At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern Part 33

Her monologue was interrupted by the arrival of the stage, which Harlan had gladly ordered. Mrs. Holmes and the children climbed into it without vouchsafing a word to anybody, but Mrs. Dodd shook hands all around and would have kissed both Dorothy and Elaine had they not dodged the caress.

"Remember, my dear," said Mrs. Dodd to Dorothy; "I don't bear you no grudge, though I never was turned out of no place before. It's all in a lifetime, the same as marryin', and if I should ever marry again an' have a home of my own to invite you to, you an' your husband'll be welcome to come and stay with me as long as I've stayed with you, or longer, if you felt 'twas pleasant, an' I'd try to make it so."

The kindly speech made Dorothy very much ashamed of herself, though she did not know exactly why, and Gladys Gwendolen, with a cherubic smile, leaned out of the stage window and waved a chubby hand, saying: "Bye bye!"

Mrs. Holmes alone seemed hard and unforgiving, as she sat sternly upright, looking neither to the right nor the left.

"Rather unusual, isn't it?" whispered Elaine, as the ponderous vehicle turned into the yard, "to see so many of one's friends going on the stage at once?"

"Not at all," chuckled d.i.c.k. "Everybody goes on the stage when they leave the Carrs."

"Good bye, Belinda," yelled Uncle Israel, putting his flannel bandaged head out of one of the round upper windows. He had climbed up on a chair to do it. "I don't reckon I'll ever hear from you again exceptin' where Lazarus heard from the rich man!"

"Don't let that trouble you, Israel," shrieked Mrs. Dodd, piercingly. "I take it the rich man was diggin' for eight cents in Satan's orchard, an'

didn't have no time to look up his friends."

The rejoinder seemed not to affect Uncle Israel, but it sent d.i.c.k into a spasm of merriment from which he recovered only when Harlan pounded him on the back.

"Come on," said Harlan, "it's not time to laugh yet. We've got to pack Uncle Israel's bed."

Uncle Israel was going on the afternoon train, and in another direction.

He sat on his trunk and issued minute instructions, occasionally having the whole thing taken apart to be put together in a different kind of a parcel. As an especial favour, d.i.c.k was allowed to crate the bath cabinet, though as a rule, no profane hands were permitted to touch this instrument of health. Uncle Israel himself arranged his bottles, and boxes, and powders; a hand-satchel containing his medicines for the journey and the night.

"I reckon," he said, "if I take a double dose of my pain-killer, this noon, an' a double dose of my nerve tonic just before I get on the cars, I c'n get along with these few remedies till I get to Betsey's, where I'll have to take a full course of treatment to pay for all this travellin'.

The pain-killer bottle an' the nerve tonic bottle is both dretful heavy, in spite of bein' only half full."

"How would it do," suggested Harlan, kindly, "to pour the nerve tonic into the pain-killer, and then you'd have only one bottle to carry. You mix them inside, anyway."

"You seem real intelligent, nephew," quavered Uncle Israel. "I never knowed I had no such smart relations. As you say, I mix 'em in my system anyway, an' it can't do no harm to do it in the bottle first."

No sooner said than done, but, strangely enough, the mixture turned a vivid emerald green, and had such a peculiarly vile odour that even Uncle Israel refused to have anything further to do with it.

"I shouldn't wonder but what you'd done me a real service, nephew,"

continued Uncle Israel. "Here I've been takin' this, month after month, an' never suspectin' what it was doin' in my insides. I've suspicioned for some time that the pain-killer wan't doin' me no good, an' I've been goin'

to try Doctor Jones's Squaw Remedy, anyhow. I shouldn't wonder if my whole insides was green instead of red as they orter be. The next time I go to the City, I'm goin' to take this here compound to the healin' emporium where I bought it, an' ask 'em what there is in it that paints folk's insides. 'Tain't nothin' more 'n green paint."

The patient was so interested in this new development that he demanded a paint-brush and experimented on the porch railing, where it seemed, indeed, to be "green paint." In getting a nearer view, he touched his nose to it and acquired a bright green spot on the tip of that highly useful organ. Desiring to test it by every sense, he next put his ear down to the railing, as though he expected to hear the elements of the compound rus.h.i.+ng together explosively.

"My hearin' is bad," he explained. "I wish you'd listen to this here a minute or two, nephew, an' see if you don't hear sunthin'." But Harlan, with his handkerchief pressed tightly to his nose, politely declined.

"I don't feel," continued Uncle Israel, tottering into the house, "as though a poor, sick man with green insides instead of red orter be turned out. Judson Centre is a terrible healthy place, or the sanitarium wouldn't have been built here, an' travellin' on the cars would shake me up considerable. I feel as though I was goin' to be took bad, an' as if I ought not to go. If somebody'll set up my bed, I'll just lay down on it an' die now. Ebeneezer would be willin' for me to die in his house, I know, for he's often said it'd be a reel pleasure to him to pay my funeral expenses if I c'd only make up my mind to claim 'em, an'," went on the old man pitifully, "I feel to claim 'em now. Set up my bed," he wheezed, "an'

let me die. I'm bein' took bad."

He was swiftly reasoning himself into abject helplessness when d.i.c.k came valiantly to the rescue. "I'll tell you what, Uncle Israel," he said, "if you're going to be sick, and of course you know whether you are or not, we'll just get a carriage and take you over to the sanitarium. I'll pay your board there for a week, myself, and by that time we'll know just what's the matter with you."

The patient brightened amazingly at the mention of the sanitarium, and was more than willing to go. "I've took all kinds of treatment," he creaked, "but I ain't never been to no sanitarium, an' I mis...o...b.. whether they've ever had anybody with green insides.

"I reckon," he added, proudly, "that that wanderin' pain in my spine'll stump 'em some to know what it is. Even in the big store where they keep all kinds of medicines, there couldn't n.o.body tell me. I know what disease 'tis, but I won't tell n.o.body. A man knows his own system best an' I reckon them smart doctors up at the sanitarium 'll be scratchin' their heads over such a complicated case as I be. Send my bed on to Betsey's but write on it that it ain't to be set up till I come. 'Twouldn't be worth while settin' it up at the sanitarium for a week, an' I'm minded to try a medical bed, anyways. I ain't never had none. Get the carriage, quick, for I feel an ailment comin' on me powerful hard every minute."

"Suppose," said Harlan, in a swift aside, "that they refuse to take the patient? What shall we do then?"

"We won't discuss that," answered d.i.c.k, in a low tone. "My plan is to leave the patient, drive away swiftly, and, an hour or so later, walk back and settle with the head of the repair shop for a week's mending in advance."

Harlan laughed gleefully, at which Uncle Israel p.r.i.c.ked up his ears. "I'm in on the bill," he continued; "we'll go halves on the mending."

"Laughin'" said Uncle Israel, scornfully, "at your poor old uncle what ain't goin' to live much longer. If your insides was all turned green, you wouldn't be laughin'--you'd be thinkin' about your immortal souls."

It was late afternoon when the bed was finally dumped on the side track to await the arrival of the freight train, being securely covered with a canvas tarpaulin to keep it from the night dew and stray, malicious germs, seeking that which they might devour. Uncle Israel insisted upon overseeing this job himself, so that he did not reach the sanitarium until almost nightfall. d.i.c.k and Harlan were driving, and they shamelessly left the patient at the door of the Temple of Healing, with his crated bath cabinet, his few personal belongings, and his medicines.

Turning back at the foot of the hill, they saw that the wanderer had been taken in, though the bath cabinet still remained outside.

"Mean trick to play on a respectable inst.i.tution," observed d.i.c.k, las.h.i.+ng the horses into a gallop, "but I'll go over in the morning and square it with 'em."

"I'll go with you," volunteered Harlan. "It's just as well to have two of us, for we won't be popular. The survivor can take back the farewell message to the wife and family of the other."

He meant it for a jest, but even in the gathering darkness, he could see the dull red mounting to d.i.c.k's temples. "I'll be darned," thought Harlan, seeing the whole situation instantly. Then, moved by a brotherly impulse, he said, cheerfully: "Go in and win, old man. Good luck to you!"

"Thanks," muttered d.i.c.k, huskily, "but it's no use. She won't look at me.

She wants a nice lady-like poet, that's what she wants."

"No, she doesn't," returned Harlan, with deep conviction. "I don't claim to be a specialist, but when a man and a poet are entered for the matrimonial handicap, I'll put my money on the man, every time."

d.i.c.k swiftly changed the subject, and began to speculate on probable happenings at the sanitarium. They left the conveyance in the village, from whence it had been taken, and walked uphill.

Lights gleamed from every window of the Jack-o'-Lantern, but the eccentric face of the house had, for the first time, a friendly aspect. Warmth and cheer were in the blinking eyes and the grinning mouth, though, as d.i.c.k said, it seemed impossible that "no pumpkin seeds were left inside."

Those who do not believe in personal influence should go into a house which uninvited and undesired guests have regretfully left. Every alien element had gone from the house on the hill, yet the very walls were still vocal with discord. One expected, every moment, to hear Uncle Israel's wheeze, the shrill, spiteful comment of Mrs. Holmes, or a howl from one of the twins.

"What shall we do," asked Harlan, "to celebrate the day of emanc.i.p.ation?"

"I know," answered Dorothy, with a little laugh. "We'll burn a bed."

"Whose bed?" queried d.i.c.k.

"Mr. Perkins's bed," responded Elaine, readily. The tone of her voice sent a warm glow to d.i.c.k's heart, and he went to work at the heavy walnut structure with more gladness than exercise of that particular kind had ever given him before.

Harlan rummaged through the cellar and found a bottle of Uncle Ebeneezer's old port, which, for some occult reason, had hitherto escaped. Mrs.

Smithers, moved to joyful song, did herself proud in the matter of fried chicken and flaky biscuit. Dorothy had taken all the leaves out of the table, so that now it was cosily set for four, and placed a battered old bra.s.s candlestick, with a tallow candle in it, in the centre.

"Seems like living, doesn't it?" asked Harlan. Until now, he had not known how surely though secretly distressed he had been by Aunt Rebecca's persistent kin. Claudius Tiberius apparently felt the prevailing cheerfulness, and purred vigorously, in Elaine's lap.

Afterward, they made a fire in the parlour, even though the night was so warm that they were obliged to have all the windows open, and, inspired by the portrait of Uncle Ebeneezer, discussed the peculiarities of his self-invited guests.

The sacrificial flame arising from the poet's bed directed the conversation to Mr. Perkins and his gift of song. d.i.c.k, though feeling more deeply upon the subject than any of the rest, was wise enough not to say too much.

"I found something under his mattress," remarked d.i.c.k, when the conversation flagged, "while I was taking his blooming crib apart to chop it up. I guess it must be a poem."

He drew a sorely flattened roll from his pocket, and slipped off the crumpled blue ribbon. It was, indeed, a poem, ent.i.tled "Farewell."

"I thought he might have been polite enough to say good bye," said Dorothy. "Perhaps it was easier to write it."