Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West
"My
bill-of-fare is very limited, you know, owing to my--my condition; and so
I carry my food-tablets around with me, wherever I go, and eat them in my
own room."
"Food-tablets!" cried Patsy, horrified.
"Yes. They are really wafers--very harmless--and I am permitted to eat
nothing else."
"No wonder your stomach is bad and you're a living skeleton!" asserted
the girl, with scorn.
"My dear," said Uncle John, gently chiding her, "we must give Mr. Jones
the credit for knowing what is best for him."
"Not me, sir!" protested the boy, in haste. "I'm very ignorant
about--about health, and medicine and the like. But in New York I
consulted a famous doctor, and he told me what to do."
"That's right," nodded the old gentleman, who had never been ill in his
life. "Always take the advice of a doctor, listen to the advice of a
lawyer, and refuse the advise of a banker. That's worldly wisdom."
"Were you ill when you left your home?" inquired Mrs. Montrose, looking
at the young man with motherly sympathy.
"Not when I left the island," he said. "I was pretty well up to that
time. But during the long ocean voyage I was terribly sick, and by the
time we got to San Francisco my stomach was a wreck. Then I tried to eat
the rich food at your restaurants and hotels--we live very plainly in
Sangoa, you know--and by the time I got to New York I was a confirmed
dyspeptic and suffering tortures. Everything I ate disagreed with me. So
I went to a great specialist, who has invented these food tablets for
cases just like mine, and he ordered me to eat nothing else."
"And are you better?" asked Maud.
He hesitated.
"Sometimes I imagine I am. I do not suffer so much pain, but I--I seem
to grow weaker all the time."
"No wonder!" cried Patsy. "If you starve yourself you can't grow strong."
He looked at her with an expression of surprise. Then he asked abruptly:
"What would you advise me to do, Miss Doyle?"
A chorus of laughter greeted this question. Patsy flushed a trifle but
covered her confusion by demanding: "Would you follow my advice?
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There was once a king who was very powerful. He had great influence over the wild beasts and animals. Now the tortoise was looked upon as the wisest of all beasts and men. This king had a son named Ekpenyon, to whom he gave fifty young girls as wives, but the prince did not like any of them. The king was very angry at this, and made a law that if any man had a daughter who was finer than the prince's wives, and who found favour in his son's eyes, the girl herself and her father and mother should be killed.
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