“Oh yes, you will! She’ll get it out of you! And then you’ll write a big cheque for Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up, and another for the matron of this happy ‘Home’—and for Dr. Choke-Em-Off,—and for everybody else who wants a fee for sending you into the next world—and then—then you’ll be allowed to sleep if you can! And to-morrow—to-morrow——”
Here the Goblin paused. Josiah raised himself up on his hard pillow and looked at it with appealing eyes.
“Not so very long ago,”—it went on presently, in a kind of sing-song monotone, “A man I knew went to a ‘Home’ something like this, only not quite so up-to-date and expensive. He was a bold, kindly, genial creature, fond of life and life’s pleasures. Something went wrong with him and he consulted the doctors. They told him he had an internal ailment, but they could not tell whether it was ‘malignant’ or not, till they had, so to speak, ‘opened him up.’ He felt strong and hopeful, and consented to the operation. The surgeons did their work—and how they did it, of course, only they can tell. But it was, according to their own report, ‘successful.’ In forty-eight hours the warm-blooded personality of the man that had talked, smiled and jested with his own danger, was a mere lump of cold, stiff clay. He had relatives—oh yes!—he had children for whom he had worked all his life. What did they do? Why, they allowed his body which had so lately pulsated with love for them all, to be taken away from the ‘home’ in which he died, and laid in a dismal vault without a single soul to keep watch by it at night or say a prayer! The world is growing callous concerning the dead, you know! And they don’t keep corpses in ‘Homes.’ When a man dies under an operation he must be ‘removed’ by his family at once. In this case the poor fellow was ‘removed’ to a chill city mortuary. His children, warm and comfortable, ate food as usual and discussed the funeral business. Down in the cold and darkness lay the once animated, cheery, generous-hearted man, alone—all, all, alone!—shut out from the movement and light of natural things, with no loving eyes to keep watch by his mortal remains,—no tender hands to lay flowers on his lifeless breast!—and yet sentimentalists talk about family love and home-affections! Oh hoo-roo!” And the Goblin actually had tears like sparks of fiery dew in its eyes—“You ought to be glad you’ve got no children, McNason! You’ve got MONEY instead! And MONEY will enable you to have your body carried home grandly to your country seat by special train! You can be laid out in state if you like!—provided you give the order before Sir Slasher Cut-Em-Up arrives to-morrow—candles burning all round you and wreaths on your coffin,—it’s all done for MONEY!—and you can have a most expensive funeral,—a beautiful mausoleum,—a marble monument and a lying Epitaph! All for MONEY! Money’s a great thing, McNason!—and you’ve got it! Oh Beelzebub! You’ve got it! But you’ve got nothing else!”
At this juncture McNason suddenly sat up in bed.
“Yes, I have!” he said, with a kind of trembling eagerness—“I’ve got something else! I’ve got YOU! And I want—I want to make a friend of YOU!”
The Goblin opened its round eyes so wide that they threatened to fall out.
“Oh, you do, do you?” it queried doubtfully—“That’s odd! Now what put that into your head?”
“I don’t know—I don’t know!” stammered McNason agitatedly—“But I think——I feel——you don’t really want to do me any harm! Look here!—Get me out of this! Take me away—take me away—take me home!”
The Goblin took off its conical cap and examined the interior of that head gear with critical gravity. Its hair, in the all-round style, seemed blacker and stickier than ever, and its features worked into the most alarming contortions.
“Take you home!” it echoed—“What! Before Nurse Drat-Em-All comes back?”