Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 10, 2025
"Myrtella says you were a strong, handsome young man, who could have turned your hand to almost anything, and look at you now! A broken-down loafer, sitting around the saloons, talking religion while your baby starves. I don't wonder Myrtella is ashamed of you, I am ashamed of you, and if this poor little girl ever lives to grow up, she will be ashamed of you, too!"
Myrtella, who had steeled herself for mortal combat, was not prepared for a foe who sat in the middle of the nursery bed, laughing behind a tumbled shock of shining brown hair. "Oh! this is Myrtella, isn't it?" asked the bear, shaking back her mane and smiling with engaging frankness. "Bertie says you are Chick's aunt, and Chick's an old friend of mine, isn't it funny?"
"Ain't no trouble 'bout dat," Uncle Jimpson said wisely; "you jes' let her peek over de blinds onct, an' you see what gwine happen." "Well, she ain't going to peek," Myrtella said firmly. "She ain't got a thought in her head, but gittin' Miss Hattie an' Bertie educated, an' keepin' Miss Connie straight, an' carryin' out that fool will of the Doctor's."
Myrtella tacked into it, like a sailing sloop, full rigged and all sails set, an angular, heavy-set person with a belligerent expression strangely at variance with the embarrassed, almost timid movements of her hands and feet.
Myrtella, his twin sister, who for fifteen years had presided over innumerable cooking ranges throughout the city, almost lost her new place through her interest in the affair. The one subject upon which Myrtella Flathers considered herself a connoisseur was murder. In sundry third floors back, she had for years followed the current casualties with burning interest.
"If there is one person in the world I'm layin' for it's a red-headed flood-sufferer." Norah on her way out encountered another visitor and turned back to announce him: "Git on to what Bertie has drawed out here! The craziest, dirtiest kid! Puts me in mind of a egg on a couple of toothpicks!" Myrtella, peering over her shoulder, suddenly scrambled down the steps.
Meanwhile, on the floor below, sitting on the cold bare steps beside the door of the elevator, two white-faced women waited anxiously. All was silent in the high, narrow corridor except for the footsteps of passing nurses, and the occasional sharp cry of pain, or groan of weariness from some suffering patient. "That's him!" cried Myrtella hysterically as one of these cries reached her. "No, no.
But in spite of her scoffing, Myrtella was impressed. For many years she had considered a visit to a spiritualist, or clairvoyant, one of her wildest and most extravagant dissipations. The possibility of having a medium in the family was a luxury not to be lightly dismissed. "Where'd you git the money fer the lessons?" she demanded suddenly. Phineas hesitated and was lost. "You spent Chick's!
Gooch said, taking his accustomed seat at the table, with a solicitous eye on the door where Myrtella would appear with the soup. "I shall do my best for him, but I have my doubts." "You say he has been here a week?" the Doctor asked. "Strange he has not been in to see us. He was always fond of the children, and professed a certain regard, I believe, for me. I want him to meet Mrs. Queerington."
Myrtella objected to the inroads these invaders made on his time and strength, and she also objected to the extra work their presence entailed upon her. In short, she felt that the family tree needed pruning, and she set herself right heartily to the job. By persistent discourtesy she managed to lop off one relative after another, until she gained for the Doctor a privacy hitherto undreamed of.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking