Establishing Protectorates
“I’m sorry no end!” said Mickey.
“First time I ever been late. I was helping
Peter; we were so busy that the first thing I knew
I heard the hum of her gliding past the clover field,
so I was left. I know how hard you’re working.
It won’t happen again.”
Mickey studied his friend closely. He decided
the time had come to watch. Douglas Bruce was
pale and restless, he spent long periods in frowning
thought. He aroused from one of these and asked:
“What were you and Peter doing that was so very
absorbing?”
“Well about the most interesting thing that
ever happened,” said Mickey. “You
see Peter is one of the grandest men who ever lived;
he’s so fine and doing so many big things,
in a way he kind of fell behind in the little
ones.”
“I’ve heard of men doing that before,”
commented Douglas. “Can’t you tell
me a new one?”
“Sure!” said Mickey. “You know
the place and how good it seems on the outside—well
it didn’t look so good inside, in the part that
counted most. You’ve noticed the big barns,
sheds and outbuildings, all the modern conveniences
for a man, from an electric lantern to a stump puller;
everything I’m telling you—and for
the nice lady, nix! Her work table faced a wall
covered with brown oilcloth, and frying pans heavy
enough to sprain Willard, a wood fire to boil clothes
and bake bread, in this hot weather, the room so low
and dark, no ice box, with acres of ice close every
winter, no water inside, no furnace, and carrying washtubs
to the kitchen for bathing as well as washing, aw
gee—you get the picture?”
“I certainly do,” agreed Douglas, “and
yet she was a neat, nice-looking little woman.”
“Sure!” said Mickey. “If she
had to set up housekeeping in Sunrise Alley in one
day you could tell her place from anybody else’s.
Sure, she’s a nice lady! But she has troubles
of her own. I guess everybody has.”
“Yes, I think they have,” assented Douglas.
“I could muster a few right now, myself.”
“Yes?” cried Mickey. “That’s
bad! Let’s drop this and cut them out.”
“Presently,” said Douglas. “My
head is so tired it will do me good to think about
something else a few minutes. You were saying
Mrs. Harding had trouble; what is it?”
Mickey returned to his subject with a chuckle.
“She was ’bout ready to tackle them nervous
prostrations so popular with the Swell Dames,”
he explained, “because every morning for fifteen
years she’d faced the brown oilcloth and pots
and pans, while she’d been wild to watch sunup
from under a particular old apple tree; when she might
have seen it every morning if Peter had been on his
job enough to saw a window in the right place.
Get that?”
“Yes, I get it,” conceded Douglas.
“Go on!”
“Well I began her work so she started right
away, and before she got back in comes Peter.
When he asks where she was and why she went, I was
afraid, but for her sake I told him. I told him
everything I had noticed. At first he didn’t
like it.”
