ne me good to have said so, but
Leonidas didn't look at it in that way. He was a sympathizer from
headquarters; seemed to like nothin' better'n to hear Homer tell how bad
off he was.

"What you need, Fales," says Leonidas, "is the country, the calm,
peaceful country. I know a nice, quiet little place, about a hundred
miles from here, that would just suit you, and if you say the word I'll
ship you off down there early to-morrow morning. I'll give you a letter
to an old lady who'll take care of you better than four trained nurses.
She has brought half a dozen children through all kinds of sickness,
from measles to broken necks, and she's never quite so contented as when
she's trotting around waiting on somebody. I stopped there once when I
was a little hoarse from a cold, and before she'd let me go to bed she
made me drink a bowl of ginger tea, soak my feet in hot mustard water,
and bind a salt pork poultice around my neck. If you'd just go down
there you'd both be happy. What do you say?"

Homer was doubtful. He'd never lived much in the country and was afraid
it wouldn't agree with his leak. But early in the morning he was up
wantin' to know more about it. He'd begun to think of that mob of snap
hunters that was booked to show up again at ten o'clock, and it made him
nervous. Before breakfast was over he was willing to go almost anywhere,
only he was dead set that me and Leonidas should trail along, too. So
there we were, with Homer on our hands.

Well, we packed a trunk for him, called a cab, and got him loaded on a
parlor car. About every so often he'd clap his hands to his side and
groan: "Oh, my heart! My poor heart!" It was as touchin' as the
heroine's speeches to the top gallery. On the way down Leonidas gave us
a bird's-eye view of the kind of Jim Crow settlement we were heading
for. It was one of those places where they date things back to the time
when Lem Saunders fell down cellar with a lamp and set the house afire.

The town looked it. There was an aggregation of three men, two boys and
a yellow dog in sight on Main Street when we landed. We'd wired ahead,
so the old lady was ready for us. Leonidas called her "Mother" Bickell.
She was short, about as thick through as a sugar barrel, and wore two
kinds of hair, the front frizzes bein' a lovely chestnut. But she was a
nice-spoken old girl, and when she found out that we'd brought along a
genuine invalid with a leak in his blood pump, she almost fell on our