The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson (small books to read .TXT) 📕

“But sixteen dollars, Wully! The idea!”

“You’ll have it, anyway.”

“I will not!” She was indignant “Why, Wully, your coat, your overcoat was only ten last winter!”

“But I hadn’t any red dress to match. Nor any feather!”

The man had come back.

“If you want something cheap now, for your wife⁠—”

“I don’t want anything cheap!” said Wully, “We’ll take this.”

Chirstie stood examining it inside and out. She was wondering what her father would say to such a coat.

She wore the nobby coat away. Wully carried the old garment. He had been gay, almost hilarious all the morning, ever since selling the prairie chickens so well. And now as he looked at his stunning wife, walking demurely along in such grandeur, his spirits rose higher. He watched people look at her. He chuckled to see them.

They walked down the busy little street. He left the old coat at the hotel. She saw a shawl she admired, and he wanted to buy it for her. But she was thinking how nice it would be for his mother, a little soft fine shawl like that. He wondered that he hadn’t thought of that himself. They bought the shawl, and went on down the street. They came to a place where tintypes were taken. It came over him like a flash.

“We’ll go in and have our pictures taken!” he exclaimed.

“Oh,” she said hesitating. “How much will it cost?”

“Oh, nothing much!” he exclaimed. He made her go in with him. There was a picture, was there, he was thinking, that made Wee Johnnie look like the son of that snake? Well, there should soon be another that made him look like another man’s son. Chirstie had never had her likeness taken. But Wully had had his made in St. Louis, to be sent to his mother. He knew how to walk in and have the thing done grandly.

He sat down in a chair, and put the baby on one knee, paternally. On the other knee he spread out a great hand. Chirstie took her place behind him, her hand on his shoulder, her feather curling down over her hat, her new sixteen-dollar coat, her wine-colored skirts showing bravely. And when that was done, he made her sit down with the baby on her knee, for a picture of just the mother and son. And then a further happy thought came to him. He sat down and took the baby, and cuddled his face right up against his own, and demanded a picture.

“It ain’t usual,” the photographer protested. “I can’t take a picture like that! It ain’t usual!”

“This ain’t no usual baby!” Wully replied chuckling. Who could have made a statement more paternal than that? “I want his face against mine!” And he got the picture taken that way, in the end.

They sought the street again. Chirstie was rather overcome by her husband’s grandness. He had such a worldly air⁠—commanding people about. He kept getting more imperious, more happy all the time though he was entirely sober. After a while, when it was growing dusk, he spied a friend on the street, just going into his office.

“That’s Mr. Knight, Chirstie! You remember! The man that drove me home that time! I’ll take you to see him!” He wanted to show her to everybody.

They went into an office having not only a kerosene lamp, but a lamp with a rich green shade, most luxurious, most metropolitan-looking. Chirstie was shy, and Mr. Knight puzzled for a moment.

“I’m McLaughlin,” Wully explained. “The soldier you drove out to Harmony, two years ago. I was sick, you remember!”

Mr. Knight’s face lighted up with recognition.

“Come in, McLaughlin!” he said heartily. “I didn’t recognize you! Sit down!” Around a table at one end of the room, men were playing cards, well-dressed men, who paused and looked up, and continued looking at the newcomers. A tall wide bookcase screened off one corner into something like a private office and to this Mr. Knight led them.

“My wife!” Wully said proudly, as he seated them.

“Your wife? Your baby? Why, it doesn’t seem possible! How the time gets away! And where did you find her?” he asked, so frankly pleased with her appearance that she blushed more deeply than she had at his first remark.

“She’s from out there! From Harmony.”

“She is,” he exclaimed. He continued looking at her. “Well, I always said that that was a remarkable country. A remarkable country,” he drawled.

Wully was delighted. Knight was a man whose opinion was valuable, a prosperous man, a man dressed as men dress in cities, whose interest he felt was not merely assumed for political ends. “How’s your mother?” he went on. He asked about the children, and the crops, and the new town which was to be near them. Finally he said:

“Well you certainly don’t look much like you did that morning. You were sick. Skin and bones. Do you remember?”

“Do I remember!” exclaimed Wully. “Will I ever forget!” He turned to his wife. “Chirstie, I was sitting right down there by the elevator, where the sidewalk is built up high, you know. I wasn’t sitting, either, I was lying stretched out, to try to keep from throwing up! I thought I’d seen Jimmy Sproul out there, and I’d ride home with him, and when I hurried up to him, it wasn’t Jimmy at all! It just made me sick! And I was lying there when Mr. Knight came along, and began asking me what was the matter of me. He said he would take me home. ‘How far is it?’ you asked, and when I said twenty-six miles, you said, ‘Oh! Twenty-six miles!’ Naturally. That made some difference. My heart sank, as they say. Or maybe it was my breakfast trying to get out. Anyway, I had a pang of some kind. And you said, ‘You wait here!’ And pretty soon along you came with those grays! I tell you I felt better even then. I got better all the way home. Every step. It seemed that morning as if