“Stummick!” says I. “Nothin’ the matter with my stummick.”
“It don’t matter,” says she. “I was readin’ in a book that you ought to pack folks in ice when they got fever. And it’s my experience that when a boy is sick it’s all due to his stummick; so we’ll just pack your stummick, Plunk. ’Twon’t be pleasant, but it’s for your good.”
I’ve noticed that most things that’s for your good is doggone unpleasant.
By this time there was a big crowd around, calling out things and laughing fit to split, and I’ll bet the band was mad as anything because nobody was paying any attention to them. Bands likes to have folks listen and admire them, I’ve took note. Maybe I could have broke away and run for it, but I’d made a promise and I was going to stick it out, so I looked up at Mrs. Coots and begun to sing a lullaby to my doll.
“Jest listen!” says she. “Hain’t it pitiful? Maybe it hain’t no disease,” says she, “but that he’s gone out of his head permanent. Come to think of it, I been afraid somethin’ like that would happen to him. He hain’t never acted quite right. I’ll bet he’s been crazy right along, only we hain’t took particular note. Crazy folks is sly,” says she. “How long you been wantin’ to parade around with a doll and sing to it, Plunk?”
“I never wanted to,” says I, “but I got to.”
“See that?” she says to everybody. “He can’t help it. I ’spect he realizes he hain’t sane and tries to act sane, but can’t manage it. Hain’t it a shame, and him so young! Jest think of him bein’ shut up in an asylum from his age. Maybe he’ll live to be ninety like Clem Adams’s second wife’s cousin, that thought she was a cook-stove and used to go around tryin’ to fry onions in a pan on her head.”
“Lemme go,” says I, “’fore I git violent.”
“Violent!” says she, as satisfied as a purring cat. “I calc’late he’ll be dangerous. I’ll bet right now he’s figgerin’ on doin’ somebody a damage.”
“I be,” says I.