The Wit and Humor of America Volume IX Part 2

Maybury would have been more than human if she had not said "Scat! scat!

scat!" and she did say it, shaking herself in horror.

It was the last straw. Mrs. Cairnes took her cat in her arms and moved majestically out of the room, put on her rubbers, and went out to tea, and did not come home till the light up stairs told her that Mrs.

Maybury had gone to her room.

Where was it all going to end? Mrs. Cairnes could not send Sophia away after all the protestations she had made. Mrs. Maybury could never put such a slight on Julia as to go away without more overt cause for displeasure. It seemed as though they would have to fight it out in the union.

But that night a glare lit the sky which quite outdid the sunset; the fire-bells and clattering engines called attention to it much more loudly than Sophia had announced the larger conflagration. And in the morning it was found that the Webster House was in ashes. All of Mrs.

Maybury's property was in the building. The insurance had run out the week before, and meaning to attend to it every day she had let it go, and here she was penniless.

But no one need commiserate with her. Instead of any terror at her situation a wild joy sprang up within her. Relief and freedom clapped their wings above her.

It was Mrs. Cairnes who felt that she herself needed pity. A lamp at nights, oceans of fresh air careering round the house, the everlasting canary-bird's singing to bear, her plants exiled, her table revolutionized, her movements watched, her conversation restrained, her cat abused, the board of two people and the wages of one to come out of her narrow h.o.a.rd. But she rose to the emergency. Sophia was penniless.

Sophia was homeless. The things which it was the ashes of bitterness to allow her as a right, she could well give her as a benefactress. Sophia was welcome to all she had. She went into the room, meaning to overwhelm the weeping, helpless Sophia with her benevolence. Sophia was not there.

Mrs. Maybury came in some hours later, a carriage and a job-wagon presently following her to the door. "You are very good, Julia," said she, when Julia received her with the rapid sentences of welcome and a.s.surance that she had been acc.u.mulating. "And you mustn't think I'm not sensible of all your kindness. I am. But my husband gave the inst.i.tution advice for nothing for forty years, and I think I have rights there now without feeling under obligations to any. I've visited the directors, and I've had a meeting called and attended,--I've had all your energy, Julia, and have hurried things along in quite your own fas.h.i.+on. And as I had just one hundred dollars in my purse after I sold my watch this morning, I've paid it over for the entrance-fee, and I've been admitted and am going to spend the rest of my days in the Old Ladies' Home. I've the upper corner front room, and I hope you will come and see me there."

"Sophia!"

"Don't speak! Don't say one word! My mind was made up irrevocably when I went out. Nothing you, nothing any one, can say, will change it. I'm one of the old ladies now."

Mrs. Cairnes brought all her plants back into the parlor, pulled down the shades, drew the inside curtain, had the cat's cus.h.i.+on again in its familiar corner, and gave Allida warning, within half an hour. She looked about a little while and luxuriated in her freedom,--no one to supervise her conversation, her movements, her opinions, her food. Never mind the empty rooms, or the echoes there! She read an angry psalm or two, looked over some texts denouncing pharisees and hypocrites, thought indignantly of the ingrat.i.tude there was in the world, felt that any way, and on the whole, she was where she was before Sophia came, and went out to spend the evening, and came in at the nine-o'clock bell-ringing with such a sense of freedom, that she sat up till midnight to enjoy it.

And Sophia spent the day putting her mult.i.tudinous belongings into place, hanging up her bird-cage, arranging her books and her bureau-drawers, setting up a stocking, and making the acquaintance of the old ladies next her. She taught one of them to play double solitaire that very evening. And then she talked a little while concerning Dr.

Maybury, about whom Julia had never seemed willing to hear a word; and then she read, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," and went to bed perfectly happy.

Julia came to see her the next day, and Sophia received her with open arms. Every one knew that Julia had begged her to stay and live with her always, and share what she had. Julia goes now to see her every day of her life, rain or snow, storm or s.h.i.+ne; and the whole village says that the friends.h.i.+p between those two old women is something ideal.

THE MYSTERY OF GILGAL

BY JOHN HAY

The darkest, strangest mystery I ever read, or heern, or see Is 'long of a drink at Taggart's Hall-- Tom Taggart's of Gilgal.

I've heern the tale a thousand ways, But never could git through the maze That hangs around that queer day's doin's; But I'll tell the yarn to youans.

Tom Taggart stood behind his bar, The time was fall, the skies was fa'r, The neighbors round the counter drawed, And ca'mly drinked and jawed.

At last come Colonel Blood of Pike, And old Jedge Phinn, permiscus-like, And each, as he meandered in, Remarked, "A whisky-skin."

Tom mixed the beverage full and fa'r, And slammed it, smoking, on the bar.

Some says three fingers, some says two,-- I'll leave the choice to you.

Phinn to the drink put forth his hand; Blood drawed his knife, with accent bland, "I ax yer parding, Mister Phinn-- Jest drap that whisky-skin."

No man high-toneder could be found Than old Jedge Phinn the country round.

Says he, "Young man, the tribe of Phinns Knows their own whisky-skins!"

He went for his 'leven-inch bowie-knife:-- "I tries to foller a Christian life; But I'll drap a slice of liver or two, My bloomin' shrub, with you."

They carved in a way that all admired, Tell Blood drawed iron at last, and fired.

It took Seth Bludso 'twixt the eyes, Which caused him great surprise.

Then coats went off, and all went in; Shots and bad language swelled the din; The short, sharp bark of Derringers, Like bull-pups, cheered the furse.

They piled the stiffs outside the door; They made, I reckon, a cord or more.

Girls went that winter, as a rule, Alone to spellin'-school.

I've sarched in vain, from Dan to Beer- Sheba, to make this mystery clear; But I end with hit as I did begin,-- WHO GOT THE WHISKY-SKIN?

THE GUSHER

BY CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

Of course an afternoon tea is not to be taken seriously, and I hold that any kind of conversation goes, as long as it is properly vacuous and irrelevant.

One meets many kinds of afternoon teas--the bored, the bashful, the intense, and once in a while the interesting, but for pure delight there is nothing quite equals the gusher. She is generally very pretty. Nature insists upon compensations.

When you meet a real gusher--one born to gush--you can just throw all bounds of probability aside and say the first thing that comes into your head, sure that it will meet with an appreciative burst of enthusiasm, for your true gusher is nothing if she is not enthusiastic. There are those who listen to everything you say and punctuate it with "Yes-s-s, yes-s-s, yes-s-s," until the sibilance gets on your nerves; but the attention of the Simon-pure gusher is purely subconscious. She could not repeat a thing of what you have told her a half minute after hearing it.

Her real attention is on something else all the while--perhaps on the gowns of her neighbors, perhaps on the reflection of her pretty face--but never on the conversation. And why should it be? Is a tea a place for the exercise of concentration? Perish the thought.

You are presented to her as "Mr. Mmmm," and she is "delighted," and smiles so ravis.h.i.+ngly that you wish you were twenty years younger. You do not yet know that she is a gusher. But her first remark labels her.

Just to test her, for there is something in the animation of her face and the farawayness of the eye that makes you suspect her sincerity, you say:

"I happen to have six children--"

"Oh, how perfectly dee-ar! How old are they?"

She scans the gown of a woman who has just entered the room and, being quite sure that she is engaged in a mental valuation of it, you say:

"They're all of them six."

"Oh, how lovely!" Her unseeing eyes look you in the face. "Just the right age to be companions."

"Yes, all but one."

The eye has wandered to another gown, but the sympathetic voice says:

"Oh, what a pi-i-ty!"

"Yes, isn't it? But he's quite healthy."