iin
— :
Bellefonte, Pa., November 26, 1926.
EE PAT
AND “THE YANKS” FOGOT HIM,
ALAS!
During the last year of the Great
War, when I was Medical Officer in
charge of troops at the Rest Camp,
Southampton, a dog arrived and at-
tached himself to the American troops
as they passed through on their way
to France. He would have nothing to
~~
do with our men nor the troops of oth-
er nations—only Americans. It was
so amusing to watch him that I
thought I must try to give his devo-
tion what immortality I could by
writing these verses. I wish I had
been able to get hold of him and keep
him, but in the rush of those stormy
times I lost sight of him and suppose
he was destroyed.
He was only a bit of a mongrel dog,
But nevertheless, I ween,
He fancied himself an important cog
On a wheel of the War Machine.
With his stumpy tail and his ginger hair.
He wouldn't have fetched a dollar;
And he came to the camp from none knew
where,
With neither a name nor collar,
To shepherd the Yanks and to act as guide
Was all that he had to ask,
And he gave himself with a lordly pride
To his self-appointed task.
He'd start away from the sentry-box
And he never would rest or slack
Till he'd got the one draft down to the
docks,
And brought the new draft back.
Barking in front of those stalwart Yanks,
To answer the people's cheer;
Trotting ahead of the marching ranks,
As proud as a Bombadier.
And he’d look at his men as they stood at
ease,
As if to proudly say:
“They are correct and in order, please,
And I've done my bit to-day.”
And then the Peace came, and the march-
ing host
Of his soldiers came no more,
But faithful still he stuck to his post
By the shut Headquarters door.
Waiting alone for his men to come
To the place they'd always meet,
With his ears erect for the distant drum
And the sound of the tramping feet.
But there came no sign, and he wondered
then,
With a creature’s dumb despair,
What had become of his soldier men,
And why they had left him there.
And so he'd wait, with never a friend,
Till at last there came a day
When I heard he had met the appointed
end
That happens to dogs astray.
Now I know not where, without stone or
name,
Is the spot where your heart's at rest.
But I do know this, that you played the
game,
That you did your level best.
So I've made you a wreath that will not
fade,
And I trust, whate'er befalls,
We shall meet once more, at the Great
Parade,
When the last Reveille calls.
—From Our Dumb Animals.
ONE MEDIUM-SIZED DOG.
Momma's cheeks were hot and
angry. The frost of her thick hair
stood out the more whitely around
their glowing crimson.
“Theodore! How many more times
must I tell you that you cannot have
a dog?”
Theodore Roosevelt Wesley swung
his books unhappily from their strap.
Behind Momma he could see his fath-
er gazing out of the window. Some-
thing in that mute profile gave him
assurance that he was not completely
alone.
“Why can’t I, Momma, I'd like to
know.”
“Because! A dog is a dirty animal.
Useless. Fleas!” She shivered.
“1 told you I'd wash him! Twice a
week.’
“Hairs everywhere.”
“I told you I'd keep him combed.”
“Always scratching up flower beds!
It would all fall on me.”
“I promised you when I was twelve
I'd bring him up. And you said—"
Momma arose from the table and be-
gan picking up napkins.
“Your poppa just bought you that
radio.”
“I’d rather have a dog, twice over.”
“And that’s enough. I've told you
no a hundred times.”
“Once you said when I was thirteen
I could have one!”
“Theodore! Please stop kicking the
door. And you’ll be late for school.
No one in this family was ever late
for, school!”
Behind her he could see his father’s
silhouette against the morning win-
dow turn slightly from side to side.
“Better not say any more,” it warn-
ed him. “Enough’s enough.”
“I don’t care!” said Theodore. “I've
always wanted a dog. And I’m going
to want a dog. When I’m twenty-one
I'll have a dog.”
He slammed the dining-room door
as he went out. The front door slam-
med more distantly. They could hear
his feet taking the porch steps in two
leaps. Into the ensuing silence there
came the three blasts of his automo-
bile horn. They meant that he was
pedaling his bicycle around the corner.
The automobile horn had a rich con-
tralto quality that confirmed his be-
lief that he was at the wheel of an
eight-cylinder 1926 sport model, all
eight exploding noiselessly. Beside
him on the front seat sat his dog, in-
telligently contemplating the low
forms of pedestrian life upon the
thoroughfare.
Much of this was understood by
Poppa and Momma as together they
cleared away the breakfast things.
Momma’s color remained high and she
may have wrung out the dish mop
| welt.
—_— —
i
with unnecessary ene as the last’
i iid , father could hear and, “Oh, gee! He's
' got the pinkest tongue!”
coffee cup was set away.
“It’s a good morning,” said Poppa,
1 spading. I'll dig up the back
ot.”
The back lot was Momma’s particu-
lar domain. It was the forty-foot
square bounded on the west by the
garage, on the north by the kitchen
window, east and south by the lattice
fence. Two cherry trees graced op-
posite corners. Pie cherries. In the
forty-foot square Momma had her
pansies and daffodils, her border
plants, her asters, and those tall
dahlias that took, all the blue ribbons
at the armory in the fall. Already the
noses of the hyacinths and daffodills
were more than up. Another week
would see the first blossom.
All morning Poppa spaded.
At eleven ‘Momma came out with
her tin pan and got the potatoes from
the garage. She walked fast and set
her heels down a little hard on the ce-
ment path.
“The earth’s fine,” he said as she
came back. “You can plant whenever
you want. There won't be any frost
to speak of.”
Her brow cleared slightly as she
stood beside him. Even with her
white hair, he was thinking, there
wasn’t another woman in town so
young-looking at her age. Her skin
was fresh and pretty. Her hair,
though white, was fine and gleaming.
She was slim, like a girl.
He remembered that dreadful night,
when she nearly died.
The little boy had just breathed and
gone. He was so perfect to look upon
that it did not seem possible that the
doctor had told the truth.
“Can’t you save him, Doctor?” he
asked, knowing as he spoke that it
was too late. She had been so in-
trepid, later! He never would have
asked of her the gallant efforts that
she made. But it had been twelve
vears before they had put into his
arms a living child.
“It’s a fine little boy,” the nurse
had said. And he had stood there,
holding him and crying. He didn’t
care so much about him, after all, just
at the moment. All he cared for was the
girl on the white bed in the next room,
her gallantry, her heavenly sweetness,
her round white arm about his neck.
They called him Theodore Roose-
And they knew that, whatever
the young doctor had done, he was
owed to his mother.
“What your momma says goes,”
Poppa had told Theodore more than
once. Of course, the boy had never
understood all that was back of the
verdict. But Momma did not like
dogs. And what Momma said on that
subject went.
Momma was right. And yet—
“Lunch!”
He went in and washed up. After-
ward they ate together, in the Dutch
nook of the blue and white kitchen,
hearty, unimaginative food. And
Momma, pink-cheeked and smiling,
was pleasant to contemplate, sitting
across from him.
There was time to help straighten
up, before he had to go to the bank.
Momma brushed an invisible fleck
from his blue serge suit as he was
leaving.
“Of course,” she said, “I know
I must let him have that dog.”
Poppa put his arm about her and
laughed.
“Well,” he said, “I do kind of think
we ought to do it.”
Her face, looking up into his, was
very sweet.
“Give us a kiss?” he asked.
She gave it to him, her arm around
his neck.
On Saturday, there was a family
pilgrimage to market. Poppa drove
the car and Ted went along to help
carry things. There was no mountain
that he would not shoulder, since the
glad word had gone out. Many prom-
ises had been exacted. The dog was
never to come into the house. When
Theodore was at school the dog was
to be tied up. Theodore was to wash,
comb and feed him. If there was any
sign of neglect, the dog should go.
Momira did not like dogs but she
would not have a hungry and abused
creature about the place.
“He'll have distemper,” she predict-
ed, “and the mange. Then you are to
be the nurse. It must be understood
from the beginning that he is in no
sense my dog.”
With the gates of heaven thus open-
ing before him, Theodore found it
easy to give every assurance.
“You be extra nice to Momma,” his
father coached him. “She’s being
extra nice to you.”
Theodore was being extra nice at
public market on Saturday afternoon
carrying little baskets of seedlings to
the car and Fotiing them just where
Momma said. His arms were full, in
fact, of two dozen plants of that new
kind of delphinium, when he saw The
Dog.
Something tawny and bright-eyed
sat in a market basket beside a farm-
er woman’s heaped-up new potatoes.
A black nose inquired wisely of all
that passed. As Theodore came to a
full stop beside the market basket a
plume of tail waved its flag of hope,
“Oh!” said Theodore, above his
delphiniums. “It’s him! His name
is Prince.”
Momma beside him was, as always,
gallant. :
“How much ?” she said to the coun-
try woman behind the new potatoes.
“He's a collie!” the excited Theo-
dore told his father at the wheel of
the car.. Poppa looked at the bright
eyes, the busy nose, the fanning of
the plume of hope. :
“Well,” he said, in the bankerish
voice of the private office. Theodore’s
face began to lose a little of its rap-
ture.
“I expect he is,” said Poppa warm-
ly. “Part, anyway.”
“Part!” Theodore’s face was trans-
figured. “I bet he’s pure collie. His
name’s Prince.”
As they drove home Poppa could
see, out of the tail of his eye, that
Momma had begun her long martyr-
dom.
“She’ll stick it out,” he said to him-
self, half smiling.
In the tonneau sat the boy, his mar-
ket basket on his lap, exchanging ex-
traordinary sounds with . the tawny
fluff named Prince. ; Super
“Whose dog are you, Prince?” his and breathing he knew himself to be
As well as if he had seen the deed, |
Poppa knew that Prince had kissed
his son. A bright color stained Mom-
ma’s profile. But she said nothing.
Decidedly she was gallant.
“All I ask,” she said as they began
taking the seedlings from their places
on the back seat, “is that you don’t
$¥pect me to have one thing to do with
im.
In such fashion the trio in Banker
Wesley’s family became a quartet.
Not all of its volcalizings could al-
ways have been described as
harmony. Between Ted and his fath
er there was, no doubt, understanding.
Certain holes in the back lot were
mysteriously filled at hours when Ted
was not at home to fill them. Poppa
formed a habit, also, of sweeping out
the sedan with a small whisk broom
every morning.
But there were near disasters.
There was the very old ham that lay
on the front porch door mat just as
Mrs. Professor Ray rang the doorbell.
Prince had been tied up with two
knots and a stone had been laid on the
lid of the garbage can.
“I bet he learns to push it off,” said
Theodore in some excitement. “He's
a smart dog.”
His smartness had renewed proof
within a week when a three-rib roast,
close |
. woodehucks
invisible and nonexistent.
At three o’clock the legs twingled
around the corner. Theodore was off
his bicycle.
“Hello, Prince!” he called. At the
magic word life began again. The
rope came off. Excursions took place
by the river among dogs and boys,
and other interesting
characters. Lessons were learned.
The plume of hope waved high. The
two, dog and boy, ran with one rhythm.
Momma, looking after them from her
front window, would almost have said
that they laughed alike.
“What will you do with him this
summer?” she asked at the dinner
table, not long before the end of
school. Theodore stared.
“Do?” he echoed. “Oh, swim.
Chase things. Hike. He'll love to
camp.”
“Just a little more of that dessert,”
said Poppa. Momma did not meet
his eye as she gave it to him.
“How do you expect him to get
there?”
At this full understanding came to
Theodore. They were to camp beyond
the reach of trains and baggage cars.
- The sedan was to be loaded with sleep-
all too clearly meant for some family :
dinner, lay on the Wesley lawn, Prince
affectionately beside it.
had not only slipped his noose but al-
so wandered far afield.
“How would he get it out of any-
body’s house?” Mrs. Wesley’s fore-
head mirrored her distracted mind.
“Pshaw!” said Theodore. “He’s a
smart dog. Want to see him open our
door?”
There was no doubt that Prince
could open the screen door.
watched him nosing the catch about.
“Isn’t he a smart dog?” her son de-
manded. “Want to see him roll
over?”
She could not refuse his eagerness.
“Prince!” said her son in the con-
fidential voice he habitually used.
“ 'Tenshun!”
Prince, his eyes upon his deity,
stood rigid.
1 “Republican!” said Theodore sharp-
y
Prince, lying down, rolled over
twice. Almost it seemed to Mrs.
Wesley as he stood again on four legs
that he laughed in her son's face.
“Prince!” said Theodore again,
“Democrat!”
Unbelieving, she saw the dog sit up
and beg. Poppa, at her side, laughed.
“What does he do for the Third
Party?” he asked.
“It’s awful hard for him to play
dead,” said Theodore, “but he’s learn-
ing. Want to see him find my glove ?”
The two, dog and boy, sat on the
front steps together.
Well, Prince,” said Theodore soft-
ly, “where's my glove?”
Prince trotted around the corner of
the house and presently came back, a
catcher’s mit in his mouth.
He'll put it back too,” said the
proud master. “What'll you bet he'll
find it if I hide it in a new place?”
Poppa bet a new dog collar. ,
“Pll hide it in my room,” said Theo-
dore.
“Not in the house!” Momma’s voice
was sharp.
“Aw, Momma! Just this once! Just
to see if he can.”
He could. The glove was hidden un-
der Ted’s mattress.
Mrs. Wesley looked on in horror
while Prince nosed up the latch of the
scraen door, vanished up the stairs
and reappeared, the mitt in his mouth.
“Did he do that without ever being
in the house before ?”” Momma’s voice
was glacial.
“I told you he was a smart dog!”
said her son. “Awful smart.”
“Better tie him up now,” said Poppa
suddenly. “What say to a movie?”
There was a low-toned conference
of men’s voices in the garage that
night.
“It amounts to a gentleman’s agree-
ment,” Poppa could have been heard
to say. That's something that can’t
be violated. It isn’t done.”
“I know.” Theodore’s voice was
ashamed. “I'll never let him in the
house again. I'm sorry.
No regret, however, could overcome
the triumph in his voice as he added,
“But he’s a smart dog, isn’t he?”
“He’s a smart dog,” his father said
without reservation.
Prince at the moment was knowing
the ecstasy of Theodore’s hand upon
his head forgetful that the other hand
was busy slipping that old enemy, the
rope, under his collar. : :
“Sorry!” Theodore was saying into
his ear. “Got to do it. See you in
the morning.”
Prince quivered all over with de-
light. Then the back door swallowed
Theodore up. A single frantic tug,
and the dog knew that once more the
rope had stolen a march on him. He
always fought the rope when Theo-
dore was not there to talk to him.
Under the bright starlight he strained
against it in vain. Resignedly he
turned around three times in the same
place, expelled a deep sigh and plung-
ed into sleep. It was his device for
passing the time until he and his other
self should be reunited.
The device was all very well for the
night hours when sleep seemed appro-
priate. But the days, after Theo-
dore’s legs had bicycled beyond vision
around the corner, were the glacial
age indeed, when the soul of any dog
might lie stark and forgotten for
eons on end.
From nine o’clock until three, when
school closed, he knew what it was to
breathe, yet not to be. He lay, face
between his paws, looking at the back
door. He could hear Momma moving
about inside the house. From time to
time she emerged, to dig among her
plants or to fetch the potatoes from
the garage. At her coming he stood
up. His plume of hope waved faint-
ly. Almost, for a moment, he exist-
ed. Always, however, she went by.
She did not speak. She did not even
look at him.
After she had passed, he stood,
drooping. Hope was frozen. Every-
thing that mattered was dead in him.
He knew the ultimate humiliation pos-:
| sible to a sentient creature.
Alive
Momma |
‘ mouth, ready for a rather oversized
Evidently he
ing bags and food.
“Can’t he ride
board?”
Poppa shook his head. That was
where the tents would be.
“Can’t he sit with me on the back
seat?”
“That was settled long ago. I made
on the running
| it clear at the very first.”
Momma here met husband’s eye and
gave it a long, clear, irrevocable look.
Before the look his own wavered.
Momma had made it clear. She was
honorably and undeniably entitled to
her bargain. Yet one look at his son
was more than he could bear. Theo-
dore had laid down his fork. His
load of peach shortcake, remained
open. His eyes, widening as they
stared ahead into an empty summer,
gazed out from caverns of despair in
his whitening face.
“Excuse me,” said Theodore sud-
denly and left his peach shortcake.
Into the silence that closed behind
him, Momma’s voice came:
“I think it’s wicked to put the bur-
den of this on me. I knew how it
would be at the beginning. And you
both promised. Now you make me
seem cruel and hard.”
In 2 moment, he could see, she would
be crying. Poppa folded up his nap-
kin very slowly, got up, and went
around and kissed her.
“Whatever you say,” he told her,
goes.”
Out in the garage he found two
creatures weeping. At least the dog
wept. The boy, lying on his stomach,
his face deep in his friend’s neck, was
stifling his own sobs. Prince unsham-
edly whimpered. Something devas-
tating had laid low his divinity.
“Maybe we can think up some way,”
said Poppa, sitting down beside his
son. The smothered sounds, deep in
Prince’s ruff, lessened. Presently they
stopped and one red eye looked up at
his father.
“Isn’t there a stage or something?”
Poppa thought there was.
, Two eyes appeared, in a face ravag-
ed with tears.
“Do you suppose they would take a
“Might find out.”
It was ten o’clock before Theodore
presented a document before the com-
mittee of Poppa and Momma, assem-
bled under the reading lamp in the
living-room. Since eight they had
been able to see his black head bent
over the library table, its cherished
pompadour growing wilder as the
debris of torn papers grew in the
waste-basket.
“You can read it out if you want,”
he suggested. Momma read, Theo-
dore keeping a watchful eye on his
father’s face.
“Mr. Hiram Bixby,
Manager Gold Ridge Stage Co.
“Dear Mr. Bixby: Kindly advise at
earliest convenience as to terms on
which one medium-sized dog could
travel on stage from Gold Ridge to
Glacier. He is a very clean dog. He
would not bark or bite ladies when
with owner. He would be on leash at
all times. He is very obedient. If
necessary, he could sit on owner's
lap. Owner would, in case said dog
could be accommodated, take no lug-
gage. ;
“Thanking you in advance for your
kindness, and hoping for favorable re-
ply as soon as you can,
Yours truly,
T. R. Wesley.”
“What do you think?” Theodore
asked his father.
“T used to go to school with Hi Bix-
by,” said Poppa.
“What do you think he will think of
this letter?” asked Theodore patient:
ly.
“Oh!” His father gave the matter
attention. “I think he’ll think some
boy likes his dog very much.”
“Boy!” Theodore’s face was crest-
fallen. “Why won’t he think it’s a
man? Why won't he think maybe it’s
you?”
“Of course!” Momma's voice was
confident and she gave Poppa a smile
which her son considered far brighter
than was appropriate to the serious
problem in hand.
“Of course he will! It sounds like
all your business letters. ‘One med-
ium-sized dog,” ‘Owner would in case
said dog could be accommodated, take
no luggage.” Any banker to any
brother!”
“You think it’s all right?”
“Yes.” She was positive.
very fine letter.”
“Would you send it? Is it business
like?”
“Indeed, yes! Absolutely!” She
gave him a wonderful smile as she
handed him the masterpiece.
It was four days before a blue en-
velope bearing the letterhead of the
Gold Ridge Stage Company waited his
return to school. Theodore, his eyes
shining, showed it to Momma.
“Mr. T. R. Wesley,
“Dear Sir: Relative to your letter
of 18th inst. re one medium-sized
dog, would say that same could travel
as passenger on stage from Gold
LL
“It’s a
Ridge to Glacier, at rate of one-half
(3) fare. Yrs. truly,
Hiram Bixby.”
“It’s a pretty nice letter,” said Theo-
dore. “I've got eleven dollars saved
up from cutting lawns.”
Momma thought it was a very nice
letter. By dinner-time that night,
ticket to show to his father, stamped
with an official purple stamp, and en-
titling one Prince Wesley to a seat on
the Gold Ridge stage. Poppa read
the ticket and the letter of Hiram
Bixby with becoming gravity.
“It’s a good businesslike letter, isn’t
it?” said his son.
Dinner was a cheerful meal. Cer-
certain fears averted.
“In fairness to myself,” Momma re-
marked after Theodore had gone to
bed, “I'm going to tell you that of
course if it had come right down to it
I couldn’t have held out.”
Poppa laughed at her over his even-
ing paper.
“First thing you know,” he said,
“you'll be liking that dog.”
He liked
scrutiny to which Momma subjected
this revolting idea.
“Well,” she admitted, rolling up her
i darning, “if I could like any dog 1
suppose it would be that dog.”
Afterward she was to remember
this confession with thankful heart.
| The trip from Gold Ridge to Glacier
by stage was an unqualified success.
| Prince, shampooed to such a state of
‘golden glory that he blazed like a
solar system in his seat beside his
| master, was the cynosure of all fel-
| low passengers’ eyes and the social ;
lion of the journey. At Gold Ridge
Poppa and Momma traveling by sedan
waited to see the stage pull out, Theo-
dore’s black head and the tawny head
of his friend grinning farewells to-
gether.
“I kind of thought,” said’ Hiram
Bixby, “the little feller might be your
boy.”
“Your letter,” said Banker Wesley,
“gave Ted a whole lot of satisfaction.”
to do it,” said Hiram Bixby. “I
could see this was no ordinary every-
day correspondence I was conducting.
Anyway, you know I always kind of
liked a dog.”
From this happy inaugural the four
weeks sped pleasantly to a perfect
close. Momma admitted in so many
words, as they broke up camp, that
the dog had had his uses, He had
scared away midnight marauders and
had made a cheerful fourth on the
long mountain trails that the quartet
essayed.
“He had a good time,” said her son.
“But he’s going to miss me a lot
when school begins. It isn’t as if any-
one ever noticed him. I don’t be-
lieve,” he looked at her severely, “you
exactly understand what it means to
be a dog.”
His mother capably packing camp
utensils looked at him in turn.
“I understand quite well,” she said
in that dry voice which precluded
further argument, “what it is to have
a useless creature around a town
house where no dog has any earthly
business to be.” Mrig i Lorid
It was one of those verbal victories
which mothers of thirteen-year-old
sons must occasionally achieve.
hind it lay just enough dynamite for
Theodore to feel it best to remain si-
lent.
Was it that very day, or perhaps a
day or two after the familiar home
routines had established themselves,
that she and Poppa noticed something
strange about Ted? For a day or two
he had not seemed quite his abounding
self. Then there was the night when
he would not eat cherry pie.
“Theodore! You're sick!” His mother
looked at him appalled.
“I'm all right.”
“You stayed in swimming much too
long to-day,” she said.
“Qh! For heaven's sake! Let me
have a little peace, can’t you?” said
her son volcanically, and left the table
From her kitchen window she could
see Theodore sitting on the ground be-
side his dog. The rope was tied with
two knots. The two creatures sat side
by side for a little, Theodore’s arm
over the dog's neck. Presently the
boy got up, walked heavily into the
house and up the back stairs. Mom-
ma could hear him stirring about in
his room above her. His voice, from
his window, dropped softly:
“Good night, Prince!”
_ The dog stood tense, his plume wav-
ing.
“See you in the morning.”
His mother alone in her kitchen felt
the cold approach of a new epoch in
her life. Theodore had never gone to
bed without a word to her. No mat-
ter what the tragedy of the day, the
evening hour came benignantly upon
them. She hung her dishmop on its
hook, seeing as she did so the dog with
his face toward the upper window. He
would be looking up atit in the morn-
ing when Ted’s voice dropping joyous-
ly would create the day.
When she stole up later she could
not be sure that Ted was asleep. He
did not stir when she laid her hand
upon him. Most of his face was bur-
ied in his pillow.
“But his cheek seemed very hot to
me,” she told Poppa.
“Qh, he’s sunburned. Or he may
i have had an overdose of doughnuts
somewhere. He'll be all right in the
morning.”
In the morning the dog sat with his
face toward the upper window but no
voice created the day for him. There
was an unwonted quiet upon the
house. No Theodore came out with
his breakfast or to take him for a
morning scamper At nine o’clock no
legs bicycled around the corner of the
house.
Instead there were voices in the
room upstairs and a hurried coming
and going: Later in the day a young
woman in a stiff white dress walked
starchily up and down the cement
path between the dahlias and the gar-
age. She was a pretty young wom-
an, and as she passed him she said in
a pleasant voice, “Hello, doggie! Well,
well!”
The afternoon shadows were long
when Poppa brought: him his ration.
Later he took him sedately about the
Theodore had a bright pink half-fare |
tain tensions were visibly relaxed and !
immensely the frank
The three weeks stretched to four.
“Had to get down the old grammar
Be-
block and returning tied him up again.
It was not a day like other days.
Strange days succeeded one anoth-
er. A second starchy youny lady ap-
peared, who also greeted him. But
after the first day he did not notice
either of them. He lay with his nose
‘on his paws, his eyes on the house,
waiting for the only voice in the world
to create the day for him.
He did not know that in the room
from whose windows Theodore’s
morning voice once dropped down the:
starchy young ladies reigned supreme,
that Momma, capable Momma, looked
in now and then with a wistful face.
Poppa, who as the days went by wan-.
dered more and more aimlessly from
the house to the bank and back, some-
times stood there beside her. It was
not a room in which Poppa and Mom-
ma had much place.
“He’s a very sick boy,” the doctor
had said. “He’s got to have expert
service. The nursing he gets will
make all the difference.”
Difference! = Difference between
what and what? Between life per-
haps and what?
Momma, something clutching at her
breath, threw back her head defiantly.
She had given him life once almost at
the price of her own. She would give
it to him again. The young doctor,
beginning after these years to show
more than a little gray in his hair,
shook his head kindly.
“Do you mean to tell me those
young girls can do more for him than
his mother?”
He had to make it cruelly pain. The"
young girls were experts. He told her
where they had trained. He would
come every day, twice.
“But they will pull him through.”
“But I’m his mother!”
“That’s one good reason,” she heard
him say, “why you’ve no earthly busi-
ness in that room.”
She was to hear this verdict re-echo-
ing through all the shadowed weeks
that followed. Somewhere that sum-
mer in some polluted country stream
i Theodore had found a typhoid germ.
“Must have got a beauty,” scowled
the young doctor, looking haggard as
the fever mounted. It ran its course,
went down by infinitely slow degrees,
hung for a little, then began once
more to climb.
The young doctor said, “Damn!”
and “Reinfection,” to a man and wom-
an who in these weeks had grown old.
The thing ran its second course, the
starched young ladies did infinitely
wise and competent things above-
stairs. Momma, stepping noiselessly
about the one domain remaining to
her, cooked wonderful food. It com-
forted her to do it. &
There was a dog lying day by day
outside her kitchen, his face on his
paws, his eyes on the upper windows,
his dish of water and of food that she
prepared and Poppa brought to him,
scarcely touched. He lay there but
she did not see him. Even when she
went to the garage for potatoes she
never looked his way. A woman
stricken she passed the nonexistent
‘ dog who knew of her comings and go-
ings as little as she knew of his pres-
‘ence. What was a dog in such hours
'as these? And who was she, had she
but thought of it, that any dog should
{ turn his eyes her way? :
| All things come to some conclusion.
Even to that second run of the fever
there came the breathless morning
when the skeleton of a boy lay under
his white cover white as the sheet over
him, inches longer surely than when
he went to bed, a long fleshless body
for which the starched young ladies
seemed to have won a victory. The
fever wavered, sank, rose, sank, and
did not rise.
“We'll have him bounding around
in no time,” said the young doctor,
able at last to make his voice sound
hearty.
i Poppa’s eyes were wet.
i “We can’t thank you. We can’t ever
thank you,” he said. :
“Thank me? You want to thank
‘those girls. He'd never have pulled
. through without them.”
+ Momma dry-eyed looked at him and
said nothing. Theodore would live.
Poppa could be tremulous and happy.
; She could not feel that anything could
“ever matter again. It had happened
: without her. She who had never slept
i at night nor waked in the morning for
all these years without a thought of
him had counted for nothing in these
weeks.
There were slow days yet to come.
For a boy who should have all a boy’s
resilience he did not make a good re-
covery. He lay weak, still listless, not
clamoring as he ought to clamor for
food. The young doctor did not like
it.
“Isn’t there something,” he scowled,
“that he might like? He’s got to
take more interest than this.”
His mother bent over him in one of
those short moments the starched
women allowed her. The irony of
these moments was that the women
always gently explained that there
would be nothing to do. She was just
to let him be quiet. Not to disturb
him.
“Isn’t there something you would
like to have?” she asked.
He lay there still and colorless, his
eyes closed. How she wished he would
whisper, “Yes. Cut off your hand and
give it to me.”
Her hand? Her heart! Anything!
The still lids quivered and her son’s
eyes looked gravely into hers. He
was too weak to do more than whis-
per, but she hung on any whispered
wish. The eyes surveyed her for a
long moment. Then the lids closed
again and she could see the white lips
form a whispered “No.”
The tears that would not come when
the young doctor said he would live
began to blind her now. She could
not stay in this room with him. In
another moment she would sob and he
would be disturbed. She tiptoed out
and felt her way down the back stairs
At the kitchen door she stood lean.
ing against the wall while her weep:
ing had its way. For weeks she hac
been nothing. She was nothing to
day. She could give nothing to this
hoy who was part of her life. Nothing
but her love. Her tiresome, useles:
love!
“I might as well,” she told herself
while the tears made their bitte:
(Continued on page 7, Col, 3.)