e
of it all right. While I'm out I'll stop and send Todd back. I'm going
to end his apprenticeship to-day, and so he'll help you dress. Nothing
like getting into your clothes when you're well enough to get out
of bed; I've done it more than once," and with a pat on his uncle's
shoulder and the readjustment of the blanket, he closed the door behind
him and left the room.

"Everything is working fine, auntie," he cried gaily as he passed the
old woman who was hanging out the last of her wash. "I'll be back in
an hour. Don't tell him yet--" and he strode out of the yard on his way
uptown.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Intruders of all kinds had thrust their heads between the dripping,
slightly moist, and wholly dry installments of Aunt Jemima's Monday
wash, and each and every one had been assailed by a vocabulary hurled
at them through the creaky gate, and as far out as the street--peddlers;
beggars; tramps; loose darkies with no visible means of support, who
had smelt the cooking in the air--even goats with an acquired taste for
stocking legs and window curtains--all of whom had either been invited
out, whirled out, or thrown out, dependent upon the damage inflicted,
the size of the favors asked, or the length of space intervening between
Jemima's right arm and their backs. In all of these instances the old
cook had been the broom and the intruders the dust. Being an expert in
its use the intruders had succumbed before they had gotten through their
first sentence. In the case of the goat even that privilege was denied
him; it was the handle and not the brush-part which ended the argument.
To see Aunt Jemima get rid of a goat in one whack and two jumps was
not only a lesson in condensed conversation, but furnished a sight one
rarely forgot--the goat never!

This morning the situation was reversed. It was Aunt Jemima who came
flying upstairs, her eyes popping from her head, her plump hands
flattened against her big, heaving bosom, her breath gone in the effort
to tell her dreadful news before she should drop dead.

"Marse George! who d'ye think's downstairs?" she gasped, bursting in the
door of his bedroom, without even the customary tap. "Oh, bless Gawd!
dat you'se outen dat bed! and dressed and tryin' yo' po' legs about the
room. He's comin' up. Got a man wid him I ain't neber see befo'. Says
he's a-lookin' fer somebody! Git in de closet an' I'll tell him you'se
out an' den I'll run an' watch for Marse Harry at de gate