Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories

								


Produced by Kentuckiana Digital Library, David Garcia, Josephine
Paolucci, Joshua Hutchinson and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading
Team.

MISS MINK'S SOLDIER
AND OTHER STORIES

MISS MINK'S SOLDIER
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
ALICE HEGAN RICE
Author of "MRS. WIGGS OF THE CABBAGE PATCH," "MR. OPP," "CALVARY ALLEY,"
ETC.

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918

Copyright, 1905, 1906, 1910, 1918, by THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright, 1914, by THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY
Published, October, 1918

  TO
THE LADY OF THE DECORATION


A MEMENTO OF MANY HAPPY DAYS
SPENT TOGETHER "EAST OF SUEZ"

CONTENTS


MISS MINK'S SOLDIER


A DARLING OF MISFORTUNE


"POP"


HOODOOED


A MATTER OF FRIENDSHIP


THE WILD OATS OF A SPINSTER


CUPID GOES SLUMMING


THE SOUL OF O SANA SAN

MISS MINK'S SOLDIER

Miss Mink sat in church with lips compressed and hands tightly clasped
in her black alpaca lap, and stubbornly refused to comply with the
request that was being made from the pulpit. She was a small desiccated
person, with a sharp chin and a sharper nose, and narrow faded eyes that
through the making of innumerable buttonholes had come to resemble them.
For over forty years she had sat in that same pew facing that same
minister, regarding him second only to his Maker, and striving in
thought and deed to follow his precepts. But the time had come when Miss
Mink's blind allegiance wavered.
Ever since the establishment of the big Cantonment near the city, Dr.
Morris, in order to encourage church attendance, had been insistent in
his request that every member of his congregation should take a soldier
home to Sunday dinner.
Now it was no lack of patriotism that made Miss Mink refuse to do her
part. Every ripple in the small flag that fluttered over her humble
dwelling sent a corresponding ripple along her spinal column. When she
essayed to sing "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," in her high, quavering
soprano, she invariably broke down from sheer excess of emotion. But the
American army fighting for right and freedom in France, and the Army
individually tracking mud into her spotless cottage, were two very
different things. Miss Mink had always regarded a man in her house much
as she regarded a gnat in her eye. There was but one course to pursue in
either case--elimination!
But her firm stand in the matter had not been maintained without much
misgiving. Every Sunday when Dr. Morris made his earnest appeal,
something within urged her to comply. She was like an automobile that
gets cranked up and then refuses to go. Church-going instead of being
her greatest joy came to be a nightmare. She no longer lingered in the
vestibule, for those highly cherished exchanges of inoffensive gossip
that constituted her social life. Nobody seemed to have time for her.
Every one was busy with a soldier. Within the sanctuary it was no