CHAPTER X.
Uncle Ike stood with his pipe in his left hand, his thumb pressing the tobacco down tight, and with a match in his right hand, just ready to scratch it on his leg, when he froze stiff in that position, and never moved for five minutes, as he watched the red-headed boy, who had walked into the room listlessly, his eyes staring at a picture he held in his hand, his face so pale that the freckles looked large and dark, his lips white as chalk, his cheeks sunken, his fingers gripping the picture, a faded and forlorn pansy in his buttonhole, and his short clipped hair standing up straight in rows like red beet tops in a vegetable garden.
“Anybody very dead?” said Uncle Ike, as he drew the match across the cloth, put it to his pipe, and began to swell out his cheeks and puff, keeping his eye on the boy, through the smoke, who had taken his eyes from the picture, drawn a deep sigh, and sat down on the lounge, as though he never expected to get up again.
“No, nobody dead,” said the boy, as he laid his head on a sofa pillow, closed his eyes, and placed the picture inside his vest. “But I wish there was. I wish I was dead.”
“How many times have I told you to put oil on cucumbers, and they wouldn't gripe you that way?” said Uncle Ike, as he drew a chair up beside the lounge and felt of the boy's pulse, and took his handkerchief and wiped the perspiration off his forehead, and finally took the picture out of his bosom and looked at it.
“She is a nice, warm-looking girl, but you might have the picture on your stomach a week, and it wouldn't draw that colic out of you,” and Uncle Ike gazed with some admiration on the picture of the beautiful girl, whose high forehead, bright eyes, and beautiful chin, showed that she had the making of a rare and radiant woman.
“'Tain't colic, and I haven't et no cucumbers,” said the boy, as he rolled his eyes up toward the roof of his head. “It's love, that's what it is, and I am miserable, and Aunt Almira said you had been in love over six hundred times, and could tell me what to do.”
“Well, I like your Aunt Almira's nerve,” said Uncle Ike, as he looked half pleased at the accusation. “Of course, I have had some encounters with the fair sex, but I have never entirely collapsed, the way you have. What's the symptoms? Don't the girl love you?”