“Perhaps that is the reason she wants it done,” I suggested.
“By George!” he exclaimed.
Well, that _was_ the reason. I may as well admit it now. Tish is a fine
and spirited woman, and as brave as a lion. But it was soon evident to
all of us that she was going to keep Charlie Sands safe if she could.
She was continually referring to his having been a sickly baby, and I am
quite sure she convinced herself that he had been. She spoke, too, of a
small cough he had as indicating weak lungs, and was almost indecently
irritated when the chest specialist said that it was from smoking, and
that if he had any more lung space the rest of his organs would have had
to move out.
One way and another, she kept him from enlisting for quite a time,
maintaining that to run a newspaper and keep people properly informed
was as patriotic as carrying a gun.
I remember that on one occasion, when he had at last decided to join the
navy and was going to Washington, Tish took a very bad attack of
indigestion, and nothing quieted her until after train time but to have
Charlie Sands beside her, feeding her peppermint and hot water.
Then, at last, the draft bill was passed, and she persuaded him to wait
and take his chance.
We were at a Red Cross class, being taught how to take foreign bodies
out of the ear, when the news came. Tish was not paying much attention,
because she considered that if a soldier got a bullet or shrapnel in his
ear, a syringe would not help him much. She had gone out of the room,
therefore, and Aggie had just had a bean put in her auditory canal, and
was sure it would swell before they got it again, when Tish returned.
She said the bill had passed, and that the age limit was thirty-one.
Mrs. Ostermaier, who was using the syringe, let it slip and shot a
stream of water into Aggie’s right eye.
“Thirty-one!” she said. “Well, I suppose that includes your nephew, Miss
Tish.”
“Not at all,” said Tish. “He will have his thirty-second birthday on the
fifth of June, and he probably won’t have to register at all. It’s
likely to be July before they’re ready.”
“Oh, the fifth of June!” said Mrs. Ostermaier, and gave Aggie another
squirt.
Now Tish and I have talked this over since, and it may only be a
coincidence. But Mrs. Ostermaier’s cousin is married to a Congressman
from the west, and she sends the Ostermaiers all his speeches. Mr.
Ostermaier sends on his sermon, too, in exchange, and every now and then
Mrs. Ostermaier comes running in to Tish with something delivered in our
national legislature which she claims was conceived in our pulpit.
Anyhow, when the draft day was set, _it was the fifth of June_!
Aggie and I went to Tish at once, and found her sitting very quietly
with the blinds down, and Hannah snivelling in the kitchen.
“It’s that woman,” Tish said. “When I think of the things I’ve done for
them, and the way I’ve headed lists and served church suppers and made
potato salad and packed barrels, it makes me sick.”
Aggie sat down beside her and put a hand on her knee.
“I know, Tish,” she said. “Mr. Wiggins was set on going to the Spanish
war. He said that he could not shoot, but that he would be valuable as
an observer, from church towers and things, because he was used to being
in the air. He would have gone, too, but——”
“If he goes,” Tish said, “he will never come back. I know it. I’ve known
it ever since I ran over that black cat the other day.”
Well, we had to leave her, as Aggie was buying wool for the Army and
Navy League. We went out, very low in our minds. What was our surprise,
therefore, on returning late that afternoon, to find Tish cheerfully
hoeing in the garden she had planted in the vacant lot next door, while
Hannah followed her and gathered up in a basket the pieces of brick,
broken bottles and buried bones that Tish unearthed.
“You poor dear!” Aggie said, going toward her. “I know just how you
feel. I——”
“Get out!” Tish yelled, in a furious tone. “Look what you’re doing!
Great heavens, don’t you see what you’ve done? That was a potato
plant.”
We tried to get out, although I could see nothing but a few weeds, but
she yelled at us every moment and at last I gave it up.
“I’d rather stay here, Tish,” I said, “if you don’t mind. I can keep the
dogs away, and along in the autumn, when it’s safe to move, you can take
me home, or put me in a can, along with the other garden stuff.”
Here Tish fired a brick at Hannah’s basket, but struck her in the knee
cap instead, and down she went on what Tish said was six egg plants. In
the resulting conversation I escaped, and went up to Tish’s sitting
room.
Tish followed us soon after, and jerked the window shades to the top.
“There’s nothing like getting close to nature,” she said. “I feel like a
different woman, after an hour or so of the soil.”
She then took Hannah’s basket and placed it on the window-sill
overlooking the vacant lot, explaining that she used its contents to
fling at dogs, cats and birds below.
“It makes a little extra work for Hannah,” she commented. “But it’s
making a new woman of her. It would be good for you, too, Lizzie.
There’s nothing like bending over to reduce the abdomen.”
But Aggie, having come to mourn, proceeded to do it.
“To think,” she said, “that if they had only made it a day later, dear
Charlie would have been exempt. It’s too tragic, Tish.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Tish in a cold tone. “He
does not have to register. He was born at seven in the morning, June
fifth.”
“In the evening, Tish,” said Aggie gently. “I was there, you know, and I
remember——”
Tish gave her a terrible look.
“Of course you would know,” she observed, icily. “But as I was in the
room, and recall distinctly going out and telling old Amanda, the cook,
about breakfast——”
“Supper,” said Aggie firmly. “You were excited, naturally. But I was in
the hall when you came out, and I was expecting my first gentleman
caller, which no girl ever forgets, Tish. I remember that Amanda was
hooking my dress, which was very tight, because we had waist lines in
those days and I wanted——”
“Aggie,” Tish thundered, “he was born early in the morning of June
fifth. He will be thirty-two years of age early in the morning of
Registration day. And if he tries to register I shall be on hand with
the facts.”
Well, whether she was right or not, she was convinced that she was, and
it is useless to argue with her under those circumstances. Luckily she
heard a dog in the lot just then, and threw down a broken bottle and
some bricks at him, and the woman in the apartment below raised a window
and threatened to report her to the Humane Society. But, as usual, Tish
was more than her equal.
“Come right up, then,” she said. “Because I am a member of the Humane
Society and have been for twenty years. I consider throwing bricks at
that dog as patriotic a duty as killing a German, any day.”
Here, by accident, the basket slid off the window-sill, and Tish closed
the window violently.
“It hit her on the head,” she said, in what I fear was an exultant tone.
“I wouldn’t have done it on purpose, but I guess it’s no sin to be
thankful.”
Because the incident I am about to relate concerns not only Registration
Day, but also Mr. Culver and the secret in the barn, I have been some
time in getting to it. And if, in so doing, I have reflected at any time
either on Tish’s patriotism or her strict veracity, I am sorry. No one
who knows Tish can doubt either.
In spite of Aggie, in spite of Charlie Sands, who protested violently
that he distinctly remembered being born in the evening, because he had
yelled all the ensuing night and no one had had a wink of sleep—in
spite of all this, Tish remained firm in her conviction that 7 A. M. on
Registration Day, when the precincts opened, would find him too old to
register.
On the surface the days that followed passed uneventfully. Tish sewed
and knitted, and once each day stood Aggie and myself on the outskirts
of her garden and pointed out things which she said would be green corn,
and tomatoes and peppers and so on. But there was a set look about her
face, to those of us who knew and loved her. She had moments of
abstraction, too, and during one of them weeded out an entire row of
spring onions, according to Hannah.
On the third of June I went into the jeweller’s to have my watch
regulated, and found Tish at the counter. She muttered something about a
main spring and went out, leaving me staring after her. I am no idiot,
however, although not Tish’s mental equal by any means, and I saw that
she had been looking at gentlemen’s gold watches.
I had a terrible thought that she intended trying to purchase Charlie
Sands by a gift. But I might have known her high integrity. She would
not stoop to a bribe. And, as a matter of fact, happening to stop at
the Ostermaiers that evening to show Mrs. Ostermaier how to purl, I
found that dear Tish, remembering the anniversary of his first sermon to
us, had presented Mr. Ostermaier with a handsome watch.
It was on the fourth of June that I had another visit from Charlie
Sands. He is usually a most amiable young man, but on that occasion he
came in glowering savagely, and on sitting down on Aggie’s knitting,
which was on steel needles, he flung it across the room, and had to
spend quite a little time apologizing.
“The truth is,” he said, “I’m so blooming upset that I’m not myself. Let
me put these needles back, won’t you? Or do they belong in some
particular place?”
“They do,” Aggie retorted grimly. “And for a young man who will be
thirty-two tomorrow morning——”
“Evening,” he corrected her, with a sort of groan. “I see she’s got you
too. Look here,” he went on, “I’m in trouble, and I’m blessed if I see
my way out. I want to register tomorrow. I may not be drawn, because I’m
an unlucky devil and always was. But—I want to do my bit.”
“Well,” I observed, tartly. “I guess no one can prevent you. Go and do
it, and say nothing.”
“Not at all,” he replied, getting up and striding up and down the room.
“Not a bit of it. I grant you it looks simple. Wouldn’t any one in his
senses think that a young and able-bodied man could go and put his name
down as being willing to serve his country? Why, she herself—she’s
crazy to go. I’d like to bet a hat she’ll get there before long, too,
and into the front trenches.”
“Oh, no!” Aggie wailed suddenly.
“But not I,” went on Charlie Sands fiercely. “Not I. How she ever got
around that old fool Ostermaier I don’t know. But she has. He’s
appointed her an assistant registrar in his precinct, which is mine. And
she’ll swear until she’s black in the face that I’m over age.”
“Can’t you have the place opened before seven in the morning?” I
suggested.
“I’ve been to him, but he says the law is seven o’clock. Besides,” he
added bitterly, “she knows me, and as like as not she’ll sleep there, to
be on hand to forestall me.”
As I look back, I am convinced that a desire to do his bit, as he termed
it, was only a part of his anger that evening. The rest was the feeling
that Tish’s superior acumen had foiled him. He had a truly masculine
hatred of being thwarted by a woman, even by a beloved aunt.
“Well,” he said at last, picking up his hat. “I’ll be off.” He went to
the door, but turned back and glowered at us both, although I am sure we
had done nothing whatever. “But mark my words, and remind her of them
the day after tomorrow. This thing’s not over yet. She’s pretty devilish
clever”—(I regret to record this word, but he was greatly
excited)—“but she hasn’t all the brains in the family.”
For a day that was to contain so much, however, the fifth of June
started quietly enough. We telephoned Hannah, and she reported that Tish
had left the house at five-thirty, although obliged to go only one block
to the engine house which was her destination.
So far as I can learn, for Tish is very uncommunicative about the entire
matter, the morning passed quietly enough. She had taken the precaution
of having her folding card table and two pillows sent to the engine
house, and when Aggie and I arrived at midday she was seated
comfortably, with her hat hung on a lamp of the fire truck. When we
arrived she was asking the sexton of the Methodist Church, whom she has
known for thirty years, if he had lost a leg or an arm.
Aggie had brought a basket with some luncheon for her, and she placed it
on the truck. But there was an alarm of fire soon after, and the thing
went out in a rush with the lunch and also with Tish’s hat.
Tish was furiously angry. Indeed, I have since thought that much of what
followed was due to the loss of the luncheon, which the firemen declared
they had not seen, although Aggie was positive she saw one of them
eating one of the doughnuts that afternoon behind a newspaper.
But, worst of all, Tish’s hat was missing. It reappeared later, however,
but was brought in by the engine house dog, after having been run over
by the Chief’s machine, two engines and a ladder truck.
As I say, that was part of her irritation, but what really upset her was
the number of married men. More than once, as she grew excited, I heard
her say:
“Married? How many wives?”
When of course she meant how many children.
She had registered twenty-four married men and two single ones by one
o’clock, and she was looking very discouraged. But at one o’clock the
clerk from the shoe store at the corner came in, and said he had
dependent on him a wife, four children, a mother-in-law, a sister-in-law
and his sister-in-law’s husband.
“Of course,” Tish said bitterly, “you claim exemption.”
“Me?” he said. “Me, Miss Carberry? My God, no.”
Well, about two o’clock Charlie Sands came in. Tish saw him the moment
he entered the door, and stopped work to watch him. But he made no
attempt to register. He said he was doing a column on slackers for the
next morning’s paper.
“There’s aren’t many,” he said, “but of course there are some. The
license court is the place to nail them.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Tish demanded, “that there are traitors in
this country who are getting married _today_?”
“There are,” said Charlie Sands, sitting down on the fire truck. “Even
so, beloved aunt. They are getting married so they can claim exemption
because of a dependent wife. And I’ll bet the orphan asylums are full of
fellows trying to get ready-made families.”
Tish is a composed and self-restrained woman, but she spoke so
distinctly of how she felt about such conduct that Charlie Murray, our
grocer’s assistant, who has four children, did not so much as mention
them when she made out his card.
“Of course,” Charlie Sands observed, “I don’t want to dictate to you,
because you’re doing all that can be expected of you now. But if some
one would go to the license court and tell those fellows a bit of
wholesome truth, it might be valuable.”
“You do it, Lizzie,” Tish said.
“I? I never made a speech in my life, Tish Carberry, and you know it.”
“And I never before tried to get the truth from an idiot who says he is
twenty-eight and has a daughter of eighteen! See here,” Tish said to a
man in front of her, waving her pen and throwing a circle of ink about.
“I’ll have you know that I represent the government today, and if you
think you are being funny, you are not.”
Well, it turned out that he had married a widow with a child, but had a
cork leg anyhow, so it made no difference. But Tish’s mind was not on
her work. However, she was undecided until Charlie Sands said:
“By the way, I saw your friend Culver among the Cupid-chasers today. And
this is his district. You’d better round him up.”
“Culver!” Tish said. “Do you mean that—Lizzie, where’s my hat?”
Well, we had to recover it again from the engine house dog, whom we
found burying it in the back yard. Tish’s mind, however, was far away,
and she merely brushed it absently with her hand and stuck it on her
head. Then she turned to Charlie Sands.
“I’m going to the license court,” she said, between clenched teeth. “And
I am going to show that young fool that he is not going to hide behind
any petticoats today.”
“It’s his privilege to get married if he wants to.”
“When I finish with him,” said Tish, grimly, “he won’t want to.”
All the way to the court house Tish’s lips were moving, and I knew she
was rehearsing what she meant to say. I think that even then her shrewd
and active mind had some foreboding of what was to come, for she called
back unexpectedly to Aggie:
“Look in the right-hand pocket and see if there is a box of tacks
there.”
“Tacks?” said Aggie. “Why, what in the world——”
“I had tacks to nail up flags this morning. Well?”
“They are here, Tish, but no hammer.”
“I shan’t need a hammer,” Tish replied, cryptically.
I am afraid I had expected Tish to lead the way into the license court
and break out into patriotic fury. But how little, after all, I knew
her! Already in that wonderful brain of hers was seething the plot which
was so to alter certain lives, and was to leave an officer of the
law—but that comes later on.
Mr. Culver was at the desk. Just as we arrived, a clerk handed him a
paper, and he walked across the room to an ice-water cooler and took a
drink.
“The slacker!” said Tish, from clenched teeth. “The coward! The
poltroon! The——”
At that moment Mr. Culver, with a paper cup in his hand, saw us and
stared at us fixedly. The next moment he had whipped off his hat, and
was coming toward us.
“Well!” he said, as he came up to us, “so it really did happen!”
Tish took a deep breath, to begin on him, but he went on blithely:
“You see, when I got back home that day, I felt it hadn’t really been
true. I had _not_ gone rabbit-shooting, and found three ladies
half-buried in a haystack. And of course I had not driven an automobile
along a creek bed and through the old swimming hole, with my own gun
levelled at my back.”
Tish took another breath and opened her mouth.
“Then, the other day,” he went on, smiling cheerfully, “I thought I had
had a return of the hallucination, because I fancied I saw you all on a
wagon. But the next moment the wagon was driving on, and you were
nowhere in sight.”
“That was because,” said Aggie, “when the wagon started we all sat down
unexpectedly, and——”
“Aggie!” Tish said, in a savage tone. “Now, young man, I want to say
something to you, and I’d thank you——”
“Oh, I say!” he broke in, looking suddenly depressed, “I can see you are
still down on me. But don’t scold me. Please don’t. Because I am a
sensitive person, and you will ruin what was going to be a perfect day.
I know I was wrong. I apologize. I eat my words. And now I’ll leave you,
because if you should vanish into thin air again I should have to go and
lock myself up.”
Well, with all his gaiety he did not look particularly gay, and he was
rather hollow in the cheeks. I came to the conclusion that he was going
to marry another young woman, partly to keep out of going to war, but
partly to spite the first. I must say I felt rather sorry for him,
especially when I saw the way he looked at her. Oh, yes, I picked her
out at once, because she never took her eyes off him.
I didn’t think she was fooled much, either, because she looked as if she
needed to go off into a corner and have a good cry. Well, she got her
wish later, if that was what she wanted.
But Tish is a woman of one idea. While he chattered with one eye on the
girl, Tish was eyeing him coldly. At last she caught him by the arm.
“I have something to say to you, young man,” she commenced. “I want to
ask you what you think of any one who——”
“I beg your pardon,” he interrupted, and freed his arm. “Awfully sorry.
I think a young lady over there wishes to speak to me.”
He left us briskly enough, but he slowed up before he got across the
room. He stopped once and half turned, too, with the unhappiest face
I’ve ever seen on a human being. Aggie was feeling in her knitting bag
for the glasses.
“Is she pretty?” she asked.
“Too pretty to be a second choice,” I replied, shortly. “She’s a nice
little thing, and deserves something better than a warmed-over heart.”
Tish had been angry enough before, but when I told her that he had been
disappointed in love, and was merely making the girl a tool, her eyes
were savage.
“She is pretty,” Aggie observed. “Perhaps, after all, he _does_ love
her. Or if not he may learn to. And he cannot be very unhappy about
marrying her. He said, you know, it was a perfect day.”
“Go down and get into the car,” Tish said, in a choking voice. “I’ll fix
his perfect day for him. Go down and start the engine.”
I took a last glance as Aggie and I left the License Court, and if we
had had any doubts they vanished then, because he was speaking to the
girl with angry gestures, and she was certainly crying.
“Brute,” Tish said, with her eyes on him. “A bully as well as a slacker.
Never mind. She won’t have to put up with him long. If I have any
influence in this community that youth will be drafted and sent to a mud
hole in France. Mark my words,” she went on, settling her hat with a
jerk, “that boy will be registered as a single man before this day’s
over. Go and start the engine, Lizzie. I daresay you remember that
much.”
Seeing that she had a plan, and “ours not to reason why, ours but to do
and die,” as Aggie frequently quotes, we went down to the street again.
I was even then vaguely apprehensive, an apprehension not without
reason, as it turned out. For, reaching over to start the engine, as
Tish had taught me by turning a lever on the dashboard and moving up a
throttle on the wheel, what was my horror to see the car moving slowly
off, with Aggie in the rear seat and as white as chalk.
Tish, in her patriotic fervor, had stopped the thing in gear.
I ran beside it, but was unable to get onto the running board. I then
saw Aggie, generally so timid, crawling over the back of the seat, and
called to her to put on the brake. She did so, but not until the car had
mounted the sidewalk and struck a policeman in the back.
This would not be worth recording, as there were no immediate results,
had it not been for the policeman. It brought us to his attention, and
came near to ruining Tish’s plan. But of this later on.
I do not, even now, know just what arguments Tish used with Myrtle. Yes,
that was her name. We had a great deal of time later on to learn her
name, and all about her. The matter is a delicate one, and we have not
since discussed the events of that day. But Aggie said later on, when we
were sitting in the dark and wondering what to do next, that Tish had
probably waited until Mr. Culver went out to look up a minister.
Whatever Tish said or did, the result was that only a short time after
Aggie had jammed on the brake, they came out together, and Tish was
carrying a suitcase. Myrtle was hanging back, but Tish had her by the
arm.
At first she did not see us. When she did, however, she worked her way
through the crowd and opened the rear door.
“Get in,” she said, in an uncompromising tone.
“But I really think,” said Myrtle, “that I should——”
“Get in,” Tish said again, firmly. “We can talk it over later.”
“But are you sure he sent for me?” she demanded, looking ready to cry
again. “I think it must be a mistake. He said to wait, and he would come
back as soon as——”
It was the crowd that really settled the matter, for some one yelled
that the girl had been eloping and that her mother had caught her in the
License Court. Most of them were men, but they called to Myrtle not to
let the old lady bully her. Also one young man said that if her young
man didn’t come back she could have him and welcome. It frightened
Myrtle, and she got into the car and asked Tish to drive away quickly.
“I know it will be in the papers,” she said forlornly. “And my people
think I am at a house party.”
But the next moment I caught her looking at Tish’s hat, and her lip
quivered.
“I guess I’m nervous,” she said, in a choking voice. “I had no idea it
was so much trouble to get married.”
Tish heard her, although she had her hands full getting the car back to
the street. She said nothing until we were in the street again, and
moving away slowly.
“Then you might as well settle down and be quiet,” she said. “Because
you are not going to be married today.”
Myrtle may have suspected something before that, perhaps when she first
saw Tish’s hat, for she looked dazed for a moment, and then stood up in
the car and yelled that she was being kidnapped. Tish threw on the gas
just then, and she had to sit down, but I looked back just in time to
see Mr. Culver and the policeman standing in the center of the street,
gesticulating madly.
“Little fool!” Tish muttered, and bent low over the wheel.
Well, they followed us. At the top of the first hill the girl was crying
hard, and there were eleven automobiles, Aggie counted, not far behind
us. At the end of the next rise there were still ten. It was then that
Tish, with her customary presence of mind, told us to scatter the tacks
over the road behind us.
The result was that only four were to be seen when we got to the top of
Graham’s Hill, and they had lost time and were far away. Tish was in a
terrible way. Her plan had been merely to take the girl away, because
Culver belonged in her precinct and it was her business, as ordered by
the government, to gather in all the slackers, matrimonial or otherwise.
Then, after Culver had registered as a single man, he could, as Tish
tersely observed later, either marry or go and drown himself. It was
immaterial to her.
But now we were likely to be arrested for abduction, and the whole thing
would get in the papers.
“Tish,” Aggie begged, “do stop and put her out in the road. That Culver
and the policeman are in the first car. I can see them plainly—and they
can pick her up and take her back.”
But Tish ignored her, and kept on. She merely asked, once, if we had any
scissors with us, and on Aggie finding a pair in her knitting bag, said
to get them out and have them ready.
I pause here for a moment to reflect on Tish’s resourcefulness. How many
times, in the years of our association, has her active brain come to our
rescue in trying times? And, once the danger is over, how quickly she
becomes again one of us, busy with her charities, her Sunday school
class, and her knitting for the poor! Indomitable spirit and Christian
soul, her only fault, if any, perhaps a slight lack of humor, that is
Letitia Carberry.
“Watch for a barbed wire fence, Lizzie,” she said, as we flew along.
“And see how near they are.”
Well, they were very close, but owing to Tish leaving the macadam at
this point, they lost time at a crossroads. At the top of the next hill
Aggie said she could not see anything of them. It was then that Myrtle
tried to jump out, and would have succeeded had not Tish speeded up the
car.
I could hear Aggie trying to soothe her, and telling her that Tish was
not insane, but was merely saving her from a terrible fate.
“I have never been married, my dear, owing to an unfortunate
circumstance,” she said, in her gentle voice. “But to marry without
love——”
The girl sat up, startled.
“But how do you know I don’t love him?” she demanded.
“I am speaking of the young man,” said Aggie. “My dear child, all over
this great land of ours today, here and there are wretches who would use
a confiding young woman in order——”
“Barbed wire!” said Tish exultantly, and stopped the car with a jerk. In
an instant she was out in the road, cutting lengths of barbed wire from
a fence with the scissors and placing them across the road behind us.
Her expression was set and tense. When she had placed some six pieces of
wire in position, she returned to the car.
“We can thank the war for that,” she observed, coolly. “As long as the
barbed wire fences hold out they’ll never get us.”
The first car was in sight by that time, and we could see that Mr.
Culver and the policeman were in it. They shouted with joy when they saw
us, but Tish merely smiled, and let in the clutch. Soon after we heard a
series of small explosions, and Tish observed that the enemy attack was
checked against our barbed wire, and that she reckoned we could hold the
position indefinitely.
Aggie looked back and reported that they were both out of the car, and
that the policeman was standing on one foot and hopping up and down.
It had been Tish’s intention, as I learned later, merely to take the
young woman for a country ride, and there to strive to instill into her
the weakness and folly of being married by Mr. Culver as an exemption
plea. But as we had been making forty-five miles an hour by the
speedometer, there had been little opportunity.
However, as the last car was now standing on four rims in the barbed
wire entanglement behind us, and as Tish’s farm was not far ahead, she
improved the occasion with a short but highly patriotic speech, flung
over her shoulder.
“I don’t believe it,” said Myrtle, sullenly. “He loves me. We only ran
away today instead of some other day later because my father is leading
the parade in my town, and mother is presenting a flag at the
schoolhouse.”
“Very well,” said Tish. “If he loves you, well and good. When your young
man has registered, I’ll see that you get married, if I have to kidnap a
preacher to do it. But I’ll tell you right now, I don’t think you’ll be
getting anything worth having.”
Well, Myrtle grew quieter then, and I heard Aggie saying Miss Tish never
made a promise she could not fulfill. She then told about Mr. Wiggins,
and had just reached the place where he had slipped on the eve of his
wedding and fallen off a roof, when the car stopped dead.
Tish pushed a few things on the dashboard, but it only hiccoughed twice
and then stopped breathing.
“No gasoline!” she exclaimed, in a rage. “We’ll have to run for it.”
The farmhouse was in sight now, about a half mile ahead. Aggie groaned,
but got out and turned to Myrtle. But Myrtle was sitting back in the car
with a gleam of triumph in her eyes.
“Certainly _not_,” she said calmly.
“Very well,” Tish replied. “I don’t know but you are just as well where
you are. That last car is done for, if I know anything about barbed
wire, and they’re not likely to chase a machine on foot. They’re
probably on their way back to town now, and I hope the policeman has to
hop all the way. It’s only forty miles or so.”
She then started up the road, but turned:
“Bring her suitcase, Lizzie,” she said. “There’s no use leaving it there
for tramps to come along and steal it.”
She then stalked majestically up the road, and we followed. I am not a
complaining woman, but if that girl had left any clothes at home they
couldn’t have amounted to much. Aggie refused to help with the suitcase,
as she had her knitting bag, and as any exertion in summer brings on her
hay fever.
It was perhaps five minutes later that I heard a faint call behind me,
and turned to see Myrtle coming along behind. She was not crying now,
and her mouth was shut tight.
“I suppose,” she said angrily, “that it does not matter if tramps get
_me_.”
“Miss Tish invited you to the farm,” I replied.
“Invited!” she snapped. “If this is what she calls an invitation, I’d
hate to have her make it a request.”
However, she seemed to be really a very nice girl, although misguided,
for she took one end of the suitcase. But I learned then how difficult
it is for the average mind to grasp the high moral purpose and lofty
conception of a woman like Tish.
“I might as well tell you now,” she said, “that I don’t believe they’ll
pay any large sum. They’re not going to be very keen about me at home,
since this elopement business.”
“Who’ll pay what sum?”
“The ransom,” she said, impatiently. “You don’t suppose I fell for all
that patriotic stuff, do you?”