Life — April 2, 1914 — page 28: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

EASTER SUPPOSE YOUR PASTOR FOLLOWED YOUR EXAMPLE? The Retum MALTBY staggered home in the light of the early afternoon. He was feverish and extremely unvirile. He managed to crawl into bed. Later his wife found him there, the blankets heaped up. Said Mrs, Maltby: “What's the matter?” “T'm, sick.” Mrs. Maltby adjusted her hair by the looking-glass. She was going to a Thé Dansant. “Don’t get up,” she said, absently, Al TERE “and don't ask me to kiss you. I wouldn't catch it for anything. If you want anything, ring.” There was a rule in the Maltby house that when anyone was ill, it should be ignored. They were not Christian Scientists. They simply believed that it was unwise to encourage illness. Maltby accepted the situation manfully. When his wife had gone, however, he managed to extract from the nether- most regions of a drawer a clinical thermometer. His temperature was one hundred and three. He telephoned for the doctor. He heard his daughters talking about him outside of his room. “Isn't it horrid!” ‘ “We can’t have him around here.” “Yes, the dance is at four. They won't begin to come until five—they never do.” “Did you telephone for the music?” “ Certainly.” Maltby managed to reach out of bed and open the door. “Lizzie! Mildred! no dance here to-day.” “Why not, father?” “T'm sick, “Mother said we could have it; that you wouldn’t mind. We don't need your room.” An hour later the doctor came. “Um! Too early to say what is the matter. You must have absolute quiet. May be some days—— While that temperature is up, a light diet. Get this prescription filted.” “But there's nobody to fill it—be- sides——" “ Nobody?” No. Wife at a Thé Dansant. Girls giving a dance here. No one to wait on me. Everybody busy. Leave me to my fate. Don't care whether I live or die, anyway.” Jm! Better come to the hospital. T'll send an ambulance with a nurse. Fifty dollars a week, and absolute com- fort. Be here in an hour.” Maltby went out as the musicians came in. He snatched a few greens from the Thé Dansant decorations to make his room at the hospital look homelike. The nurse was under thirty, and tucked him into the ambulance as if he were a motherless child—which he was. At the end of three days, when There will be Maltby’s fever had left and he was taking orange juice and chops and be- ing read to aloud, he said to the trained nurse: “Do you know, Estelle, no one around home has any use for a sick man these days? They can’t even notice him. A well man isn’t attract- ing too much attention, but a sick man—bah!” “Never mind, dearie,” said the trained nurse, patting his pillow; “ for- get it.” It was a week later that Maltby ap- peared, about noon, in his own house. He opened one door, and found the two girls in bed. He opened another, and found his wife in bed. She said: “ What did you have?” “tGrippe.” “Well, you didn’t get away soon enough. We've got it.” "Sot." Then Maltby went to the downstairs ‘phone and telephoned for a palm man, a macaroon and ice cream man, a wax man, a regular band, and fourteen friends, including Estelle. “Drums?” said the band man over the ‘phone. “All you've got. Also timbrels and cymbals,” and he added, smilingly, to himself : “After all, dances last!” he dances best who ‘THE CHORUS GIRL ON THE STREET, AND ON THE STAGE comicbooks.com