"Now grab the winkers of your lower eyelid in your left hand. Now
raise the right hand, push the under lid under the overlid and haul
the overlid over the underlid; when you have the overlid well over the
under----"
Wellington waved him away: "Say, what do you think I'm trying to do?
stuff a mattress? Get out of my way. I want my wife--lead me to my
wife."
"An excellent idea," said Dr. Temple, who had been praying for a
reconciliation.
He guided Wellington with difficulty to the observation room and,
finding Mrs. Wellington at the desk as usual, he began: "Oh, Mrs.
Wellington, may I introduce you to your husband?"
Mrs. Wellington rose haughtily, caught a sight of her suffering
consort and ran to him with a cry of "Jimmie!"
"Lucretia!"
"What's happened--are you killed?"
"I'm far from well. But don't worry. My life insurance is paid up."
"Oh, my poor little darling," Mrs. Jimmie fluttered, "What on earth
ails you?" She turned to the doctor. "Is he going to die?"
"I think not," said the doctor. "It's only a bad case of
cinder-in-the-eyetis."
Thus reassured, Mrs. Wellington went into the patient's eye with her
handkerchief. "Is that the eye?" she asked.
"No!" he howled, "the other one."
She went into that and came out with the cinder.
"There! It's just a tiny speck."
Wellington regarded the mote with amazement. "Is that all? It felt as
if I had Pike's Peak in my eye." Then he waxed tender. "Oh, Lucretia,
how can I ever----"
But she drew away with a disdainful: "Give me back my hand, please."
"Now, Lucretia," he protested, "don't you think you're carrying this
pretty far?"
"Only as far as Reno," she answered grimly, which stung him to retort:
"You'd better take the beam out of your own eye, now that you've taken
the cinder out of mine," but she, noting that they were the center of
interest, observed: "All the passengers are enjoying this, my dear.
You'd better go back to the café."
Wellington regarded her with a revulsion to wrath. He thundered at
her: "I will go back, but allow me to inform you, my dear madam, that
I'll not drink another drop--just to surprise you."
Mrs. Wellington shrugged her shoulders at this ancient threat and
Jimmie stumbled back to his lair, whither the men followed him.
Feeling sympathy in the atmosphere, Little Jimmie felt impelled to
pour out his grief:
"Jellmen, I'm a brok'n-heartless man. Mrs. Well'n'ton is a queen among
women, but she has temper of tarant----"
Wedgewood broke in: "I say, old boy, you've carried this ballast for
three days now, wherever did you get it?"
Wellington drew himself up proudly for a moment before he slumped back
into himself. "Well, you see, when I announced to a few friends that I
was about to leave Mrs. Well'n'ton forever and that I was going out
to--to--you know."
"Reno. We know. Well?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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