Sez she, liftin’ a torn lace handkerchief to her eyes, and leanin’ up against one of her statutes a good deal as I’ve seen Grief in a monument in a mournin’ piece, “He lingered along for years, but he wuz sick all the time, he had acute dyspepsia.”
“I thought so,” said Josiah, “I almost knowed it!”
Agin I wunk at him to keep still, but his arms wuz folded over his empty stomach with a expression of agony on him, and he answered my sithe with a deep groan, and knowin’ that I had better remove him to once, I proposed that we should retire. But Evangeline wuz describing a most magnificent sunset which she proposed to immortalize in a poem, and in spite of the gripin’ in my stomach, which had begun fearful, I couldn’t help bein’ carried away some distance by her eloquent language.
Well, at my second or third request we retired and went to bed. Our room wuz a big empty lookin’ one, the girl havin’ lately started to clean it, but prevented by nooraligy, the carpet nails hadn’t been took out only on two sides, and the children had been playin’ under it, I judged by the humps and hummocks under it. Josiah drawed out from under it a sled, an old boot-jack, and a Noah’s Ark that he had stubbed his foot aginst, and I tripped and most fell over a basket-ball and a crokay mallet. The washstand had been used by them, I thought, for headquarters for the enemy, for some stuns wuz piled up on it, a broken old hammer, a leather covered ball, and some marbles.
The lamp hadn’t been washed for weeks, I judged, by the mournin’ chimbly and gummed-up wick, and there wuz mebby a spunful of kerseen in the dirty bottom of the lamp. The bed wuz awful; the children had used it also as a receptacle for different things. We drawed out of it a old sponge, a dead rat, crumbs of bread and butter, and a pair of old shoes.
The girl who showed us up said the children had played there all the day before, it bein’ rainy, but she guessed we would find everything all right. Not a mite of water in the broken nosed pitcher, not a particle of soap, but an old apple core reposed in the dirty soap dish.
Well, I fixed things as well as I could, and we pulled the soiled, torn lace coverlet over us and sought the repose of sleep, but in vain, awful pains in my stomach attested to the voyalation of nater’s laws. Josiah wore out, and, groanin’ to the last, fell asleep, for which I wuz thankful, the oil burnt out to once, leavin’ a souvenir of smoke to add to the vile collection of smells, so I lay there in the dark amidst the musty odors and suffered, suffered dretful in body and sperit.
Amidst the gripin’ of colic I compared this home to the home Marion had composed like a rare poem of beauty, and I bethought how much more desirable is real practical duty and beauty than the gauzy fabric wrought of imagination, or ’tennyrate how necessary it wuz not to choose two masters. If one loved Art well enough to wed it and leave father and mother for its sake, well and good, but after chosin’ love and home and children, how necessary and beautiful it wuz to tend to them first of all, and then pay devotion to Art afterwards.
Well, I couldn’t allegore much, I wuz in too much pain, dyspepsia lay holt of me turribly. But amidst its twinges I remember wishin’ that Laurence Marsh could compare as I had the two homes and lives composed by Marion and Evangeline.
And then a worse twinge of pain brung this thought, a doctor I ought to have. A woman should be allowed to choose her own doctor. I said to myself I will send for Doctor Laurence Marsh in the mornin’, which I did. Josiah bein’ skairt telephoned to him to come to once. He come on the cars, arrivin’ at about ten A. M.