You Can Search Me Part 8

"My idea is to rub it on your chest and call it goose grease, because the moral effect will be the same," Aunt Martha told him.

Then that loving wife rubbed so much axle grease into Uncle Peter that for hours afterwards he thought he had a pair of shafts on him, and every time he saw a horse he felt like making fifty revolutions a minute.

I suppose the axle grease gave him wheels in the noddle and made him buggyhouse.

Then Aunt Martha said to him, "Now, Peter, we could cure that cold in five minutes if we can get a woolen stocking to tie around your throat."

After a little while she found out that the only woolen stocking in our village was owned by the night watchman.

The night watchman said he liked Uncle Peter well enough, but he'd be switched if he was going to walk around all night with one bare foot even to let the Mayor use his stocking for a necktie.

Selfish watchman.

The next morning Uncle Peter's cold was much worse, but the axle grease had cured his appet.i.te.

About nine o'clock his friend Dave Torrence came in, and after Uncle Peter had barked for him a couple of times Dave decided that the trouble was information of the lungs and he suggested that Uncle Peter should tie a rubber band around his chest and rub his shoulder blades with gasolene.

Uncle Peter told his friend that he had no desire to become a human automobile, so Dave got mad, kicked the piano on the s.h.i.+ns and went home.

An hour later Deacon Ed. Sp.r.o.ng, the Mayor's next-door neighbor, came in and in ten minutes he had Uncle Peter making signs to an undertaker.

Deacon Sp.r.o.ng decided that Uncle Peter had the galloping asthma with compressed tonsilitis, and a touch of chillblainous croup on the side, aggravated by asparagus on the chest.

Deacon Sp.r.o.ng told Uncle Peter to drink a pint of catnip tea, take eight grains of quinine, rub the back of his neck with benzine, soak his ankles in kerosene, take two grains of phenacetine, and drink a hot whiskey toddy every half-hour before meals.

Deacon Sp.r.o.ng volunteered to run over every half-hour and help Uncle Peter drink the toddy if it tasted bitter.

Then Deacon Sp.r.o.ng went home, and Uncle Peter's temperature came down about ten degrees, while his respiration began to sit up and notice things.

During the rest of the day every friend and relative Uncle Peter had in the world rushed in, suggested a couple of prescriptions, and then rushed out again.

Aunt Martha tried them all on Uncle Peter.

Before the shades of evening fell that day Uncle Peter was turned into a human medicine chest.

And to make matters worse, he took some dogberry cordial and it chased the catnip tea all over his interior from Alpha to Omaha.

Then Aunt Martha gave him some h.o.a.rhound candy to bite the dogberry, so it would leave the catnip alone, but blood will tell, and the h.o.a.rhound joined with the dogberry and chased the catnip up Uncle Peter's family tree.

But it cured the cold. Now all Uncle Peter had to do was to cure the medicine.

CHAPTER VI.

JOHN HENRY GETS A SETBACK.

Dinner was nearly over that evening at Uncle Peter's villa in Ruraldene when suddenly the doorbell rang violently and two minutes later the servant announced that Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius McGowan were in the parlor.

First I decided to faint; then I changed my mind and tried to figure out which would be the most cruelly effective way of killing Bunch Jefferson.

Uncle Peter resented the unexpected arrival of these strangers, because he wanted to sit around and have the home folks tell him how sick he was.

"I'd like to know what Bunch Jefferson means by sending his relatives over to us on a Sunday evening," my wife's uncle snapped.

"Why doesn't he worry old Bill Grey with them, eh? It's bad enough for me to have to sneeze my head off before my own people, but I'll be dod bimmed if I'm going to sit around the parlor and play solos on my bronchial tubes for the edification of strangers--no, sir!"

Uncle Peter sniffled off to his apartments, and Peaches said she'd try to entertain the visitors.

I concluded to help her some.

Skinski arose from the sofa and greeted us with his most elaborate bow.

Ma'moselle Dodo didn't Society very much.

She sat in the middle of the room and sang soft lullabys to a hold-over.

"Mr. Jefferson, my nephew," Skinski was saying, "insisted that we should hit the suburban trail and locate your shack. Here's a note from nephew Bunch for you."

Skinski handed me the note with a face as solemn as a monkey-wrench, and I read it:

CITY, Sunday P.M.

DEAR JOHN--I send herewith the two rosebuds. As a favor to your old pal please treat my beloved relatives with every consideration and make a fuss over them. You know you told them in the restaurant to come and see you. They want to make good and will stay a week if you insist.

With kindest regards, BUNCH.

P. S. Don't drag Aunt Flora into any literary discussions--she might hand you something. Her favorite author is Pommery Sec., the chap who writes all those frothy books.

B.

"I wish you could have seen our place in the day-time," Peaches was saying to Skinski when I finished reading Bunch's get-back. "We think it's delightful out here. Did you, have much trouble in finding the place?"

"Nay, lady fair," Skinski replied; "no trouble at all. Nephew Bunch came as far as the front door with us."

"What!" exclaimed the astonished Peaches.

"Yes," Skinski concluded; "he even saved us the hards.h.i.+p of ringing the bell. Oh! he's a thoughtful relative, Bunch is."

Clara J. looked at me, I looked at Skinski, he looked at Dodo, and she looked at the piano and said thoughtfully, "You betcher sweet!"

"The idea of Bunch coming to our front door and then rus.h.i.+ng off again without seeing anybody," gasped Peaches, "what does it mean?"

"Alice lives only half a mile away and possibly Bunch was running behind his schedule," I suggested.

Just then Aunt Martha and Uncle Peter came in the parlor, and presently I grabbed a chance to say a few words to Skinski on the side: