Belles on their Toes

stupit, I am. I'm so stupit that even though I seen a hundred cases just like it in the war, I don't know what it is. I seen them dying like flies from it:"
    "Is it really bad?" Bill asked. "Will everybody catch it?"
    "You'll catch it, you bold thing you, if you don't stop scratching. You'll be out of the Club for a hundred years."
    "Not that!" Ernestine protested in mock terror. "Anything but that."
    Tom pretended not to hear. But there was no doubt that Ernestine—or the Princess, as Tom sometimes called her with an exaggerated courtesy—was out of the Club for a thousand years and four days.
    Tom resumed his pacing and mumbling. "I was an orderly in the horsepittle for ten months during the war for nothing. Had my eyes closed all the time. Sure I did."
    The war to which Tom alluded was the Spanish-American. If, as Tom frequently alleged, he actually had served as a hospital orderly, medicine had progressed considerably since those days. For Tom placed all his reliance on quinine and castor oil. And we weren't completely sure he knew that the practice of bleeding the patient had been pretty generally discontinued.
    What was good medicine for humans, he believed, was equally beneficial for animals. Tom was a collector of pets, both wild and domesticated, much to the disgust of Dad. Dad used to complain that feeding almost a score of human mouths was more than any white man's burden, and that it was an outrage to be required to give sustenance to the fauna which followed Tom home or begged handouts on the kitchen window sill.
    Let one of Tom's pets show up with a warm nose, sagging beak, coated tongue, fetid breath, or bloodshot eye, and Tom would swiftly mix a dose of caster oil and Quinine Remedy, add a bit of sugar to make the dose more palatable, and force the solution through the mouth or down the bill of the debilitated creature.
    None of them ever died or seemed to hold a lasting grudge. But Tom's cat, Fourteen—Tom numbered his cats progressively—would get down on her belly and start sneaking toward the back door every time she saw him reach up over the kitchen sink, where he kept the Quinine Remedy.
    Tom's diagnoses for persons other than himself were varied, uninhibited, and sometimes exotic. But when he was sick himself, he always diagnosed the ailment as pleurisy, regardless of whether the symptoms were a bleeding nose or a swollen foot. On these occasions, he would send out for the Quinine Remedy's large economy flagon, and it never failed him.

    Ernestine and Martha were in bed too by the time Dr. Burton arrived. Whenever the doctor came to our house, Tom was the medical orderly again. He said "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and he sucked in his stomach. Dr. Burton knew of Tom's claims of medical experience, and assured himself of Tom's cooperation by treating him as a learned colleague in the profession.
    "What is it?" Anne asked anxiously, as Dr. Burton leaned over Bill's bed. "Tom keeps hinting that it's something serious."
    "He says he's seen them die like flies from it," Bill said. "But all it does is itch."
    "It's obvious, eh Tom?" said the physician.
    "Yes, sir. Only I wouldn't tell them nothing because Mr. Gilbreth made me promise."
    "Anyone can see it's chicken pox. No need to make an examination, would you say so, Tom?"
    "Is that all," Anne sighed.
    "That's what I thought, sir," said Tom. "Either that or smallpox, I wasn't sure which."
    "It's nothing to worry about," Dr. Burton told Anne.
    "I'm not worried," said Anne, glaring at Tom, "now that I know it isn't leprosy or cholera."
    "You'll all be up and around again in a few days," Dr. Burton assured her.
    "What do you mean, 'all'?" Anne asked. "Chicken pox is a children's disease, isn't it?"
    "Have any of you had chicken pox?"
    "I guess not," Anne admitted.
    "Then you'll all get it. But Tom will take good care of you."
    "Yes, sir," Tom beamed.
    "I'll have some medicine sent around," the doctor continued. "And Tom, I'll count on you to see they keep regular."
    "I've got just the thing," said Tom, and it was obvious that Dr. Burton's medical standing had skyrocketed in his estimation.
    "Castor oil," moaned Bill.
    "A little castor oil never hurt anyone," Dr. Burton agreed.
    "Did you hear that, Tom?" Bill said, grasping at a straw. "Dr. Burton says a little."
    "That's right," the doctor cautioned. "Not too much." He turned to Tom. "I suppose you've had chicken pox?"
    "No, sir," said Tom. "When I was a kid I had something that looked just like it.