Betty at Fort Blizzard | Page 4

night and thrusting superfluous services and
advice upon the nurse, she decided she would not stand being "bossed
by a nigger," and took a train for the East. Then, Mrs. Fortescue
determined to return to first principles and imported from Virginia, at
great cost and trouble, a colored mammy, most capable and
experienced. But the complications with Kettle grew more acute, and
the mammy, in a blaze of indignation, took even stronger ground than
the trained nurse, and declared she "warn't goin' to be bossed by no
black nigger." When she had shaken the snow of Fort Blizzard from her
feet, there was nothing left but to hand the baby over to Kettle and Mrs.
McGillicuddy, as coadjutor. After tending her own brood and keeping a
sharp eye on Anna Maria McGillicuddy, her eldest daughter, who had
reached the stage of beaux, and cooking the best meals for the Sergeant
that any sergeant could ask, Mrs. McGillicuddy still had time to lend a
helping hand with the After-Clap.
Kettle and Mrs. McGillicuddy had been good friends ever since the
time, nineteen years before, when she had become the little Sergeant's
two-hundred-pound bride. But in the twenty years, during which Kettle
had never left "Miss Betty" and Sergeant McGillicuddy had been
Colonel Fortescue's factotum, there had been a continual guerilla
warfare between Kettle and the Sergeant. The Sergeant alluded
scornfully to Kettle as "the naygur," while with Kettle the Sergeant was
always "ole McGillicuddy." Mrs. McGillicuddy was invariably on
Kettle's side, and one blast upon her bugle horn was worth ten thousand
men in what Kettle called his "collusions," with the Sergeant. Sergeant
McGillicuddy had performed prodigies of valor in fights with Indians;
he had been mentioned in general order, along with Colonel Fortescue,
and was commonly reputed to fear neither the devil nor the doctor. But
he was under iron discipline with Mrs. McGillicuddy, and Kettle, like
everybody else, knew it.
While the After-Clap was disporting himself with the articles on the

Sergeant's desk, under the full glare of the electric light, a shadow
passed the window. The next minute Sergeant McGillicuddy entered,
the lion in him aroused by the sight of the liberties taken with his desk.
"I say, you naygur," snorted the Sergeant wrathfully, "you take that
baby off my desk and out of this office. The C. O's office ain't no day
nursery."
"You go to grass," replied Kettle boldly.
The reason for Kettle's boldness was in sight. Mrs. McGillicuddy's
majestic figure was seen approaching from the region back of the
dining-room, and she had heard the Sergeant's remark about the C. O.'s
office being a day nursery.
"And it's you, Patrick McGillicuddy," cried Mrs. McGillicuddy, sailing
into the office, "the father of eight children, complaining of this sweet
blessed lamb."
"D' ye mean the naygur?" asked McGillicuddy.
Mrs. McGillicuddy, scorning to reply, seized the baby, and with Kettle
following marched out. It was not really judicious for the After-Clap to
be taken into the C. O.'s office.
The Sergeant began meekly to straighten up his desk, and Colonel
Fortescue, coming in later to glance over the evening newspaper, found
McGillicuddy gazing meditatively at the Articles of War, lying in a
volume on the table.
The Sergeant was not the modern educated non-com, with an eye to a
commission, but an old-timer, unlearned in books, but an expert in
handling men and horses.
"What is it, Sergeant?" asked the C. O.
"Just this, sir," replied the Sergeant respectfully, "I was thinkin' a man
ought to be mighty keerful when he picks out a wife."

"Certainly," replied the Colonel, gravely, who had exercised no
forethought at all, after once falling under the spell of Betty Beverley's
laughing eyes.
"When I got married I didn't act rash at all, sir, because I'm by nature a
timid man," continued the Sergeant, who was a valiant man, and free.
"I went to a palmist and paid him a dollar for my horrorscope. I told
him I wanted a little woman, about my size, who would follow me
around like a poodle dog. The palmist, he said, sir, he seen a little
woman in my hand as would follow me around like a poodle dog. Then
I went to a reg'lar fortune teller, and she told me the same thing, for a
dollar. And I went to a mind reader, the seventh daughter of a seventh
daughter, and she promised me the little woman, too. I bought a dream
book and there was the same little woman again, sir. Within a fortnight
after all this I met Araminta Morrarity, as is now Missis Patrick
McGillicuddy, and she is six-foot-two-and-three-quarters inches in
height, and tipped the scale then at a hundred and ninety-six
pounds--and I'm the lightest man in the regiment. Missis McGillicuddy
has been