundrels, to a man—naught but a nest of adders! She should have known better than to listen to his wiles. And now your poor sibling lies at the point of dissolution—gasping in mortal agony—only struggling to keep alive in hopes of a sight of her sweet sis—and there's not a hand else in the wide world to tend her—"
    "Hey, hold hard, Pa—Penny never tended
me,
that I recollect..."
    "Calling out for her little Dido with every rattling breath," continued Mr. Twite—he was beginning to put considerable dramatic fervor into his account—"with