Part 41 (1/2)

”What would you subst.i.tute for--my drug?”

”I'll have to think about it. May I come again and tell you?”

”Of course. I am dying to know.”

Mrs. Flippin entered just then with a tall pitcher of lemonade and a plate of delicate cakes. ”I think Miss MacVeigh is looking mighty fine,” she said, ”don't you, Major?”

He would not have dared to tell how fine she looked to him.

He limped across the room with the plate of cakes, and poured lemonade into a gla.s.s for Madge. Her eyes followed his strong soldierly figure.

What a man he must have been before the war crippled him. What a man he was still, and his strength was not merely that of body. She felt the strength too of mind and soul.

”I think,” said Mrs. Flippin that night, ”that Major Prime is one of the nicest men.”

Madge was in bed. The nurse had made her ready for the night, and was out on the porch with Mr. Flippin. Mrs. Flippin had fallen into the habit of having a little nightly talk with Madge. She missed her daughter, and Madge was pleasant and friendly.

”I think that Major Prime is one of the nicest men,” repeated Mrs.

Flippin as she sat down beside the bed, ”but what a dreadful thing that he is lame.”

”I am not sure,” Madge said, ”that it is dreadful.”

She hastened to redeem herself from any possible charge of bloodthirstiness.

”I don't mean,” she said, ”that it isn't awful for a man to lose his leg. But men who go through a thing like that and come out--conquerors--are rather wonderful, Mrs. Flippin.”

Madge had hold of Mrs. Flippin's hand. She often held it in this quiet hour, and the idea rather amused her. She was not demonstrative, and it seemed inconceivable that she should care to hold Mrs. Flippins'

hand. But there was a motherliness about Mrs. Flippin, a quality with which Madge had never before come closely in contact. ”It is like the way I used to feel when I was a little girl and said my prayers at night,” she told herself.

Madge did not say her prayers now. n.o.body did, apparently. She thought it rather a pity. It was a comfortable thing to do. And it meant a great deal if you only believed in it.

”Do you say your prayers, Mrs. Flippin?” she asked suddenly.

Mrs. Flippin was getting used to Madge's queer questions. She treated them as a missionary might treat the questions of a beautiful and appealing savage, who having gone with him to some strange country was constantly interrogatory.

”She don't seem to know anything about the things we do,” Mrs. Flippin told her husband. ”She got the nurse to wheel her out into the kitchen this afternoon, and watched me frost a cake and cut out biscuits. And she says that she has never seen anything so sociable as the teakettle, the way it rocks and sings.”

So now when Madge asked Mrs. Flippin if she said her prayers, Mrs.

Flippin said, ”Do you mean at night?”

”Yes.”

”Bob and I say them together,” said Mrs. Flippin. ”We started on our wedding night, and we ain't ever stopped.”

It was a simple statement of a sublime fact. For thirty years this plain man and this plain woman had kept alive the spiritual flame on the household altar. No wonder that peace was under this roof and serenity.

Madge, as she lay there holding Mrs. Flippin's hand, looked very young, almost like a little girl. Her hair was parted and the burnished braids lay heavy on her lovely neck. Her thin fine gown left her arms bare. ”Mrs. Flippin,” she said, ”I wish I could live here always, and have you come every night and sit and hold my hand.”

Her eyes were smiling and Mrs. Flippin smiled back. ”You'd get tired.”

”No,” said Madge, ”I don't believe anybody ever gets tired of goodness.