ONIONS!
They went to the movies that evening, a jovial, noisy “gang” of nearly
a dozen that included the “Three Guardsmen,” Willard, Don Harris,
Stacey Ross, Cal Grainger and several more. Unfortunately, the picture
lacked action to a lamentable degree, being largely concerned with
the doings of a few ladies and gentlemen who when at home, which was
infrequent, lived in large white marble palaces in Westchester County,
New York. At least, the titles placed the scene of the story in
Westchester County, but Martin expressed incredulity, asserting that he
had never seen palmettoes and cocoanut palms growing in that locality
in such profusion. Jack Macon, however, was of the opinion that “anyone
as rich as those guys could have their lawns trimmed with palms even if
they lived at the North Pole!” The hero was a strapping gentleman with
a broad, flat face, large, limpid eyes and a very brief mustache. He
dressed immaculately on all occasions, which, since he, like everyone
else, was forever “weekending” somewhere, must have caused him a
great deal of thought and care. Of course, he had a Japanese valet at
his beck and call, and that probably helped. Don Harris declared that
when he became wealthy he would have a valet just like the one in the
picture. “Why,” he marveled, “that fellow doesn’t even have to go to
the telephone. The valet pulls the thing out by the roots and brings it
to him wherever he is! That’s what I call service!”
Paul Nichols, who had played center all through the afternoon’s game
and who, consequently, was rather tired, went sound asleep somewhere
about the third reel and snored loudly until the final “fade-out,” to
the amusement of his companions and the audience in general. Martin
expressed the fear, loudly enough to be heard by Bob, several seats
distant, that Nichols had contracted the sleeping sickness from “one of
our number.” The comedy that followed the big picture provided a few
“fine moments,” but, on the whole, the party considered that they had
wasted the evening. Nichols was aroused with difficulty and led, in a
comatose condition, up the aisle and into the street where the brisk
October breeze that was hurrying and scurrying through the little town
awakened him more thoroughly. Having missed most of the entertainment,
Nichols insisted on partaking of food and drink and, being in funds
this evening, invited the party to visit the lunch-cart. This vividly
painted institution stood at night in the square at the other side of
town, a matter of twelve blocks in distance, but, as Nichols pointed
out, the night was still young. So they set out, decorously joyous,
along West Street, “window shopping” as they went, and turned down
Meadow Street and finally reached the Square and hailed the crimson
and blue windows of the “Owl Night Lunch” with shouts of approval that
won them the fleeting interest of the single blue-coated guardian of
the law on duty there. Fortunately, since their numbers were many, the
lunch-cart held but a solitary patron, a car conductor indulging in the
delicacy referred to on the wall as “Tonight’s Special: Pork Chop and
Fried Onions, 30c.” The viands had diffused a perceptible fragrance
through the establishment, but no one voiced criticism save Martin.
Martin halted at the doorway and registered suspicion followed by
disgust.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bob, behind him. “Go on in!”
“Onions!” said Martin in pained tones.
“What of it?”
“I can’t stand ’em. Gee, the place is full of ’em!”
“Well, you don’t have to eat them,” replied Bob comfortingly, while
those behind him earnestly requested “gangway!” Martin allowed himself
to be shoved inside, but during the subsequent proceedings he wore his
nose in an elevated position and looked most unhappy, a circumstance
that interested Bob greatly for a reason not then apparent. Sandwiches
and coffee constituted the menu served. Bob generously offered to buy
Martin a chopped onion sandwich if he would eat it, which offer was
thanklessly, almost rudely, declined. That banquet cost Paul Nichols
most of his cash in hand, but he settled the bill in an almost regal
manner; quite, as Martin commented, as though he lived amongst the
palms of Westchester!
Going back, Willard walked with Joe and Jack Macon, and the talk was
mostly of the day’s game. Joe was rather cynical and predicted disaster
in the Kenly contest unless things got better soon. “We need beef on
the team,” said Joe bitterly. “We’ve got plenty of fellows who know
football, but they’re too lady-like, Jack. It doesn’t do to stop and
apologize before you hit the line or keel a chap over! Kenly will bring
a lot of hard-hitting ‘rough-necks’ that’ll make us look like a parcel
of ‘co-eds’!”
“Oh, we aren’t that bad,” said Jack soothingly. “It’s early yet--”
“Early nothing! The season’s half over! Gee, we’ve got to learn to
fight, Jack, or we’ll get literally walked on!”
“Seems to me the backfield’s a bit light, Joe.”
“Of course it is, and it’s lighter than ever since Lake’s gone to left
end. We’ve got to find a full-back, and find him mighty quick, and
that’s no dream!”
“Too bad you couldn’t land that fellow Harmon you were talking about,”
said Jack. Then he turned in a puzzled way to Willard. “Say, your
name’s Harmon, too, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. “That’s odd!”
“Not very,” said Joe hurriedly. “The Harmon I was after was Brand’s
brother. If we’d got him we’d been fixed.”
“What happened?” asked Jack. “I understood it was all fixed up.”
“Oh, he changed his mind,” replied Joe carelessly. “Went into the Navy,
didn’t he, Brand?”
“Yes,” corroborated Willard gravely.
“Too bad,” murmured Jack. “Too bad you aren’t your brother, Harmon!”
“Well, Brand’s doing pretty well where we had him today,” said Joe.
“Rather!” agreed the other. “He surely had one fine moment this
afternoon. If it hadn’t been for that Lorimer end or half--which was
he? Half?--well, if it hadn’t been for him Harmon would have scored in
a romp!”
“That’s the trouble with C Formation,” replied Joe. “If the runner does
get away he has no interference half the time. The end’s supposed to
get free and go ahead, but he can’t do it very often. The more I think
about today’s game, fellows, the more certain I am that we were mighty
lucky to break even! Lorimer ought to have won on the showing she made.”
“Well, she didn’t,” answered Jack cheerfully. “And results count.”
Up ahead, Bob was questioning Martin regarding the latter’s lack of
enthusiasm for onions. “What is it you don’t like about them, Mart? The
taste or the smell or what?”
“I don’t like either,” said Martin. “Folks who eat onions belong to a
low order of humanity. Criminals and idiots and such folks are always
fond of them, I’ve read.”
“Where do you get that stuff?” asked Stacey Ross. “Look at Garibaldi.”
“Where?” asked Martin flippantly.
“Wasn’t he a patriot and a man of brains and--and blameless life?”
pursued Stacey.
“I guess so,” assented Martin doubtfully.
“All right! Garibaldi invented onions, didn’t he?”
Martin viewed him suspiciously. “Well, maybe he did, but I’ll bet he
didn’t eat them! Carbol invented carbolic acid, but he didn’t drink it,
did he?”
“Garibaldi,” remarked Bob gravely, “made onions his principal diet: ate
them three times a day and fed his army on them!”
“Oh, well, he was an Italian,” said Martin. “I’m talking about folks in
this country.”
“George Washington invariably began the day with a raw sliced onion,”
said Bob. “History tells you that.”
“Sure,” asserted Stacey. “Wasn’t it Washington who said ‘In onion there
is strength’?”
“You fellows make me weary,” retorted Martin. “I’ll bet you eat them
yourselves! As I remarked hitherto, the onion is the favorite fruit
of the mentally deficient! And you fellows talk like you never ate
anything else!”
Stacey continued to expatiate on the merits of the onion, but Bob
relapsed into silence. He had been visited by an idea and he was busy
developing it all the rest of the way back to school. When he said good
night to Martin later in front of Lykes there was an expression on his
face that might have caused the other some uneasiness had he noticed it.
“It’s awfully funny,” remarked Martin after dinner the next day, “but I
can still taste those onions, Brand.”
“What onions?” asked Willard.
“In that lunch-cart last night. Taste the smell of them, I mean. It’s
just as though I’d eaten them myself. Gosh, I didn’t enjoy my dinner a
bit, either. Everything seemed to smell of the beastly things!”
“We didn’t have onions at our table,” said Willard.
“Neither did we, but I’ll swear I could almost smell them! It’s queer,
but I simply can’t stand the smell of onions. It almost makes me sick.
I can go a little of it, of course, and I manage to eat soups and
things like that that are flavored with onions, but I don’t like them.”
“Maybe there was onion in the gravy or something,” Willard suggested.
But Martin shook his head.
“It isn’t that. I guess I got my lungs full of the smell last night.
Funny thing is, though, that it seems almost as if I could _taste_
them!”
“You’ll get over it,” Willard consoled. “Let’s go for a walk. Maybe the
air will do you good.”
Later Martin confessed that the imaginary onions bothered him less, but
after supper the trouble recurred, and he was fairly miserable and wore
a pained look all the evening. “I guess it’s dyspepsia,” he confided to
them in Bob’s room. “No matter what I eat, seems as if it was flavored
with onion. I ought never to go near the beastly things.”
“You must have a very delicate stomach,” observed Bob sympathetically.
“I knew a fellow once who was like you. He couldn’t stand the sight of
garlic. He’d go a mile out of his way so as not to have to pass by a
garlic--er--grove. Used to get sick at the mere mention of the word!”
“Is that so?” asked Martin with almost a sneer. “What was his name?”
“His name? Why--er--Smith, Jack Smith. Did you know him?”
“No, but I knew an awful liar once,” answered Martin stiffly. “His name
wasn’t Jack, though, it was Robert.”
Afterwards, back in the room and preparing for bed, Martin spoke
earnestly of seeing a doctor on the morrow if he didn’t stop smelling
onions and even tasting them, and Willard said he thought it would be a
very sensible thing to do, and was careful to hide his smile behind the
jacket of his pajamas. In the morning, though, Martin was quite himself
again and told Willard he guessed he’d imagined those onions.
But two hours later, returning to Number 16 for a book, Willard
discovered a very pale and unhappy Martin stretched out on the
window-seat with his head on the ledge and a chilling October wind
ruffling his locks. “Onions,” groaned Martin in response to Willard’s
concerned inquiry. “I--I’ve got them again, something fierce!” He
closed his eyes and shuddered. “Do you smell them, Brand?” he asked
weakly.
Willard sniffed the air and truthfully replied that he didn’t. Martin
sighed dolorously. “I can’t make it out,” he said. “I was all right
this morning until breakfast. Then, just as soon as I got to the table
it came back. Everything seemed to smell of onions, and taste of ’em,
too. Why, even the coffee did!”
“I suppose you imagined it,” murmured Willard.
“I suppose so. No one else noticed it. I guess I’ll have to cut
French. Tell Metcalfe I’m sick, will you, Brand?”
“Yes, but why don’t you take something?”
“What’ll I take?” groaned Martin.
“Soda-mint tablets are good, I think. Hot water, too. Want me to get
you some hot water?”
Martin nodded weakly but gratefully, and Willard went off to the
lavatory and presently returned with a tooth-mug filled with
scalding-hot water. As it was then time for a nine o’clock recitation,
he had to leave Martin sipping and shuddering. When he next saw him,
shortly before dinner, he was much better physically but in poor mental
condition. His disposition was utterly vile. He put his tongue out and
wagged it accusingly at Willard.
“I burned my tongue,” he said. “That water was too blamed hot!”
“Too bad,” replied Willard soothingly. “It made you feel better,
though, didn’t it?”
“What if it did? What’s the good of feeling better if your tongue is
all scalded?” Martin demanded huffily. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” asked Willard indignantly. “Not to burn your tongue,
you simp?”
“Tell me it was so hot! How’d I know?”
“I thought maybe you could tell by the feel of it,” answered Willard
dryly. “Most folks can!”
“Funny, aren’t you?” Martin turned disgruntedly to the window, and
after a moment Willard asked:
“Did you get to any classes?”
“Math,” grunted the other. “I was too sick for the rest of them. What
time is it?”
“Nearly half-past. Coming along?”
“I don’t believe I want any dinner. What’s the use? It’ll just taste
of--of those things!”
“Onions?” asked Willard innocently.
“Shut up! Don’t speak of ’em!” yelled Martin. “Now you’ve made me all
squirmy again!” He sank to the window-seat, placed anxious hands on his
waistcoat and glared at Willard accusingly. “I was feeling all right,
too!”
“Well, how did I know you didn’t want me to say--”
“Cut it out, I tell you!”
“I wasn’t going to say on--”
“You’re saying it!” shrieked Martin. “I hope you get it, too! When you
do, I’ll say ‘onions’ to you! You see if I don’t!”
“You just said it yourself,” said Willard, grinning.
“That’s different.” Martin glared ferociously. “You’re just trying to
make me sick again!”
“Oh, be good,” answered the other humoringly. “Tell you what I’ll do,
Mart. I’ll go over to the drug store and get you some soda-mints right
after dinner.”
Martin looked slightly mollified for an instant. Then he asked
suspiciously: “Do they taste awful?”
“N--no, not very. Come along to dinner. You’d better try to eat
something, even if you don’t feel hungry.”
“Well, all right, but I know I can’t eat.”