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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories
+by Alice Hegan Rice
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories
+
+Author: Alice Hegan Rice
+
+Release Date: March 2, 2005 [EBook #15230]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MISS MINK'S SOLDIER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kentuckiana Digital Library, David Garcia, Josephine
+Paolucci, Joshua Hutchinson and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading
+Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MISS MINK'S SOLDIER
+
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+
+[Illustration: Then Miss Mink received a shock]
+
+
+
+
+MISS MINK'S SOLDIER
+
+AND OTHER STORIES
+
+BY
+
+ALICE HEGAN RICE
+
+Author of "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH," "MR. OPP," "CALVARY ALLEY,"
+ETC.
+
+
+NEW YORK
+THE CENTURY CO.
+1918
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1905, 1906, 1910, 1918, by THE CENTURY CO.
+
+Copyright, 1914, by THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+_Published, October, 1918_
+
+
+
+
+  TO
+  THE LADY OF THE DECORATION
+
+  A MEMENTO OF MANY HAPPY DAYS
+  SPENT TOGETHER "EAST OF SUEZ"
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  MISS MINK'S SOLDIER
+
+  A DARLING OF MISFORTUNE
+
+  "POP"
+
+  HOODOOED
+
+  A MATTER OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+  THE WILD OATS OF A SPINSTER
+
+  CUPID GOES SLUMMING
+
+  THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN
+
+
+
+
+MISS MINK'S SOLDIER
+
+
+Miss Mink sat in church with lips compressed and hands tightly clasped
+in her black alpaca lap, and stubbornly refused to comply with the
+request that was being made from the pulpit. She was a small desiccated
+person, with a sharp chin and a sharper nose, and narrow faded eyes that
+through the making of innumerable buttonholes had come to resemble them.
+
+For over forty years she had sat in that same pew facing that same
+minister, regarding him second only to his Maker, and striving in
+thought and deed to follow his precepts. But the time had come when Miss
+Mink's blind allegiance wavered.
+
+Ever since the establishment of the big Cantonment near the city, Dr.
+Morris, in order to encourage church attendance, had been insistent in
+his request that every member of his congregation should take a soldier
+home to Sunday dinner.
+
+Now it was no lack of patriotism that made Miss Mink refuse to do her
+part. Every ripple in the small flag that fluttered over her humble
+dwelling sent a corresponding ripple along her spinal column. When she
+essayed to sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," in her high, quavering
+soprano, she invariably broke down from sheer excess of emotion. But the
+American army fighting for right and freedom in France, and the Army
+individually tracking mud into her spotless cottage, were two very
+different things. Miss Mink had always regarded a man in her house much
+as she regarded a gnat in her eye. There was but one course to pursue in
+either case--elimination!
+
+But her firm stand in the matter had not been maintained without much
+misgiving. Every Sunday when Dr. Morris made his earnest appeal,
+something within urged her to comply. She was like an automobile that
+gets cranked up and then refuses to go. Church-going instead of being
+her greatest joy came to be a nightmare. She no longer lingered in the
+vestibule, for those highly cherished exchanges of inoffensive gossip
+that constituted her social life. Nobody seemed to have time for her.
+Every one was busy with a soldier. Within the sanctuary it was no
+better. Each khaki-clad figure that dotted the congregation claimed her
+attention as a possible candidate for hospitality. And each one that
+presented himself to her vision was indignantly repudiated. One was too
+old, another too young, one too stylish, another had forgotten to wash
+his ears. She found a dozen excuses for withholding her invitation.
+
+But this morning as she sat upright and uncompromising in her short pew,
+she was suddenly thrown into a state of agitation by the appearance in
+the aisle of an un-ushered soldier who, after hesitating beside one or
+two pews, slipped into the seat beside her. It seemed almost as if
+Providence had taken a hand and since she had refused to select a
+soldier, had prompted a soldier to select her.
+
+During the service she sat gazing straight at the minister without
+comprehending a word that he said. Never once did her glance stray to
+that khaki-clad figure beside her, but her thoughts played around him
+like lightning. What if she should get up her courage and ask him to
+dinner, how would she ever be able to walk out the street with him! And
+once she had got him to her cottage, what on earth would she talk to him
+about? Her hands grew cold as she thought about it. Yet something warned
+her it was now or never, and that it was only by taking the hated step
+and getting it over with, that she could regain the peace of mind that
+had of late deserted her.
+
+The Doxology found her weakening, but the Benediction stiffened her
+resolve, and when the final Amen sounded, she turned blindly to the man
+beside her, and said, hardly above her breath:
+
+"If you ain't got any place to go to dinner, you can come home with me."
+
+The tall figure turned toward her, and a pair of melancholy brown eyes
+looked down into hers:
+
+"You will excuse if I do not quite comprehend your meaning," he said
+politely, with a strong foreign accent.
+
+Miss Mink was plunged into instant panic; suppose he was a German?
+Suppose she should be convicted for entertaining a spy! Then she
+remembered his uniform and was slightly reassured.
+
+"I said would you come home to dinner with me?" she repeated weakly,
+with a fervent prayer that he would decline.
+
+But the soldier had no such intention. He bowed gravely, and picked up
+his hat and overcoat.
+
+Miss Mink, looking like a small tug towing a big steamer, shamefacedly
+made her way to the nearest exit, and got him out through the
+Sunday-school room. She would take him home through a side street, feed
+him and send him away as soon as possible. It was a horrible ordeal, but
+Miss Mink was not one to turn back once she had faced a difficult
+situation. As they passed down the broad steps into the brilliant
+October sunshine, she noticed with relief that his shoes were not
+muddy. Then, before she could make other observations, her mind was
+entirely preoccupied with a large, firm hand that grasped her elbow, and
+seemed to half lift her slight weight from step to step. Miss Mink's
+elbow was not used to such treatment and it indignantly freed itself
+before the pavement was reached. The first square was traveled in
+embarrassed silence, then Miss Mink made a heroic effort to break the
+ice:
+
+"My name is Mink," she said, "Miss Libby Mink. I do dress-making over on
+Sixth Street."
+
+"I am Bowinski," volunteered her tall companion, "first name Alexis. I
+am a machinist before I enlist in the army."
+
+"I knew you were some sort of a Dago," said Miss Mink.
+
+"But no, Madame, I am Russian. My home is in Kiev in Ukrania."
+
+"Why on earth didn't you stay there?" Miss Mink asked from the depths of
+her heart.
+
+The soldier looked at her earnestly. "Because of the persecution," he
+said. "My father he was in exile. His family was suspect. I come alone
+to America when I am but fifteen."
+
+"Well I guess you're sorry enough now that you came," Miss Mink said,
+"Now that you've got drafted."
+
+They had reached her gate by this time, but Bowinski paused before
+entering: "Madame mistakes!" he said with dignity. "I was _not_ drafted.
+The day America enter the war, that day I give up my job I have held for
+five years, and enlist. America is my country, she take me in when I
+have nowhere to go. It is my proud moment when I fight for her!"
+
+Then it was that Miss Mink took her first real look at him, and if it
+was a longer look than she had ever before bestowed upon man, we must
+put it down to the fact that he was well worth looking at, with his tall
+square figure, and his serious dark face lit up at the present with a
+somewhat indignant enthusiasm.
+
+Miss Mink pushed open the gate and led the way into her narrow yard. She
+usually entered the house by way of the side door which opened into the
+dining room, which was also her bedroom by night, and her sewing room by
+day. But this morning, after a moment's hesitation, she turned a key in
+the rusty lock of the front door, and let a flood of sunshine dispel the
+gloom of the room. The parlor had been furnished by Miss Mink's parents
+some sixty years ago, and nothing had been changed. A customer had once
+suggested that if the sofa was taken away from the window, and the table
+put in its place, the room would be lighter. Miss Mink had regarded the
+proposition as preposterous. One might as well have asked her to move
+her nose around to the back of her head, or to exchange the positions of
+her eyes and ears!
+
+You have seen a drop of water caught in a crystal? Well, that was what
+Miss Mink was like. She moved in the tiniest possible groove with her
+home at one end and her church at the other. Is it any wonder that when
+she beheld a strange young foreigner sitting stiffly on her parlor sofa,
+and realized that she must entertain him for at least an hour, that
+panic seized her?
+
+"I better be seeing to dinner," she said hastily. "You can look at the
+album till I get things dished up."
+
+Private Bowinski, surnamed Alexis, sat with knees awkwardly hunched and
+obediently turned the leaves of the large album, politely scanning the
+placid countenances of departed Minks for several generations.
+
+Miss Mink, moving about in the inner room, glanced in at him from time
+to time. After the first glance she went to the small store room and got
+out a jar of sweet pickle, and after the second she produced a glass of
+crab apple jelly. Serving a soldier guest who had voluntarily adopted
+her country, was after all not so distasteful, if only she did not have
+to talk to him. But already the coming ordeal was casting its baleful
+shadow.
+
+When they were seated opposite one another at the small table, her worst
+fears were realized. They could neither of them think of anything to
+say. If she made a move to pass the bread to him he insisted upon
+passing it to her. When she rose to serve him, he rose to serve her. She
+had never realized before how oppressive excessive politeness could be.
+
+The one point of consolation for her lay in the fact that he was
+enjoying his dinner. He ate with a relish that would have flattered any
+hostess. Sometimes when he put his knife in his mouth she winced with
+apprehension, but aside from a few such lapses in etiquette he conducted
+himself with solemn and punctilious propriety.
+
+When he had finished his second slice of pie, and pushed back his chair,
+Miss Mink waited hopefully for him to say good-bye. He was evidently
+getting out his car fare now, searching with thumb and forefinger in his
+vest pocket.
+
+"If it is not to trouble you more, may I ask a match?" he said.
+
+"A match? What on earth do you want with a match?" demanded Miss Mink.
+Then a look of apprehension swept over her face. Was this young man
+actually proposing to profane the virgin air of her domicile with the
+fumes of tobacco?
+
+"Perhaps you do not like that I should smoke?" Bowinski said instantly.
+"I beg you excuse, I--"
+
+"Oh! that's all right," said Miss Mink in a tone that she did not
+recognize as her own, "the matches are in that little bisque figure on
+the parlor mantel. I'll get you to leave the front door open, if you
+don't mind. It's kinder hot in here."
+
+Five o'clock that afternoon found Miss Mink and Alexis Bowinski still
+sitting facing each other in the front parlor. They were mutually
+exhausted, and conversation after having suffered innumerable relapses,
+seemed about to succumb.
+
+"If there's any place else you want to go, you mustn't feel that you've
+got to stay here," Miss Mink had urged some time after dinner. But
+Alexis had answered:
+
+"I know only two place. The Camp and the railway depot. I go on last
+Sunday to the railway depot. The Chaplain at the Camp advise me I go to
+church this morning. Perhaps I make a friend."
+
+"But what do the other soldiers do on Sunday?" Miss Mink asked
+desperately.
+
+"They promenade. Always promenade. Except they go to photo-plays, and
+dance hall. It is the hard part of war, the waiting part."
+
+Miss Mink agreed with him perfectly as she helped him wait. She had
+never spent such a long day in her life. At a quarter past five he rose
+to go. A skillful word on her part would have expedited matters, but
+Miss Mink was not versed in the social trick of speeding a departing
+guest. Fifteen minutes dragged their weary length even after he was on
+his feet. Then Miss Mink received a shock from which it took her an even
+longer time to recover. Alexis Bowinski, having at last arrived at the
+moment of departure, took her hand in his and, bowing awkwardly, raised
+it to his lips and kissed it! Then he backed out of the cottage, stalked
+into the twilight and was soon lost to sight beyond the hedge.
+
+Miss Mink sank limply on the sofa by the window, and regarded her small
+wrinkled hand with stern surprise. It was a hand that had never been
+kissed before and it was tingling in the strangest and most
+unaccountable manner.
+
+The following week was lived in the afterglow of that eventful Sunday.
+She described the soldier's visit in detail to the few customers who
+came in. She went early to prayer-meeting in order to tell about it. And
+in the telling she subordinated everything to the dramatic climax:
+
+"I never was so took back in my life!" she said. "After setting there
+for four mortal hours with nothing to say, just boring each other to
+death, for him to get up like that and make a regular play-actor bow,
+and kiss my hand! Well, I never _was_ so took back!"
+
+And judging from the number of times Miss Mink told the story, and the
+conscious smile with which she concluded it, it was evident that she was
+not averse to being "took back."
+
+By the time Sunday arrived she had worked herself up to quite a state of
+excitement. Would Bowinski he at church? Would he sit on her side of the
+congregation? Would he wait after the service to speak to her? She put
+on her best bonnet, which was usually reserved for funerals, and pinned
+a bit of thread lace over the shabby collar of her coat.
+
+The moment she entered church all doubts were dispelled. There in her
+pew, quite as if he belonged there, sat the tall young Russian. He even
+stepped into the aisle for her to pass in, helped her off with her coat,
+and found the place for her in the hymn-book. Miss Mink realized with a
+glow of satisfaction, that many curious heads were craning in her
+direction. For the first time since she had gone forward forty years ago
+to confess her faith, she was an object of interest to the congregation!
+
+When the benediction was pronounced several women came forward
+ostensibly to speak to her, but in reality to ask Bowinski to go home to
+dinner with them. She waived them all aside.
+
+"No, he's going with me!" she announced firmly, and Bowinski obediently
+picked up his hat and accompanied her.
+
+For the following month this scene was enacted each Sunday, with little
+change to outward appearances but with great change to Miss Mink
+herself. In the mothering of Bowinski she had found the great adventure
+of her life. She mended his clothes, and made fancy dishes for him, she
+knit him everything that could be knitted, including an aviator's helmet
+for which he had no possible use. She talked about "my soldier" to any
+one who would listen.
+
+Bowinski accepted her attention with grave politeness. He wore the
+things she made for him, he ate the things she cooked for him, he
+answered all her questions and kissed her hand at parting. Miss Mink
+considered his behavior perfect.
+
+One snowy Sunday in late November Miss Mink was thrown into a panic by
+his failure to appear on Sunday morning. She confided to Sister Bacon in
+the adjoining pew that she was afraid he had been sent to France. Sister
+Bacon promptly whispered to her husband that he _had_ been sent to
+France, and the rumor spread until after church quite a little group
+gathered around Miss Mink to hear about it.
+
+"What was his company?" some one asked.
+
+"Company C, 47th Infantry," Miss Mink repeated importantly.
+
+"Why, that's my boy's company," said Mrs. Bacon. "_They_ haven't gone to
+France."
+
+The thought of her soldier being in the trenches even, was more
+tolerable to Miss Mink than the thought of his being in town and failing
+to come to her for Sunday dinner.
+
+"I bet he's sick," she announced. "I wish I could find out."
+
+Mrs. Bacon volunteered to ask her Jim about him, and three days later
+stopped by Miss Mink's cottage to tell her that Bowinski had broken his
+leg over a week before and was in the Base Hospital.
+
+"Can anybody go out there that wants to?" demanded Miss Mink.
+
+"Yes, on Sundays and Wednesdays. But you can't count on the cars running
+to-day. Jim says everything's snowed under two feet deep."
+
+Miss Mink held her own counsel but she knew what she was going to do.
+Her soldier was in trouble, he had no family or friends. She was going
+to him.
+
+With trembling fingers she packed a small basket with some apples, a jar
+of jelly and a slice of cake. There was no time for her own lunch, so
+she hurriedly put on her coat and twisting a faded scarf about her neck
+trudged out into the blustery afternoon.
+
+The blizzard of the day before had almost suspended traffic, and when
+she finally succeeded in getting a car, it was only to find that it ran
+no farther than the city limits.
+
+"How much farther is it to the Camp?" Miss Mink asked desperately.
+
+"About a mile," said the conductor. "I wouldn't try it if I was you, the
+walking's fierce."
+
+But Miss Mink was not to be turned back. Gathering her skirts as high as
+her sense of propriety would permit, and grasping her basket she set
+bravely forth. The trip alone to the Camp, under the most auspicious
+circumstances, would have been a trying ordeal for her, but under the
+existing conditions it required nothing less than heroism. The snow had
+drifted in places as high as her knees, and again and again she stumbled
+and almost lost her footing as she staggered forward against the force
+of the icy wind.
+
+Before she had gone half a mile she was ready to collapse with
+nervousness and exhaustion.
+
+"Looks like I just can't make it," she whimpered, "and yet I'm going
+to!"
+
+The honk of an automobile sent her shying into a snowdrift, and when she
+caught her breath and turned around she saw that the machine had stopped
+and a hand was beckoning to her from the window.
+
+"May I give you a lift?" asked a girl's high sweet voice and, looking
+up, she saw a sparkling face smiling down at her over an upturned fur
+collar.
+
+Without waiting to be urged she climbed into the machine, stumbled over
+the rug, and sank exhausted on the cushions.
+
+"Give me your basket," commanded the young lady. "Now put your feet on
+the heater. Sure you have room?"
+
+Miss Mink, still breathless, nodded emphatically.
+
+"It's a shame to ask anyone to ride when I'm so cluttered up," continued
+the girl gaily. "I'm taking these things out to my sick soldier boys."
+
+Miss Mink, looking down, saw that the floor of the machine was covered
+with boxes and baskets.
+
+"I'm going to the Hospital, too," she said.
+
+"That's good!" exclaimed the girl. "I can take you all the way. Perhaps
+you have a son or a grandson out there?"
+
+Miss Mink winced. "No, he ain't any kin to me," she said, "but I been
+sort of looking after him."
+
+"How sweet of you!" said the pouting red lips with embarrassing ardor.
+"Just think of your walking out here this awful day at your age. Quite
+sure you are getting warm?"
+
+Yes, Miss Mink was warm, but she felt suddenly old, old and shrivelled
+beside this radiant young thing.
+
+"I perfectly adore going to the hospital," said the girl, her blue eyes
+dancing. "Father's one of the medical directors, Major Chalmers, I
+expect you've heard of him. I'm Lois Chalmers."
+
+But Miss Mink was scarcely listening. She was comparing the big luscious
+looking oranges in the crate, with the hard little apples in her own
+basket.
+
+"Here we are!" cried Lois, as the car plowed through the snow and mud
+and stopped in front of a long shed-like building. Two orderlies sprang
+forward with smiling alacrity and began unloading the boxes.
+
+"Aren't you the nicest ever?" cried Lois with a skillful smile that
+embraced them both. "Those to the medical, those to the surgical, and
+these to my little fat-faced Mumpsies."
+
+Miss Mink got herself and her basket out unassisted, then stood in doubt
+as to what she should do next. She wanted to thank Miss Chalmers for her
+courtesy, but two dapper young officers had joined the group around her
+making a circle of masculine admirers.
+
+Miss Mink slipped away unnoticed and presented herself at the door
+marked "Administration Building."
+
+"Can you tell me where the broken-legged soldiers are?" she asked
+timidly of a man at a desk.
+
+"Who do you want to see?"
+
+"Alexis Bowinski. He come from Russia. He's got curly hair and big sort
+of sad eyes, and--"
+
+"Bowinski," the man repeated, running his finger down a ledger, "A.
+Bowinski, Surgical Ward 5-C. Through that door, two corridors to the
+right midway down the second corridor."
+
+Miss Mink started boldly forth to follow directions, but it was not
+until she had been ejected from the X-ray Room, the Mess Hall, and the
+Officers' Quarters, that she succeeded in reaching her destination. By
+that time her courage was at its lowest ebb. On either side of the long
+wards were cots, on which lay men in various stages of undress. Now Miss
+Mink had seen pajamas in shop windows, she had even made a pair once of
+silk for an ambitious groom, but this was the first time she had ever
+seen them, as it were, occupied.
+
+So acute was her embarrassment that she might have turned back at the
+last moment, had her eyes not fallen on the cot nearest the door. There,
+lying asleep, with his injured leg suspended from a pulley from which
+depended two heavy weights, lay Bowinski.
+
+Miss Mink slipped into the chair between his cot and the wall. After the
+first glance at his pale unshaven face and the pain-lined brow, she
+forgot all about herself. She felt only overwhelming pity for him, and
+indignation at the treatment to which he was being subjected.
+
+By and by he stirred and opened his eyes.
+
+"Oh you came!" he said, "I mean you not to know I be in hospital. You
+must have the kindness not to trouble about me."
+
+"Trouble nothing," said Miss Mink, husky with emotion, "I never knew a
+thing about it until to-day. What have they got you harnessed up like
+this for?"
+
+Then Alexis with difficulty found the English words to tell her how his
+leg had not set straight, had been re-broken and was now being forced
+into proper position.
+
+"It is like hell, Madame," he concluded with a trembling lip, then he
+drew a sharp breath, "But no, I forget, I am in the army. I beg you
+excuse my complain."
+
+Miss Mink laid herself out to entertain him. She unpacked her basket,
+and spread her meagre offerings before him. She described in detail all
+the surgical operations she had ever had any experience with, following
+some to their direst consequences. Alexis listened apathetically. Now
+and then a spasm of pain contracted his face, but he uttered no word of
+complaint.
+
+Only once during the afternoon did his eyes brighten. Miss Mink caught
+the sudden change in his expression and, following his glance, saw Lois
+Chalmers coming through the ward. She had thrown aside her heavy fur
+coat, and her slim graceful little figure as alert as a bird's darted
+from cart to cot as she tossed packages of cigarettes to right and left.
+
+"Here you are, Mr. Whiskers!" she was calling out gaily to one. "This is
+for you, Colonel Collar Bone. Where's Cadet Limpy? Discharged? Good for
+him! Hello, Mr. Strong Man!" For a moment she poised at the foot of
+Bowinski's cot, then recognizing Miss Mink she nodded:
+
+"So you found your soldier? I'm going back to town in ten minutes, I'll
+take you along if you like."
+
+She flitted out of the ward as quickly as she had come, leaving two long
+rows of smiling faces in her wake. She had brought no pity, nor
+tenderness, nor understanding, but she had brought her fresh young
+beauty, and her little gift of gayety, and made men forget, at least for
+a moment, their pain-racked bodies and their weary brains.
+
+Miss Mink reached her cottage that night weary and depressed. She had
+had nothing to eat since breakfast, and yet was too tired to prepare
+supper. She made her a cup of tea which she drank standing, and then
+crept into bed only to lie staring into the darkness tortured by the
+thought of those heavy weights on Bowinski's injured leg.
+
+The result of her weariness and exposure was a sharp attack of
+tonsilitis that kept her in bed several weeks. The first time she was
+able to be up, she began to count the hours until the next visiting day
+at the Camp. Her basket was packed the evening before, and placed beside
+the box of carnations in which she had extravagantly indulged. It is
+doubtful whether Miss Mink was ever so happy in her life as during that
+hour of pleased expectancy.
+
+As she moved feebly about putting the house in order, so that she could
+make an early start in the morning, she discovered a letter that the
+Postman had thrust under the side door earlier in the day. Across the
+left hand corner was pictured an American flag, and across the right was
+a red triangle in a circle. She hastily tore off the envelop and read:
+
+    Dear Miss Mink:
+
+    I am out the Hospital, getting along fine. Hope you are in the same
+    circumstances. I am sending you a book which I got from a Dear Young
+    Lady, in the Hospital. I really do not know what to call her because
+    I do not know her name, but I know she deserve a nice, nice name for
+    all good She dose to all soldiers. I think she deserve more
+    especially from me than to call her a Sweet Dear Lady, because that
+    I have the discouragement, and she make me to laugh and take heart.
+    I would ask your kind favor to please pass the book back to the
+    Young Lady, and pleas pass my thankful word to her, and if you might
+    be able to send me her name before that I go to France, which I
+    learn is very soon. Excuse all errors if you pleas will. This is
+    goodby from
+
+  Your soldier friend,
+  A. BOWINSKI.
+
+Miss Mink read the letter through, then she sat down limply in a kitchen
+chair and stared at the stove. Twice she half rose to get the pen and
+ink on the shelf above the coal box, but each time she changed her mind,
+folded her arms indignantly, and went back to her stern contemplation of
+the stove. Presently a tear rolled down her cheek, then another, and
+another until she dropped her tired old face in her tired old hands, and
+gave a long silent sob that shook her slight body from head to foot.
+Then she rose resolutely and sweeping the back of her hand across her
+eyes, took down her writing materials. On one side of a post card she
+wrote the address of Alexis Bowinski, and on the other she penned in
+her cramped neat writing, one line:
+
+"Her name is Lois Chalmers. Hotel LeRoy."
+
+This done she unpacked her basket, put her half dozen carnations in a
+tumbler of water and carried them into the dark parlor, pulled her chair
+up to the kitchen table, drew the lamp closer and patiently went back to
+her buttonholes.
+
+
+
+
+A DARLING OF MISFORTUNE
+
+
+A shabby but joyous citizen of the world at large was Mr. Phelan
+Harrihan, as, with a soul wholly in tune with the finite, he half sat
+and half reclined on a baggage-truck at Lebanon Junction. He wag
+relieving the tedium of his waiting moments by entertaining a critical
+if not fastidious audience of three.
+
+Beside him, with head thrust under his ragged sleeve, sat a small and
+unlovely bull-terrier, who, at each fresh burst of laughter, lifted a
+pair of languishing eyes to the face of his master, and then manifested
+his surplus affection by ardently licking the buttons on the sleeve of
+the arm that encircled him.
+
+It was a moot question whether Mr. Harrihan resembled his dog, or
+whether his dog resembled him. That there was a marked similarity
+admitted of no discussion. If Corp's nose had been encouraged and his
+lower jaw suppressed, if his intensely emotional nature had been under
+better control, and his sentimentality tempered with humor, the analogy
+would have been more complete. In taste, they were one. By birth,
+predilection, and instinct both were philosophers of the open,
+preferring an untrammeled life in Vagabondia to the collars and
+conventions of society. Both delighted in exquisite leisure, and spent
+it in pleased acquiescence with things as they are.
+
+Some twenty-five years before, Phelan had opened his eyes upon a
+half-circle of blue sky, seen through the end of a canvas-covered wagon
+on a Western prairie, and having first conceived life to be a
+free-and-easy affair on a long, open road, he thereafter declined to
+consider it in any other light.
+
+The only break in his nomadic existence was when a benevolent old
+gentleman found him, a friendless lad in a Nashville hospital, cursed
+him through a fever, and elected to educate him. Those were years of
+black captivity for Phelan, and after being crammed and coached for what
+seemed an interminable time, he was proudly entered at the University,
+where he promptly failed in every subject and was dropped at the
+mid-year term.
+
+The old gentleman, fortunately, was spared all disappointment in regard
+to his irresponsible protégé, for he died before the catastrophe,
+leaving Phelan Harrihan a legacy of fifteen dollars a month and the
+memory of a kind, but misguided, old man who was not quite right in his
+head.
+
+Being thus provided with a sum more than adequate to meet all his
+earthly needs, Phelan joyously abandoned the straight and narrow path of
+learning, and once more betook himself to the open road.
+
+The call of blue skies and green fields, the excitement of each day's
+encounter, the dramatic possibilities of every passing incident, the
+opportunity for quick and intimate fellowship, and above all an
+inherited and chronic disinclination for work, made Phelan an easy
+victim to that malady called by the casual tourist "wanderlust," but
+known in Hoboland as "railroad fever."
+
+Only once a year did he return to civilization, don a stiff collar, and
+recognize an institution. During his meteoric career at the University
+he had been made a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity, in recognition
+of his varied accomplishments. Not only could he sing and dance and tell
+a tale with the best, but he was also a mimic and a ventriloquist, gifts
+which had proven invaluable in crucial conflicts with the faculty, and
+had constituted him a hero in several escapades. Of such material is
+college history made, and the Alpha Delta, recognizing the distinction
+of possessing this unique member, refused to accept his resignation, but
+unanimously demanded his presence at each annual reunion.
+
+On June second, for five consecutive years, the ends of the earth had
+yielded up Phelan Harrihan; by a miracle of grace he had arrived in
+Nashville, decently appareled, ready to respond to his toast, to bask
+for his brief hour in the full glare of the calcium, then to depart
+again into oblivion.
+
+It was now the first day of June and as Phelan concluded his tale,
+which was in fact an undress rehearsal of what he intended to tell on
+the morrow, he looked forward with modest satisfaction to the triumph
+that was sure to be his. For the hundredth time he made certain that the
+small brown purse, so unused to its present obesity, was safe and sound
+in his inside pocket.
+
+During the pause that followed his recital, his audience grew restive.
+
+"Go on, do it again," urged the ragged boy who sold the sandwiches,
+"show us how Forty Fathom Dan looked when he thought he was sinking.
+
+"I don't dare trifle with me features," said Phelan solemnly. "How much
+are those sandwiches. One for five, is it? Two for fifteen, I suppose.
+Well, here's one for me, and one for Corp, and keep the change, kid.
+Ain't that the train coming?"
+
+"It's the up train," said the station-master, rising reluctantly; "it
+meets yours here. I've got to be hustling."
+
+Phelan, left without an audience, strolled up and down the platform,
+closely followed by Corporal Harrihan.
+
+As the train slowed up at the little Junction, there was manifestly some
+commotion on board. Standing in the doorway of the rear car a small,
+white-faced woman argued excitedly with the conductor.
+
+"I didn't have no ticket, I tell you!" she was saying as the train came
+to a stop. "I 'lowed I'd pay my way, but I lost my pocket-book. I lost
+it somewheres on the train here, I don't know where it is!"
+
+"I've seen your kind before," said the conductor wearily; "what did you
+get on for when you didn't have anything to pay your fare with?"
+
+"I tell you I lost my pocket-book after I got on!" she said doggedly; "I
+ain't going to get off, you daren't put me off!"
+
+Phelan, who had sauntered up, grew sympathetic. He, too, had experienced
+the annoyance of being pressed for his fare when it was inconvenient to
+produce it.
+
+"Go ahead," demanded the conductor firmly, "I don't want to push you
+off, but if you don't step down and out right away, I'll have it to do."
+
+The woman's expression changed from defiance to terror. She clung to the
+brake with both hands and looked at him fearfully.
+
+"No, no, don't touch me!" she cried. "Don't make me get off! I've got to
+get to Cincinnati. My man's there. He's been hurt in the foundry.
+He's--maybe he's dying now."
+
+"I can't help that, maybe it's so and maybe it ain't. You never had any
+money when you got on this train and you know it. Go on, step off!"
+
+"But I did!" she cried wildly; "I did. Oh, God! don't put me off."
+
+The train began to move, and the conductor seized the woman's arms from
+behind and forced her forward. A moment more and she would be pushed off
+the lowest step. She turned beseeching eyes on the little group of
+spectators, and as she did so Phelan Harrihan sprang forward and with
+his hand on the railing, ran along with the slow-moving train.
+
+With a deft movement he bent forward and apparently snatched something
+from the folds of her skirt.
+
+"Get on to your luck now," he said with an encouraging smile that played
+havoc with the position of his features; "if here ain't your pocket-book
+all the time!"
+
+The hysterical woman looked from the unfamiliar little brown purse in
+her hand, to the snub-nosed, grimy face of the young man running along
+the track, then she caught her breath.
+
+"Why,--" she cried unsteadily, "yes--yes, it's my purse."
+
+Phelan loosened his hold on the railing and had only time to scramble
+breathlessly up the bank before the down train, the train for Nashville
+which was to have been his, whizzed past.
+
+He watched it regretfully as it slowed up at the station, then almost
+immediately pulled out again for the south, carrying his hopes with it.
+
+"Corporal," said Phelan, to the dog, who had looked upon the whole
+episode as a physical-culture exercise indulged in for his special
+benefit, "a noble act of charity is never to be regretted, but wasn't I
+the original gun, not to wait for the change?"
+
+His lack of business method seemed to weigh upon him, and he continued
+to apologize to Corporal:
+
+"It was so sudden, you know, Corp. Couldn't see a lady ditched, when I
+had a bit of stuffed leather in my pocket. And two hundred miles to
+Nashville! Well I'll--be--jammed!"
+
+He searched in his trousers pockets and found a dime in one and a hole
+in the other. It was an old trick of his to hide a piece of money in
+time of prosperity, and then discover it in the blackness of adversity.
+
+He held the dime out ruefully: "That's punk and plaster for supper, but
+we'll have to depend on a hand-out for breakfast. And, Corp," he added
+apologetically, "you know I told you we was going to ride regular like
+gentlemen? Well, I've been compelled to change my plans. We are going to
+turf it twelve miles down to the watering tank, and sit out a couple of
+dances till the midnight freight comes along. If a side door Pullman
+ain't convenient, I'll have to go on the bumpers, then what'll become of
+you, Mr. Corporal Harrihan?"
+
+The coming ordeal cast no shadow over Corporal. He was declaring his
+passionate devotion, by wild tense springs at Phelan's face, seeking in
+vain to overcome the cruel limitation of a physiognomy that made kissing
+well-nigh impossible.
+
+Phelan picked up his small bundle and started down the track with the
+easy, regular swing of one who has long since gaged the distance of
+railroad ties. But his step lacked its usual buoyancy, and he forgot to
+whistle, Mr. Harrihan was undergoing the novel experience of being
+worried. Of course he would get to Nashville,--if the train went, _he_
+could go,--but the prospect of arriving without decent clothes and with
+no money to pay for a lodging, did not in the least appeal to him. He
+thought with regret of his well-laid plans: an early arrival, a Turkish
+bath, the purchase of a new outfit, instalment at a good hotel,
+then--presentation at the fraternity headquarters of Mr. Phelan
+Harrihan, Gentleman for a Night. He could picture it all, the dramatic
+effect of his entrance, the yell of welcome, the buzz of questions, and
+the evasive, curiosity-enkindling answers which he meant to give. Then
+the banquet, with its innumerable courses of well-served food, the
+speeches and toasts, and the personal ovation that always followed Mr.
+Harrihan's unique contribution.
+
+Oh! he couldn't miss it! Providence would interfere in his behalf, he
+knew it would, it always did. "Give me my luck, and keep your lucre!"
+was a saying of Phelan's, quoted by brother hoboes from Maine to the
+Gulf.
+
+All the long afternoon he tramped the ties, with Corporal at his heels.
+As dusk came on the clouds that had been doing picket duty, joined the
+regiment on the horizon which slowly wheeled and charged across the sky.
+Phelan scanned the heavens with an experienced weather eye, then began
+to look for a possible shelter from the coming shower. On either side,
+the fields stretched away in undulating lines, with no sign of a
+habitation in sight. A dejected old scarecrow, and a tumble-down shed in
+the distance were the only objects that presented themselves.
+
+Turning up his coat-collar Phelan made a dash for the shed, but the
+shower overtook him half-way. It was not one of your gentle little
+summer showers, that patter on the shingles waking echoes underneath; it
+was a large and instantaneous breakage in the celestial plumbing that
+let gallons of water down Phelan's back, filling his pockets, hat brim,
+and shoes and sending a dashing cascade down Corporal's oblique profile.
+
+"Float on your back, Corp, and pull for the shore!" laughed Phelan as he
+landed with a spring under the dilapidated shed. "Cheer up, old pard;
+you look as if all your past misdeeds had come before you in your
+drowning hour."
+
+Corporal, shivering and unhappy, crept under cover, and dumbly demanded
+of Phelan what he intended to do about it.
+
+"Light a blaze, sure," said Phelan, "and linger here in the air of the
+tropics till the midnight freight comes along."
+
+Scraping together the old wood and débris in the rear of the shed, and
+extricating with some difficulty a small tin match-box from his
+saturated clothes, he knelt before the pile and used all of his
+persuasive powers to induce it to ignite.
+
+At the first feeble blaze Corporal's spirits rose so promptly that he
+had to be restrained.
+
+"Easy there! Corp," cautioned Phelan. "A fire's like a woman, you can't
+be sure of it too soon. And, dog alive, stop wagging your tail, don't
+you see it makes a draft?"
+
+The fire capriciously would, then it wouldn't. A tiny flame played
+tantalizingly along the top of a stick only to go sullenly out when it
+reached the end. Match after match was sacrificed to the cause, but at
+last, down deep under the surface, there was a steady, reassuring,
+cheerful crackle that made Phelan sit back on his heels, and remark
+complacently:
+
+"They most generally come around, in the end!"
+
+In five minutes the fire was burning bright, Corporal was dreaming of
+meaty bones in far fence corners, and Phelan, less free from the
+incumbrances of civilization, was divesting himself of his rain-soaked
+garments.
+
+From one of the innumerable pockets of his old cutaway coat he took a
+comb and brush and clothes-brush, and carefully deposited them before
+the fire. Then from around his neck he removed a small leather case,
+hung by a string and holding a razor. His treasured toilet articles thus
+being cared for, he turned his attention to the contents of his dripping
+bundle. A suit of underwear and a battered old copy of Eli Perkins were
+ruefully examined, and spread out to dry.
+
+The fire, while it lasted, was doing admirable service, but the wood
+supply was limited, and Phelan saw that he must take immediate advantage
+of the heat. How to dry the underwear which he wore was the question
+which puzzled him, and he wrestled with it for several moments before an
+inspiration came.
+
+"I'll borrow some duds from the scarecrow!" he said half aloud, and
+went forth immediately to execute his idea.
+
+The rain had ceased, but the fields were still afloat, and Phelan waded
+ankle deep through the slush grass, to where the scarecrow raised his
+threatening arms against the twilight sky.
+
+"Beggars and borrowers shouldn't be choosers," said Phelan, as he
+divested the figure of its ragged trousers and coat, "but I have a
+strong feeling in my mind that these habiliments ain't going to become
+me. Who's your tailor, friend?"
+
+The scarecrow, reduced now to an old straw hat and a necktie, maintained
+a dignified and oppressive silence.
+
+"Well, he ain't on to the latest cut," continued Phelan, wringing the
+water out of the coat. "But maybe these here is your pajamas? Don't tell
+me I disturbed you after you'd retired for the night? Very well then,
+aurevoy."
+
+With the clothes under his arm he made his way back to the shed, and
+divesting himself of his own raiment he got into his borrowed property.
+
+By this time the fire had died down, and the place was in
+semi-darkness. Phelan threw on a handful of sticks and, as the blaze
+flared up, he caught his first clear sight of his newly acquired
+clothes. They were ragged and weather-stained, and circled about with
+broad, unmistakable stripes.
+
+"Well, I'll be spiked!" said Phelan, vastly amused. "I wouldn't 'a'
+thought it of a nice, friendly scarecrow like that! Buncoed me, didn't
+he? Well, feathers don't always make the jail-bird. Wonder what poor
+devil wore 'em last? Peeled out of 'em in this very shed, like as not.
+Well, they'll serve my purpose all right, all right."
+
+He took off his shoes, placed them under his head for a pillow, lit a
+short cob pipe, threw on fresh wood, and prepared to wait for his
+clothes to dry.
+
+Meanwhile the question of the banquet revolved itself continually in his
+mind. This time to-morrow night, the preparations would be in full
+swing. Instead of being hungry, half naked, and chilled, he might be in
+a luxurious club-house dallying with caviar, stuffed olives, and
+Benedictine. All that lay between him and bliss were two hundred miles
+of railroad ties and a decent suit of clothes!
+
+"Wake up, Corp; for the love of Mike be sociable!" cried Phelan when the
+situation became too gloomy to contemplate. "Ain't that like a dog now?
+Hold your tongue when I'm longing for a word of kindly sympathy an'
+encouragement, and barking your fool head off once we get on the
+freight. Much good it'll be doing us to get to Nashville in this fix,
+but we'll take our blessings as they come, Corp, and just trust to luck
+that somebody will forget to turn 'em off. I know when I get to the
+banquet there'll be one other man absent. That's Bell of Terre Haute.
+Him and me is always in the same boat, he gets ten thousand a year and
+ain't got the nerve to spend it, and I get fifteen a month, and ain't
+got the nerve to keep it! Poor old Bell."
+
+Corporal, roused from his slumbers, sniffed inquiringly at the many
+garments spread about the fire, yawned, turned around several times in
+dog fashion, then curled up beside Phelan, signifying by his bored
+expression that he hadn't the slightest interest in the matter under
+discussion.
+
+Gradually the darkness closed in, and the fire died to embers. It would
+be four hours before the night freight slowed up at the water tank, and
+Phelan, tired from his long tramp, and drowsy from the heat and the
+vapor rising from the drying clothes, shifted the shoe-buttons from
+under his left ear, and drifted into dreamland.
+
+How long he slept undisturbed, only the scarecrow outside knew. He was
+dimly aware, in his dreams, of subdued sounds and, by and by, the sounds
+formed themselves into whispered words and, still half asleep, he
+listened.
+
+"I thought we'd find him along here. This is the road they always take,"
+a low voice was saying; "you and Sam stand here, John and me'll tackle
+him from this side. He'll put up a stiff fight, you bet."
+
+Phelan opened his eyes, and tried to remember where he was.
+
+"Gosh! look at that bulldog!" came another whisper, and at the same
+moment Corporal jumped to his feet, growling angrily.
+
+As he did so, four men sprang through the opening of the shed, and
+seized Phelan by the arms and legs.
+
+"Look out there," cried one excitedly; "don't let him escape; here's the
+handcuffs."
+
+"But here," cried Phelan, "what's up; what you doing to me?"
+
+By this time Corporal, thoroughly roused, made a vicious lunge at the
+nearest man. The next minute there was a sharp report of a pistol, and
+the bull-terrier went yelping and limping out into the night.
+
+"You coward!" cried Phelan, struggling to rise, "if you killed that
+dog--"
+
+"Get those shackles on his legs," shouted one of the men. "Is the wagon
+ready, Sam? Take his legs there, I've got his head. Leave the truck
+here, we've got to drive like sand to catch that train!"
+
+After being dragged to the road and thrown into a spring wagon, Phelan
+found himself lying on his back, jolting over a rough country road, his
+three vigilant captors sitting beside him with pistols in hand.
+
+Any effort on his part to explain or seek information was promptly and
+emphatically discouraged. But in time he gathered, from the bits let
+fall by his captors, that he was an escaped convict, of a most desperate
+character, for whom a reward was offered, and that he had been at large
+twenty-four hours.
+
+In vain did he struggle for a hearing. Only once did he get a response
+to his oft-repeated plea of innocence. It was when he told how he had
+come by the clothes he had on. For once Phelan got a laugh when he did
+not relish it.
+
+"Got 'em off a scarecrow, did you?" said the man at his head, when the
+fun had subsided; "say, I want to be 'round when you tell that to the
+Superintendent of the Penitentiary--I ain't heard him laugh in ten
+years!"
+
+So, in the face of such unbelief, Phelan lapsed into silence and gloom.
+What became of him concerned him less, at the moment, than the fate of
+Corporal, and the thought of the faithful little beast wounded and
+perhaps dying out there in the fields, made him sick at heart.
+
+Just as they came in sight of the lights of the station, the whistle of
+the freight was heard down the track and the horses were beaten to a
+gallop.
+
+Phelan was hurried from the wagon into an empty box car, with his full
+guard in attendance. As the train pulled out he heard a little whimper
+beside him and there, panting for breath after his long run, and with
+one ear hanging limp and bloody, cowered Corporal. Phelan's hands were
+not at his disposal, but even if they had been it is doubtful if he
+would have denied Corp the joy for once of kissing him.
+
+Through the rest of the night the heavy cars rumbled over the rails, and
+the men took turn about sleeping and guarding the prisoner. Only once
+did Phelan venture another question:
+
+"Say, you sports, you don't mind telling me where you are taking me, do
+you?"
+
+"Listen at his gaff!" said one. "He'll know all right when he gets to
+Nashville."
+
+Phelan sent such a radiant smile into the darkness that it threatened
+to reveal itself. Then he slipped his encircled wrists about Corporal's
+body and giving him a squeeze whispered:
+
+"It's better'n the bumpers, Corp."
+
+At the Penitentiary next day there was consternation and dismay when
+instead of the desperate criminal, who two days before had scaled the
+walls and dropped to freedom, an innocent little Irishman was presented,
+whose only offense apparently was in having donned, temporarily, the
+garb of crime.
+
+As the investigation proceeded, Phelan found it expedient, to become
+excessively indignant. That an American citizen, strolling harmlessly
+through the fields of a summer evening, and being caught in a shower,
+should attempt to dry his clothes in an unused shed, and find himself
+attacked and bound, and hurried away without his belongings to a distant
+city, was an inconceivable outrage. If a shadow of doubt remained as to
+his identity, a score of prominent gentlemen in the city would be able
+to identify him. He named them, and added that he was totally unable to
+hazard a guess as to what form their resentment of his treatment would
+assume.
+
+The authorities looked grave. Could Mr. Harrihan remember just what
+articles he had left behind? Mr. Harrihan could. A suit of clothes, a
+pair of shoes, a hat, a toilet set, and a small sum of money; "the loss
+of which," added Phelan with a fine air of indifference, "are as nothing
+compared to the indignity offered to my person."
+
+Would the gentleman be satisfied if the cost of these articles, together
+with the railroad fare back to Lebanon Junction be paid him? The
+gentleman, after an injured pause, announced that he would.
+
+And thus it was that Mr. Phelan Harrihan, in immaculate raiment,
+presented himself at the Sixth Annual Reunion of the Alpha Delta
+fraternity and, with a complacent smile encircling a ten-cent cigar, won
+fresh laurels by recounting, with many adornments, the adventures of the
+previous night.
+
+
+
+
+"POP"
+
+
+The gloomy corridor in the big Baltimore hospital was still and deserted
+save for a nurse who sat at a flat-topped desk under a green lamp
+mechanically transferring figures from one chart to another. It was the
+period of quiet that usually precedes the first restless stirring of the
+sick at the breaking of dawn. The silence was intense as only a silence
+can be that waits momentarily for an interrupting sound.
+
+Suddenly it came in a prolonged, imperative ring of the telephone bell.
+So insistent was the call that the nurse's hand closed over the
+transmitter long before the burr ceased. The office was notifying Ward B
+that an emergency case had been brought in and an immediate operation
+was necessary.
+
+With prompt efficiency the well-ordered machinery for saving human life
+was put in motion. Soft-footed nurses emerged from the shadows and
+moved quickly about, making necessary arrangements. A trim, comely
+woman, straight of feature and clear of eye, gave directions in low
+decisive tones. When the telephone rang the second time she answered it.
+
+"Yes, Office," she said, "this is Miss Fletcher. They are not going to
+operate? Too late? I see. Very well. Send the patient up to No. 16.
+Everything is ready."
+
+Even as she spoke the complaining creak of the elevator could he heard,
+and presently two orderlies appeared at the end of the corridor bearing
+a stretcher.
+
+Beside it, with head erect and jaw set, strode a strangely commanding
+figure. Six feet two he loomed in the shadows, a gaunt, raw-boned old
+mountaineer. On his head was a tall, wide-brimmed hat and in his right
+hand he carried a bulky carpet sack. The left sleeve of his long-tailed
+coat hung empty to the elbow. The massive head with its white flowing
+beard and hawklike face, the beaked nose and fierce, deep-set eyes,
+might have served as a model for Michael Angelo when he modeled his
+immortal Moses.
+
+As the orderlies passed through the door of No. 16 and lowered the
+stretcher, the old man put down his carpet sack and grimly watched the
+nurse uncover the patient. Under the worn homespun coverlet, stained
+with the dull dyes of barks and berries, lay an emaciated figure, just
+as it had been brought into the hospital. One long coarse garment
+covered it, and the bare feet with their prominent ankle bones and the
+large work-hardened hands might have belonged to either a boy or a girl.
+
+"Take that thar head wrappin' off!" ordered the old man peremptorily.
+
+A nurse carefully unwound the rough woolen scarf and as she did so a
+mass of red hair fell across the pillow, hair that in spite of its
+matted disorder showed flashes of gleaming gold.
+
+"We'll get her on the bed," a night nurse said to an assistant. "Put
+your arm under her knees. Don't jar the stretcher!"
+
+Before the novice could obey another and a stronger arm was thrust
+forward.
+
+"Stand back thar, some of you-uns," commanded a loud voice, "I'll holp
+move Sal myself."
+
+In vain were protests from nurses and orderlies alike, the old
+mountaineer seemed bent on making good use of his one arm and with quick
+dexterity he helped to lift her on the bed.
+
+"Now, whar's the doctor?" he demanded, standing with feet far apart and
+head thrown back.
+
+The doctor was at the desk in the corridor, speaking to Miss Fletcher in
+an undertone:
+
+"We only made a superficial examination down-stairs," he was saying,
+"but it is evidently a ruptured appendix. If she's living in a couple of
+hours I may be able to operate. But it's ten to one she dies on the
+table."
+
+"Who are they, and where did they come from?" Miss Fletcher asked
+curiously.
+
+"Their name is Hawkins, and they are from somewhere in the Kentucky
+mountains. Think of his starting with her in that condition! He can't
+read or write; it's the first time he has ever been in a city. I am
+afraid he's going to prove troublesome. You'd better get him out of
+there as soon as possible."
+
+But anyone, however mighty in authority, who proposed to move Jeb
+Hawkins when he did not choose to be moved reckoned unknowingly. All
+tactics were exhausted from suggestion to positive command, and the
+rules of the hospital were quoted in vain.
+
+In the remote regions where Jeb lived there were no laws to break. Every
+man's home was his stronghold, to be protected at the point of a pistol.
+He was one of the three million people of good Anglo-Saxon stock who had
+been stranded in the highlands when the Cumberland Mountains dammed the
+stream of humanity that swept westward through the level wilderness.
+Development had been arrested so long in Jeb and his ancestors that the
+outside world, its interests and its mode of living, was a matter of
+supreme and profound indifference. A sudden and unprecedented emergency
+had driven him to the "Settlements." His girl had developed an ailment
+that baffled the skill of the herb doctors; so, following one bit of
+advice after another, he had finally landed in Baltimore. And now that
+the terrible journey was ended and Sal was in the hands of the doctor
+who was to work the cure, the wholly preposterous request was made of
+him that he abandon her to her fate!
+
+With dogged determination he sat beside the bed, and chewed silently and
+stolidly through the argument.
+
+"You gals mought ez well save yer wind," he announced at last. "Ef Sal
+stays, I stay. Ef I go, Sal goes. We ain't axin' favors of nobody."
+
+He was so much in the way during the necessary preparations for the
+possible operation that finally Miss Fletcher was appealed to. She was a
+woman accustomed to giving orders and to having them obeyed; but she was
+also a woman of tact. Ten minutes of valuable time were spent in
+propitiating the old man before she suggested that he come with her into
+the corridor while the nurses straightened the room. A few minutes later
+she returned, smiling:
+
+"I've corralled him in the linen closet," she whispered; "he is
+unpacking his carpet sack as if he meant to take up his abode with us."
+
+"I am afraid," said the special nurse, glancing toward the bed, "he
+won't have long to stay. How do you suppose he ever got her here?"
+
+"I asked him. He said he drove her for three days in an ox-cart along
+the creek bottom until they got to Jackson. Then he told the ticket
+agent to send them to the best hospital the train ran to. Neither of
+them had ever seen a train before. It's a miracle she's lived this
+long."
+
+"Does he realize her condition?"
+
+"I don't know. I suppose I ought to tell him that the end may come at
+any time."
+
+But telling him was not an easy matter as Miss Fletcher found when she
+joined him later in the linen closet. He was busy spreading his varied
+possessions along the shelves on top of the piles of immaculate linen,
+stopping now and then to refresh himself with a bite of salt pork and
+some corn pone that had been packed for days along with Sally's shoes
+and sunbonnet and his own scanty wardrobe.
+
+"I suppose you know," Miss Fletcher began gently, trying not to show her
+chagrin at the state of the room, "that your daughter is in a very
+serious condition."
+
+He looked at her sharply. "Shucks! Sal'll pull through," he said with
+mingled defiance and alarm. "You ain't saw her afore in one of them
+spells. Besides, hit meks a difference when a gal's paw and grandpaw and
+great-grandpaw was feud-followers. A feud-follower teks more killin'
+then ordinary folks. Her maw was subjec' to cramp colic afore her."
+
+"But this isn't cramp colic," Miss Fletcher urged, "it's her appendix,
+and it wasn't taken in time."
+
+"Well, ain't they goin' to draw it?" he asked irritably. "Ain't that
+whut we're here fer?"
+
+"Yes; but you don't understand. The doctor may decide _not_, to
+operate."
+
+The old man's face wore a puzzled look, then his lips hardened:
+
+"Mebbe hit's the money thet's a-woriyin' him. You go toll him that Jeb
+Hawkins pays ez he goes! I got pension money sewed in my coat frum the
+hem clean up to the collar. I hain't askin' none of you to cure my gal
+fer nothin'!"
+
+Miss Fletcher laid her hand on his arm. It was a shapely hand as well as
+a kindly one.
+
+"It isn't a question of money," she said quietly, "it's a question of
+life or death. There is only a slight chance that your daughter will
+live through the day."
+
+Someone tapped at the door and Miss Fletcher, after a whispered
+consultation, turned again to the old man:
+
+"They have decided to take the chance," she said hurriedly. "They are
+carrying her up now. You stay here, and I will let you know as soon as
+it is over."
+
+"Whar they fetching her to?" he demanded savagely.
+
+"To the operating-room."
+
+"You take me thar!"
+
+"But you can't go, Mr. Hawkins. No one but the surgeons and nurses can
+be with her. Besides, the nurse who was just here said she had regained
+consciousness, and it might excite her to see you."
+
+She might as well have tried to stop a mountain torrent. He brushed past
+her and was making his way to the elevator before she had ceased
+speaking. At the open door of the operating-room on the fourth floor he
+paused. On a long white table lay the patient, a white-clad doctor on
+either side of her, and a nurse in the background sorting a handful of
+gleaming instruments. With two strides the old man reached the girl's
+side.
+
+"Sal!" he said fiercely, bending over her, "air ye wuss?"
+
+Her dazed eyes cleared slightly.
+
+"I dunno, Pop," she murmured feebly.
+
+"Ye ain't fixin' to die, air ye?" he persisted.
+
+"I dunno, Pop."
+
+"Don't you let 'em skeer you," he commanded sternly. "You keep on
+a-fightin'. Don't you dare give up. Sal, do you hear me?"
+
+The girl's wavering consciousness steadied, and for a moment the
+challenge that the old man flung at death was valiantly answered in her
+pain-racked eyes.
+
+For an hour and a half the surgeons worked. The case, critical enough at
+best, was greatly complicated by the long delay. Twice further effort
+seemed useless, and it was only by the prompt administration of oxygen
+that the end was averted. During the nerve-racking suspense Pop not only
+refused to leave the room, he even refused to stand back from the table.
+With keen, suspicious eyes he followed every movement of the surgeons'
+hands. Only once did he speak out, and that was in the beginning, to an
+interne who was administering the anćsthetic:
+
+"Lift that funnel, you squash-headed fool!" he thundered; "don't you see
+hit's marking of her cheek?"
+
+When the work was finished and the unconscious patient had been taken
+down to her ward, Pop still kept his place beside her. With his hand on
+her pulse he watched her breathing, watched the first faint quivering of
+her lids, the restlessness that grew into pain and later into agony.
+Hour after hour he sat there and passed with her through that
+crucifixion that follows some capital operations.
+
+On his refusal at luncheon time to leave the bedside Miss Fletcher
+ignored the rules and sent him a tray; but when night came and he still
+refused to go, she became impatient.
+
+"You can't stay in here to-night, Mr. Hawkins," she said firmly. "I have
+asked one of the orderlies, who lives nearby, to take you home with him.
+We can send for you if there is any change. I must insist that you go
+now."
+
+"Ain't I made it cl'ar from the start," cried Pop angrily, "thet I ain't
+a-goin' to be druv out? You-uns kin call me muley-headed or whatever
+you've a mind to. Sal's always stood by me, and by golly, I'm a-goin' to
+stand by Sal!"
+
+His raised voice roused the patient, and a feeble summons brought Miss
+Fletcher to the bedside.
+
+"Say," plead the girl faintly, "don't rile Pop. He's the--fightenest
+man--in--Breathitt--when his blood's--up."
+
+"All right, dear," said Miss Fletcher, with a soothing hand on the hot
+brow; "he shall do as he likes."
+
+During that long night the girl passed from one paroxysm of pain to
+another with brief intervals of drug-induced sleep. During the quiet
+moments the nurse snatched what rest she could; but old Jeb Hawkins
+stuck to his post in the straight-backed chair, never nodding, never
+relaxing the vigilance of his watch. For Pop was doing sentry duty, much
+as he had done it in the old days of the Civil War, when he had answered
+Lincoln's first call for volunteers and given his left arm for his
+country.
+
+But the enemy to-night was mysterious, crafty, one that might come in
+the twinkling of an eye, and a sentry at seventy is not what he was at
+twenty-two. When the doctor arrived in the morning he found the old man
+haggard with fatigue.
+
+"This won't do, Mr. Hawkins," he said kindly; "you must get some rest."
+
+"Be she goin' to die?" Pop demanded, steadying himself by a chair.
+
+"It is too soon to tell," the doctor said evasively; "but I'll say this
+much, her pulse is better than I expected. Now, go get some sleep."
+
+Half an hour later a strange rumbling sound puzzled the nurses in Ward
+B. It came at regular intervals, rising from a monotonous growl to a
+staccato, then dying away in a plaintive diminuendo. It was not until
+one of the nurses needed clean sheets that the mystery was explained. On
+the floor of the linen closet, stretched on his back with his carpet
+sack under his head and his empty sleeve across his chest, lay Pop!
+
+From that time on the old mountaineer became a daily problem to Ward B.
+It is true, he agreed in time to go home at night with the orderly; but
+by six in the morning he was sitting on the hospital steps, impatiently
+awaiting admission. The linen closet was still regarded by him as his
+private apartment, to which he repaired at such times as he could not
+stay in Sally's room, and refreshed himself with the luncheon he brought
+with him each day.
+
+During the first week, when the girl's life hung in the balance, he was
+granted privileges which he afterward refused to relinquish. The
+hospital confines, after the freedom of the hills, chafed him sorely. As
+the days grew warmer he discarded his coat, collar, and at times his
+shoes.
+
+"I 'low I'm goin' to tek Sal home next week!" became his daily threat.
+
+But the days and weeks slipped by, and still the girl lay with a low,
+consuming fever, and still Pop watched by her side, showing her no
+affection by word or gesture but serving her and anticipating her every
+want with a thoroughness that left little for the nurses to do.
+
+In some way Miss Fletcher had gained his confidence. To her he intrusted
+the bills which he ripped from his coat at the end of each week with the
+instruction that she "pay off them boys down in the office fa'r an'
+squar', but not to 'low 'em to cheat her." It may have been her growing
+interest in the invalid that won his favor, for she came in often to
+chat awhile with Sally and sometimes brought up a handful of flowers to
+brighten the sick room.
+
+"She's getting better," she said one morning as she held the girl's big
+bony hand and looked down at the thin bright face in its frame of
+shining hair. "We'll have her sitting up now before long."
+
+Pop's whole aspect brightened.
+
+"Ef Sal onct begins to git well, can't none of 'em beat her," he said
+proudly.
+
+"Have you any other children?" Miss Fletcher asked.
+
+"Lord, yes," said Pop, "heaps of 'em. Thar's Ted an' Larkin, an'
+Gus,--they wuz all kilt in feud fights. An' Burt an' Jim,--they're in
+jail in Jackson fer moonshinin'. Four more died when they wuz babies.
+An' they ain't nary a one at home now but jes' Sal."
+
+"How old is she?"
+
+"Seventeen or eighteen, mebbe."
+
+"And she tells me she has never been to school."
+
+"Thar warn't no needcessity," said Pop complacently, taking a long twist
+of tobacco from his pocket. "Sal don't need no larnin'. She's pearter
+then most gals thet's got book sense. You show me ary one of these gals
+round here thet kin spin an' weave the cloth to mek ther own dresses,
+thet kin mold candles, an' mek soap, an' hoe terbaccy, an' handle a
+rifle good ez a man."
+
+"But, Mr. Hawkins," insisted Miss Fletcher, "there are better things
+than those for us to learn. Haven't you ever felt the need of an
+education yourself?"
+
+Pop looked at her suspiciously: "Look a-here, young woman. I'm nigh on
+to seventy. I never hed a doctor but onct in my life, an' then he
+chopped my arm off when it might hev got well whar it wuz. I kin plow,
+an' fell trees, an' haul wood. Thar ain't a log-rollin' ner a
+house-raisin' in our neck of the woods thet Jeb Hawkins ain't sent fer.
+I kin h'ist a barrel with the best of 'em, and shake up Ole Dan Tucker
+ez peart ez the next one. Now how about yer scholards? This here
+horspittle is full of 'em. Pale-faced, spindly-legged, nerve-jerking
+young fellows thet has spent ther fust twenty years gittin' larnin',
+an' ther next twenty gittin' over hit. Me an' Sal will keep to the
+open!"
+
+But Sally was not so confident. As her strength began to return she took
+a growing interest in all that went on around her, asking eager,
+intelligent questions and noting with wistful curiosity the speech and
+manners of the nurses who served her. She was a raw recruit from Nature,
+unsophisticated, illiterate. Under a bondage of poverty and drudgery she
+had led her starved life in the mountain fastnesses; but now she had
+opened her eyes on a new and unexpected world.
+
+"How do you go about gittin' a larnin'?" she ventured at last to ask one
+of the friendly nurses. "Can't you fetch me up some of them thar picter
+books?"
+
+For hours after this she pored over her new treasures, until one day
+Miss Fletcher brought her a primer, and the seventeen-year-old girl
+grappled for the first time with the alphabet. After that she was loath
+to have the book out of her hand, going painfully and slowly over the
+lessons, mastering each in turn with patient perseverance.
+
+Pop viewed this proceeding with disfavor. He seemed to sense the
+entering wedge that was to separate her from him. His pride in her
+accomplishment was overshadowed by his jealousy, and when she was able
+to read a whole page and attempted to explain the intricate process to
+him, he was distinctly cast down. He left the hospital that afternoon
+for the first time, and was gone until dusk. When he returned he carried
+a bunch of faded wild flowers that he had tramped two miles in the
+country to get for his girl.
+
+May dragged into June, and still they were kept at the hospital. The old
+man became as restless as a caged animal; he paced the corridors for
+hours at a time and his eyes grew furtive and defiant. He, who had lived
+out of sight of the smoke from his nearest neighbor's chimneys, who had
+spent his life in the vast, still solitudes of the hills, was incredibly
+lonely here among his fellow men.
+
+"If Pop has to stay here much longer, I'm afraid he'll smash the
+furniture," said the night nurse who, like everybody else in the ward,
+had grown interested in the old man. "He packs his things every morning
+before the doctor comes, only to unpack them after he leaves."
+
+"The confinement is telling on him," said Miss Fletcher. "I wish for his
+sake they could start home to-day. But I do hate to see Sally go! The
+girl is getting her first taste of civilization, and I've never seen
+anyone so eager to learn. We have to take the books away from her every
+day, and when she can't study she begs to be allowed to roll bandages.
+The third day she sat up she wanted to help nurse the other patients.
+
+"I am afraid we have spoiled her for hoeing tobacco, and planting corn,"
+said the night nurse.
+
+"I hope so," Miss Fletcher answered fervently.
+
+It was nearly the last of June when the doctor dismissed his patient.
+"This doesn't mean that she is well," he warned Pop. "You will have to
+be careful of her for a long time. She has worked too hard for a growing
+girl, and she's not as strong now as she was."
+
+"She will be!" Pop responded confidently. "That thar gal is made outen
+iron! Her maw was afore her. Liza wuz my third wife, an' she'd borned
+six or seven children, when she died at thirty-five, an', by Joshuy,
+she'd never once hed a doctor in all her life!"
+
+Pop's joy over their dismissal was slightly dimmed by Sally's reception
+of the news. He saw her draw a long breath and bite her lips; then he
+saw what he had never seen since she was a baby, two large tears gather
+slowly in her eyes and roll down on the pillow. He watched them in
+amazement.
+
+"Sal, whut ails ye?" he asked anxiously, after the doctor was gone.
+
+"I want to git a larnin'!" she broke out. "I don't want to go back to
+the hills."
+
+Instantly the old man's face, which had been tender, hardened to a mask
+of fury.
+
+"That passel of fool women's been workin' on ye," he cried hoarsely,
+"larnin', larnin', thet's all they know. Ain't the Fork good enough fer
+ye? Ain't the cabin whar yer paw, an' yer grandpaw, an' yer
+great-grandpaw was borned good enough for ye?"
+
+"Yes, Pop, yes!" she gasped, terrified at the storm she had raised. "I'm
+a-goin' back with you. Don't tek on so, Pop, I'm a-goin'!"
+
+But the tempest was raging, and the old man got up and strode angrily up
+and down the small room, filling the air with his indignation.
+
+"I should say you _wuz_ goin' back! I'd like to see any of 'em try to
+keep you. They'd like to make one o' them dressed-up doll women outen
+you! You're goin' back with me to the Fork, an' ef thar's ever any more
+nussin' er doctorin' to do, I'm a-goin' to do hit. I've nussed three
+women on their deathbeds, an' when your time comes I 'low I kin handle
+you too."
+
+Then his mood changed suddenly, and he sat down by the bed.
+
+"Sal," he said almost persuasively, "you'll git over this here
+foolishness. Ag'in' fall you'll be a-cappin corn, an' a-roastin' sweet
+pertatoes, an' singin' them ole ballarts along with the Hicks gals, an'
+Cy West, an' Bub Holly. An' I'll tote you behind me on the beast over
+the Ridge to the Baptist Meetin' House the very next feet-washin' they
+hev. Jes' think how good hit's goin' to be to see the sun a-risin' over
+Ole Baldy, an' to hev room to stretch an' breathe in. Seems ez if I
+hain't been able to git my lungs full of wind sense I left Jackson."
+
+"I know it, Pop," Sally said miserably. "You growed old in the hills
+afore you ever seen the Settlements. But sence I got a sight of whut
+folks is a-doin' down here, 'pears like I can't be reconciled to goin'
+back. 'Tain't the work back home, nor the lonesomeness, tho' the Lord
+knows the only folks thet ever does pass is when they're totin' deads
+down the creek bottom. Hit's the feelin' of bein' shet off from my
+chanct. Ef I could git a larnin' I wouldn't ask nothin' better then to
+go back an' pass it along. When I see these here gals a-larnin' how to
+holp the sick, an' keer fer babies, an' doctor folks, I lay here an'
+steddy 'bout all the good I could do back home ef I only knowed how."
+
+"You do know how," Pop declared vociferously; "ain't you bin a-lookin'
+after folks thet's ailin' around the Fork fer a couple of years or more?
+Ez fer these new-fangled doctorin's, they won't nary one ov 'em do the
+good yarbs will. I'd ruther trust bitter-goldenseal root to cure a
+ailment than all the durn physic in this here horspittle. I ben
+a-studyin' these here doctors, an' I don't take much stock in 'em;
+instid of workin' on a organ thet gets twisted, they ups and draws hit.
+Now the Lord A'mighty put thet air pertickler thing in you fer some good
+reason, an' ther's bound to be a hitch in the machinery when hit's took
+out. Hit's a marvel to me some of these here patients ain't a amblin'
+round on all fours from what's been did to their insides!"
+
+"But think whut the doctor did fer me," urged Sally.
+
+"I ain't fergittin'," Pop said suddenly, "an' I've paid 'em fer hit. But
+ef they calkerlate on yer takin' root here, they're treein' the wrong
+possum. You're a-goin' home along o' me to-morrow."
+
+That afternoon he left the hospital, and several hours later was seen
+walking up Monument Street with his arm full of bundles.
+
+"I believe he's been buying clothes to take Sally home in!" said one of
+the nurses, who was watching him from an upper window. "He asked me this
+morning if I knew a place where he could buy women's togs."
+
+"It's a shame he won't let the girl stay," said Miss Fletcher. "I have
+been talking to the superintendent, and she is quite willing to let her
+do light work around the hospital and pick up what training she can. I
+should be glad enough to look after her, and there's a good night school
+two blocks over."
+
+"Why don't you talk to the old man?" urged the nurse. "You are the only
+one who has ever been able to do anything with him. Perhaps you could
+make him see what an injustice he is doing the girl."
+
+"I believe I'll try," said Miss Fletcher.
+
+The next morning, when she came on duty, she found Sally's bed the
+repository of a strange assortment of wearing apparel. A calico dress
+of pronounced hue, a large lace jabot, and a small pair of yellow kid
+gloves were spread out for inspection.
+
+"I knowed they wuz too leetle," Pop was saying, as he carefully smoothed
+the kid fingers, "but I 'lowed you could kerry 'em in yer hand."
+
+There was an unusual eagerness in his hard face, an evident desire to
+make up to Sally in one way for what he was depriving her of in another.
+He was more talkative than at any time since coming to the hospital, and
+he dilated with satisfaction on the joys that awaited their home-coming.
+
+"May I have a little talk with you before you go?" asked Miss Fletcher.
+
+He flashed on her a quick look of suspicion, but her calm, impassive
+face told him nothing. She was a pretty woman, and Pop had evidently
+recognized the fact from the start.
+
+"Wal, I'll come now," he said, rising reluctantly; "but, Sal, you git
+yer clothes on an' be ready to start time I git back. I ain't anxious to
+stay round these here diggin's no longer'n need be. Besides, that thar
+railroad car mought take a earlier start. You be ready ag'in I git
+back."
+
+For an hour and a quarter Miss Fletcher was shut up in the linen closet
+with the old man. What arguments and persuasions she brought to bear are
+not known. Occasionally his voice could be heard in loud and angry
+dissent, but when at last they emerged he looked like some old king of
+the jungle that has been captured and tamed. His shoulders drooped, his
+one arm hung limply by his side, and his usually restless eyes were bent
+upon the floor.
+
+Without a word he strode back to the room where Sally in her misfit
+clothes was waiting for him.
+
+"Come along o' me, Sal," he commanded sternly as he picked up his carpet
+sack. "Leave your things whar they be."
+
+Silently they passed out of the ward, down the stairway, through the
+long vaultlike corridor to the superintendent's room. Once there he
+flung back his rusty coat and ripped the last bill but one from its
+hiding place.
+
+"That thar is fer my gal," he said defiantly to the superintendent.
+"She'll git one the fust day of every month. Give her the larnin' she's
+so hell-bent on, stuff her plumb full on it. An' ef you let ennything
+happen to her"--his brows lowered threateningly--"I'll come back an'
+blow yer whole blame' horspittle into eternity!"
+
+"Pop!" Sally pleaded, "Pop!"
+
+But his emotions were at high tide and he did not heed her. Pushing her
+roughly aside, he strode back to the entrance hall, and was about to
+pick up his carpet sack when his gaze was suddenly arrested by the great
+marble figure that bends its thorn-crowned head in pity over the unhappy
+and the pain-racked mortals that pass beneath its outstretched hands.
+
+"You ain't goin' to leave me like this, Pop?" begged Sally. "Ef you take
+it so hard, I'll go back, an' I'll go willin'. Jus' say the word, Pop,
+an' I'll go!"
+
+The old mountaineer's one hand closed on the girl's bony arm in a tight
+clasp, his shoulders heaved, and his massive features worked, but his
+gaze never left the calm, pitying face of the Saviour overhead. He had
+followed his child without a tremor into the Valley of the Shadow of
+Death, but at the entrance of this new life, where he must let her go
+alone, his courage failed and his spirit faltered. His dominant will,
+hitherto the only law he knew, was in mortal combat with a new and
+unknown force that for the first time had entered his life.
+
+For several minutes he stood thus, his conflicting passions swaying him,
+as opposing gales shake a giant forest tree. Then he resolutely loosened
+his grip on the girl's arm and taking up his burden, without a word or a
+backward glance, set his face toward the hills, leaving an awkward,
+wistful girl watching him with her tears only half obscuring the vision
+that was already dawning for her.
+
+
+
+
+HOODOOED
+
+
+Gordon Lee Surrender Jones lay upon what he confidently claimed to be
+his death-bed. Now and again he glanced furtively at the cabin door and
+listened. Being assured that nobody was coming, he cautiously extricated
+a large black foot from the bedclothes, and, holding it near the candle,
+laboriously tied a red string about one of his toes. He was a powerful
+negro, with a close-cropped bullet-head, a massive bulldog jaw, and a
+pair of incongruously gentle and credulous eyes.
+
+According to his own diagnosis, he was suffering from "asmy, bronketers,
+pneumony, grip, diabeters, and old age." The last affliction was hardly
+possible, as Gordon Lee was probably born during the last days of the
+Civil War, though he might have been eighty, for all he knew to the
+contrary. In addition to his acknowledged ailments, there was one he
+cherished in secret. It was by far the most mysterious and deadly of the
+lot, a malady to be pondered on in the dark watches of the night, to be
+treated with weird rites and ceremonies, and to be cured only by some
+specialist versed in the deepest lore of witchcraft; for Gordon Lee knew
+beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that a hoodoo had been laid upon
+him.
+
+Of course, like most of his race, he had had experiences in this line
+before; but this was different. In fact, it was no less a calamity than
+a cricket in his leg. Just how the cricket got into his leg was a matter
+too deep for human speculation; but the fact that it was there, and that
+it hopped with ease from knee to ankle, and made excruciating excursions
+into his five toes, was as patent as the toes themselves.
+
+What complicated the situation for Gordon Lee was that he could not
+discuss this painful topic with his wife. Amanda Jones had embarked on
+the higher education, and had long ago thrown overboard her old
+superstitions. She was not only Queen Mother of the Sisters of the
+Order of the Star, and an officer in various church societies, but she
+was also a cook in the house of Mrs. James Bertram, President of the
+State Federation of Women's Clubs. The crumbs of wisdom that fell from
+the lips of the great Mrs. Bertram were carefully preserved by Amanda,
+and warmed over, with sundry garnishings of her own, for the various
+colored clubs to which she belonged.
+
+Gordon Lee had succeeded in adorning only three toes when he heard a
+quick step on the gravel outside and, hastily getting his foot under
+cover, he settled back on the pillow, closed his eyes, and began
+laboriously inhaling with a wheeze and exhaling with a groan.
+
+The candle sputtered as the door was flung open, and a small, energetic
+mulatto woman, twenty years Gordon Lee's junior, bustled into the room.
+
+"Good lan'! but it's hot in heah!" she exclaimed, flinging up a window.
+"I got a good mind to _nail_ this heah window down f'om the top."
+
+"I done open' de door fer a spell dis mawnin'," said Gordon Lee,
+sullenly, pulling the bedclothes tighter about his neck. "Lettin' in all
+dis heah night air meks my eyes sore."
+
+The bedclothes, having thus been drawn up from the bottom of the bed,
+left the patient's feet exposed, and Amanda immediately spied the
+string-encircled toes.
+
+"Gordon Lee Surrender Jones," she exclaimed indignantly, "has that there
+meddlin' ol' Aunt Kizzy been here again?"
+
+Gordon Lee's eyes blinked, and his thick, sullen under lip dropped half
+an inch lower.
+
+"Ef you think," continued Amanda, furiously, "that I'm a-goin' to keep
+on a-workin' my fingers to the bone, lak I been doin' for the past year,
+a-payin' doctors' bills, an' buyin' medicines fer you, while you lay up
+in this here bed listenin' to the fool talk of a passel of igneramuses,
+you's certainly mistaken. Hit's bad enough to have you steddyin' up new
+ailments ever' day, without folks a-puttin' 'em in yer head. Whut them
+strings tied on yer toes fer?"
+
+Gordon Lee's wheezing had ceased under his severe mental strain, and now
+he lay blinking at the ceiling, utterly unable to give a satisfactory
+answer.
+
+"Aunt Kizzy jes happen' 'long," he muttered presently. "Ain't no harm in
+a' ol' frien' passin' de time ob day."
+
+"Whut them _strings_ tied on yer toes fer?" repeated Amanda with fearful
+insistence.
+
+Gordon Lee, pushed to the extreme, and knowing by experience that he was
+as powerless in the hands of his diminutive wife as an elephant in those
+of his keeper, weakly capitulated.
+
+"Aunt Kizzy 'low'--I ain't sayin' she's right; I's jes tellin' you what
+she _'low'_--Aunt Kizzy 'low' dat, 'cordin' to de symtems, she
+say',--an' I ain't sayin' I b'lieve her,--but she say' hit looks to her
+lak I's sufferin' f'om a hoodoo."
+
+"A hoodoo!" Amanda's scorn was unbounded. "Ef it don't beat my time how
+some of you niggers hang on to them ol' notions. 'Tain't nothin' 't all
+but ignorant superstition. Ain't I tol' you that a hunderd times?"
+
+"Yes, you done tol' me," said Gordon Lee, putting up a feeble defense.
+"You all time quoilin' an' runnin' down conjurin' an' bad-luck signs
+an' all de _nigger_ superstitions; but you's quick 'nough to tek up all
+dese heah _white_ superstitions."
+
+"How you mean?" demanded Amanda.
+
+Gordon Lee, flattered at having any remark of his noticed, proceeded to
+elaborate.
+
+"I mean all dis heah talk 'bout hits bein' bad luck to sleep wid de
+windows shet, an' bout flies carrying disease, an' 'bout worms gittin'
+in de milk ef you leave it settin' roun' unkivered."
+
+"Not worms," corrected Amanda; "_germs_. That ain't no superstition;
+that's a scientific fac'. They is so little you don't see 'em; but
+they's there all right. Mis' Bertram says they's ever'where--in the
+water, in the air, crawlin' up the very walls."
+
+Gordon Lee looked fearfully at the ceiling, as if he expected an
+immediate attack from that direction.
+
+"I ain't sayin' dey ain't, Amanda. Come to think of hit, seems lak I
+'member 'em scrunchin' 'g'inst my teeth when I eats. I ain't sayin'
+nothin' 't all 'bout white folks superstitions,--I 'spec' dey's true,
+ebery one ob 'em,--but hit look' lak you oughtn't to shet yer min'
+ag'inst de colored signs dat done come down f'om yer maw an' yer paw,
+an' yer gran'maw an' gran'paw fer back as Adam. I 'spec' Adam hisself
+was conjured. Lak as not de sarpint done tricked him into regalin'
+hisself wid dat apple. But I s'pose you'd lay hit on de germs whut was
+disportin' deyselves on de apple. But dey ain't no use in 'sputin' dat
+p'int, 'ca'se de fac' remains dat de apple's done et."
+
+"I ain't astin' you to dispute nothin'," cried Amanda, by this time in a
+high state of indignation. "I'm a-talkin' scientific fac's, an' you're
+talkin' nigger foolishness. The ignorance jes nachully oozes outen the
+pores o' your skin."
+
+Gordon Lee, thus arraigned, lay with contracted brows and protruding
+lips, nursing his wrongs, while Amanda disappeared into the adjoining
+room, there to vent her wrath on the pots and pans about the stove.
+
+Despite the fact that it was after eight o'clock and she had been on her
+feet all day, she set about preparing the evening meal for her husband
+with all the care she had bestowed on the white folks' supper.
+
+Soon the little cabin was filled with the savory odor of bacon, and when
+the corn battercakes began to sizzle promisingly, and she flipped them
+over dexterously with a fork, Gordon Lee forgot his ill humor, and
+through the door watched the performance with growing eagerness.
+
+"Git yerself propped up," Amanda called when the cakes were encircled
+with crisp, brown edges. "I'll git the bread-board to put acrost yer
+knees. You be eatin' this soup while I dishes up the bacon an' onions.
+How'd you like to have a little jam along with yer apple-dumplin'?"
+
+Gordon Lee, sitting up in bed with this liberal repast spread on the
+bread-board across his knees, and his large, bare feet, with their pink
+adornments, rising like ebony tombstones at the foot of the bed, forgot
+his grievance.
+
+"Jam!" he repeated. "Well, dat dere Sally Ann Slocum's dumplin's may
+need jam, er Maria Johnsing's, but dis heah dumplin' is complete in
+hitself. Ef dey ever was a pusson dat could assemble a' apple-dumplin'
+so's you swoller hit 'most afore hit gits to yer mouf, dat pusson is
+you."
+
+Harmony being thus restored, and the patient having emptied all the
+dishes before him, Amanda proceeded to clear up. Her small, energetic
+figure moved briskly from one room to the other, and as she worked she
+sang in a low, chanting tone:
+
+              "You got a shoe,
+              I got a shoe,
+  All God's children got shoes.
+  When I git to heaben, gwine try on my shoes,
+  Gwine walk all over God's heaben, heaben, heaben.
+  Ever'body's talkin' 'bout heaben ain't gwine to heaben--
+  Heaben, heaben, gwine walk all over God's heaben."
+
+But the truce, thus declared, was only temporary. During the long days
+that Amanda was away at her work, Gordon Lee had nothing to do but lie
+on his back and think of his ailments. For twenty years he had worked in
+an iron foundry, where his muscles were as active as his brain was
+passive. Now that the case was reversed, the result was disastrous.
+From an attack of rheumatism a year ago he had developed an amazing
+number of complaints, all of which finally fell under the head of the
+dread hoodoo.
+
+Aunt Kizzy, the object of Amanda's special scorn, he held in great
+reverence. She had been a familiar figure in his mother's chimney-corner
+when he was a boy, and to doubt her knowledge of charms and conjuring
+was to him nothing short of heresy. She knew the value of every herb and
+simple that grew in Hurricane Hollow. She was an adept in getting people
+into the world and getting them out of it. She was constantly consulted
+about weaning calves, and planting crops according to the stage of the
+moon. And for everything in the heavens above and the earth beneath and
+the waters under the earth she "had a sign."
+
+Since Gordon Lee's illness, she had fallen into the habit of dropping in
+to sit with him at such hours as Amanda would not be there. She would
+crouch over the fire, elbows on knees and pipe in mouth, and regale him
+with hair-raising tales of "hants" and "sperrits" and the part she had
+played in exorcising them.
+
+"Dis heah case ob yourn," she said one day, "ain't no ordinary case. I
+done worked on lizards in de laigs, but I nebber had no 'casion to treat
+a _cricket_ in de laig. Looks lak de cricket is a more persistent animal
+dan de lizard. 'Sides, ez I signify afore, dis heah case ob yourn ain't
+no ordinary case."
+
+"Why--why ain't it?" Gordon Lee stammered apprehensively.
+
+Aunt Kizzy lifted a bony black hand, and shook her turbaned head
+ominously.
+
+"Dey's two kinds ob hoodoos," she said, "de libin' an' de daid. De daid
+ones is de easiest to lift, 'ca'se dey answers to charms; but nobody can
+lift a libin' hoodoo 'ceptin' de one dat laid hit on. I been a-steddyin'
+an' a-steddyin', an' de signs claim dat dis heah hoodoo ob yourn ain't
+no daid hoodoo."
+
+By this time the whites of Gordon Lee's eyes were largely in evidence,
+and he raised himself fearfully on his elbow.
+
+"Aunt Kizzy," he whispered hoarsely, "how am I gwine to fin' out who 't
+is done conjured me?"
+
+"By de sign ob seben," she answered mysteriously. "I's gwine home an'
+work hit out, den I come back an' tell yer. Ef my 'spicions am true, dat
+dis heah is a _libin'_ hoodoo, de only power in de earth to tek it off
+am ter git er bigger trick an' lay on de top ob hit. I'm gwine home now,
+an' I'll be back inside de hour."
+
+That night when Amanda returned home she found Gordon Lee preoccupied
+and silent. He ate gingerly of the tempting meal she prepared, and
+refused to have his bed straightened before he went to sleep.
+
+"Huccome you put yer pillow on the floor?" she asked.
+
+"I ain't believin' in feathers," he answered sullenly; "dey meks me heah
+things."
+
+In vain Amanda tried to cheer him; she recounted the affairs of the day;
+she gave him all the gossip of the Order of the Sisters of the Star. He
+lay perfectly stolid, his horizontal profile resembling a mountain-range
+the highest peak of which was his under lip.
+
+Finally Amanda's patience wore thin.
+
+"Whut's the matter with you, Gordon Lee Surrender Jones?" she demanded.
+"Whut you mean by stickin' out yer lip lak a circus camel?"
+
+Now that the opportunity for action had come, he feared to take
+advantage of it. Amanda, small as she was, looked firm and determined,
+and he knew by experience that he was no match for her.
+
+"'Tain't fer you to be astin' _me_ whut's de matter," he began
+significantly. "De glove's on de other han'."
+
+"Whut you 'sinuatin', nigger?" cried Amanda, now thoroughly roused.
+
+"I's tired layin' heah under dis heah spell," complained Gordon Lee. "I
+knowed all 'long 'twas a hoodoo, but I neber 'spicioned till to-day who
+was 'sponsible fer hit. Aunt Kizzy tried de test, an', 'fore de Lawd,
+hit p'inted powerful' near home."
+
+Amanda sank into the one rocking-chair the cabin boasted, and dropped
+her hands in her lap. Her anger had given place for the moment to sheer
+amazement.
+
+"Well, if this ain't the beatenest thing I ever heard tell of in all my
+born days! Do you mean to say that that honery old cross-eyed nigger
+Kizzy had the audacity to set up before my fire, in my house, an' tell
+my husband I'd laid a spell on him?"
+
+"Dat's whut de signs p'int to," said Gordon Lee, doggedly.
+
+Amanda rose, and it seemed to him that she towered to the ceiling. With
+hands on hips and head thrown back, she delivered herself, and her voice
+rang with suppressed passion.
+
+"Yas, I laid a spell on yer! I laid a spell on yer when I let you quit
+work, an' lay up in bed wid nothin' to do but to circulate yer symtems.
+I put a spell on yer when I nuss you an' feed you an' s'port you an'
+spile the life plumb outen you. I ain't claimin' 't wasn't rheumatism in
+the fust place, but it's a spell now, all right--a spell I did lay on
+yer, a spell of laziness pure an' simple!"
+
+After this outburst the relations were decidedly strained in the little
+cabin at the far end of Hurricane Hollow. Gordon Lee persistently
+refused to eat anything his wife cooked for him, depending upon the
+food that Aunt Kizzy or other neighbors brought in.
+
+To Amanda the humiliation of this was acute. She used every strategy to
+conciliate him, and at last succeeded by bringing home some pig's feet.
+His appetite got the better of his resentment, and he disposed of four
+with evident relish.
+
+With the approach of winter, however, other and graver troubles
+developed. The rent of the cabin, which had always been promptly paid
+out of Gordon Lee's wages, had now to come out of Amanda's limited
+earnings. Two years' joint savings had gone to pay the doctor and the
+druggist.
+
+Amanda gave up the joys of club life, and began to take in small
+washings, which she did at night. Gordon Lee, surrounded by every luxury
+save that of approbation, continued to lie on his back in the white bed
+and nurse his hallucinations.
+
+"'Mandy," he said one morning as she was going to work, "wished you'd
+ast Marse Jim ef he got a' ol' pair of pants he could spare me."
+
+Her face brightened.
+
+"You fixin' to git up, Honey?" she asked hopefully.
+
+"No, I's jes collectin' ob my grave-clothes," said Gordon Lee. "Dere's a
+pair ob purple socks in de bottom drawer, an' a b'iled shirt in de
+wardrobe. But I been layin' heah steddyin' 'bout dat shirt. Hit's got
+Marse Jim's name on de tail of it, an' s'pose I git to heaben, an' St.
+Peter he read de name an' look hit up in de jedgment book. He's 'lowable
+to come to me an' say, 'Huccome you wearin' dat shirt? Dey ain't but one
+James Bartrum writ down in de book, an' he ain't no colored pusson.'
+'Co'se I _could_ explain, but I's got 'splainin' 'nough to do when I git
+to heaben widout dat."
+
+Amanda paused with her hand on the doorknob.
+
+"Marse Jim'll beat you to heaben; that is, ef he don't beat you to the
+bad place first. You git that idea of dyin' outen yer mind, and you'll
+git well."
+
+"I can't git well till de hoodoo's lifted. Aunt Kizzy 'lows--"
+
+But the door was slammed before he could finish.
+
+The limit of Amanda's endurance was reached about Christmas-time. One
+gloomy Sunday afternoon when she had finished the numerous chores that
+had accumulated during the week, she started for the coal-shed to get an
+armful of kindling.
+
+Dusk was coming on, and Hurricane Hollow had never seemed more lonesome
+and deserted. The corn-shocks leaned toward one another as if they were
+afraid of a common enemy. Somewhere down the road a dog howled dismally.
+
+Amanda resolutely pushed open the door of the shed, and felt her way
+toward the pile of chips. Suddenly she found her progress blocked by a
+strange and colossal object. It was an oblong affair, and it stood on
+one end, which was larger than the other. With growing curiosity she
+felt its back and sides, and then peered around it to get a front view.
+What she saw sent her flying back to the cabin with her mouth open and
+her limbs shaking.
+
+"Gordon Lee," she cried, "whose coffin is that settin' in our
+coal-shed?"
+
+The candidate for the next world looked very much embarrassed.
+
+"Well, 'Mandy," he began lamely, "I can't say 'zactly ez hit's any
+pusson's jes yit. But hit's gwine be mine when de summons comes."
+
+"Where'd you git it at?" demanded his Nemesis.
+
+His eyes shifted guiltily.
+
+"De foundry boss done been heah las' week, an' he gimme some money. I
+'lowed I was layin' hit up fer a rainy day."
+
+"An' you mean to tell me," she cried, "that you took that money an'
+spent it for a coffin, a white one with shiny handles, an' a satin
+bolster that'll done be wore out, an' et up by moths, 'fore you ever git
+a chancet to use it?"
+
+"Couldn't you fix hit up in terbaccy er mothballs ag'in' de time I need
+hit?" Gordon Lee asked helplessly.
+
+But Amanda was too exasperated this time to argue the matter. Fifty
+dollars' worth of coffin in the coal-shed and fifty cents' worth of coal
+in the bin constituted a situation that demanded her entire attention.
+
+For six months now Gordon Lee had remained in bed, firm in the belief
+that he could not walk on account of the spell that had been laid upon
+him. During that time he had come to take a luxurious satisfaction in
+the interest his case was exciting in the neighborhood. Being in
+excellent physical condition, he could afford the melancholy joy of
+playing with the idea of death. He spent hours discussing the details of
+his funeral, which had assumed in his mind the proportions of a pageant.
+
+Amanda, on the other hand, overworked and anxious, and compelled to
+forego her lodges and societies, became more and more irascible and
+depressed. In some subtle way she was aware that the sympathy of the
+colored community was solidly with Gordon Lee. Nobody now asked her how
+he was. Nobody came to the cabin when she was there, though it was
+apparent that visitors were frequent during her absence. Aunt Kizzy had
+evidently been busy in the neighborhood.
+
+One night Amanda sat very long over the stove rolling her hair into
+little wads about the length and thickness of her finger, then tightly
+wrapping each with a stout bit of cord to take out the kink. When Gordon
+Lee roused himself now and then to inquire suspiciously what she was
+doing, she answered with ominous calm.
+
+"Jes steddyin', that's all."
+
+Her meditations evidently resulted in a plan of action, for the next
+night she came home from her work in a most mysterious and unusual mood.
+Gordon Lee heard her moving some heavy and cumbersome article across the
+kitchen floor, then he saw her surreptitiously put something into a tin
+can before she presented herself at the foot of his bed.
+
+"'Mandy," he said, anxious to break the silence, and distrusting that
+subdued look of excitement in her eyes, "did you bring me dat possum,
+lak you 'lowed you was gwine to?"
+
+Her lips tightened.
+
+"Yes, I got the possum, an' also some apples fer a dumplin'; but before
+I lays a stick to the fire I'm goin' to say my say."
+
+Gordon Lee looked at her with consternation. She stood at the foot of
+his bed as if it wore a rostrum, and with an air of detached dignity
+addressed him as if he had been the whole Order of the Sisters of the
+Star.
+
+"I done arrive' at a decision," she declared. "I arrive' at it in the
+watches of the night. I'm goin' to cure you 'cordin' to yer lights an'
+knowledge. I'm goin' to lif' that spell ef I has to purge my immortal
+soul to do it."
+
+"'Mandy," cried Gordon Lee, eagerly, "you mean to say you gwine to
+remove the hoodoo?"
+
+"I am," she said solemnly. "I'm goin' to draw out all yer miseries fer
+the rest of yer life, _includin' of the cricket in yer leg_."
+
+"'Mandy," he cried again fearfully, "you ain't gwine ter hurt me in no
+way, is you?"
+
+"Not effen you do as I tell you. But fust of all you got to take the
+pledge of silence. Whatsomever takes place heah in this cabin to-night
+ain't never to be revealed till the jedgment-day. Do you swear?"
+
+The big negro, fascinated with the mystery, and deeply impressed with
+his wife's manner, laid his hand on the Bible and solemnly took the
+oath.
+
+"Now," she continued impressively, "while I go in the kitchen an' git
+the supper started, I want you to ease yerse'f outen the bed on to the
+floor, an' lay with yer head to the north an' your han's outspread, an'
+yer mind on the heabenly kingdom."
+
+"Air you shore hit ain't gwine hurt me?" again he queried.
+
+"Not if you do 'zactly like I say. Besides," she added dryly, "if it
+comes to the worst, ain't you ready an' waitin' to go!"
+
+"Yas," agreed Gordon Lee; "but I ain't fixin' to go till I's sent fer."
+
+It took not only time, but courage, for him to follow the prescribed
+directions. He had for a long time cherished the belief that any
+exertion would prove fatal; but the prospect of having the hoodoo
+removed, together with a lively curiosity as to what means Amanda would
+employ to remove it, spurred him to persist despite groans, wheezes,
+and ejaculations.
+
+Once stretched upon the floor, with his head to the north and his arms
+extended, he encountered a new difficulty: his mind refused to dwell
+upon the heavenly kingdom. Anxiety as to the treatment he was about to
+be subjected to alternated with satisfaction at the savory odors that
+floated in from the kitchen. If the ordeal was uncertain, the reward at
+least was sure.
+
+After what seemed to him an endless vigil, Amanda appeared in the
+doorway. With measured steps and great solemnity of mien, she
+approached, holding in her right hand a piece of white chalk.
+
+"De hour has come," she chanted. "With this chalk, an' around this man,
+I make the mark of his image." Stooping, she began to trace his outline
+on the dull rag-carpet, speaking monotonously as she worked: "Gordon Lee
+Surrender Jones, I command all the aches an' the pains, all the miseries
+an' fool notions, includin' the cricket in yer leg, to pass outen yer
+real body into this heah image on the floor. Keep yer head still,
+nigger! I pass 'em through you into yer symbol, an' from thence I draws
+'em out to satisfy yer mind now and forever more, amen. Now roll over to
+the right an' watch what's about to happen."
+
+The patient by this time was so interested that he followed instructions
+mechanically. He saw Amanda dart into the kitchen and emerge with an
+object totally unfamiliar to him. It was a heavy, box-shaped object,
+attached to a long handle. This she placed on the chalked outline of his
+right leg. Then she stood with her eyes fixed on the floor and solemnly
+chanted:
+
+  "Draw, draw, 'cordin' to the law,
+    Lif' the hoodoo, now I beg,
+  An' draw the cricket
+    F'om this heah leg!"
+
+And Gordon Lee, raised on his elbow, watching with protruding eyes,
+_heard_ it draw! He heard the heavy, panting breathing as Amanda ran the
+vacuum cleaner over every inch of the chalked outline, and when she
+stopped and, kneeling beside the box, removed a small bag of dust and
+lint, he was not in the least surprised to see a cricket jump from the
+débris.
+
+"Praise be!" he cried in sudden ecstasy. "De pain's done lef me, do
+spell's done lifted!"
+
+"An' the cricket's done removed," urged Amanda, skilfully getting the
+machine out of sight. "You seen it removed with yer own eyes."
+
+"Wid my own eyes," echoed Gordon Lee, still in a state of self-hypnosis.
+
+"An' now," she said, "I'm goin' to git that supper ready jes as quick ez
+I kin."
+
+"Ain't you gwine help me back in bed fust?" he asked from where he still
+lay on the floor.
+
+"What fer?" she exclaimed. "Ain't the spell lifted? I'm goin' to set the
+table in the kitchen, an' ef you wants any of that possum an' sweet
+pertater an' that apple-dumplin' an' hard sass, you got to walk in there
+to git em."
+
+For ten minutes Gordon Lee Surrender Jones lay flat on his back on the
+floor, trying to trace the course of human events during the last
+half-hour. Against the dim suspicion that Amanda had in some way
+outwitted him rose the staggering evidence of that very live cricket
+that still hopped about the room, chirping contentedly.
+
+Twice Amanda spoke to him, but he refused to answer. His silence did not
+seem to affect her good spirits, for she continued her work, singing
+softly to herself.
+
+Despite himself, he became aware of the refrain, and before he knew it
+he was going over the familiar words with her:
+
+  "Oh, chicken-pie an 'pepper, oh!
+  Chicken-pie is good, I know;
+  So is wattehmillion, too;
+  So is rabbit in a stew;
+  So is dumplin's, b'iled with squab;
+  So is cawn, b'iled on de cob;
+  So is chine an' turkey breast;
+  So is aigs des f'om de nest."
+
+Gordon Lee rose unsteadily. Holding to a chair, he reached the table,
+then the door, through which he shambled, and sheepishly took his old
+place at the foot of the table. Amanda outdid herself in serving him,
+emptying the larder in honor of the occasion; but neither of them spoke
+until the apple-dumpling was reached. Then Gordon Lee turned toward her
+and said confidentially:
+
+"I wished we knowed some corpse we could sell dat coffin to."
+
+
+
+
+A MATTER OF FRIENDSHIP
+
+
+When a jovial young person in irreproachable pongee, and a wholly
+reproachable brown topi, scrambled up the lifting gang-plank of the big
+Pacific liner, setting sail from Yokohama, he was welcomed with acclaim.
+The Captain stopped swearing long enough to megaphone a greeting from
+the bridge, the First Officer slapped him on the back, while the half
+dozen sailors, tugging at the ropes, grinned as one man.
+
+Three months before this good ship _East India_ had carried Frederick
+Reynolds out to the Orient and deposited him on the alien soil, an
+untried youth of unimpeachable morals with a fatal facility for making
+friends.
+
+The temporary transplanting had had a strange and exotic effect. The
+East has a way of developing crops of wild oats that have been neglected
+in the West, and by the end of his sojourn Mr. Frederick Reynolds had
+seen more, felt more, and lived more than in all of his previous
+twenty-four years put together. He had learned the difference between a
+"straight flush" and a "full house" under the palms at Raffles Hotel in
+Singapore; he had been instructed in the ways of the wise in Shanghai by
+a sophisticated attaché of the French Legation, who imparted his
+knowledge between sips of absinthe, as he looked down on the passing
+show from a teahouse on the Bubbling Well Road; he had rapturously
+listened to every sweet secret that Japan had to tell, and had left a
+wake of smiles from Nagasaki to Yokohama.
+
+In fact, in three short months he was fully qualified to pass a
+connoisseur's judgment on a high-ball, to hold his own in a game of
+poker, and to carry on a fairly coherent flirtation in four different
+languages.
+
+With this newly acquired wisdom he was now setting sail for home, having
+accomplished his downward career with such alacrity that he did not at
+all realize what had happened to him.
+
+Nor did the return voyage promise much in the way of silent meditation
+and timely repentance. The Captain placed Reynolds next to him at table,
+declaring that he was like an electric fan on a sultry day; the Purser,
+with the elasticity of conscience peculiar to pursers, moved him from
+the inexpensive inside room which he had engaged, to a spacious
+state-room on the promenade deck, where sufficient corks were drawn
+nightly to make a small life preserver.
+
+The one person who watched these proceedings with disfavor was a short,
+attenuated, bow-legged Chinaman, with a face like a grotesque brass
+knocker, and a taciturnity that enveloped him like a fog.
+
+On the voyage out, Tsang Foo, the assistant deck steward, had gotten
+into a fight with a brother Chinaman, and had been saved from dismissal
+by Reynolds's timely intercession at headquarters. In dumb gratitude for
+this service, he had laid his celestial soul at the feet of the young
+American and sworn eternal allegiance.
+
+From the day Reynolds reëmbarked, Tsang's silken, slippered feet
+silently followed him from smoking-room to bar, from bar back to
+smoking-room. Whatever emotion troubled the depths of his being, no sign
+of it rose to his ageless, youthless face. But whether he was silently
+performing his duties on deck, or sitting on the hatchway smoking his
+opium, his vigilant eyes from their long, narrow slits kept watch.
+
+For thirteen days the sun sparkled on the blue waters of the Pacific,
+and favoring breezes gave every promise of landing the _East India_ in
+port with the fastest record of the season. Bets went higher and higher
+on each day's running, and the excitement was intense each evening in
+the smoking-room when the numbers most likely to win the next day's pool
+were auctioned off to the highest bidder.
+
+It was the afternoon of the fourteenth day, thirty-six hours out from
+San Francisco, that Mr. Frederick Reynolds, who had bet more, drunk
+more, talked more, and laughed more than any man on board, suddenly came
+to his full senses. Then it was that he went quietly to his luxurious
+state-room with its brass bed and crimson hangings, and took a
+forty-two caliber revolver from his steamer trunk. Slipping a cartridge
+into the cylinder, he sat breathing heavily and staring impatiently
+before him.
+
+From outside above the roar of the ocean, came the tramp of the
+passengers on deck, and the trivial scraps of conversation that floated
+in kept side-tracking his thoughts, preventing their reaching the
+desired destination.
+
+The world, which he had sternly resolved to leave, seemed determined to
+stay with him as long as possible. He heard Glass, the actor, inquiring
+for him, and in spite of himself he felt flattered; he heard the pretty
+girl whose steamer chair was next his, make a conditional engagement
+with the high-voiced army-officer, and he knew why she left the matter
+open; even a plaintive old voice inquiring how long it would be before
+tea, caused him to wait for the answer.
+
+At last, as if to present his misery in embodied form, he produced a
+note-book and tried to concentrate his attention upon the items therein
+recorded. Line after line of wavering figures danced in impish glee
+before him, defying inspection. But at the foot of the column, like
+soldiers waiting to shoot a prisoner, stood four formidable units
+unquestionably pointing his way to doom.
+
+As be looked at them Reynolds's thoughts got back on the main track and
+rushed to a conclusion. Tearing the leaf from the book, and crushing it
+in his hand, he jumped to his feet. Seized with a fury of self-disgust,
+he pulled off his coat and collar, and with the reckless courage of a
+boy put the mouth of the revolver to his temple.
+
+As he did so the room darkened. He involuntarily looked up. Framed in
+the circle of the port-hole were the head and shoulders of Tsang Foo.
+Not a muscle of the yellow face moved, not a tremor of the slanting
+eyelids showed surprise. The right hand, holding a bit of tow,
+mechanically continued polishing the brass around the port-hole, but the
+left--long, thin, and with claw-like nails, shot stealthily forward and
+snatched the pistol.
+
+For a full minute the polishing continued, then face and figure
+vanished, and Reynolds was left staring in impotent rage at the empty
+port-hole.
+
+When the room steward appeared in answer to an imperative summons, he
+was directed to send Tsang Foo to room No. 7 at once.
+
+Tsang came almost immediately, bearing tea and anchovy sandwiches, which
+he urbanely placed on a camp-stool.
+
+"Where's my pistol?" demanded Reynolds hotly, holding to the door to
+steady himself.
+
+Tsang's eyes, earnest as a dog's, were lifted to his:
+
+"He fall overboard," he explained suavely, "me velly solly."
+
+Reynolds impulsively lifted his arm to strike, but a second impulse,
+engulfing the first, made him turn and fling himself upon his berth,
+struggling to master the heavy sobs that shook him from head to foot.
+
+The Chinaman softly closed the door and slipped the bolt, then he
+dropped to a sitting posture on the floor and waited.
+
+When the squall had passed, Reynolds addressed his companion from the
+depths of the pillows in language suited to his comprehension.
+
+"Me belong large fool, Tsang!" he said savagely. "Have drink too much.
+No good. You go 'long, I'm all right now."
+
+Tsang's eye swept the disordered room and returned to the figure on the
+bed. "Suppose me go," he said, "you makee one hole in head?"
+
+"That's my business," said Reynolds, his wrath rekindling. "You go
+'long, and get my pistol; there's a good chap."
+
+Tsang did not stir; he sat with his hands clasped about his knees, and
+contemplated space with the abstract look of a Buddha gazing into
+Nirvana.
+
+Reynolds passed from persuasion to profanity with no satisfactory
+result. His language, whether eloquent or fiery, beat upon an
+unresponsive ear. But being in that condition that demands sympathy, he
+found the mere talking a relief, and presently drifted into a recital of
+his woes.
+
+"I'm up against it, in the hole, you know, much largee trouble," he
+amplified with many gestures, sitting on the side of his berth, and
+pounding out excited, incoherent phrases to the impassive figure
+opposite. "Company sent me out to collect money. My have spent all. No
+can go back home. Suppose my lose face, more better die!"
+
+Tsang shifted his position and nodded gravely. Out of much that was
+unintelligible, the last statement loomed clear and incontrovertible.
+
+"I'm a thief!" burst out Reynolds passionately, not to Tsang now, but to
+the world at large, "a plain, common thief. And the worst of it is there
+isn't a man in that San Francisco office that doesn't trust me down to
+the ground. Then there's the Governor. O God! I can't face the
+Governor!"
+
+Tsang sat immovable, lost in thought. Stray words and phrases helped,
+but it was by some subtle working of his own complex brain that he was
+arriving at the truth.
+
+"Father, him no can lend money?" he suggested presently.
+
+"The Governor? Good heavens, no. There's not enough money in our whole
+family to wad a gun! They put up all they had to give me a start, and
+look where I have landed! Do you suppose I'd go back and ask them to put
+up a thousand more for my rotten foolishness?" He knotted his hands
+together until the nails grew white then, seeing the unenlightened face
+below, he added emphatically: "No, no, Tsang, no can askee!"
+
+"How fashion you losee money!" asked Tsang.
+
+"The money? Oh, belong gamble. Bet on ship's run. First day--win. Second
+day--win. Then lose, lose, keep on losing. Didn't know half the time
+what I was doing. To-day my settle up; no can pay office. A thousand
+dollars out! Lord! All same two thousand Mex', Tsang!"
+
+An invisible calculation was made on the end of the steamer trunk by a
+long, pointed, fingernail, but no change of expression crossed the
+yellow face. For an incalculable time Tsang sat, lost in thought. All
+his conserved energy went to aid him in solving the problem. At last he
+reached a decision: this was clearly a case to be laid before the only
+god be knew, the god of Chance.
+
+"Me gamble too," he said; "me no lose."
+
+"But s'pose you _had_ lost? S'pose you lose what no belong you? What
+thing you do?"
+
+"You do all same my talkee you?" asked Tsang, for the first time lifting
+his eyes.
+
+It was a slender straw, to be sure, but Reynolds grasped at it.
+
+"What thing you mean, Tsang? What can I do?"
+
+"Two more night' to San Flancisco," said Tsang softly; "one more bet,
+maybe!"
+
+"Oh, I've thought of that. What's the good of throwing good money after
+bad? No use, I no got chance."
+
+"_My_ have got chance," announced Tsang emphatically, "you bet how
+fashion my talkee you, your money come back."
+
+Reynolds studied the brass knocker of a face, but found no clue to the
+riddle. "What you mean, Tsang?" he asked. "What do you know? For the
+Lord's sake don't fool with me about it!"
+
+"Me no fool," declared Tsang. "You le' me talkee number, him win big
+heap money."
+
+"But how do you know?"
+
+"Me savey," said Tsang enigmatically.
+
+Again Reynolds studied the impassive face. "It's on the square, Tsang?
+You don't stand in with anybody below decks? The thing is on the level?"
+Then finding further elucidation necessary, he added, "No belong cheat!"
+
+Tsang Foo shook his head positively. "No belong cheat, all belong
+ploper. No man savey, only me savey, this side," and he tapped his head
+significantly.
+
+Reynolds gave a short, unpleasant laugh. "All right," he said, thrusting
+his hand in his pocket. "I'll give myself one more chance. There'll be
+time to-morrow to finish my job. I'll make a bargain with you, Tsang!
+Bet this, and this, and this, on the next run for me. You win, I no
+makee shoot; you lose, you promise bring back pistol, then go way. My
+can do what thing my wantchee, see?"
+
+Tsang Foo looked at him cunningly: "I win, you belong good boy? Stop
+whisky-soda, maybe?"
+
+Reynolds laughed in spite of himself: "Going to reform me, oh? All
+right, it's a bargain."
+
+Tsang allowed his hand to be shaken, then he carefully counted over the
+express checks that had been given to him.
+
+"My go now," he announced as eight bells sounded from the bridge.
+
+As the door closed Reynolds sighed, then his eyes brightened as they
+fell upon the sandwiches. Even a desperate young man on the verge of
+suicide if he is hungry must needs cheer up temporarily at the sight of
+food. Reynolds had taken an early breakfast after being up all night,
+and had eaten nothing since. After devouring the sandwiches and tea with
+relish, he ordered a hot bath, and in less than an hour was wrapped in
+his berth sleeping the sleep that is not confined to the righteous.
+
+It was high noon the next day when he awoke. His first feeling was one
+of exhilaration: the long sleep, the fresh sea air pouring in at the
+port-hole, and a sense of perfect physical well-being had made him
+forget, for a moment, the serious business the day might have in store
+for him.
+
+As he lay, half dozing, he became dimly aware that something was wrong.
+The throb of the engines had ceased, and an ominous stillness prevailed.
+He sat up in bed and listened, then he thrust his head out of the
+port-hole, only to see a deserted deck. The passage was likewise
+deserted save for a hurried stewardess, who called back, over her
+shoulder, "It's a man overboard, sir, on the starboard side--"
+
+Reynolds flung on his clothes. The boy in him was keen for excitement,
+and in five minutes he was on deck, and had joined the crowd of
+passengers that thronged the railing.
+
+The life-boat was being lowered, groaning and protesting as it cleared
+the davits and swung away from the ship's side. Far behind, in the still
+shining wake of the steamer, a small black object bobbed helplessly in
+the gray expanse of waters.
+
+"What's the matter?" "Did he fall overboard!" "Did he jump in?" "Was it
+suicide?" The air buzzed with questions. The sentimental contingent
+clung to the theory that it was some poor stoker who could no longer
+stand the heat, or a foreign refugee afraid to come into port. The more
+practical argued that it was probably one of the seamen who, while doing
+outside painting, had lost his balance and fallen into the sea.
+
+A smug, well-dressed man, with close-cropped gray beard, and a detached
+gaze that seemed to go no further than his rimless glasses, turned and
+spoke to Reynolds:
+
+"It has gotten to be quite the fashion for somebody in the steerage to
+create this sort of sensation. It happened as I went over. If a man sees
+fit to jump overboard, all well and good; in nine cases out of ten it's
+a good riddance to the community. But why in Heaven's name should the
+steamer put back? Why should several hundred people be delayed an hour
+or so for the sake of an inconsiderate, useless fool?"
+
+Reynolds turned away sickened. From a point, apart from the rest, he
+strained his eyes to keep in sight the small black object now hidden,
+now revealed, by the waves. A fierce sense of kinship for that man in
+the water seized him. He, too, perhaps had grappled with some
+unendurable situation and been overcome. What if he was an utterly
+worthless asset on the great human ledger? He was a fellow-being,
+suffering, tempted, vanquished. Was it kind to bring him back, to go
+through with it all again?
+
+For answer Reynolds's muscles strained with those of the sailors rowing
+below: all the life and youth in him rose in rebellion against
+unnecessary death. He watched with teeth hard set as the small boat
+climbed to the crest of a wave, then plunged into the trough again,
+crawling by imperceptible inches toward the bobbing spot in the water.
+He longed to be in the boat, in the water even, helping to save that
+human life that only on the verge of extinction had gained significance.
+What if the man wished to die? No matter, he must be saved, saved from
+himself, given another chance, made to face it out, whatever it was.
+Not until then did Reynolds remember another life that be had dared to
+threaten, that even now he meant to take if the wheel of chance swung
+against him. Suddenly he faced the awful judgment of his own act, and
+shuddered back as one who, standing upon a precipice, trembles in terror
+before the mad desire to leap.
+
+"I'll stick it out!" he said half aloud as if in promise. "Whatever
+comes, I'll take my medicine, I'll--"
+
+An eager murmur swept through the crowd. A sailor with a rope about him
+was being lowered from the life-boat.
+
+For five tense minutes the two men rose and fell at the mercy of the
+high waves, and the distance between them did not lessen by an inch.
+
+Then a passenger with a binocular announced that the sailor was swimming
+around to the far side to get the man between him and the boat.
+
+With long, steady, overhand strokes, the sailor was gaining his way, and
+when at last he reached the apparently motionless object and got a rope
+under its arms, and the two were hauled into the life-boat, a rousing
+cheer went up from the big steamer above.
+
+Reynolds drew in his breath sharply and turned away from the railing. As
+he did so he was hailed by a group of friends who were returning to
+their cards, waiting face downward on the small tables in the
+smoking-room.
+
+"Behold His Nibs!" shouted Glass, the actor, "the luckiest duffer that
+ever hit a high-ball!"
+
+"How did you happen to do it?" cried another.
+
+Reynolds lifted his hand to his bewildered head. "Do what?" he asked
+dully. "I'm not on."
+
+"Oh, come!" said Glass, shaking him by the shoulder; "that bet you sent
+in last night! When the Chink said you wanted to buy the low field for
+all six pools, and to bet five hundred to boot that you'd win, I thought
+you were either drunk or crazy. Yesterday's run was four-fifty-one, a
+regular corker, and yet with even better weather conditions, you took
+only the numbers below four-thirty-one. I argued with the Chinaman 'til
+I was blue in the face, but he stood pat, said, you were all right, and
+had told him what to do. Nothing but an accident could have saved you,
+and it arrived. You've won the biggest pool of the crossing, don't you
+think it's about time for you to set 'em up? Say Martini cocktails for
+the crowd, eh?"
+
+Reynolds was jostled about in congratulation and good-humored banter.
+Everybody was glad of the boy's success, he was an all round favorite,
+and some of the men who had won his money felt relieved to return it.
+
+"Here's your cocktail, Freddy," cried Glass, "and here's to you!"
+
+Reynolds stood in the midst of the crowd, his face flushed, his hair
+tumbled. With a quick movement he sent the glass and its contents
+spinning out of a near-by port-hole.
+
+"Not for Frederick!" he said with emphasis, "I've been that particular
+kind of a fool for the last time."
+
+Some hours later when the crowd went below to dress for dinner, Reynolds
+dropped behind to ask the Second Officer about the man who had been
+rescued.
+
+"He is still pretty full of salt water," said the Officer, "but he is
+being bailed out."
+
+"How did it happen?" asked Reynolds.
+
+"Give it up. He hasn't spoken yet. It looks as if he were getting ready
+to do some outside cleaning, for he had on a life-preserver. Funny thing
+about it, though, that's not his work. He's not even on duty during the
+starboard watch. The man in the lookout saw him climb out on the bow,
+shout something up to him, then fall backward into the water. I'll be
+hanged if I can make it out. Tsang Foo is one of the steadiest sailors
+on board."
+
+"Tsang Foo!" shouted Reynolds. "You don't mean that man was Tsang?"
+
+With headlong haste he seized the bewildered officer and made him pilot
+him below decks. Stumbling down the ladders and through dark passages,
+he at last reached the bunk where Tsang Foo lay with the ship's surgeon
+and a steward in attendance.
+
+The Chinaman's lips were drawn tightly back over his prominent teeth,
+and his breath came in irregular gasps. Across the pillow in a straight
+black line lay his dripping queque. As his eyelids fluttered feebly, the
+doctor straightened his own tired back.
+
+"He'll come round now, all right," he said to the steward. "Give him
+those drops and don't talk to him. He's had a close call. I'll be back
+in ten minutes."
+
+Reynolds crowded into the narrow apace the doctor had left. The fact
+that he was saved from disgrace was utterly blotted out by the bigger
+fact that this ignorant, uncouth, foreign sailor had fearlessly risked
+his life to save him from facing a merited punishment. Reynolds's very
+soul seemed to grow bigger to accommodate the thought.
+
+"Tsang!" he whispered, seizing the yellow hand, "You are a brick! Number
+one good man. But my no can take money,--I--"
+
+The steward in attendance, who had stepped aside, made a warning gesture
+and laid his finger on his lips.
+
+For five minutes the man in the bunk and the one beside it looked
+silently into each other's eyes, then the drawn lips moved, and
+Reynolds, bending his head to listen, heard the broken question:
+
+"You--no--blake--bargain?"
+
+Reynolds's mind dashed at two conclusions and recoiled from each. Should
+be follow his impulse to explain the whole affair, serious consequences
+would result for Tsang, while the other alternative of accepting the
+situation made him a party, albeit an innocent one, to a most
+reprehensible proceeding. It was to his credit, that of the two courses
+the latter was infinitely the more intolerable. He got up nervously,
+then sat down again.
+
+"No--blake--bargain!" repeated Tsang anxiously.
+
+Still Reynolds waited for some prompting from a conscience unaccustomed
+to being rusty. Any course that would involve the loyal little Chinaman,
+who had played the game according to the rules as he knew them, was out
+of the question. The money must be paid back, of course, but how, and
+when? If he cleared himself at the office it might be years before he
+could settle this new debt, but he could do it in time, he must do it.
+Then at last, light came to him. He would accept Tsang's sacrifice but
+it should stand for more than the mere material good it had purchased.
+It should pledge him to a fresh start, a clean life. He would justify
+the present by the future. He drew a deep breath of relief and leaned
+forward:
+
+"Tsang," he said, and his voice trembled with the earnestness of his
+resolve, "I no break bargain. From now on my behave all same proper. It
+wasn't right, old fellow, you oughtn't--" then he gave it up and smiled
+helplessly, "you belong my good friend Tsang, what thing you wantchee?"
+
+A slow smile broke the brass-like stillness of Tsang Foo's face:
+
+"Pipe," he gasped softly, "opium velly good,--make land and sea--all
+same--by an' by!"
+
+
+
+
+THE WILD OATS OF A SPINSTER
+
+
+Judging from appearances Miss Lucinda Perkins was justifying her reason
+for being by conforming absolutely to her environment. She apparently
+fitted as perfectly into her little niche in the Locustwood Seminary for
+young ladies as Miss Joe Hill fitted into hers. The only difference was
+that Miss Joe Hill did not confine herself to a niche; she filled the
+seminary, as a plump hand does a tight glove.
+
+It was the year after Miss Lucinda had come to the seminary to teach
+elocution that Miss Joe Hill discovered in her an affinity. As
+principal, Miss Joe Hill's word was never questioned, and Miss Lucinda,
+with pleased obedience, accepted the honor that was thrust upon her, and
+meekly moved her few belongings into Miss Joe Hill's apartment.
+
+For four years they had lived in the rarified atmosphere of celestial
+friendship. They clothed their bodies in the same raiment, and their
+minds in the same thoughts, and when one was cold the other shivered.
+
+If Miss Lucinda, in those early days found it difficult to live up to
+Miss Joe Hill's transcendental code she gave no sign of it. She laid
+aside her mildly adorned garments and enveloped her small angular person
+in a garb of sombre severity. Even the modest bird that adorned her hat
+was replaced by an uncompromising band. She foreswore meat and became a
+vegetarian. She stopped reading novels and devoted her spare time to
+essays and biography. In fact she and Miss Joe Hill became one and that
+one was Miss Joe Hill.
+
+It was not until Floss Speckert entered the senior class at Locustwood
+Seminary that this sublimated friendship suffered a jar.
+
+Floss's father lived in Chicago, and it was due to his unerring
+discernment in the buying and selling of live stock that Floss was being
+"finished" in all branches without regard to the cost.
+
+"Learn her all you want to," he said magnanimously to Miss Lucinda, who
+negotiated the arrangement. "I ain't got but two children, her and Tom.
+He's just like me--don't know a blame thing but business; but Floss--"
+his bosom swelled under his checked vest--"she's on to it all. I pay for
+everything you get into her head. Dancin', singin', French--all them
+extries goes."
+
+Miss Lucinda had consequently undertaken the management of Floss
+Speckert, and the result had been far-reaching in its consequences.
+
+Floss was a person whose thoughts did not dwell upon the highest
+development of the spiritual life. Her mind was given over to the
+pursuit of worldly amusements, her only serious thought being a burning
+ambition to win histrionic honors. The road to this led naturally
+through the elocution classes, and Floss accepted Miss Lucinda as the
+only means toward the desired end.
+
+A drop of water in a bottle of ink produces no visible result, but a
+drop of ink in a glass of water contaminates it at once. Miss Lucinda
+took increasing interest in her frivolous young pupil; she listened
+with half-suppressed eagerness to unlimited gossip about stage-land, and
+even sank to the regular perusal of certain bold theatrical papers. She
+was unmistakably becoming contaminated.
+
+Meanwhile Miss Joe Hill, quite blind to the situation, condoned the
+friendship. "You are developing your own character," she told Miss
+Lucinda. "You are exercising self-control and forbearance in dealing
+with that crude, undisciplined girl. Florence is the natural outcome of
+common stock and newly acquired riches. It is your noble aspiration to
+take this vulgar clay and mold it into something higher. Your motive is
+laudable, Lucinda; your self-sacrifice in giving up our evening hour
+together is heroic. I read you like an open book, dear."
+
+And Miss Lucinda listened and trembled. They were standing together
+before the window of their rigid little sitting room, the chastened
+severity of which banished all ideas of comfort. "What purpose do you
+serve?" Miss Joe Hill demanded of every article that went into her
+apartment, and many of the comforts of life failed to pass the
+examination.
+
+After Miss Joe Hill had gone out, Miss Lucinda remained at the window
+and restlessly tapped her knuckles against the sill. The insidious
+spring sunshine, the laughter of the girls in the court below, the
+foolish happy birds telling their secrets under the new, green leaves,
+all worked together to disturb her peace of mind.
+
+She resolutely turned her back to the window and took breathing
+exercises. That was one of Miss Joe Hill's sternest
+requirements--fifteen minutes three times a day and two pints of water
+between meals. Then she sat down in a straight-back chair and tried to
+read "The Power Through Poise." Her body was doing its duty, but it did
+not deceive her mind. She knew that she was living a life of black
+deception; evidences of her guilt were on every hand. Behind the books
+on her little shelf was a paper of chocolate creams; in the music rack,
+back to back with Grieg and Brahms, was an impertinent sheet of ragtime
+which Floss had persuaded her to learn as an accompaniment. And deeper
+and darker and falser than all was a plan which had been fermenting in
+her mind for days.
+
+In a fortnight the school term would be over. Following the usual
+custom, Miss Lucinda was to go to her brother in the country and Miss
+Joe Hill to her sister for a week. This obligation to their respective
+families being discharged, they would repair to the seclusion of a
+Catskill farmhouse, there to hang upon each other's souls for the rest
+of the summer.
+
+Miss Lucinda's visits to her brother were reminiscent of a multiplicity
+of children and a scarcity of room. To her the Inferno presented no more
+disquieting prospect than the necessity of sharing her bedroom. She
+always returned from these sojourns in the country with impaired
+digestion, and shattered nerves. She looked forward to them with dread
+and looked back on them with horror. Was it any wonder that when a
+brilliant alternative presented itself she was eager to accept it?
+
+Floss Speckert had gained her father's consent to spend her first week
+out of school in New York provided she could find a suitable chaperon.
+She had fallen upon the first and most harmless person in sight and
+besieged her with entreaties.
+
+Miss Lucinda would have flared to the project had not a forbidding
+presence loomed between her and the alluring invitation. She knew only
+too well that Miss Joe Hill would never countenance the proposition.
+
+As she sat trying vainly to concentrate on her "Power Through Poise,"
+she was startled by a noise at the window, followed immediately by a
+dishevelled figure that scrambled laughingly over the sill.
+
+"I came down the fire escape!" whispered the invader breathlessly, "Miss
+Joe Hill caught us making fudge in the linen closet, and I gave her the
+slip."
+
+"But Florence!" Miss Lucinda began reproachfully, but Floss interrupted
+her:
+
+"Don't 'Florence' me, Miss Lucy! You're just pretending to be mad
+anyhow. You are a perfect darling and Miss Joe Hill is an old bear!"
+
+Miss Lucinda was aghast at this irreverence but her halting protests
+had no effect on the torrent of Floss's eloquence.
+
+"I am going to take you to New York," the girl declared "and I am going
+to give you the time of your life! Dad's got to put us up in style--a
+room and a bath apiece and maybe a sitting room. He likes me to splurge
+around a bit, says he'd hate to have a daughter that acted like she
+wasn't used to money."
+
+Miss Lucinda glanced apprehensively at the door and then back at the
+sparkling face before her.
+
+"I can't go," she insisted miserably, trying to free her hand from
+Floss's plump grasp. "My brother is expecting me and Miss Hill--"
+
+"Oh, bother Miss Joe Hill! You don't have to tell her anything about it!
+You can pretend you are going to your brother's and meet me some place
+on the road instead."
+
+Miss Lucinda looked horrified, but she listened. A material kept plastic
+by years of manipulation does not harden to a new hand. Her objections
+to Floss's plan grew fainter and fainter.
+
+"Think of the theaters," went on the temptress, putting an arm around
+her neck, and ignoring the fact that caresses embarrassed Miss Lucinda
+almost to the point of tears; "think of it! A new show every night, and
+operas and pictures. There will be three Shakspere plays that week,
+'Merchant of Venice,' 'Twelfth Night,' and 'Hamlet.'"
+
+Miss Lucinda's heart fluttered in her bosom. Although she had spent a
+great part of her life interpreting the Bard of Avon, she had never seen
+one of his plays produced. In her secret soul she believed that her own
+rendition of "The quality of mercy," was not to be excelled.
+
+"I--I haven't any clothes," she urged feebly, putting up her last
+defense.
+
+"I have," declared Floss in triumph--"two trunks full, and we are almost
+the same size. It's just for a week, Miss Lucy; won't you come?"
+
+Miss Lucinda, sitting rigid, felt a warm cheek pressed against her own,
+and a stray curl touched her lips. She sat for a moment with her eyes
+closed. It was more than disconcerting to be so close to youth and joy
+and life; it was infectious. The blood surged suddenly through her
+veins, and an exultation seized her.
+
+"I'm going to do it," she cried recklessly; "I never had a real good
+time in my life."
+
+Floss threw her arms about her and waltzed her across the room, but a
+step in the hall brought them to a halt.
+
+"It's Miss Joe Hill," whispered Floss, with trepidation; "I am going out
+the way I came. Don't you forget; you have promised."
+
+When Miss Joe Hill entered, she smiled complacently at finding Miss
+Lucinda in the straight-back chair, absorbed in the second volume of the
+"Power Through Poise."
+
+At the Union Depot in Chicago, two weeks later, a small, nervous lady
+fluttered uncertainly from one door to another. She wore a short, brown
+coat suit of classic severity, and a felt hat which was fastened under
+her smoothly braided hair by a narrow elastic band.
+
+On her fourth trip to the main entrance she stopped a train-boy. "Can
+you tell me where I can get a drink?" she asked, fanning her flushed
+face. He looked surprised. "Third door to the left," he answered. Miss
+Lucinda, carrying a hand-bag, a suit-case, and an umbrella, followed
+directions. When she pushed open the heavy door she was confronted by a
+long counter with shining glasses and a smiling bartender. Beating a
+confused retreat, she fled back to the main entrance, and stood there
+trembling. For the hundredth time that day she wished she had not come.
+
+The arrangements, so glibly planned by Floss, had not been adhered to in
+any particular. At the last moment that mercurial young person had
+decided to go on two days in advance and visit a friend in Philadelphia.
+She wrote Miss Lucinda to come on to Chicago, where Tom would meet her
+and give her her ticket, and that she would meet her in New York.
+
+With many misgivings and grievous twinges of conscience, Miss Lucinda
+had bade Miss Joe Hill a guilty farewell, and started ostensibly for her
+brother's home. At the Junction she changed cars for Chicago, missed two
+connections, and lost her lunch-box. Now that she had arrived In
+Chicago, three hours late, nervous and excited over her experiences,
+there was no one to meet her.
+
+A sense of homesickness rushed over her, and she decided to return to
+Locustwood. It was the same motive that might prompt a newly hatched
+chicken, embarrassed by its sudden liberty, to return to its shell. Just
+as she was going in search of a time-table, a round-faced young man came
+up.
+
+"Miss Perkins?" he asked, and when she nodded, he went on: "Been looking
+for you for half an hour. Sis told me what you looked like, but I
+couldn't find you." He failed to observe that Floss's comparison had
+been a squirrel.
+
+"Isn't it nearly time to start?" asked Miss Lucinda, nervously.
+
+"Just five minutes; but I want to explain something to you first." He
+looked through the papers in his pocket and selected one. "This is a
+pass," he explained; "the governor can get them over this road. I got
+there late, so I could only get one that had been made out for somebody
+else and not been used. It's all right, you know; you won't have a bit
+of trouble."
+
+Miss Lucinda took the bit of paper, put on her glasses, and read, "Mrs.
+Lura Doring."
+
+"Yes," said Tom; "that's the lady it was made out for. Nine chances out
+of ten they won't mention it; but if anything comes up, you just say
+yes, you are Mrs. Doring, and it will be all right."
+
+"But," protested Miss Lucinda, ready to weep, "I cannot tell a
+falsehood."
+
+"I don't think you'll have to," said Tom, somewhat impatiently; "but if
+you deny it, you'll get us both into no end of a scrape. Hello! there's
+the call for your train. I'll bring your bag."
+
+In the confusion of getting settled in her section, and of expressing
+her gratitude to Tom, Miss Lucinda forgot for the time the deadly
+weight of guilt that rested upon her. It was not until the conductor
+called for her ticket that her heart grew cold, and a look of
+consternation swept over her face. It seemed to her that he eyed the
+pass suspiciously and when he did not return it a terror seized her. She
+knew he was coming back to ask her name, and what was her name? Mrs.
+Dora Luring, or Mrs. Dura Loring, or Mrs. Lura Doring?
+
+In despair she fled to the dressing room and stood there concealed by
+the curtains. In a few moments the conductor passed, and she peeped at
+his retreating figure. He stopped in the narrow passage by the window
+and studied her pass, then he compared it with a telegram which he held
+in his hand. Just then the porter joined him, and she flattened herself
+against the wall and held her breath.
+
+"It's the same name," she heard the conductor say in an undertone. "I'll
+wire back to headquarters at the next stop."
+
+If ever retribution followed an erring soul, it followed Miss Lucinda on
+that trip. No one spoke to her, and nothing happened, but she sat in
+terrified suspense, looking neither to right nor left, her heart beating
+frantically at every approach, and the whirring wheels repeating the
+questioning refrain, "Dora Luring? Dura Loring? Lura Doring?"
+
+In New York, Floss met her as she stepped off the train, fairly
+enveloping her in her enthusiasm.
+
+"Here you are, you old darling! I have been having a fit a minute for
+fear you wouldn't come. This is my Cousin May. She is going to stay with
+us the whole week. New York is simply heavenly, Miss Lucy. We have made
+four engagements already. Matinée this afternoon, a dinner
+to-night--What's the matter? Did you leave anything on the train?"
+
+"No, no," stammered Miss Lucinda, still casting furtive glances backward
+at the conductor. "Was he talking to a policeman?" she asked
+suspiciously.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The conductor."
+
+The girls laughed.
+
+"I don't wonder you were scared," said Floss; "a policeman always does
+remind me of Miss Joe Hill."
+
+They called a cab and, to Miss Lucinda's vast relief, were soon rolling
+away from the scene of danger.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It needed only one glance into a handsome suite of an up-town hotel one
+week later to prove the rapid moral deterioration of the prodigal.
+
+Arrayed in a shell-pink kimono, she was having her nails manicured. Her
+gaily figured garment was sufficient in itself to give her an unusual
+appearance; but there was a more startling reason.
+
+Miss Lucinda's hair, hitherto a pale drab smoothly drawn into a braided
+coil at the back, had undergone a startling metamorphosis. It was
+Floss's suggestion that Miss Lucinda wash it in "Golden Glow," a
+preparation guaranteed to restore luster and beauty to faded locks. Miss
+Lucinda had been over-zealous, and the result was that of copper in
+sunshine.
+
+These outward manifestations, however, were insignificant compared with
+the evidences of Miss Lucinda's inner guilt. She was taking the keenest
+interest in the manicure's progress, only lifting her eyes occasionally
+to survey herself with satisfaction in the mirror opposite.
+
+At first her sense of propriety had been deeply offended by her changed
+appearance. She wept so bitterly that the girls, seeking to console her,
+had overdone the matter.
+
+"I never thought you _could_ look so pretty," Floss had declared; "you
+look ten years younger. It makes your eyes brighter and your skin
+clearer. Of course this awfully bright color will wear off, and then it
+will be just dear."
+
+Miss Lucinda began to feel better; she even allowed May to arrange her
+changed locks in a modest pompadour.
+
+The week she had spent in New York was a riotous round of dissipation.
+May's fiancé had prepared a whirlwind of pleasures, and Miss Lucinda was
+caught up and revolved at a pace that made her dizzy. Dances, dinners,
+plays, roof-gardens, coaching parties, were all held together by a line
+of candy, telegrams, and roses.
+
+There was only one time in the day when Miss Lucinda came down to earth.
+Every evening, no matter how exhausted she might he from the frivolities
+of the day, she conscientiously penned an affectionate letter to her
+celestial affinity, expressing her undying devotion, and incidentally
+mentioning the health and doings of her brother's family. These she sent
+under separate cover to her brother to be mailed.
+
+Her conscience assured her that the reckoning would come, that sooner or
+later she would face the bar of justice and receive the verdict of
+guilty; but while one day of grace remained, she would still "in the
+fire of spring, her winter garments of repentance fling."
+
+As the manicure put the finishing touch to her nails, Floss came rushing
+in:
+
+"Hurry up, Miss Lucy dear! Dick Benson has just 'phoned that he is going
+to take us for a farewell frolic. We leave here at five, have dinner
+somewhere, then do all sorts of stunts. You are going to wear my tan
+coat-suit and light blue waist. Yes, you are, too! That's all
+foolishness; everybody wears elbow-sleeves. Blue's your color, and I've
+got the hat to match. May says she'll fix your hair, and you can wear
+her French-heel Oxfords again. They pitch you over? Oh, nonsense! you
+just tripped along the other day like a nice little jay-bird. Hurry,
+hurry!"
+
+Even Miss Lucinda's week of strenuous living had not prepared her for
+what followed. First, there was a short trip on the train, during which
+she conscientiously studied a map. Then followed a dinner at a large and
+ostentatious hotel. The decorations were more brilliant, the music
+louder, and the dresses gayer, than at any place Miss Lucinda had yet
+been. She viewed the passing show through her glasses, and experienced a
+pleasant thrill of sophistication. This, she assured herself, was
+society; henceforth she was in a position to rail at its follies as one
+having authority.
+
+In the midst of these complacent reflections she choked on a crumb, and,
+after groping with closed eyes for her tumbler, gulped down the
+contents. A strange, delicious tingle filled her mouth; she forgot she
+was choking, and opened her eyes. To her horror, she found that she had
+emptied her glass of champagne.
+
+"Spirituous liquor!" she thought in dismay, as the shade of Miss Joe
+Hill rose before her.
+
+Total abstinence was such a firm plank in the platform of the celestial
+affinity that, even in the chafing-dish, alcohol had been tabooed. The
+utter iniquity of having deliberately swallowed a glass of champagne was
+appalling to Miss Lucinda. She sat silent during the rest of the dinner,
+eating little, and plucking nervously at the ruffles about her elbows.
+The fear of rheumatism in her wrists which had assailed her earlier in
+the evening gave way to a deeper and more disturbing discomfort.
+
+When the dinner was over, the party started forth on a hilarious round
+of sight-seeing. Miss Lucinda limped after them, vaguely aware that she
+was in a giant electric cage filled with swarming humanity, that bands
+were playing, drums beating, and that at every turn disagreeable men
+with loud voices were imploring her to "step this way."
+
+"Come on!" cried Dick. "We are going on the scenic railway."
+
+But the worm turned. "I--I'm not going," she protested. "I will wait
+here. All of you go; I will wait right here."
+
+With a sigh of relief she slipped into a vacant corner, and gave herself
+up to the luxury of being miserable. She longed for solitude in which to
+face the full enormity of her misdeed, and to plan an immediate
+reformation. She would throw herself bodily upon the mercy of Miss Joe
+Hill, she would spare herself nothing; penance of any kind would be
+welcome, bodily pain even--
+
+She shifted her weight to the slender support of one high-heeled shoe
+while she rested the other foot. Her hair, unused to its new
+arrangement, pulled cruelly upon every restraining hair-pin, and her
+head was beginning to ache.
+
+"I deny the slavery of sense. I repudiate the bondage of matter. I
+affirm spirit and freedom," she quoted to herself, but the thought
+failed to have any effect.
+
+A two-ringed circus was in progress at her right while at her left a
+procession of camels and Egyptians was followed by a noisy crowd of
+urchins. People were thronging in every direction, and she realized that
+she was occasionally the recipient of a curious glance. She began to
+watch rather anxiously for the return of her party. Ten minutes passed,
+and still they did not come.
+
+Suddenly the awful possibility presented itself that they might have
+lost her. She had no money, and even with it, she knew she could not
+find her way back to the hotel alone. Anxiety gained upon her in leaps.
+In bitter remorse she upbraided herself for ever having strayed from the
+blessed protection of Miss Joe Hill's authority. Gulfs of hideous
+possibility yawned at her feet; imagination faltered at the things that
+might befall a lone and unprotected lady in this bedlam of frivolity.
+
+Just as her fear was turning to terror the party returned.
+
+"Oh, here you are!" cried Floss. "We thought we had lost you. It was
+just dandy, Miss Lucy; you ought to have gone. It makes you feel like
+your feet are growing right out of the top of your head. Come on; we are
+going to have our tintypes taken."
+
+Strengthened by the fear of being left alone again, Miss Lucinda rallied
+her courage, and once more followed in their wake. She was faint and
+exhausted, but the one grain of comfort she extracted from the situation
+was that through her present suffering she was atoning for her sins.
+
+At midnight Dick said: "There's only one other thing to do. It's more
+fun than all the rest put together. Come this way."
+
+Miss Lucinda followed blindly. She had ceased to think; there were only
+two realities left in the world, French-heels and hair-pins.
+
+At the foot of a flight of steps the party paused to buy tickets.
+
+"You can wait for us here, Miss Lucy," said Floss.
+
+Miss Lucinda protested eagerly that she was not too tired to go with
+them. The prospect of being left alone again nerved her to climb to any
+height.
+
+"But," cried Floss, "if you get up there, there's only one way to come
+down. You have to--"
+
+"Let her come!" interrupted the others in laughing chorus, and, to Miss
+Lucinda's great relief, she was allowed to pass through the little gate.
+
+When she reached the top of the long stairs, she looked about for the
+attraction. A wide inclined plane slanted down to the ground floor, and
+on it were bumps of various sizes and shapes, all of a shining
+smoothness. She had a vague idea that it was a mammoth map for the
+blind, until she saw Dick and Floss sit down at the top and go sliding
+to the bottom.
+
+"Come on, Miss Lucinda!" cried May. "You can't get down any other way,
+you know. Look out! Here I go!"
+
+One by one the others followed, and Miss Lucinda could not distinguish
+them as they merged in the laughing crowd at the base.
+
+Delay was fatal; they would lose her again if she hesitated. In
+desperation she gathered her skirts about her, and let herself
+cautiously down on the floor. For one awful moment terror paralyzed her,
+then, grasping her skirts with one hand and her hat with the other and
+closing her eyes, she slid.
+
+Miss Lucinda did not "hump the bumps"; she slid gracefully around them,
+describing fanciful curves and loops in her airy flight. When she
+arrived in a confused bunch on the cushioned platform below, she was
+greeted with a burst of applause.
+
+"Ain't it great?" cried Floss, straightening Miss Lucinda's hat and
+trying to get her to open her eyes. "Dick says you are the gamest
+chaperon he ever saw. Sit up and let me pin your collar straight."
+
+But Miss Lucinda's sense of direction had evidently been disturbed, for
+she did not yet know which was up, and which was down. She leaned limply
+against Floss and tried to get her breath.
+
+"Excuse me," said a man's voice above her, "but are either of you
+ladies Mrs. Lura Doring?"
+
+The effect was electrical. Miss Lucinda sat bolt upright and stared
+madly about. Tom Speckert had told her to be sure to answer to that
+name. It would get him into trouble if she failed to do so.
+
+"Yes, yes," she gasped; "I am Mrs. Lura Doring."
+
+The members of her little party looked at her anxiously and ceased to
+laugh. The slide had evidently unsettled her mind.
+
+"Why, this is Miss Perkins--Miss Lucinda Perkins of Locustwood, Ohio,"
+explained Dick Benson to the officer, "She's rather upset by her
+tobogganing, and didn't understand you."
+
+"I did," declared Miss Lucinda, making mysterious signs to Dick to be
+silent. "It's all right; I am Mrs. Doring."
+
+The officer looked suspiciously from one to the other, then consulted
+his memorandum: "Small, slender woman, yellow hair, gray eyes, answers
+to name of Mrs. Lura Doring. Left Chicago on June 10."
+
+"When did she get to New York?" asked the officer.
+
+"A week ago to-morrow, on the eleventh," said Floss.
+
+"Then I guess I'll have to take her up," said the officer; "she answers
+all the requirements. I've got a warrant for her arrest."
+
+"Arrest!" gasped Benson. "What for?"
+
+"For forging her husband's name, and defrauding two hotels in Chicago."
+
+"My husband--" Miss Lucinda staggered to her feet, then, catching sight
+of the crowd that had collected, she gave a fluttering cry and fainted
+away in the arms of the law.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Miss Joe Hill arrived in New York, in answer to an urgent telegram,
+she went directly to work with her usual executive ability to unravel
+the mystery. After obtaining the full facts in the case, she was able to
+make a satisfactory explanation to the officers at headquarters. Then
+she sent the girls to their respective homes, and turned her full
+attention upon Miss Lucinda.
+
+"The barber will be here in half an hour to cut your hair," she
+announced on the eve of their departure for the Catskills.
+
+"You ought not to be so good to me!" sobbed Miss Lucinda, who was lying
+limply on a couch.
+
+Miss Joe Hill took her hand firmly and said: "Lucinda, error and illness
+and disorder are man-made perversions. Let the past week be wiped from
+our memories. Once we are in the mountains we will turn the formative
+power of our thoughts upon things invisible, and yield ourselves to the
+higher harmonies."
+
+The next morning, Miss Lucinda, shorn and penitent, was led forth from
+the scene of her recent profligacy. It was her final exit from a world
+which for a little space she had loved not wisely but too well.
+
+
+
+
+CUPID GOES SLUMMING
+
+
+It is a debatable question whether love is a cause or an effect, whether
+Adam discovered a heart in the recesses of his anatomy before or after
+the appearance of Eve. In the case of Joe Ridder it was distinctly the
+former.
+
+At nineteen his knowledge of the tender passion consisted of dynamic
+impressions received across the footlights at an angle of forty-five
+degrees. Love was something that hovered with the calcium light about
+beauty in distress, something that brought the hero from the uttermost
+parts of the earth to hurl defiance at the villain and clasp the
+swooning maiden in his arms; it was something that sent a fellow down
+from his perch in the peanut gallery with his head hot and his hands
+cold, and a sort of blissful misery rioting in his soul.
+
+Joe lived in what was known by courtesy as Rear Ninth Street. "Rear
+Ninth Street" has a sound of exclusive aristocracy, and the name was a
+matter of some pride to the dwellers in the narrow, unpaved alley that
+writhed its watery way between two rows of tumble-down cottages, Joe's
+family consisted of his father, whose vocation was plumbing, and whose
+avocation was driving either in the ambulance or the patrol wagon; his
+mother, who had discharged her entire debt to society when she bestowed
+nine healthy young citizens upon it; eight young Ridders, and Joe
+himself, who had stopped school at twelve to assume the financial
+responsibilities of a rapidly increasing family.
+
+Lack of time and the limited opportunities of Rear Ninth Street,
+together with an uncontrollable shyness, had brought Joe to his
+nineteenth year of broad-shouldered, muscular manhood, with no
+acquaintance whatever among the girls. But where a shrine is built for
+Cupid and the tapers are kept burning, the devotee is seldom
+disappointed.
+
+One morning in October, as Joe was guiding his rickety wheel around the
+mud puddles on his way to the cooper shops, he saw a new sign on the
+first cottage after he left the alley--"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste & Dress
+Maker." In the yard and on the steps were a confusion of household
+effects, and in their midst a girl with a pink shawl over her head.
+
+So absorbed was Joe in open-mouthed wonder over the "Modiste," that he
+failed to see the girl, until a laughing exclamation made him look up.
+
+"Watch out!"
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Joe, coming to a halt.
+
+"I thought maybe you didn't know your wheels was going 'round!" the girl
+said audaciously, then fled into the house and slammed the door.
+
+All day at the shops Joe worked as in a trance. Every iron rivet that he
+drove into a wooden hoop was duly informed of the romantic occurrence of
+the morning, and as some four thousand rivets are fastened into four
+thousand hoops in the course of one day, it will be seen that the matter
+was duly considered. The stray spark from a feminine eye had kindled
+such a fierce fire in his heart that by the time the six o'clock
+whistle blew the conflagration threw a rosy glow over the entire
+landscape.
+
+As he rode home, the girl was sitting on the steps, but she would not
+look at him. Joe had formulated a definite course of action, and though
+the utter boldness of it nearly cost him his balance, he adhered to it
+strictly. When just opposite her gate, without turning his head or his
+eyes, he lifted his hat, then rode at a furious pace around the corner.
+
+"What you tidying up so fer, Joe?" asked his mother that night; "you
+goin' out?"
+
+"No," said Joe evasively, as he endeavoured in vain to coax back the
+shine to an old pair of shoes.
+
+"Well, I'm right glad you ain't. Berney and Dick ain't got up the coal,
+and there's all them dishes to wash, and the baby she's got a misery in
+her year."
+
+"Has paw turned up?" asked Joe.
+
+"Yes," answered Mrs. Ridder indifferently. "He looked in 'bout three
+o'clock. He was tolerable full then, and I 'spec he's been took up by
+now. He said he was goin' to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I
+surely hope he won't. Them white mice he brought me on his last spree
+chewed a hole in Berney's stocking; besides, I never did care much for
+birds. Good lands! what are you goin' to wash yer head for?"
+
+Joe was substituting a basin of water for a small girl in the nearest
+kitchen chair, and a howl ensued.
+
+"Shut up, Lottie!" admonished Mrs. Ridder, "you ain't any too good to
+set on the floor. It's a good thing this is pay-day, Joe, for the rent's
+due and four of the children's got their feet on the ground. You paid up
+the grocery last week, didn't you!"
+
+Joe nodded a dripping head.
+
+"Well, I'll jes' git yer money out of yer coat while I think about it,"
+she went on as she rummaged in his pocket and brought out nine dollars.
+
+"Leave me a quarter," demanded Joe, gasping beneath his soap-suds.
+
+"All right," said Mrs. Ridder accommodatingly; "now that Bob and Ike
+are gitting fifty cents a day, it ain't so hard to make out. I'll be
+gittin' a new dress first thing, you know."
+
+"I seen one up at the corner!" said Joe.
+
+"A new dress?"
+
+"Naw, a dressmaker. She's got out her sign."
+
+"What's her name?" asked Mrs. Ridder, keen with interest.
+
+"Mrs. R. Beaver, Modiste," repeated Joe from the sign that floated in
+letters of gold in his memory.
+
+"I knowed a Mrs. Beaver wunst, up on Eleventh Street--a big, fat woman
+that got in a fuss with the preacher and smacked his jaws."
+
+"Did she have any children?" asked Joe.
+
+"Seems like there was one, a pretty little tow-headed girl."
+
+"That's her," announced Joe conclusively. "What was her name?"
+
+"Lawsee, I don't know. I never would 'a' ricollected Mrs. Beaver 'cepten
+she was such a tarnashious woman, always a-tearin' up stumps, and never
+happy unless she was rippitin' 'bout somethin'. _What_ you want? A
+needle and thread to mend your coat? Why, what struck you? You been
+wearin' it that a-way for a month. You better leave it be 'til I git
+time to fix it."
+
+But Joe had determined to work out the salvation of his own wardrobe.
+Late in the evening after the family had retired, he sat before the
+stove with back humped and knees drawn up trying to coax a coarse thread
+through a small needle. Surely no rich man need have any fear about
+entering the kingdom of heaven since Joe Ridder managed to get that
+particular thread through the eye of that particular needle!
+
+But when a boy is put at a work-bench at twelve years of age and does
+the same thing day in and day out for seven long years, he may have lost
+all of the things that youth holds dear, but one thing he is apt to have
+learned, a dogged, plodding, unquestioning patience that shoves silently
+along at the appointed task until the work is done.
+
+By midnight all the rents were mended and a large new patch adorned
+each elbow. The patches, to be sure, were blue, and the coat was black,
+but the stitches were set with mechanical regularity. Joe straightened
+his aching shoulders and held the garment at arm's length with a smile.
+It was his first votive offering at the shrine of love.
+
+The effect of Joe's efforts were prompt and satisfactory. The next day
+being Sunday, he spent the major part of it in passing and repassing the
+house on the corner, only going home between times to remove the mud
+from his shoes and give an extra brush to his hair. The girl, meanwhile,
+was devoting her day to sweeping off the front pavement, a scant three
+feet of pathway from her steps to the wooden gate. Every time Joe passed
+she looked up and smiled, and every time she smiled Joe suffered all the
+symptoms of locomotor ataxia!
+
+By afternoon his emotional nature had reached the saturation point.
+Without any conscious volition on his part, his feet carried him to the
+gate and refused to carry him farther. His voice then decided to speak
+for itself, and in strange, hollow tones he heard himself saying--
+
+"Say, do you wanter go to the show with me?"
+
+"Sure," said the pink fascinator. "When?"
+
+"I don't care," said Joe, too much embarrassed to remember the days of
+the week.
+
+"To-morrer night?" prompted the girl.
+
+"I don't care," said Joe, and the conversation seeming to lauguish, he
+moved on.
+
+After countless eons of time the next night arrived. It found Joe and
+his girl cosily squeezed in between two fat women in the gallery of the
+People's Theatre. Joe had to sit sideways and double his feet up, but he
+would willingly have endured a rack of torture for the privilege of
+looking down on that fluffy, blond pompadour under its large bow, and of
+receiving the sparkling glances that were flashed up at him from time to
+time.
+
+"I ain't ever gone with a feller that I didn't know his name before!"
+she confided before the curtain rose.
+
+"It's Joe," he said, "Joe Ridder, What's your front name?"
+
+"Miss Beaver," she said mischievously. "What do you think it is?"
+
+Joe could not guess.
+
+"Say," she went on, "I knew who you was all right even if I didn't know
+yer name. I seen you over to the hall when they had the boxin' match."
+
+"The last one?"
+
+"Yes, when you and Ben Schenk was fightin'. Say, you didn't do a thing
+to him!"
+
+The surest of all antidotes to masculine shyness was not without its
+immediate effect. Joe straightened his shoulders and smiled
+complacently.
+
+"Didn't I massacre him?" he said. "That there was a half-Nelson holt I
+give him. It put him out of business all right, all right. Say, I never
+knowed you was there!"
+
+"You bet I was," said his companion in honest admiration; "that was when
+I got stuck on you!"
+
+Before he could fully comprehend the significance of this confession,
+the curtain rose, and love itself had to make way for the tragic and
+absorbing career of "The Widowed Bride." By the end of the third act
+Joe's emotions were so wrought upon by the unhappy fate of the heroine,
+that he rose abruptly and, muttering something about "gittin' some gum,"
+fled to the rear. When he returned and squeezed his way back to his seat
+he found "Miss Beaver" with red eyes and a dejected mien.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" he asked banteringly.
+
+"My shoe hurts me," said Miss Beaver evasively.
+
+"What you givin' me?" asked Joe, with fine superiority. "These here
+kinds of play never hurts my feelin's none. Catch me cryin' at a show!"
+
+But Miss Beaver was too much moved to recover herself at once. She sat
+in limp dejection and surreptitiously dabbed her eyes with her moist
+ball of a handkerchief.
+
+Joe was at a loss to know how to meet the situation until his hand,
+quite by chance, touched hers as it lay on the arm of her chair. He
+withdrew it as quickly as if he had received an electric shock, but the
+next moment, like a lodestone following a magnet, it traveled slowly
+back to hers.
+
+From that time on Joe sat staring straight ahead of him in embarrassed
+ecstasy, while Miss Beaver, thus comforted, was able to pass through the
+tragic finale of the last act with remarkable composure.
+
+When the time came to say "Good night" at the Beavers' door, all Joe's
+reticence and awkwardness returned. He watched her let herself in and
+waited until she lit a candle. Then he found himself out on the pavement
+in the dark feeling as if the curtain had gone down on the best show be
+had ever seen. Suddenly a side window was raised cautiously and he heard
+his name called softly. He had turned the corner, but he went back to
+the fence.
+
+"Say!" whispered the voice at the window, "I forgot to tell you--It's
+Mittie."
+
+The course of true love thus auspiciously started might have flowed on
+to blissful fulfilment had it not encountered the inevitable barrier in
+the formidable person of Mrs. Beaver. Not that she disapproved of Mittie
+receiving attention; on the contrary, it was her oft-repeated boast that
+"Mittie had been keepin' company with the boys ever since she was six,
+and she 'spected she'd keep right on till she was sixty." It was not
+attention in the abstract that she objected to, it was rather the
+threatening of "a steady," and that steady, the big, awkward, shy Joe
+Ridder. With serpentine wisdom she instituted a counter-attraction.
+
+Under her skilful manipulation, Ben Schenk, the son of the
+saloon-keeper, soon developed into a rival suitor. Ben was engaged at a
+down-town pool-room, and wore collars on a weekday without any apparent
+discomfort. The style of his garments, together with his easy air of
+sophistication, entirely captivated Mrs. Beaver, while Ben on his part
+found it increasingly pleasant to lounge in the Beavers' best parlour
+chair and recount to a credulous audience the prominent part which he
+was taking in all the affairs of the day.
+
+Matters reached a climax one night when, after some close financing,
+Joe Ridder took Mittie to the Skating Rink. An unexpected run on the tin
+savings bank at the Ridders' had caused a temporary embarrassment, and
+by the closest calculation Joe could do no better than pay for two
+entrance-tickets and hire one pair of skates. He therefore found it
+necessary to develop a sprained ankle, which grew rapidly worse as they
+neared the rink.
+
+"I don't think you orter skate on it, Joe!" said Mittie sympathetically.
+
+"Oh, I reckon I kin manage it all O.K.," said Joe.
+
+"But I ain't agoin' to let you!" she declared with divine authority. "We
+can just set down and rubber at the rest of them."
+
+"Naw, you don't," said Joe; "you kin go on an' skate, and I'll watch
+you."
+
+The arrangement proved entirely satisfactory so long as Mittie paused on
+every other round to rest or to get him to adjust a strap, or to hold
+her hat, but when Ben Schenk arrived on the scene, the situation was
+materially changed.
+
+It was sufficiently irritating to see Ben go through an exhaustive
+exhibition of his accomplishments under the admiring glances of Mittie,
+but when he condescended to ask her to skate, and even offered to teach
+her some new figures, Joe's irritation rose to ire. In vain he tried to
+catch her eye; she was laughing and clinging to Ben and giving all her
+attention to his instructions.
+
+Joe sat sullen and indignant, savagely biting his nails. He would have
+parted with everything he had in the world at that moment for three
+paltry nickels!
+
+On and on went the skaters, and on and on went the music, and Joe turned
+his face to the wall and doggedly waited. When at last Mittie came to
+him flushed and radiant, he had no word of greeting for her.
+
+"Did you see all the new steps Mr. Ben learnt me?" she asked.
+
+"Naw," said Joe.
+
+"Does yer foot hurt you, Joe?"
+
+"Naw," said Joe.
+
+Mittie was too versed in masculine moods to press the subject. She
+waited until they were out under the starlight in the clear stretch of
+common near home. Then she slipped her hand through his arm and said
+coaxingly--
+
+"Say now, Joe, what you kickin' 'bout?"
+
+"Him," said Joe comprehensively.
+
+"Mr. Ben? Why, he's one of our best friends. Maw likes him better'n
+anybody I ever kept company with. What have all you fellers got against
+him?"
+
+"He was black marveled at the hall all right," said Joe grimly.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"It ain't none of my business to tell what for," said Joe, though his
+lips ached to tell what he knew.
+
+"Maw says all you fellows are jealous 'cause he talks so pretty and
+wears such stylish clothes."
+
+"We might, too, if we got 'em like he done," Joe began, then checked
+himself. "Say, Mittie, why don't yer maw like me?"
+
+"She says you haven't got any school education and don't talk good
+grammar."
+
+"Don't I talk good grammar?" asked Joe anxiously.
+
+"I don't know," said Mittie; "that's what she says. How long did you go
+to school?"
+
+"Me? Oh, off and on 'bout two year. The old man was always poorly, and
+Maw, she had to work out, till me an' the boys done got big enough to
+work. 'Fore that I had to stay home and mind the kids. Don't I talk like
+other fellers, Mittie?"
+
+"You talk better than some," said Mittie loyally.
+
+After he left her, Joe reviewed the matter carefully. He thought of the
+few educated people he knew--the boss at the shops, the preacher up on
+Twelfth Street, the doctor who sewed up his head after he stopped a
+runaway team, even Ben Schenk, who had gone through the eighth grade.
+Yes, there was a difference. Being clean and wearing good clothes were
+not the only things.
+
+When he got home, he tiptoed into the front room, and picking his way
+around the various beds and pallets, took Berney's school satchel from
+the top of the wardrobe. Retracing his steps, he returned to the
+kitchen, and with his hat still on and his coat collar turned up, he
+began to take an inventory of his mental stock.
+
+One after another of the dog-eared, grimy books he pondered over, and
+one after another he laid aside, with a puzzled, distressed look
+deepening in his face.
+
+"Berney she ain't but fourteen an' she gits on to 'em," he said to
+himself; "looks like I orter."
+
+Once more he seized the nearest book, and with the courage of despair
+repeated the sentences again and again to himself.
+
+"That you, Joe?" asked Mrs. Ridder from the next room an hour later. "I
+didn't know you'd come. Yer paw sent word by old man Jackson that he was
+at Hank's Exchange way down on Market Street, and fer you to come git
+him."
+
+"It's twelve o'clock," remonstrated Joe.
+
+"I know it," said Mrs. Ridder, yawning, "but I reckon you better go. The
+old man always gits the rheumatiz when he lays out all night, and that
+there rheumatiz medicine cost sixty-five cents a bottle!"
+
+"All right," said Joe with a resignation born of experience, "but don't
+you go and put no more of the kids in my bed. Jack and Gus kick the
+stuffin' out of me now."
+
+And with this parting injunction he went wearily out into the night,
+giving up his struggle with Minerva, only to begin the next round with
+Bacchus.
+
+The seeds of ambition, though sown late, grew steadily, and Joe became
+so desirous of proving worthy of the consideration of Mrs. Beaver that
+he took the boss of the shops partially into his confidence.
+
+"It's a first-rate idea, Joe," said the boss, a big, capable fellow who
+had worked his way up from the bottom. "I could move you right along the
+line if you had a better education. I have a good offer up in Chicago
+next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you
+along."
+
+"Where can I get it at?" asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power
+of achievement.
+
+"Night school," said the boss. "I know a man that teaches in the
+Settlement over on Burk Street. I'll put you in there if you like."
+
+Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a
+family for seven years, who had been the champion scrapper of the South
+End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly
+humiliating. But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the
+matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss's proposition.
+
+"You're mighty stingy with yourself these days!" said Mittie Beaver one
+night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school.
+
+Joe grinned somewhat foolishly. "I come every evenin'," he said.
+
+"For 'bout ten minutes," said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous
+pompadour; "there's some wants more'n ten minutes."
+
+"Ben Schenk?" asked Joe, alert with jealousy.
+
+"I ain't sayin'," went on Mittie. "What do you do of nights, hang around
+the hall?"
+
+"Naw," said Joe indignantly. "There ain't nobody can say they've sawn
+me around the hall sence I've went with you!"
+
+"Well, where do you go?"
+
+"I'm trainin'," said Joe evasively.
+
+"I don't believe you like me as much as you used to," said Mittie
+plaintively.
+
+Joe looked at her dumbly. His one thought from the time he cooked his
+own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold
+and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and Dick, was of her.
+The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour after hour
+over the machine; it made all the problems and hard words and new ideas
+at night school come straight at last; it made the whole sordid, ugly
+day swing round the glorious ten minutes that they spent together in the
+twilight.
+
+"Yes, I like you all right," he said, twisting his big, grease-stained
+hands in embarrassment. "You're the onliest girl I ever could care
+about. Besides, I couldn't go with no other girl if I wanted to, 'cause
+I don't know none."
+
+Is it small wonder that Ben Schenk's glib protestations, reinforced by
+Mrs. Beaver's own zealous approval, should have in time outclassed the
+humble Joe? The blow fell just when the second term of night school was
+over, and Joe was looking forward to long summer evenings of unlimited
+joy.
+
+He had bought two tickets for a river excursion, and was hurrying into
+the Beavers' when he encountered a stolid bulwark in the form of Mrs.
+Beaver, whose portly person seemed permanently wedged into the narrow
+aperture of the front door. She sat in silent majesty, her hands just
+succeeding in clasping each other around her ample waist. Had she closed
+her eyes, she might have passed for a placid, amiable person, whose
+angles of disposition had also become curves. But Mrs. Beaver did not
+close her eyes. She opened them as widely as the geography of her face
+would permit, and coldly surveyed Joe Ridder.
+
+Mrs. Beaver was a born manager; she had managed her husband into an
+untimely grave, she had managed her daughter from the hour she was
+born, she had dismissed three preachers, induced two women to leave
+their husbands, and now dogmatically announced herself arbiter of
+fashions and conduct in Rear Ninth Street.
+
+"No, she can't see you," she said firmly in reply to Joe's question.
+"She's going out to a dance party with Mr. Schenk."
+
+"Where at?" demanded Joe, who still trembled in her presence.
+
+"Somewheres down town," said Mrs. Beaver, "to a real swell party."
+
+"He oughtn't to take her to no down-town dance," said Joe, his
+indignation getting the better of his shyness. "I don't want her to go,
+and I'm going to tell her so."
+
+"In-deed!" said Mrs. Beaver in scorn. "And what have you got to say
+about it? I guess Mr. Schenk's got the right to take her anywhere he
+wants to!"
+
+"What right?" demanded Joe, getting suddenly a bit dizzy.
+
+"'Cause he's got engaged to her. He's going to give her a real handsome
+turquoise ring, fourteen-carat gold."
+
+"Didn't Mittie send me no word?" faltered Joe.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Beaver unhesitatingly, though she had in her pocket a
+note for him from the unhappy Mittie.
+
+Joe fumbled for his hat. "I guess I better be goin'," he said, a lump
+rising ominously in his throat. He got the gate open and made his way
+half dazed around the corner. As he did so, he saw a procession of small
+Ridders bearing joyously down upon him.
+
+"Joe!" shrieked Lottie, arriving first, "Maw says hurry on home; we got
+another new baby to our house."
+
+During the weeks that followed, Rear Ninth Street was greatly thrilled
+over the unusual event of a home wedding. The reticence of the groom was
+more than made up for by the bulletins of news issued daily by Mrs.
+Beaver. To use that worthy lady's own words, "she was in her elements!"
+She organised various committees--on decoration, on refreshment, and
+even on the bride's trousseau, tactfully permitting each assistant to
+contribute in some way to the general grandeur of the occasion.
+
+"I am going to have this a real showy wedding," she said from her point
+of vantage by the parlour window, where she sat like a field-marshal and
+issued her orders. "Those paper fringes want to go clean across every
+one of the shelves, and you all must make enough paper roses to pin
+'round the edges of all the curtains. Ever'thing's got to look gay and
+festive."
+
+"Mittie don't look very gay," ventured one of the assistants. "I seen
+her in the kitchen cryin' a minute ago."
+
+"Mittie's a fool!" announced Mrs. Beaver calmly. "She don't know a good
+thing when she sees it! Get them draperies up a little higher in the
+middle; I'm going to hang a silver horseshoe on to the loop."
+
+The wedding night arrived, and the Beaver cottage was filled to
+suffocation with the _élite_ of Rear Ninth Street. The guests found it
+difficult to circulate freely in the room on account of the elaborate
+and aggressive decorations, so they stood in silent rows awaiting the
+approaching ceremony. As the appointed hour drew near, and none of the
+groom's family arrived, a few whispered comments were exchanged.
+
+"It's 'most time to begin," whispered the preacher to Mrs. Beaver, whose
+keen black eyes had been watching the door with growing impatience.
+
+"Well, we won't wait on nobody," she said positively, as she rose and
+left the room to give the signal.
+
+In the kitchen she found great consternation: the bride, pale and
+dejected in all her finery, sat on the table, all the chairs being in
+the parlour.
+
+"What's the matter?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.
+
+"He ain't come!" announced one of the women in tragic tones.
+
+"Ben Schenk ain't here?" asked Mrs. Beaver in accents so awful that her
+listeners quaked. "Well, I'll see the reason why!"
+
+Out into the night she sallied, picking her way around the puddles until
+she reached the saloon at the corner.
+
+"Where's Ben Schenk?" she demanded sternly of the men around the bar.
+
+There was an ominous silence, broken only by the embarrassed shuffling
+of feet.
+
+Drawing herself up, Mrs. Beaver thumped the counter.
+
+"Where's he at?" she repeated, glaring at the most embarrassed of the
+lot.
+
+"He don't know where he's at," said the man. "I rickon he cilebrated a
+little too much fer the weddin'."
+
+"Can he stand up?" demanded Mrs. Beaver.
+
+"Not without starchin'," said the man, and amid the titter that
+followed, Mrs. Beaver made her exit.
+
+On the corner she paused to reconnoitre. Across the street was her gaily
+lighted cottage, where all the guests were waiting. She thought of the
+ignominy that would follow their abrupt dismissal, she thought of the
+refreshments that must be used to-night or never, she thought of the
+little bride sitting disconsolate on the kitchen table.
+
+With a sudden determination she decided to lead a forlorn hope. Facing
+about, she marched weightily around to the rear of the saloon and began
+laboriously to climb the steps that lead to the hall. At the door she
+paused and made a rapid survey of the room until she found what she was
+looking for.
+
+"Joe Ridder!" she called peremptorily.
+
+Joe, haggard and listless, put down his billiard-cue and came to the
+door.
+
+Five minutes later a breathless figure presented himself at the Beaver
+kitchen. He had on a clean shirt and his Sunday clothes, and while he
+wore no collar, a clean handkerchief was neatly pinned about his neck.
+
+"Everybody but the bride and groom come into the parlour," commanded
+Mrs. Beaver. "I'm a-going to make a speech, and tell 'em that the bride
+has done changed her mind."
+
+Joe and Mittie, left alone, looked at each other in dazed rapture. She
+was the first to recover.
+
+"Joe!" she cried, moving timidly towards him, "ain't you mad? Do you
+still want me?"
+
+Joe, with both hands entangled in her veil and his feet lost in her
+train, looked down at her through swimming eyes.
+
+"Want yer?" he repeated, and his lips trembled, "gee whiz! I feel like I
+done ribbeted a hoop round the hull world!"
+
+The signal was given for them to enter the parlour, and without further
+interruption the ceremony proceeded, if not in exact accordance with the
+plans of Mrs. Beaver, at least in obedience to the mandate of a certain
+little autocrat who sometimes takes a hand in the affairs of man even in
+Rear Ninth Street.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN
+
+
+O Sana San stood in the heart of a joyous world, as much a part of the
+radiant, throbbing, irresponsible spring as the golden butterfly which
+fluttered in her hand. Through the close-stemmed bamboos she could see
+the sparkling river racing away to the Inland Sea, while slow-moving
+junks, with their sixfold sails, glided with almost imperceptible motion
+toward a far-distant port. From below, across the rice-fields, came the
+shouts and laughter of naked bronze babies who played at the water's
+edge, and from above, high up on the ferny cliff, a mellow-throated
+temple bell answered the call of each vagrant breeze. Far away, shutting
+out the strange, big world, the luminous mountains hung in the purple
+mists of May.
+
+And every note of color in the varied landscape, from the purple irises
+whose royal reflection stained the water below, to the rosy-tipped
+clover at the foot of the hill, was repeated in the kimono and _obi_ of
+the child who flitted about in the grasses, catching butterflies in her
+long-handled net.
+
+It was in the days of the Japanese-Russian War, but the constant echo of
+the great conflict that sounded around her disturbed her no more than it
+did the birds overhead. All day long the bugles sounded from the
+parade-grounds, and always and always the soldiers went marching away to
+the front. Around the bend in the river were miniature fortifications
+where recruits learned to make forts and trenches, and to shoot through
+tiny holes in a wall at imaginary Russian troopers. Down in the town
+below were long white hospitals where twenty thousand sick and wounded
+soldiers lay. No thought of the horror of it came to trouble O Sana San.
+The cherry-trees gladly and freely gave up their blossoms to the wind,
+and so much the country give up its men for the Emperor. Her father had
+marched away, then one brother, then another, and she had held up her
+hands and shouted, "Banzai!" and smiled because her mother smiled.
+Everything was vague and uncertain, and no imagined catastrophe troubled
+her serenity. It was all the will of the Emperor, and it was well.
+
+Life was a very simple matter to O Sana San. She rose when the sun
+climbed over the mountain, bathed her face and hands in the shallow
+copper basin in the garden, ate her breakfast of bean-curd and pickled
+fish and warm yellow tea. Then she hung the quilts over poles to sun,
+dusted the screens, and placed an offering of rice on the steps of the
+tiny shrine to Inari, where the little foxes kept guard. These simple
+duties being accomplished, she tied a bit of bean-cake in her gaily
+colored handkerchief, and stepping into her _geta_, went pattering off
+to school.
+
+It was an English school, where she sat with hands folded through the
+long mornings, passively permitting the lessons to filter through her
+brain, and listening in smiling patience while the kind foreign ladies
+spoke incomprehensible things. Sometimes she helped pass the hours by
+watching the shadows of the dancing leaves outside; sometimes she told
+herself stories about "The Old Man Who Made Withered Trees to Blossom,"
+or about "Momotaro, the Little Peach Boy." Again she would repeat the
+strange English words and phrases that she heard, and would puzzle out
+their meaning.
+
+But the sum of her lore consisted in being happy; and when the shadow of
+the mountains began to slip across the valley, she would dance back
+along the homeward way, singing with the birds, laughing with the
+rippling water, and adding her share of brightness to the sunshine of
+the world.
+
+As she stood on this particular morning with her net poised over a
+butterfly, she heard the tramping of many feet. A slow cavalcade was
+coming around the road,--a long line of coolies bearing bamboo
+stretchers,--and in the rear, in a jinrikisha, was a foreign man with a
+red cross on his sleeve.
+
+O Sana San scrambled up the bank and watched with smiling curiosity as
+the men halted to rest. On the stretcher nearest her lay a young
+Russian prisoner with the fair skin and blond hair that are so
+unfamiliar to Japanese eyes. His blanket was drawn tight around his
+shoulders, and he lay very still, with lips set, gazing straight up
+through the bamboo leaves to the blue beyond.
+
+Then it was that O Sana San, gazing in frank inquisitiveness at the
+soldier, saw a strange thing happen. A tear formed on his lashes and
+trickled slowly across his temple; then another and another, until they
+formed a tiny rivulet. More and more curious, she drew yet nearer, and
+watched the tears creep unheeded down the man's face. She was sure he
+was not crying, because soldiers never cry; it could not be the pain,
+because his face was very smooth and calm. What made the tears drop,
+drop on the hard pillow, and why did he not brush them away?
+
+A vague trouble dawned in the breast of O Sana San. Running back to the
+field, she gathered a handful of wild flowers and returned to the
+soldier. The tears no longer fell, but his lips quivered and his face
+was distorted with pain. She looked about her in dismay. The coolies
+were down by the river, drinking from their hands and calling to one
+another; the only person to whom she could appeal was the foreigner with
+the red cross on his arm who was adjusting a bandage for a patient at
+the end of the line.
+
+With halting steps and many misgivings, she timidly made her way to his
+side; then placing her hands on her knees, she bowed low before him. The
+embarrassment of speaking to a stranger and a foreigner almost
+overwhelmed her, but she mustered her bravest array of English, and
+pointing to the stretcher, faltered out her message:
+
+"Soldier not happy very much is. I sink soldier heart sorry."
+
+The Red Cross orderly looked up from his work, and his eyes followed her
+gesture.
+
+"He is hurt bad," he said shortly; "no legs, no arms."
+
+"_So--deska_?" she said politely, then repeated his words in puzzled
+incomprehension: "Nowarms? Nowarms?"
+
+When she returned to the soldier she gathered up the flowers which she
+had dropped by the wayside, and timidly offered them to him. For a long
+moment she waited, then her smile faded mid her hand dropped. With a
+child's quick sensitiveness to rebuff, she was turning away when an
+exclamation recalled her.
+
+The prisoner was looking at her in a strange, distressed way; his
+deep-set gray eyes glanced down first at one bandaged shoulder, then at
+the other, then he shook his head.
+
+As O Sana San followed his glance, a startled look of comprehension
+sprang into her face. "Nowarms!" she repeated softly as the meaning
+dawned upon her, then with a little cry of sympathy she ran forward and
+gently laid her flowers on his breast.
+
+The cavalcade moved on, under the warm spring sun, over the smooth white
+road, under the arching cryptomerias; but little O Sana Sun stood with
+her butterfly net over her shoulder and watched it with troubled eyes.
+A dreadful something was stirring in her breast, something clutched at
+her throat, and she no longer saw the sunshine and the flowers. Kneeling
+by the roadside, she loosened the little basket which was tied to her
+_obi_ and gently lifted the lid. Slowly at first, and then with eager
+wings, a dozen captive butterflies fluttered back to freedom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Along the banks of the Upper Flowing River, in a rudely improvised
+hospital, lay the wounded Russian prisoners. To one of the small rooms
+at the end of the ward reserved for fatally wounded patients a
+self-appointed nurse came daily, and rendered her tiny service in the
+only way she knew.
+
+O Sana San's heart had been so wrought upon by the sad plight of her
+soldier friend that she had begged to be taken to see him and to be
+allowed to carry him flowers with her own hand. Her mother, in whom
+smoldered the fires of dead samurai, was quick to be gracious to a
+fallen foe, and it was with her consent that O Sana San went day after
+day to the hospital.
+
+The nurses humored her childish whim, thinking each day would be the
+last; but as the days grew into weeks and the weeks into months, her
+visits became a matter of course.
+
+And the young Russian, lying on his rack of pain, learned to watch for
+her coming as the one hour of brightness in an interminable night of
+gloom. He made a sort of sun-dial of the cracks in the floor, and when
+the shadows reached a certain spot his tired eyes grew eager, and he
+turned his head to listen for the patter of the little _tabi_ that was
+sure to sound along the hall.
+
+Sometimes she would bring her picture-books and read him wonderful
+stories in words he did not understand, and show him the pictures of
+Momotaro, who was born out of a peach and who grew up to be so strong
+and brave that he went to the Ogres' Island and carried off all their
+treasures,--caps and coats that made their wearers invisible, jewels
+which made the tide come or go, coral and amber and tortoise-shell,--and
+all these things the little Peach Boy took back to his kind old foster
+mother and father, and they all lived happily forever after. And in the
+telling O Sana Man's voice would thrill, and her almond eyes grow
+bright, while her slender brown finger pointed out the figures on the
+gaily colored pages.
+
+Sometimes she would sing to him, in soft minor strains, of the beauty of
+the snow on the pine-trees, or the wonders of Fuji-San.
+
+And he would pucker his white lips and try to whistle the accompaniment,
+to her great amusement and delight.
+
+Many were the treasures she brought forth from the depths of her long
+sleeves, and many were the devices she contrived to amuse him. The most
+ambitious achievement was a miniature garden in a wooden box--a
+wonderful garden where grasses stood for tall bamboo, and a saucer of
+water, surrounded by moss and pebbles, made a shining lake across which
+a bridge led through a _torii_ to a diminutive shrine above.
+
+He would watch her deft fingers fashioning the minute objects, and
+listen to her endless prattle in her soft, unknown tongue, and for a
+little space the pain-racked body would relax and the cruel furrows
+vanish from between his brows.
+
+But there were days in which the story and the song and the play had no
+part. At such times O Sana San slipped in on tiptoe and took her place
+at the head of the cot where he could not see her. Sitting on her heels,
+with hand folded in hand, she watched patiently for hours, alert to
+adjust the covers or smooth the pillow, but turning her eyes away when
+the spasms of pain contorted his face. All the latent maternity in the
+child rose to succor his helplessness. The same instinct that had
+prompted her to strap her doll upon her back when yet a mere baby
+herself, made her accept the burden of his suffering, and mother him
+with a very passion of tenderness.
+
+Longer and sultrier grew the days; the wistaria, hanging in feathery
+festoons from many a trellis, gave way to the flaming azalea, and the
+azalea in turn vanished with the coming of the lotus that floated
+sleepily in the old castle moat.
+
+Still the soul of the young Russian was held a prisoner in his shattered
+body, and the spirit in him grew restive at the delay. Months passed
+before the doctor told him his release was at hand. It was early in the
+morning, and the sun fell in long, level rays across his cot. He turned
+his head and looked wistfully at the distance it would have to travel
+before it would be afternoon.
+
+The nurse brought the screen and placed it about the bed--the last
+service she could render. For hours the end was expected, but moment by
+moment he held death at bay, refusing to accept the freedom that he so
+earnestly longed for. At noon the sky became overcast and the slow
+falling of rain was heard on the low wooden roof. But still his fervent
+eyes watched the sun-dial.
+
+At last the sound of _geta_ was heard without, and in a moment O Sana
+San slipped past the screen and dropped on her knees beside him. Under
+one arm was tightly held a small white kitten, her final offering at the
+shrine of love.
+
+When he saw her quaint little figure, a look of peace came over his face
+and he closed his eyes. An interpreter, knowing that a prisoner was
+about to die, came to the bedside and asked if he wanted to leave any
+message. He stirred slightly then, in a scarcely audible voice, asked in
+Russian what the Japanese word was for "good-by." A long pause followed,
+during which the spirit seemed to hover irresolute upon the brink of
+eternity.
+
+O Sana San sat motionless, her lips parted, her face full of the awe and
+mystery of death. Presently he stirred and turned his head slowly until
+his eyes were on a level with her own.
+
+"_Sayonara_," he whispered faintly, and tried to smile; and O Sana San,
+summoning all her courage to restrain the tears, smiled bravely back and
+whispered, "Sayonara."
+
+It was scarcely said before the spirit of the prisoner started forth
+upon his final journey, but he went not alone. The soul of a child went
+with him, leaving in its place the tender, newborn soul of a woman.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories
+by Alice Hegan Rice
+
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