Part 5 (1/2)

”Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?”

”Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get hold of him.”

”Then he wasn't a good man?”

”Who?”

”Your husband.”

”Who says he ain't a good man?” It was Susan's flying leaps from tense to tense that most bewildered me. ”If anybody says he ain't I'll gouge their eye out!”

I hastened to a.s.sure Susan that my observation had been intended in the nature of enquiry, not of a.s.sertion.

”Brings me a bottle of gin--for my headaches--every time he comes home,”

continued Susan, showing cause for opinion, ”every blessed time.”

And at some such point as this I would retire to the clearer atmosphere of German grammar or mixed fractions.

We suffered a good deal from Susan one way and another; for having regard to the admirable position of her heart, we all felt it our duty to overlook mere failings of the flesh--all but my aunt, that is, who never made any pretence of being a sentimentalist.

”She's a lazy hussy,” was the opinion expressed of her one morning by my aunt, who was rinsing; ”a gulping, snorting, lazy hussy, that's what she is.” There was some excuse for my aunt's indignation. It was then eleven o'clock and Susan was still sleeping off an attack of what she called ”new-ralgy.”

”She has seen a good deal of trouble,” said my mother, who was wiping.

”And if she was my cook and housemaid,” replied my aunt, ”she would see more, the s.l.u.t!”

”She's not a good servant in many respects,” admitted my mother, ”but I think she's good-hearted.”

”Oh, drat her heart,” was my aunt's retort. ”The right place for that heart of hers is on the doorstep. And that's where I'd put it, and her and her box alongside it, if I had my way.”

The departure of Susan did take place not long afterwards. It occurred one Sat.u.r.day night. My mother came upstairs looking pale.

”Luke,” she said, ”do please run for the doctor.”

”What's the matter?” asked my father.

”Susan,” gasped my mother, ”she's lying on the kitchen floor breathing in the strangest fas.h.i.+on and quite unable to speak.”

”I'll go for Washburn,” said my father; ”if I am quick I shall catch him at the dispensary.”

Five minutes later my father came back panting, followed by the doctor.

This was a big, black-bearded man; added to which he had the knack of looking bigger than even he really was. He came down the kitchen stairs two at a time, shaking the whole house. He brushed my mother aside, and bent over the unconscious Susan, who was on her back with her mouth wide open. Then he rose and looked at my father and mother, who were watching him with troubled faces; and then he opened his mouth, and there came from it a roar of laughter, the like of which sound I had never heard.

The next moment he had seized a pail half full of water and had flung it over the woman. She opened her eyes and sat up.

”Feeling better?” said the doctor, with the pail still in his hand; ”have another dose?”

Susan began to gather herself together with the evident intention of expressing her feelings; but before she could find the first word, he had pushed the three of us outside and slammed the door behind us.

From the top of the stairs we could hear Susan's thick, rancorous voice raging fiercer and fiercer, drowned every now and then by the man's savage roar of laughter. And, when for want of breath she would flag for a moment, he would yell out encouragement to her, shouting: ”Bravo!

Go it, my beauty, give it tongue! Bark, bark! I love to hear you,”