she tried to get him interested in the talk and win him to a happier
frame of mind, but the cloud of sadness remained on his countenance.
Luigi lent his help, too. He used a form and a phrase which he was
always accustomed to employ in these circumstances. He gave his brother
an affectionate slap on the shoulder and said, encouragingly:
“Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!”
But this did no good. It never did. If anything, it made the matter
worse, as a rule, because it irritated Angelo. This made it a favorite
with Luigi. By and by the widow said:
“Angelo, you are tired, you’ve overdone yourself; you go right to bed
after dinner, and get a good nap and a rest, then you’ll be all right.”
“Indeed, I would give anything if I could do that, madam.”
“And what’s to hender, I’d like to know? Land, the room’s yours to do
what you please with! The idea that you can’t do what you like with your
own!”
“But, you see, there’s one prime essential–an essential of the very
first importance– which isn’t my own.”
“What is that?”
“My body.”
The old ladies looked puzzled, and Aunt Betsy Hale said:
“Why bless your heart, how is that?”
“It’s my brother’s.”
“Your brother’s! I don’t quite understand. I supposed it belonged to
both of you.”
“So it does. But not to both at the same time.”
“That is mighty curious; I don’t see how it can be. I shouldn’t think it
could be managed that way.”
“Oh, it’s a good enough arrangement, and goes very well; in fact, it
wouldn’t do to have it otherwise. I find that the teetotalers and the
anti-teetotalers hire the use of the same hall for their meetings. Both
parties don’t use it at the same time, do they?”
“You bet they don’t!” said both old ladies in a breath.
“And, moreover,” said Aunt Betsy, “the Freethinkers and the Baptist Bible
class use the same room over the Market house, but you can take my word
for it they don’t mush up together and use it at the same time.’
“Very well,” said Angelo, “you understand it now. And it stands to
reason that the arrangement couldn’t be improved. I’ll prove it to you.
If our legs tried to obey two wills, how could we ever get anywhere?
I would start one way, Luigi would start another, at the same moment–
the result would be a standstill, wouldn’t it?”
“As sure as you are born! Now ain’t that wonderful! A body would never
have thought of it.”
“We should always be arguing and fussing and disputing over the merest
trifles. We should lose worlds of time, for we couldn’t go down-stairs
or up, couldn’t go to bed, couldn’t rise, couldn’t wash, couldn’t dress,
couldn’t stand up, couldn’t sit down, couldn’t even cross our legs,
without calling a meeting first and explaining the case and passing
resolutions, and getting consent. It wouldn’t ever do–now would it?”
“Do? Why, it would wear a person out in a week! Did you ever hear
anything like it, Patsy Cooper?”
“Oh, you’ll find there’s more than one thing about them that ain’t
commonplace,” said the widow, with the complacent air of a person with a
property right in a novelty that is under admiring scrutiny.
“Well, now, how ever do you manage it? I don’t mind saying I’m suffering
to know.”
“He who made us,” said Angelo reverently, “and with us this difficulty,
also provided a way out of it. By a mysterious law of our being, each of
us has utter and indisputable command of our body a week at a time, turn
and turn about.”
“Well, I never! Now ain’t that beautiful!”
“Yes, it is beautiful and infinitely wise and just. The week ends every
Saturday at midnight to the minute, to the second, to the last shade of
a fraction of a second, infallibly, unerringly, and in that instant the
one brother’s power over the body vanishes and the other brother takes
possession, asleep or awake.”
“How marvelous are His ways, and past finding out!”
Luigi said: “So exactly to the instant does the change come, that during