The Queer Side of Things.
T was all old Joe Wilkings's notion, every ounce of it: you see, there never was anybody anywhere to compare with old Joe for "go." He was goey, was old Joe—but I'll tell you. Old Joe had been laid up with rheumatism and gout—ah! and asthma, that's more—for a matter of eleven weeks; pretty bad he'd been too, and everybody had said he would never pull through, being, you see, ninety-seven, and a wooden leg in, that he'd lost in the Crimean War; at least, not the wooden one, for he'd found that in the loft over the stable years ago and taken to it.
Well, old Joe was sunning himself in his wicker chair in the front garden, propped up with pillows and things; and he'd just finished his beef-tea, when he begins to chuckle so, in an internal kind of manner, that the last drop going down got startled and separated from the others on ahead, and tried to turn back, and got in a panic, so that it nearly choked old Joe, who got purple in the face, and had to be thumped.
He'd no sooner got right than he began to chuckle again, but luckily that last drop had got further down now, and wedged in among its comrades, so that it only heard the chuckles faintly, and kept quiet this time.
"Whatever is the matter, grandfather?" said Kate.
"Matter?" said old Joe. "Nothing's the matter. You don't understand the ways of young 'uns, nor their methods neither. When youth chuckles, it's a sign of good spirits and healthy. If you must know, I was thinking we might have a picnic—just like we used to have sixty years back———"
"Ah! that would be nice," said Kate.
"Not you," said old Joe. "No young 'uns in it—they're too slow. No; I and Georgie Worble, and his aunt Susan, and her mother, and—"
"Why," said Kate, "Mr. Worble hasn't walked from one room to another without assistance for———"
"I know—seven years," said old Joe, "and he's seventy-six; and his aunt Susan's seventy-one; and his aunt Susan's mother's ninety-two, and bedridden—but I tell you what: it's all fudge and the undue influence of imagination—that's the whole story. Georgie W. can get up if he likes; and his aunt Susan's bronchitis and paralytic strokes are all fudge; and as to her mother being bedridden—pooh! we'll just see; and if she doesn't dance just as well as me———"
"Dance!"
"Ah—we'll have a dance, of course—we used to have a dance always; finished up with a dance. I've been thinking—and I don't mind telling you—that this imagination and fudge is making us all old before our time; and I'm not going to stand any more of it, and that's all about it."
With that old Joe Wilkings waved his stick and jumped up—that's what he did; and he ninety-seven years and nine weeks! Talk about greyness!
