How did George and Harris react to this? Did Jerome like their reaction?
<answer> George and Harris accepted the narrator's suggestion readily. But Jerome did not like it. <context> 1. I SAID I’d pack.
I rather pride myself on my packing. Packing
is one of those many things that I feel I know
more about than any other person living. (It
surprises me myself, sometimes, how many such
things there are.) I impressed the fact upon George
and Harris and told them that they had better
leave the whole matter entirely to me. They fell
into the suggestion with a readiness that had
something uncanny about it. George spread
himself over the easy-chair, and Harris cocked
his legs on the table.
2. This was hardly what I intended. What I had meant,
of course, was, that I should boss the job, and
that Harris and George should potter about under
my directions, I pushing them aside every now and
then with, “Oh, you!” “Here, let me do it.” “There
you are, simple enough!” — really teaching them,
as you might say. Their taking it in the way
they did irritated me. There is nothing does irritate
me more than seeing other people sitting about doing
nothing when I’m working.
3. I lived with a man once who used to make me mad
that way. He would loll on the sofa and watch me
doing things by the hour together. He said it did
him real good to look on at me, messing about.
Now, I’m not like that. I can’t sit still and see
another man slaving and working. I want to get up
and superintend, and walk round with my hands
in my pockets, and tell him what to do. It is my
energetic nature. I can’t help it.
4. However, I did not say anything, but started the
packing. It seemed a longer job than I had thought
it was going to be; but I got the bag finished at last,
and I sat on it and strapped it.
“Ain’t you going to put the boots in?” said Harris.
And I looked round, and found I had forgotten them.
That’s just like Harris. He couldn’t have said a word
until I’d got the bag shut and strapped, of course.
And George laughed — one of those irritating,
senseless laughs of his. They do make me so wild.
5. I opened the bag and packed the boots in; and then,
just as I was going to close it, a horrible idea
occurred to me. Had I packed my toothbrush? I don’t
know how it is, but I never do know whether I’ve
packed my toothbrush.
My toothbrush is a thing that haunts me when I’m
travelling, and makes my life a misery. I dream
that I haven’t packed it, and wake up in a cold
perspiration, and get out of bed and hunt for it.
And, in the morning, I pack it before I have used it,
and have to unpack again to get it, and it is always
the last thing I turn out of the bag; and then I
repack and forget it, and have to rush upstairs for
it at the last moment and carry it to the railway
station, wrapped up in my pocket-handkerchief.
6. Of course I had to turn every mortal thing out now,
and, of course, I could not find it. I rummaged the
things up into much the same state that they
must have been before the world was created, and
when chaos reigned. Of course, I found George’s
and Harris’s eighteen times over, but I couldn’t find
my own. I put the things back one by one, and held
everything up and shook it. Then I found it inside a
boot. I repacked once more.
7. When I had finished, George asked if the soap was in.
I said I didn’t care a hang whether the soap was in or
whether it wasn’t; and I slammed the bag shut and
strapped it, and found that I had packed my spectacles
in it, and had to re-open it. It got shut up finally at
10.05 p.m., and then there remained the hampers to
do. Harris said that we should be wanting to start in
less than twelve hours’ time and thought that he and
George had better do the rest; and I agreed and sat
down, and they had a go.
8. They began in a light-hearted spirit, evidently
intending to show me how to do it. I made no
comment; I only waited. With the exception of
George, Harris is the worst packer in this world;
and I looked at the piles of plates and cups, and
kettles, and bottles, and jars, and pies, and stoves,
and cakes, and tomatoes, etc., and felt that the
thing would soon become exciting.
It did. They started with breaking a cup. That
was the first thing they did. They did that just to
show you what they could do, and to get you
interested.
Then Harris packed the strawberry jam on top
of a tomato and squashed it, and they had to pick
out the tomato with a teaspoon.
9. And then it was George’s turn, and he trod on the
butter. I didn’t say anything, but I came over and
sat on the edge of the table and watched them.
It irritated them more than anything I could have
said. I felt that. It made them nervous and excited,
and they stepped on things, and put things behind
them, and then couldn’t find them when they
wanted them; and they packed the pies at the
bottom, and put heavy things on top, and smashed
the pies in.
10. They upset salt over everything, and as for the
butter! I never saw two men do more with one-andtwo
pence worth of butter in my whole life than
they did. After George had got it off his slipper, they
tried to put it in the kettle. It wouldn’t go in, and
what was in wouldn’t come out. They did scrape it
out at last, and put it down on a chair, and Harris
sat on it, and it stuck to him, and they went looking
for it all over the room.
11. “I’ll take my oath I put it down on that chair,” said
George, staring at the empty seat.
“I saw you do it myself, not a minute ago,” said
Harris.
Then they started round the room again looking
for it; and then they met again in the centre and
stared at one another.
“Most extraordinary thing I ever heard of,” said
George.
“So mysterious!” said Harris.
Then George got round at the back of Harris
and saw it.
“Why, here it is all the time,” he exclaimed,
indignantly.
“Where?” cried Harris, spinning round.
“Stand still, can’t you!” roared George, flying
after him.
And they got it off, and packed it in the teapot.
12. Montmorency was in it all, of course. Montmorency’s
ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn
at. If he can squirm in anywhere where he
particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect
nuisance, and make people mad, and have
things thrown at his head, then he feels his day
has not been wasted.
To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse
him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and
object; and, when he has succeeded in
accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite
unbearable.
13. He came and sat down on things, just when they
were wanted to be packed; and he laboured under
the fixed belief that, whenever Harris
or George reached out their hand for anything,
it was his cold damp nose that they wanted.
He put his leg into the jam, and he worried
the teaspoons, and he pretended that the lemons
were rats, and got into the hamper and killed
three of them before Harris could land him with
the frying-pan.
14. Harris said I encouraged him. I didn’t encourage him.
A dog like that doesn’t want any encouragement. It’s
the natural, original sin that is born in him that
makes him do things like that.
The packing was done at 12.50; and Harris sat
on the big hamper, and said he hoped nothing would
be found broken. George said that if anything was
broken it was broken, which reflection seemed to
comfort him. He also said he was ready for bed. We
were all ready for bed. Harris was to sleep with us
that night, and we went upstairs.
15. We tossed for beds, and Harris had to sleep with
me. He said :
“Do you prefer the inside or the outside, J.?”
I said I generally preferred to sleep inside a bed.
Harris said it was odd.
George said:
“What time shall I wake you fellows?”
Harris said:
“Seven.”
I said:
“No — six,” because I wanted to write some
letters.
Harris and I had a bit of a row over it, but at
last split the difference, and said half-past six.
“Wake us at 6.30, George,” we said.
16. George made no answer, and we found, on going
over, that he had been asleep for sometime; so we
placed the bath where he could tumble into it on
getting out in the morning, and went to bed
ourselves.