Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/267

 believing that a "nigger" could not suffer from anything but yellow fever or cracked shins. For this reason he became genuinely interested in Clem's case as it was later reported to him by Young Doc.

To the rest of Little Arcady the case was also of interest. Sympathy had heretofore been with Clem, because Miss Caroline paid him no wages, and was believed to take what he earned from other people.

Now, however, an important number of persons veered—in wonder if not in absolute sympathy. That the woman should watch and nurse the black fellow, apparently with perfect single-heartedness, was not to be squared with any known laws of human association. "Nursing a nigger in her own house with her own hands," was the fashion of describing this untoward spectacle. It was like taking a sick horse into your house, and making play that it was human. The already puzzled town was further mystified, and it is probable that Miss Caroline fell a little in public esteem. Her course was not thought to be edifying. She could have sent Clem to the county poor farm, where he would have been seen to, after a fashion good enough for one of his color, by the proper authorities.

My own bewilderment was at first hardly less than the town's. Had Miss Caroline suddenly changed her manner toward Clem, showing regret, however belated, for her previous abuse of him, I should have understood. That would have been a simple case of