26 TROTTY’S WEDDING TOUR.

“QO, is it broken?”

Everybody spoke at once and bothered the doctor, so none
of them got an answer for their pains. The doctor said :—
“Well take him home. I don’t want anybody but his
mother round.”

So they carried the poor little duellist home. It was a sad
procession. Lill followed crying, at a doubtful distance.
She would n’t speak to Merle, who went a little way and
stopped. Pompey Merino hid behind the ruins of Indiana,
and dared not show his muddy face.

And so the doctor poked and pushed and probed and
washed and sewed and bandaged, —all as gently as gentle
could be, to be sure, but that did n’t seem to make so much
difference then, — and Trotty cried and sobbed and wished
he’d never been divorced, and wished he’d never fought a
duel, and wished he ’d never been married at all, and at last
wished nothing whatsoever, for they put a great sponge to
his face, and he went away (so it seemed) at once into a
pleasant place where all the furniture was carved out of jelly
roll-overs and all the people went on wedding journeys every
other day.

And so, by and by, Doctor Bryonia went back to the dozen
patients Gvho had all waited but one, and he died the next
week), and people shut the doors softly all over the house, and
Lill went about with her handkerchief at her cyes, and Nita
and Nate came over and went to the back door to find out what
had happened. Somebody had told them that Trotty was

dead.