Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/280

Rh other hand, and now putting it up to your mouth to breathe upon it—so,—and altogether you're about the most forlorn and wretched spectacle of a man—"

"Yes, I know," said Floyd sympathetically. "Never mind that part."

"—You're so forlorn and wretched looking that another tired old wayfarer that you meet stops and offers to help you. So you stop and hold out your poor thumb to him—so—and he takes out of his pocket a lot of twine and cotton waste and oiled rags such as a man usually carries in his pocket, and he bandages your thumb with it. Then, because you are really a nice man, in spite of being so forlorn and wretched looking, you thank him politely and seem just as grateful! But the moment you've turned a bend in the road, you sit down and begin pulling off his bandage, for it's too clumsy and dirty and uncomfortable. And then, while you're just sitting there looking and wondering how you are ever going to get home with such a poor sore thumb, a beautiful stately girl in a pink organdie, with white kid slippers and wearing pearl ear-rings—"

"You might dwell a little on her," Floyd interrupted.

—"And bare-headed, but with one white rose nestling in the coils of her nut-brown hair," continued Marion, "comes down the road. As she's passing, she glances at you and at once exclaims in the sweetest voice you had ever heard, 'Ah, the poor thumb!' She takes out the roll of sterilized gauze bandage that she always carries,—for she has taken a course in District Nursing and is as good as she is beautiful. She bandages your thumb until it feels all new and smooth and clean; and you hate to have her stop; you like the way her cool little finger-tips just touch your hand and play over it; you begin to have an idea that if she'd only keep it up a little longer your poor sore thumb would turn into a musical instrument and suddenly begin to give forth beautiful sounds. And when she gets through with you, you feel so well that you