But having said this, he turned abruptly and followed his wife into the little chamber off the living-room.
CHAPTER IX—ESTHER’S VISIT
The next day, Saturday, was my birthday. I celebrated it by a heavy cold, with a bursting headache, and chills chasing each other down my back. I went out to the cow-barn with the two men before daylight, as usual, but felt so bad that I had to come back to the house before milking was half over. The moment M’rye saw me, I was ordered on to the sick-list.
The Beech homestead was a good place to be sick in. Both M’rye and Janey had a talent in the way of fixing up tasty little dishes for invalids, and otherwise ministering to their comfort, which year after year went a-begging, simply because all the men-folk kept so well. Therefore, when the rare opportunity did arrive, they made the most of it. I had my feet and legs put into a bucket of hot water, and wrapped round with burdock leaves. Janey prepared for my breakfast some soft toast—not the insipid and common milk-toast—but each golden-brown slice treated separately on a plate, first moistened with scalding water, then peppered, salted, and buttered, with a little cold milk on top of all. I ate this sumptuous breakfast at my leisure, ensconced in M’rye’s big cushioned rocking-chair, with my feet and legs, well tucked up in a blanket-shawl, stretched out on another chair, comfortably near the stove.
It was taken for granted that I had caught my cold out around the bonfire the previous evening—and this conviction threw a sort of patriotic glamour about my illness, at least in my own mind.
The bonfire had been a famous success. Though there was a trifle of rain in the air, the barrels and mossy discarded old fence-rails burned like pitch-pine, and when Hurley and I threw on armfuls of brush, the sparks burst up with a roar into a flaming column which we felt must be visible all over our side of Dearborn County. At all events, there was no doubt about its being seen and understood down at the Corners, for presently our enemies there started an answering bonfire, which glowed from time to time with such a peculiarly concentrated radiance that Abner said Lee Watkins must have given them some of his kerosene-oil barrels. The thought of such a sacrifice as this on the part of the postmaster rather disturbed Abner’s mind, raising, as it did, the hideous suggestion that possibly later returns might have altered the election results. But when Hurley and I dragged forward and tipped over into the blaze the whole side of an old abandoned corn-crib, and heaped dry brush on top of that, till the very sky seemed afire above us, and the stubblefields down the hill-side were all ruddy in the light, Abner confessed himself reassured. Our enthusiasm was so great that it was nearly ten o’clock before we went to bed, having first put the fire pretty well out, lest a rising wind during the night should scatter sparks and work mischief.
I had all these splendid things to think of next day, along with my headache and the shivering spine, and they tipped the balance toward satisfaction. Shortly after breakfast M’rye made a flaxseed poultice and muffled it flabbily about my neck, and brought me also some boneset-tea to drink. There was a debate in the air as between castor-oil and senna, fragments of which were borne in to me when the kitchen door was open. The Underwood girl alarmed me by steadily insisting that her sister-in-law always broke up sick-headaches with a mustard-plaster put raw on the back of the neck. Every once in a while one of them would come in and address to me the stereotyped formula: “Feel any better?” and I as invariably answered, “No.” In reality, though, I was lazily comfortable all the time, with Lossing’s “Field-Book of the War of 1812” lying open on my lap, to look at when I felt inclined. This book was not nearly so interesting as the one about the Revolution, but a grandfather of mine had marched as a soldier up to Sackett’s Harbor in the later war, though he did not seem to have had any fighting to do after he got there, and in my serious moods I always felt it my duty to read about his war instead of the other.
So the day passed along, and dusk began to gather in the living-room. The men were off outdoors somewhere, and the girls were churning in the butter-room. M’rye had come in with her mending, and sat on the opposite side of the stove, at intervals casting glances over its flat top to satisfy herself that my poultice had not sagged down from its proper place, and that I was in other respects doing as well as could be expected.