PAGE 11
Tish Does Her Bit
by
It was about this time that Charlie Sands came to see me one day, looking worried.
“Look here,” he said, “what’s this about my having appendicitis?”
“Well, you ought to know,” I replied rather tartly. “Don’t ask me if you have a pain.”
“But I haven’t,” he said, looking aggrieved. “I’m all right. I never felt better.”
He then said that once, when a small boy, he had been taken with a severe attack of pain, following a picnic when he had taken considerable lemonade and pickles, followed by ice cream.
“I had forgotten it entirely,” he went on. “But the other day Aunt Tish recalled the incident, and suggested that I get my appendix out. It wouldn’t matter if she had let it go at that. But she’s set on it. I may waken up any morning and find it gone.”
I could only stare at him, for he is her favorite nephew, and I could not believe that she would forcibly immolate him on a bed of suffering.
“I used to think she was fond of me,” he continued. “But she’s–well, she’s positively grewsome about the thing. She’s talked so much about it that I begin to think I have got a pain there. I’m not sure I haven’t got it now.”
Well, I couldn’t understand it. I knew what she thought of him. Had she not, when she fell out of the tree, immediately left him all her property? I told him about that, and indeed about the entire incident, except the secret in the barn. He grew very excited toward the end, however, where we met the blackberry-cordial person, and interrupted me.
“I know it from there on,” he said. “Only I thought Culver had made it up, especially about the gun being levelled at him, and the machine in the creek bed. He’s on my paper; nice boy, too. Do you mean to say–but I might have known, of course.”
He then laughed for a considerable time, although I do not consider the incident funny. But when I told him about Mr. Culver’s impertinent question at the recruiting station, he sobered.
“You tell her to keep her hands off him,” he said. “I need him in my business. And it won’t take much to send him off to war, because he’s had a disappointment in love and I’m told that he walks out in front of automobiles daily, hoping to be struck down and make the girl sorry.”
“I consider her a very sensible young woman,” I observed. But he was already back to his appendix.
“You see,” he said, “my Aunt Letitia has a positively uncanny influence over me, and if I have it out I can’t enlist. No scars taken.”
I put down my knitting.
“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.