“Get their bed ready,” said Aunt Patsy
to Nancy, “and shut up the windows and doors,
and light their candles, and see that you drive all
the mosquitoes out of their bar, and make up a good
fire in their stove, and carry up some bags of hot
ashes to lay to his feet—”
“—and a shovel of fire for his head,
and a mustard plaster for his neck, and some gum shoes
for his ears,” Luigi interrupted, with temper;
and added, to himself, “Damnation, I’m
going to be roasted alive, I just know it!”
“Why, Looy! Do be quiet; I never saw such
a fractious thing. A body would think you didn’t
care for your brother.”
“I don’t—to that extent, Aunt
Patsy. I was glad the drowning was postponed
a minute ago, but I’m not now. No, that
is all gone by; I want to be drowned.”
“You’ll bring a judgment on yourself just
as sure as you live, if you go on like that.
Why, I never heard the beat of it. Now, there—there!
you’ve said enough. Not another word out
of you—I won’t have it!”
“But, Aunt Patsy—”
“Luigi! Didn’t you hear what I told
you?”
“But, Aunt Patsy, I—why, I’m
not going to set my heart and lungs afloat in that
pail of sewage which this criminal here has been prescri—”
“Yes, you are, too. You are going to be
good, and do everything I tell you, like a dear,”
and she tapped his cheek affectionately with her finger.
“Rowena, take the prescription and go in the
kitchen and hunt up the things and lay them out for
me. I’ll sit up with my patient the rest
of the night, doctor; I can’t trust Nancy, she
couldn’t make Luigi take the medicine.
Of course, you’ll drop in again during the day.
Have you got any more directions?”
“No, I believe not, Aunt Patsy. If I don’t
get in earlier, I’ll be along by early candle-light,
anyway. Meantime, don’t allow him to get
out of his bed.”
Angelo said, with calm determination:
“I shall be baptized at two o’clock.
Nothing but death shall prevent me.”
The doctor said nothing aloud, but to himself he said:
“Why, this chap’s got a manly side, after
all! Physically he’s a coward, but morally
he’s a lion. I’ll go and tell the
others about this; it will raise him a good deal in
their estimation—and the public will follow
their lead, of course.”
Privately, Aunt Patsy applauded too, and was proud
of Angelo’s courage in the moral field as she
was of Luigi’s in the field of honor.
The boy Henry was troubled, but the boy Joe said,
inaudibly, and gratefully, “We’re all
honky, after all; and no postponement on account of
the weather.”
BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF
