Miss Mink's Soldier And Other Stories
By
Alice Hegan Rice
Author of "Mrs. Wiggs Of The Cabbage Patch,""Mr. Opp," "Calvary Alley," Etc.
New York
The Century Co.
Then Miss Mink received a shock
To
THE LADY OF THE DECORATION
A Memento Of Many Happy Days
Spent Together "East Of Suez"
Miss Mink's Soldier
Miss Mink sat in church with lips compressedand hands tightly clasped in herblack alpaca lap, and stubbornly refused to complywith the request that was being made fromthe pulpit. She was a small desiccated person,with a sharp chin and a sharper nose, and narrowfaded eyes that through the making of innumerablebuttonholes had come to resemblethem.
For over forty years she had sat in that samepew facing that same minister, regarding himsecond only to his Maker, and striving inthought and deed to follow his precepts. Butthe time had come when Miss Mink's blindallegiance wavered.
Ever since the establishment of the big Cantonmentnear the city, Dr. Morris, in order toencourage church attendance, had been insistentin his request that every member of his congregationshould take a soldier home to Sundaydinner.
Now it was no lack of patriotism that madeMiss Mink refuse to do her part. Every ripplein the small flag that fluttered over her humbledwelling sent a corresponding ripple along herspinal column. When she essayed to sing "MyCountry, 'Tis of Thee," in her high, quaveringsoprano, she invariably broke down from sheerexcess of emotion. But the American armyfighting for right and freedom in France, andthe Army individually tracking mud into herspotless cottage, were two very different things.Miss Mink had always regarded a man in herhouse much as she regarded a gnat in her eye.There was but one course to pursue in eithercase—elimination!
But her firm stand in the matter had not beenmaintained without much misgiving. EverySunday when Dr. Morris made his earnest appeal,something within urged her to comply.She was like an automobile that gets crankedup and then refuses to go. Church-going insteadof being her greatest joy came to be anightmare. She no longer lingered in the vestibule,for those highly cherished exchanges ofinoffensive gossip that constituted her sociallife. Nobody seemed to have time for her.Every one was busy with a soldier. Within