Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.
Ive been a bad girl, Sudie, said Johnsy. Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.
An hour later she said.
Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.
The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.
Even chances, said the doctor, taking Sues thin, shaking hand in his. With good nursing youll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable.
The next day the doctor said to Sue: Shes out of danger. Youve won. Nutrition and care now thats all.
And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woolen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.
I have something to tell you, white mouse, she said. Mr Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldnt imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colors mixed on it, and look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didnt you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, its Behrmans masterpiece he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell.
The Handbook of Hymen
Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you cant tell me why our college professors shouldnt be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to expect. But theres the other side of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.
We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army through a peace conference.
Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of green-gages,[16] and leave us a newspaper of modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes.
That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper.
If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men tip in a eighteen-by-twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature wont stand it.
When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each others jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of an edict to me. Says he:
I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half-masticated noises that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cows cud, only shes lady enough to keep hers to herself, and you aint.
Mr Green, says I, you having been a friend of mine once, I have some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for society between you and a common yellow three-legged cur pup, one of the inmates of this here cabin would he wagging a tail just at present.
This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.