Bobby and Alice and Pink had the measles. First Bobby had taken it with a headache and a sick stomach. Then Alice had got sick with what seemed to be a cold, and at last Pink took it. She just wakened up one morning all covered with tiny red spots, and of course she knew right away that she had the measles, too.
They had all been awfully sick, but now they were better, though they still had to stay in a darkened room, which they didn’t like a bit.
“It’s the worst part of the measles,” complained Bobby bitterly. “Just like night all the time.”
“Well, then,” said Grandma, who was making them a call, “let us pretend that it is night and I will tell you a story about when I had the measles a long, long time ago.
“In those days measles was considered a necessary evil for children. That is, people thought that all children must have it one time or another, and the younger you were when you had it the less it would hurt you. All our family had had the measles except Charlie and me. We had never had the measles, and Mother was quite worried about it. She said she wouldn’t expose us on purpose, but she did wish we’d get it before we got much older and have it over with. There had been no measles epidemic in our neighborhood for several years, and this is how one came about.
“One Saturday, late in June, Father took Charlie and me to Clayville with him. We were to visit with Aunt Louisa while he attended to his business. He let us out at Aunt Louisa’s street and said when he got ready to go home he would come after us.
“Charlie and I started up the street, but neither of us had ever been there alone and all the houses looked alike to us. We couldn’t decide which was Aunt Louisa’s.
“Finally we selected one that we were sure was hers and went around to the side door and knocked. Instead of Aunt Louisa or Mettie, a little girl opened the door and told us to come in. This was queer, because Aunt Louisa had no children. But I supposed she had company and stepped into a sitting room that was so dark I could hardly see a thing at first. We sat very still for a while, and I wished that Aunt Louisa would come. In the dim light I made out a bed in one corner, but I didn’t know there was anyone in it until a boy, who had evidently been asleep, raised up his head and looked at us in surprise. And we looked at him, too, for he certainly was funny looking with his face all covered with little red spots.
“‘By, golly!’ he said. ‘What you doin’ in here?’
“I replied with dignity that we were waiting for Aunt Louisa.
“‘She doesn’t live here,’ he said crossly, and lay down again. ‘She lives in the next house. Must have been my little sister let you in. This is our house and I got the measles.’
“Charlie and I got out as quickly as we could and hurried to Aunt Louisa’s, but we decided that we would not tell her or anyone else we had had such a glorious, accidental chance for the measles.
“‘We mightn’t take the measles after all,’ Charlie pointed out, ‘and then Mother would be disappointed.’
“‘I hope we don’t take them on the way home,’ I said anxiously. I didn’t know then that it takes the measles germ nine days to mature and that we were in little danger of taking it before that time.
“The next day, being tired from my trip to town, I imagined I was sick and I was sure I was taking the measles. Charlie examined my face carefully, though, and said he couldn’t see any red spots. In a day or two Charlie thought he was taking the disease, but there were no red spots on his face, either.
“‘And if they’re in you Mother says they’ve got to come out,’ I told him wisely. ‘So as long as it doesn’t show on the outside we haven’t got it.’
“A week passed, and after several more false alarms we came to the conclusion that we were not going to take the measles after all.
“Sunday the Presiding Elder was to be at our church and there were to be two sermons, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a basket dinner in between. Mother and the girls were very busy cooking and baking, or maybe some of them would have seen that Charlie and I were not well on Saturday. I ached all over, my head most of all, and Charlie said he felt sick from his head to his toes. We slipped out to the barn and crawled up in the hay loft and lay down on the hay. Nanny Dodds almost found us there when she came out to hunt some eggs for an extra cake—Mother had already baked three cakes, but she said she had better bake four to make sure there’d be plenty.
“Charlie and I had been eating green apples. Mother always allowed us to eat green apples if we put salt on them. But we had been in the orchard and the salt was at the house, so we hadn’t bothered to wait, but had eaten the apples without salt. We thought it was the green apples that were making us sick. As we didn’t want to be dosed with castor oil and maybe have to stay home from preaching next day, we didn’t tell a soul we felt sick.
“Anyway, we were both better by Sunday morning, for who wouldn’t have been better with a new white dress to wear and a leghorn hat with a wreath of daisies around the crown?
“But in church even my new clothes couldn’t help me. The sermon seemed very, very long, the air was hot and close, and I felt terribly sick. I wanted more than anything else in the world to take off my hat and lay my head in Mother’s gray silk lap, but of course I was much too big to do that. I looked across to the men’s side where Charlie sat beside Father, and there he was all slumped down in his seat, holding his head in his hands.
“Neither of us ate much dinner, but there were so many people eating with us that Mother didn’t notice. And right after dinner we went down to the surrey and climbed in, Charlie on the front seat, I on the back.
“We covered ourselves, heads and all, with the lap robes, and there we lay and slept the live-long afternoon, until Father came to hitch the horses up to go home.
“‘These youngsters must be all tired out,’ Father said when Mother and Aggie and Belle came out to get in the surrey. I raised my head up, but I was so dizzy I lay right down again, but not before Mother had seen me.
“‘Let me see in your throat, Sarah,’ she demanded, and then to Father she said solemnly, ‘I knew it! The second I saw her I knew it. Sarah has the measles.’ Father thought surely she must be mistaken, but she examined Charlie, and would you believe it? He had the measles, too.
I looked across to Charlie and he was holding his head in his hands
“On the way home, with my head in Mother’s lap and Charlie leaning on Belle, we told them all about going to the wrong house when we went to see Aunt Louisa, and the boy who had the measles, and everything.
“‘Just exactly nine days ago today,’ Mother fairly groaned.
“‘Aren’t you glad, Mother, that we surprised you with the measles?’ I asked, puzzled, for she didn’t seem a bit glad that we had them, though she had always talked as if she would be.
“At this Father and Belle and Aggie and even Mother laughed.
“‘If I don’t miss my guess,’ said Father, ‘you’ve surprised a good many other people with the measles, too, and I bet a lot of them won’t be very glad.’
“Of course a lot of folks did take the measles from Charlie and me, but the weather was warm and they all got along nicely, so there was no great harm done.
“Some of the folks wondered where in the world Charlie and I could have caught the measles. But old Mrs. Orbison, who came to see us right away, settled that by announcing, ‘I always say that things like that are in the air. No one knows where they get them or how.’”