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T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
June 1932
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early demise. Then they had taken him to the hospital and had notified a distracted Marguerite, who, it would seem, had promptly shifted the burden to his loyal friend, A l thea, by means of the telephone. “ And now,” he whispered to Djemileh, as Althea con ferred with the nurses as to a more comfortable room for the patient. “ And now, what will become of the house !” “ We’ll go right over,” murmured Djemileh comfort ingly. “ Or—no, we cannot tonight, but tomorrow or the next day.” It was nearly sundown of the next day before the two busy girls found time to push on to the yellow house and see Marguerite and Pansy. The front of the house seemed to be deserted, so they quickly passed around to the kitchen entrance. Through the screen door, across the porch, they went, and then at the kitchen itself they paused. Althea murmured : Marguerite was standing at the patent ironing board, clad in a priceless negligee, clumsily pushing an electric iron over some article that was not only insufficiently dry, but was also conspicuously dripping soapy water all around her. As she laboriously pushed the heavy implement, she was crying softly to herself. The kitchen bore little re semblance to the shining, orderly room it had been under Mr. Wu’s beneficent reign. The sink was filled with breaks fast and luncheon dishes unwashed. “ The luncheon dishes aren’t even scraped,” Djemileh observed to herself as she poked them about despondently. She then discovered that the drain board held a load of unwiped dishes that had been washed the night before, dried on their own account in rather a streaky fashion. It did not take Djemileh long to have the kettle boiling and to fill a large clean saucepan with very hot water. The dish pan was out of sight beneath its unwashed overload ; so for the present, she left it, concluding that one thing at a time was the best method for her to pursue at present. Quickly the dishes were whisked through the pan, and then Djemileh proceeded to look about for a dish towel. Mr. Wu’s towel rack was empty. Thé roller towel appeared to have had an unfortunate encounter with badly burned but tered toast. Where mere the dish towels ? Djemileh searched the kitchen, but found everywhere only the melancholy remains of various repasts that had been hastily eaten. In the butler’s pantry, a newspaper was spread that was piled high with orange skins. “ Literally dozens o f them,” said Djemileh reflectively. Beside them was the orange reamer bearing upon its sur faces much orange pulp that was distinctly reminiscent of many a glass of juice. Djemileh sighed and pulled upon the drawer. It con tained a can opener, a golf ball, and a piece of paraffin. The golf ball rolled violently about as the drawer jerked open, and with a stifled laugh, Djemileh fled to the kitchen porch, there to find a dish towel wrapped securely around [Continued on page 270] “There is sound of women’s weeping. There is sound o f women’s tears !”
D U S T “ The Lord is merciful and gracious, . . . for he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that me are dust ’ (Psa. 103:8,14).. Ü unt M ary sighed about it.” Did she? Poor old dear!” She says Pansy’s rooms are worse than ever,” Djemi- leh went on. “ Oh, darling! Impossible,” was Althea’s cry. “ And Marguerite’s are worse than that.” “ Why doesn’t Mr. Wu take hold ?” “ Because Aunt Mary, when she went on her vacation, told Mr. Wu to keep the living room and the downstairs bright and orderly, but to let the girls do their own rooms for their own good.” “ Did the girls consent ?” “ Well, Marguerite laughed and announced that her room was in systematic disorder because she could lay her hand on anything at a moment’s notice and knew where everything was.” “ How about Pansy ?” “ She says hers is in intelligent disorder because she’s very busy catching up on Bible study. She has books and Bible study pamphlets and charts all over every available surface. I told Aunt Mary my room looked that way some times, but-------” A telephone rang. “ Horrors!” exclaimed Althea after she had listened for a moment. “We’ll come over at once.” She hung up the receiver. “ Mr. Wu has been in a collision— leg broken! Yes, they’ve taken him to a hospital.” They were in Althea’s swift little car now and Althea was emphatically shifting gears, stepping on clutches and brakes, and sliding shiny little levers to which she referred as “my spark” and “ my gas,” all of which operations were a mystery to Djemileh, who had absolutely refused to learn to drive, because, as she said, she preferred to enjoy automobiling. Mr. Wu was, as they expected, calm, though pale with the shock and the jiain from his fracture. No, he was not going to claim any damages. It had been his own fault. He had been attending a special lecture on cosmology, and he became much absorbed in the island universes and the contents of space between them made up of dust and radiation. What was the “ red shift” in those far-off neb ulae, he wondered, and then rejoiced to think that it was his very own Father who was the Creator of these galaxies of amazement, and that all these marvels were part of the universe which was his home. At this point, he had come to Wilshire but had not noticed that the signal was against him. He stepped directly off the curb, chuckling a little over the definition of philosophy as “ the systematic mis use of a terminology established for that particular pur pose.” The next instant he was seeing, not star dust, but stars. An irate truck driver and an agitated woman in a sedan were shouting each other down as to his probable and
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