Uncle Tutt's Typhoids

Uncle Tutt's Typhoids by LUCY FURMAN It was three days before the opening of the women's school in mid-August that Susanna Reeves, their visitor from the Blue Grass, rode off behind Uncle Tutt Logan as volunteer nurse for the family of five, renters on his place, down with typhoid. Uncle Tutt was an old man who lived by himself about two miles up Troublesome. He had been, as he expressed it, of a "rambling natur'" in his youth, had somewhere acquired a taste for reading, and now came down frequently to get books from die women's library. When Susanna stepped into the door of the tumbledown cabin up the hollow from Uncle Tutt's house, the five sick persons, a man and a little boy in one bed, a woman and two little girls in the other, lay in their soiled day-clothing among the dingy quilts—there were no sheets. A boy of seven sat on the floor, trying to pacify two dirty, wailing babies. A piece of fat meat dripped over a mealbarrel in one corner, and flies swarmed everywhere. "Hit's beyand a man-person," said Uncle Tutt, with a gesture of despair. "I never knowed where to begin at. A woman is called for." Susanna's heart was in her shoes, but she made no sign. "The first thing," she said, "is to fill the washkettle there in the yard and build a fire under it. While you do that, I must try to find a place where these babies can be taken care of. Is there no woman in the neighborhood?" "Milly Graham is the most nighest," he replied. "She lives about two-whoopsand -a-holler up Troublesome, and is as clever-turned a woman as ever I seed, From The Quare Women by Lucy Furman. C The Atlantic Monthly Press, reprinted with ? with not more 'n nine or ten of her own." Susanna quickly washed some of the dirt off the faces, hands, and feet of the babies, one of whom was two years old, the other less than one, sought in vain for clean things to put on them, and then, with the help of the small boy, George, took them up the creek. Milly Graham, who was lifting clothes out of a steaming kettle by the water's edge and battling them on a smooth stump, laid down her battling-stick and came forward, barefooted and kind-faced, followed by a train of towheads. "Sartain ?1 take 'em in, pore leetle scraps," she said, when Susanna had explained the situation, "Two more hain't nothing to me, nohow, with sech a mess of my own." Gathering both babies in her arms, she sat down on the battling-stump, opened her dress, and offered a generous breast to each. "I allow the biggest hain't beyand taking teat," she said. It was not indeed—both sucked as if they were starved. "I heard about Uncle Tutt's typhoids," continued Milly, "and I would have went right down; but that-air next-to-least-one of mine is croupy and chokes so bad I'm afeard to leave hit a minute, and all is jest a-getting over measles. Onliest time I been off the place in a year was the quare women's Working, the Fourth of July. I mustered the whole biling and tuck 'em down-along, and seed as fine a time as ever I seed. But that was where they all kotched them measles. I mind you a-being there that day—I alius remembered you from them pretty black eyes and that lavish of black hair. "Next thing I heared, you women was opyright 1923 by Lucy Furman. Published by ermission of the publisher. 128 all holping with the typhoid down at The Forks—'pears like hit strikes 'em as reglar as summer. Hit was right sensible for Uncle Tutt to go down atter one of you women. Pore ole widder—what could he do? A lone man's the most helplessest creetur on top of the earth. What possesses him to live that a-way, cooking and washing and even milking for hisself, the...