So Tom, instead of bidding his mother an eternal farewell and dying alone and abandoned, as he had planned, in a hospital ward, was soon made to scald his feet in hot mustard water, while his mother’s flannel kimono replaced his bedraggled clothing, and a heavy blanket was wrapped about him, and he was offered a nasty drink of lemonade, but what else was in it other than lemon only his mother knew!
By this time he felt so wretched that he cared nothing for solitaires or fiancées; all he wanted was to get one good long breath through his nose once more before he choked to death.
His mother had returned to the merry-making in the parlors, and Tom sat huddled in his unbecoming bedding in his mother’s dressing-room. Every few minutes he had to use Katrina’s “atmosizer” for his nose, or gasp for breath.
Just as the perspiration began to pour out of every pore, and his feet felt like scalded lobsters, and the vaseline his mother had smeared in his eyes and over his nose, to void any chaffing, had been trickled all over his face, Polly tiptoed into the room that opened to the dressing-room where he sat.
He held his breath, fearing lest she hear him gasp and find him in this awful predicament. He could not see her after she closed the hall-door, but he wondered what she was doing. At this moment, a tickling in his nose began and he knew it portended a sneeze! He must prevent it, or Polly would track him down. If she ever saw him in this condition, after all his hard study to propose gracefully, he would take poison!
But the sneeze was imperative, and it burst forth in such an explosion, that Polly screamed faintly from just behind the door of the little room.
“Go’way! I won’d see anyone,” commanded Tom.
“But you’ll let me come and see how you are, won’t you, Tom dear?” coaxed Polly, appearing at the open door.
“No! You above everyone. I’m goin’ to a hozpidal as zoon ads the ambulance gomes, and I never wand to zee any ob my frien’z again. I’ll leave word no one ids to gome to my funeral, eider.”
“Tom, dearest, don’t talk like that! Where have you been today, to catch such an awful cold in your head?” said Polly.