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Updated: May 29, 2025
Minick would say, looking annoyed. "What's bringing you down?" "Oh, nothing. Nothing. Just had a little business to tend to over at the Exchange. Thought I'd drop in. How's business?" "Rotten." "I should think it was!" Old man Minick would agree. "I should think it was! Hm." George wished he wouldn't. He couldn't have it, that's all.
This when Nettie had gone out from two to four, between fittings. He chuckled and waggled his head. "I expect to be paid regular assistant's wages for this," he said. "I guess you don't need any wages, Mr. Minick," the woman said. "I guess you're pretty well fixed." "Oh, well, I can't complain." "Complain! I should say not! If I was to complain it'd be different.
There was in it hardly enough nourishment to sustain them. Then came the day when Ma Minick went downtown to see Matthews about that pain right here and came home looking shrivelled, talking shrilly about nothing, and evading Pa's eyes. Followed months that were just a jumble of agony, X-rays, hope, despair, morphia, nothingness.
They had not always planned for the coming of the three but they always had found a way, afterward. You managed, somehow, once the little wrinkled red ball had fought its way into the world. You managed. You managed. Look at George! Yet when he was born, thirty-nine years ago, Pa and Ma Minick had been hard put to it.
This was oral death, though he did not put it thus. He joined the other men. They were discussing Spiritualism. He listened, ventured an opinion, was heard respectfully and then combated mercilessly. He rose to the verbal fight, and won it. "Let's see," said one of the old men. "You're not living at the Grant Home, are you?" "No," old man Minick made reply, proudly.
Old man Minick would stroll over to the desk marked Satterlee, or Owens, or James. These brisk young men would toss an upward glance at him and concentrate again on the sheets and files before them. Old man Minick would stand, balancing from heel to toe and blowing out his breath a little.
"I live with my son and his wife. They wouldn't have it any other way." "Hm. Like to be independent myself." "Lonesome, ain't it? Over there?" "Lonesome! Say, Mr. what'd you say your name was? Minick? Mine's Hughes I never was lonesome in my life 'cept for six months when I lived with my daughter and her husband and their five children. Yes, sir.
Ma Minick prepared special dishes for him. The servant girl said, "Oh, now, Mr. George, look what you've done! Gone and spilled the grease all over my clean kitchen floor!" and wiped it up adoringly while George laughed and gobbled his bit of food filched from pot or frying pan. They had been a little surprised about Nettie. George was in the bond business and she worked for the same firm.
"That lunch didn't agree with me." "Why, it was a good plain lunch. I don't see " "Oh, it was plain enough, all right." Next day she did not come to finish her work. Sick, she telephoned. Nettie called it an outrage. She finished the sewing herself, though she hated sewing. Pa Minick said nothing, but there was a light in his eye.
Old man Minick didn't think much of that photograph, though he never said so. He needed no photograph of Ma Minick. He had a dozen of them; a gallery of them; thousands of them. Lying on his one pillow he could take them out and look at them one by one as they passed in review, smiling, serious, chiding, praising, there in the dark. He needed no picture on his dresser.
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