Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories

								

too deep for human speculation; but the fact that it was there, and that
it hopped with ease from knee to ankle, and made excruciating excursions
into his five toes, was as patent as the toes themselves.
What complicated the situation for Gordon Lee was that he could not
discuss this painful topic with his wife. Amanda Jones had embarked on
the higher education, and had long ago thrown overboard her old
superstitions. She was not only Queen Mother of the Sisters of the
Order of the Star, and an officer in various church societies, but she
was also a cook in the house of Mrs. James Bertram, President of the
State Federation of Women's Clubs. The crumbs of wisdom that fell from
the lips of the great Mrs. Bertram were carefully preserved by Amanda,
and warmed over, with sundry garnishings of her own, for the various
colored clubs to which she belonged.
Gordon Lee had succeeded in adorning only three toes when he heard a
quick step on the gravel outside and, hastily getting his foot under
cover, he settled back on the pillow, closed his eyes, and began
laboriously inhaling with a wheeze and exhaling with a groan.
The candle sputtered as the door was flung open, and a small, energetic
mulatto woman, twenty years Gordon Lee's junior, bustled into the room.
"Good lan'! but it's hot in heah!" she exclaimed, flinging up a window.
"I got a good mind to nail this heah window down f'om the top."
"I done open' de door fer a spell dis mawnin'," said Gordon Lee,
sullenly, pulling the bedclothes tighter about his neck. "Lettin' in all
dis heah night air meks my eyes sore."
The bedclothes, having thus been drawn up from the bottom of the bed,
left the patient's feet exposed, and Amanda immediately spied the
string-encircled toes.
"Gordon Lee Surrender Jones," she exclaimed indignantly, "has that there
meddlin' ol' Aunt Kizzy been here again?"
Gordon Lee's eyes blinked, and his thick, sullen under lip dropped half
an inch lower.
"Ef you think," continued Amanda, furiously, "that I'm a-goin' to keep
on a-workin' my fingers to the bone, lak I been doin' for the past year,
a-payin' doctors' bills, an' buyin' medicines fer you, while you lay up
in this here bed listenin' to the fool talk of a passel of igneramuses,
you's certainly mistaken. Hit's bad enough to have you steddyin' up new
ailments ever' day, without folks a-puttin' 'em in yer head. Whut them
strings tied on yer toes fer?"
Gordon Lee's wheezing had ceased under his severe mental strain, and now
he lay blinking at the ceiling, utterly unable to give a satisfactory
answer.
"Aunt Kizzy jes happen' 'long," he muttered presently. "Ain't no harm in
a' ol' frien' passin' de time ob day."
"Whut them strings tied on yer toes fer?" repeated Amanda with fearful
insistence.
Gordon Lee, pushed to the extreme, and knowing by experience that he was
as powerless in the hands of his diminutive wife as an elephant in those