Odd Numbers. Ford Sewell

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СКАЧАТЬ old man, of course – hasn’t been planted long. He lasted until three weeks ago. He was an awful good man, Uncle Hen was – to himself. He had the worst case of ingrowing religion you ever saw. Why, he had a thumb felon once, and when the doctor came to lance it Uncle Hen made him wait until he could call in the minister, so it could be opened with prayer.

      “Sundays he made us go to church twice, and the rest of the day he talked to us about our souls. Between times he ran the Palace Emporium; that is, he and I and a half baked Swede by the name of Jens Torkil did. To look at Jens you wouldn’t have thought he could have been taught the difference between a can of salmon and a patent corn planter; but say, Uncle Hen had him trained to make short change and weigh his hand with every piece of salt pork, almost as slick as he could do it himself.

      “All I had to do was to tend the drygoods, candy, and drug counters, look after the post-office window, keep the books, and manage the telephone exchange. Euphemia had the softest snap, though. She did the housework, planted the garden, raised chickens, fed the hogs, and scrubbed the floors. Have I got the catalogue right, Phemey?”

      Euphemia blinks twice, kind of reminiscent; but nothin’ in the shape of words gets through the gum.

      “She has such an emotional nature!” says Maizie. “Uncle Hen was like that too. But let’s not linger over him. He’s gone. The last thing he did was to let go of a dollar fifty in cash that I held him up for so Phemey and I could go into Duluth and see a show. The end came early next day, and whether it was from shock or enlargement of the heart, no one will ever know.

      “It was an awful blow to us all. We went around in a daze for nearly a week, hardly daring to believe that it could be so. Jens broke the spell for us. One morning I caught him helping himself to a cigar out of the two-fer box. ‘Why not?’ says he. Next Phemey walks in, swipes a package of wintergreen gum, and feeds it all in at once. She says, ‘Why not?’ too. Then I woke up. ‘You’re right,’ says I. ‘Enjoy yourself. It’s time.’ Next I hints to her that there are bigger and brighter spots on this earth than Dobie, and asks her what she says to selling the Emporium and hunting them up. ‘I don’t care,’ says she, and that was a good deal of a speech for her to make. ‘Do you leave it to me?’ says I. ‘Uh-huh,’ says she. ‘We-e-e-ough!’ says I,” and with that Maizie lets out one of them backwoods college cries that brings Tidson up on his toes.

      “I take it,” says I, “that you did.”

      “Did I?” says she. “Inside of three days I’d hustled up four different parties that wanted to invest in a going concern, and before the week was over I’d buncoed one of ’em out of nine thousand in cash. Most of it’s in a certified check, sewed inside of Phemey, and that’s why we walked all the way up here in the rain. Do you suppose you could take me to some bank to-morrow where I could leave that and get a handful of green bills on account? Is that asking too much?”

      “Considering the way you’ve brushed up my memory of Sport Blickens,” says I, “it’s real modest. Couldn’t you think of something else?”

      “If that had come from Mrs. McCabe,” says she, eyin’ Sadie kind of longin’, “I reckon I could.”

      “Why,” says Sadie, “I should be delighted.”

      “You wouldn’t go so far as to lead two such freaks as us around to the stores and help us pick out some New York clothes, would you?” says she.

      “My dear girl!” says Sadie, grabbin’ both her hands. “We’ll do it to-morrow.”

      “Honest?” says Maizie, beamin’ on her. “Well, that’s what I call right down decent. Phemey, do you hear that? Oh, swallow it, Phemey, swallow it! This is where we bloom out!”

      And say, you should have heard them talkin’ over the kind of trousseaus that would best help a girl to forget she ever came from Dobie.

      “You will need a neat cloth street dress, for afternoons,” says Sadie.

      “Not for me!” says Maizie. “That’ll do all right for Phemey; but when it comes to me, I’ll take something that rustles. I’ve worn back number cast-offs for twenty-two years; now I’m ready for the other kind. I’ve been traveling so far behind the procession I couldn’t tell which way it was going. Now I’m going to give the drum major a view of my back hair. The sort of costumes I want are the kind that are designed this afternoon for day after to-morrow. If it’s checks, I’ll take two to the piece; if it’s stripes, I want to make a circus zebra look like a clipped mule. And I want a change for every day in the week.”

      “But, my dear girl,” says Sadie, “can you afford to – ”

      “You bet I can!” says Maizie. “My share of Uncle Hen’s pile is forty-five hundred dollars, and while it lasts I’m going to have the lilies of the field looking like the flowers you see on attic wall paper. I don’t care what I have to eat, or where I stay; but when it comes to clothes, show me the limit! But say, I guess it’s time we were getting back to our boarding-house. Wake up, Phemey!”

      Well, I pilots ’em out to Fifth-ave., stows ’em into a motor stage, and heads ’em down town.

      “Whew!” says Sadie, when I gets back. “I suppose that is a sample of Western breeziness.”

      “It’s more’n a sample,” says I. “But I can see her finish, though. Inside of three months all she’ll have left to show for her wad will be a trunk full of fancy regalia and a board bill. Then it will be Maizie hunting a job in some beanery.”

      “Oh, I shall talk her out of that nonsense,” says Sadie. “What she ought to do is to take a course in stenography and shorthand.”

      Yes, we laid out a full programme for Maizie, and had her earnin’ her little twenty a week, with Phemey keepin’ house for both of ’em in a nice little four-room flat. And in the mornin’ I helps her deposit the certified check, and then turns the pair over to Sadie for an assault on the department stores, with a call at a business college as a finish for the day, as we’d planned.

      When I gets home that night I finds Sadie all fagged out and drinkin’ bromo seltzer for a headache.

      “What’s wrong?” says I.

      “Nothing,” says Sadie; “only I’ve been having the time of my life.”

      “Buying tailor made uniforms for the Misses Blickens?” says I.

      “Tailor made nothing!” says Sadie. “It was no use, Shorty, I had to give in. Maizie wanted the other things so badly. And then Euphemia declared she must have the same kind. So I spent the whole day fitting them out.”

      “Got ’em something sudden and noisy, eh?” says I.

      “Just wait until you see them,” says Sadie.

      “But what’s the idea?” says I. “How long do they think they can keep up that pace? And when they’ve blown themselves short of breath, what then?”

      “Heaven knows!” says Sadie. “But Maizie has plans of her own. When I mentioned the business college, she just laughed, and said if she couldn’t do something better than pound a typewriter, she’d go back to Dobie.”

      “Huh!” says I. “Sentiments like that has got lots of folks into trouble.”

      “And yet,” says Sadie, “Maizie’s a nice girl in her way. We’ll see how she comes out.”

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