Mrs. Minks Soldier and Other Stories | Page 2

weakening, but the Benediction stiffened her resolve, and when the final Amen sounded, she turned blindly to the man beside her, and said, hardly above her breath:
"If you ain't got any place to go to dinner, you can come home with me."
The tall figure turned toward her, and a pair of melancholy brown eyes looked down into hers:
"You will excuse if I do not quite comprehend your meaning," he said politely, with a strong foreign accent.
Miss Mink was plunged into instant panic; suppose he was a German? Suppose she should be convicted for entertaining a spy! Then she remembered his uniform and was slightly reassured.
"I said would you come home to dinner with me?" she repeated weakly, with a fervent prayer that he would decline.
But the soldier had no such intention. He bowed gravely, and picked up his hat and overcoat.
Miss Mink, looking like a small tug towing a big steamer, shamefacedly made her way to the nearest exit, and got him out through the Sunday-school room. She would take him home through a side street, feed him and send him away as soon as possible. It was a horrible ordeal, but Miss Mink was not one to turn back once she had faced a difficult situation. As they passed down the broad steps into the brilliant October sunshine, she noticed with relief that his shoes were not muddy. Then, before she could make other observations, her mind was entirely preoccupied with a large, firm hand that grasped her elbow, and seemed to half lift her slight weight from step to step. Miss Mink's elbow was not used to such treatment and it indignantly freed itself before the pavement was reached. The first square was traveled in embarrassed silence, then Miss Mink made a heroic effort to break the ice:
"My name is Mink," she said, "Miss Libby Mink. I do dress-making over on Sixth Street."
"I am Bowinski," volunteered her tall companion, "first name Alexis. I am a machinist before I enlist in the army."
"I knew you were some sort of a Dago," said Miss Mink.
"But no, Madame, I am Russian. My home is in Kiev in Ukrania."
"Why on earth didn't you stay there?" Miss Mink asked from the depths of her heart.
The soldier looked at her earnestly. "Because of the persecution," he said. "My father he was in exile. His family was suspect. I come alone to America when I am but fifteen."
"Well I guess you're sorry enough now that you came," Miss Mink said, "Now that you've got drafted."
They had reached her gate by this time, but Bowinski paused before entering: "Madame mistakes!" he said with dignity. "I was not drafted. The day America enter the war, that day I give up my job I have held for five years, and enlist. America is my country, she take me in when I have nowhere to go. It is my proud moment when I fight for her!"
Then it was that Miss Mink took her first real look at him, and if it was a longer look than she had ever before bestowed upon man, we must put it down to the fact that he was well worth looking at, with his tall square figure, and his serious dark face lit up at the present with a somewhat indignant enthusiasm.
Miss Mink pushed open the gate and led the way into her narrow yard. She usually entered the house by way of the side door which opened into the dining room, which was also her bedroom by night, and her sewing room by day. But this morning, after a moment's hesitation, she turned a key in the rusty lock of the front door, and let a flood of sunshine dispel the gloom of the room. The parlor had been furnished by Miss Mink's parents some sixty years ago, and nothing had been changed. A customer had once suggested that if the sofa was taken away from the window, and the table put in its place, the room would be lighter. Miss Mink had regarded the proposition as preposterous. One might as well have asked her to move her nose around to the back of her head, or to exchange the positions of her eyes and ears!
You have seen a drop of water caught in a crystal? Well, that was what Miss Mink was like. She moved in the tiniest possible groove with her home at one end and her church at the other. Is it any wonder that when she beheld a strange young foreigner sitting stiffly on her parlor sofa, and realized that she must entertain him for at least an hour, that panic seized her?
"I better be seeing to dinner," she said hastily. "You can look at the album till I get things dished up."
Private Bowinski, surnamed Alexis, sat with