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Title: Little Helpers
Author: Vandegrift, Margaret
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Little Helpers" ***
[Illustration: “PICKING FLOWERS.” See page 218.]
LITTLE HELPERS
BY
MARGARET VANDEGRIFT
AUTHOR OF “THE DEAD DOLL AND OTHER POEMS” ETC.
Illustrated.
[Illustration]
BOSTON
TICKNOR AND COMPANY
211 Tremont Street
1889
COPYRIGHT, 1888,
BY TICKNOR AND COMPANY.
ELECTROTYPED BY
C. J. PETERS & SON, BOSTON,
U. S. A.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER. PAGE.
I. INDEPENDENCE 11
II. THINKING AND THINKEPHONES 23
III. LETTER AND SPIRIT 39
IV. THE FIRST MOVE 50
V. INALIENABLE RIGHTS 61
VI. LEANING 70
VII. THE EXTRA HORSE 81
VIII. “LONG PATIENCE” 89
IX. A CONTRACT 99
X. NEIGHBORS 108
XI. BATTLE AND VICTORY 122
XII. FASTING 131
XIII. A CHANCE FOR A KNIGHTLY DEED 140
XIV. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW 149
XV. MORE CHANCES 157
XVI. ENLISTING 168
XVII. THE WRONG END 178
XVIII. TURNING THE GLASS 189
XIX. AT THE FARM 195
XX. THE TIN MUG 204
XXI. SEEING WHY 212
XXII. THE WAY OF ESCAPE 221
XXIII. THE CIRCULAR CITY 232
XXIV. THE CIRCULAR CITY, CONTINUED 243
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.
“PICKING FLOWERS” _Frontispiece_
THE SKATING LESSON 75
THE NEW KNIFE 125
MINDING THE BABY 163
THE FIELD GLASS 185
POOR KATY 225
LITTLE HELPERS.
CHAPTER I.
INDEPENDENCE.
His name was Johnny Leslie, and he was standing on an empty flour barrel;
in his hand was his United States History, and he was shouting at the top
of his little voice,—
“All men are born free and equal, and endowed with certain
in-in-alienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.”
He stopped a minute to draw a long breath, and his audience, who was
sitting in an easy position upon the upturned kitchen coal scuttle, with
her oldest child in her arms, took the opportunity to ask meekly,—
“What does that dreadful long word mean, Johnny? I never heard of that
kind of rights before.”
[Illustration]
“You’ll know when you’re older, Tiny,” said Johnny, loftily, and he was
going on with his oration, but the audience was not to be silenced in
this easy manner, and persisted,—
“But I want to know right away, now! I don’t believe you know yourself,
Johnny Leslie!”
“Well, I don’t believe I do,” said Johnny, candidly, and in his own
natural voice. “We might ask mamma, she’s up there at her window, I can
see the back of her head. O mamma!”
[Illustration]
There was no doubt about Mrs. Leslie’s hearing; if she had been in the
top of the apple tree, at the foot of the garden, she could have heard
that “O mamma!” perfectly well.
A pleasant face appeared where Johnny had seen the head, and a sweet
voice said, “O Johnny!”
“Mamma, what does in-a-li-en-able mean?” shouted the orator, still loudly
enough for the top of the apple tree.
[Illustration]
“I’ve the greatest mind in the world to drop my new ‘Webster’s
Unabridged’ on your head, you wild Indian,” said Mrs. Leslie, holding
the big dictionary threateningly, over the edge of the window-sill, and
Johnny’s head. “Don’t you suppose I have any inalienable rights? And do
you think I can even pursue my happiness, much less catch it, with all
this hullaballoo under my window when I am trying to write a letter?”
“Well, mamma, Tiny and I would just as lief go to the barn,” replied
Johnny, in a reasonable tone of voice, “if you’ll just please tell us
first what that word means. You see, as Tiny’s asked me, maybe some of
the boys might ask, and I ought to be able to tell them.”
[Illustration]
“Come up here, then, if you please,” said Mrs. Leslie. “I am not a
Fourth-of-July orator, and so I do not need to practise shouting, just
now.”
So Johnny and Tiny and Veronica—who was Tiny’s oldest child, and was made
of what had once been white muslin, with cotton stuffing—came upstairs,
and had it explained to them that inalienable meant that which cannot be
separated, or taken away.
“But, I don’t see how that works,” said Johnny, looking puzzled, “for
folks do take our rights away; I’m having lots of mine taken away, all
the time. I’m very fond of you, mammy, and you know it, but still you
sometimes take away my rights yourself.”
“For a Fourth-of-July orator,” said Mrs. Leslie, gravely, “you are
showing a painful amount of ignorance. We will suppose, for the sake of
argument, that I take away, or deprive you of, certain things to which
you have a right, but the right to have them is there, all the same.
Taking away the things does not touch that. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, mamma, I think I do,” answered Johnny, thoughtfully, “but it’s
kind of puzzling. It’s most as bad as ‘if a herring and a half cost a
cent and a half, how much will three herrings cost?’ But I did get that
through my head, and I suppose I can get this.”
“But, sometimes,” said Mrs. Leslie, “people’s ‘inalienable rights’ seem
to conflict; I say seem, for they never really do. For instance, as you
have a gentleman for a father, and a woman who tries to be a lady for a
mother, I feel as if I had an inalienable right to a gentleman for a son,
and a lady for a daughter; and when my son talks about getting a thing
through his head, I begin to wonder what is becoming of _my_ rights!”
“Now, mamma,” said Johnny, appealingly, “that’s just nothing at all to
what some of the boys say. But I’d like to hear anybody say that you
aren’t a lady, or that papa isn’t a gentleman!” and Johnny doubled his
fists fiercely at the bare idea of such a statement.
“You may live to have that pleasure,” said Mrs. Leslie, “if you let the
boys have more of a right in you than I have.”
Johnny caught his mother in a “bear hug.” “I never thought of it that
way,” he said. “No ma’am! You’ve the very first, best right and title to
me, Mrs. Mother, and the boys may go bang—oh, there I go again! I mean
the boys may—what shall I say?”
“You might say that the boys may exercise their inalienable rights
over somebody else,” said his mother, laughing and kissing him. “But
now I’ll tell you what we will do—I really don’t think it would look
well for a Fourth-of-July orator to read his oration out of an United
States History, so when papa comes home, I will ask him to have the
Declaration of Independence printed on two or three sheets of paper for
you, and we’ll tie them together with a handsome bow of blue ribbon, and
meanwhile, if you’ve no objection, you will practise in the barn.”
“Of course I will, you loveliest woman alive!” said Johnny, rapturously,
“and I shall try not to have my rights treading on anybody else’s rights’
toes!” with which extraordinary declaration, he pranced off to the barn,
closely followed by Tiny and Veronica.
There was to be a picnic on the Fourth-of-July. Mr. and Mrs. Leslie and
three or four neighbor families had agreed to take their dinners in
baskets and butter-kettles, to a very pretty grove which grew obligingly
near to the little village-city where they lived, and where Mr. Leslie
edited the one newspaper of the place, which fact enabled him to have
the Declaration conveniently printed for Johnny, who had been chosen
by the boys for the orator of the day, because he stood highest in his
reading and declamation classes. It wanted three or four days, yet, of
the “glorious Fourth,” and Johnny was diligently practising his voice,
for he was afraid, notwithstanding his mother’s earnest assurances to the
contrary, that it was not loud enough for an open air oration!
[Illustration]
Johnny was a very sociable and friendly little boy, and he had
recently made acquaintance with a boy somewhat older than himself,
whose profession was bootblacking. This boy had a cool, knowing, and
business-like air, which had greatly taken Johnny’s fancy, and it
occurred to him that a partnership with Jim Brady might be a very good
thing. Jim had happened to mention that he owned a wheelbarrow, and
Johnny owned an apple tree, which had been planted by his father on the
day of Johnny’s birth, and which, this season, was full of promising
apples. So Johnny resolved, if Jim improved on acquaintance, and showed
symptoms of honor and honesty, to propose to him, when the apples should
be ripe, to take his wheelbarrow and peddle them “on shares.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
He would probably have made Jim the offer on the second day of their
acquaintance, but his mother advised him to wait a little. She felt sure
that Johnny would tell her at once, if Jim should use bad language, or
say or do anything which would make him a dangerous acquaintance for
her boy, and she thought it would be time enough then to break off the
intercourse which might put a little pleasure into the hard life of the
bootblack, whose sturdy figure and face she had often noticed in passing
his stand, and she had also noticed that he was almost always busy, even
when other boys of his trade were idle.
Johnny was such a very small boy that it had never entered his mother’s
head to forbid him to smoke. She thought of it once in a while, and hoped
that when the time came for him to choose about it, he would elect to
go without a habit which is certainly useless, and which in many cases
involves a great deal of selfishness. She wished Johnny’s wife, if he
should be so fortunate as to have a good wife some day in the far future,
to love him altogether, not with a “putting-up” with one thing, and
“making allowances” for another; and she meant, when the time came, to
lay the whole subject plainly before him, and let him choose rationally
for himself. It was quite true that his father smoked; but he smoked very
moderately, never where it could annoy any one, and, whenever he bought
cigars, he deposited a sum equal to that spent for them, in the little
earthern jug with which he presented his wife once a year, and this
money was neither “house money” nor “pin money”; it was for Mrs. Leslie
to spend absolutely as she liked. And Johnny’s mother meant him, if he
should smoke at all, to be just such a smoker as his father was.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
But on the third of July, as “Johnny came marching home,” he met Jim at
the usual corner, and Jim had a long cigar in his mouth! Johnny felt a
good deal awed. He thought Jim looked very manly indeed.
“Have a cigar?” asked Jim affably. “One of my best customers gave me
this,” he added, “and the one I’m smoking, and I tell you it’s not many
fellows I’d offer this to, for they’re prime! It was a regular joke on
him—he’s always poking fun at me, and this morning, when I said I’d give
anything to be a sailor, he just pulls these out of his pocket, and says,
seriously, ‘Smoke these, my boy, and you’ll be as sure you’re at sea as
you ever will if you really get there!’ He thought I wouldn’t take ’em,
but I did,” and Jim chuckled, “I thanked him kindly, and told him I’d
learned to smoke years ago!”
“Learned?” said Johnny, “why, what is there to learn? It looks easy
enough.”
“So it is,” said Jim, with another chuckle, “it’s like what the Irishman
said about his fall; ‘Sure, it’s not the fall, it’s the fetch up that
hurts!’ I wasn’t sea-sick after that first cigar? Oh, no! not at all!”
and he gave an indescribable wink.
All this time Johnny held the cigar doubtfully in his hand. Was it worth
while deliberately to make himself “sea-sick?” That long, coarse, black
thing did not look as if it would taste nice.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Jim, “a light? Here’s one,” and he
drew a match from his pocket, struck it, and handed it to Johnny, who,
prevented by a false and foolish shame, from saying what was in his mind,
lighted the cigar, hastily thanked Jim, and walked off, smoking.
But he had not gone a block before a queer, dizzy feeling, and a bitter,
puckery taste in his mouth, which reminded him of a green persimmon, made
him resolve to finish his cigar another time; so he put it out, wrapped
it carefully in paper, thrust it into his trousers pocket, and then
hurried home.
When he kissed his mother, she exclaimed, “Why, Johnny! You smell exactly
as if you had been smoking!”
Johnny had never, in all his life, concealed anything from his mother;
what made him wish to, now?
[Illustration]
“I stopped to talk to Jim,” he said, hastily, “and he was smoking a cigar
that a gentleman had given him.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Mrs. Leslie, gravely; “I must speak to
Jim. He is too young to begin to smoke.”
Johnny said nothing, but his mind was made up; he was not going to be
beaten by that cigar! There were no lessons to be learned for the next
day, and he could give the whole afternoon, and the whole of his mind to
it.
He did. I am not going into particulars, they are not agreeable; but late
that afternoon, as a heavy thunderstorm was coming up, Mrs. Leslie grew
uneasy about Johnny, who had not been seen since dinner.
“Run to the barn, Tiny,” she said, “and see if he is there—though I don’t
think he can be, for I haven’t heard a word of the oration.”
Tiny ran, and came back in five minutes, breathless, and with a horrified
face.
“Oh, mamma!” she exclaimed, “Johnny’s cap and his speech are on the barn
floor, and the most dreadfullest groans are coming out of the haymow!”
Mrs. Leslie was running to the barn before Tiny had finished.
“Johnny!” she called wildly. “My darling! What has happened?”
A pale face, a rough-looking head, with hay sticking out of its hair,
appeared at the top of the ladder, and Johnny staggered weakly down.
“Oh, mamma!” he groaned, “I think I must be going to die! I never felt
this way before!”
His mother caught him in her arms, and as she did so, the smell of the
rank cigar which Johnny, with wasted heroism, had smoked to the end,
struck her indignant nose.
“Johnny!” she exclaimed, reproachfully, “you’ve been smoking, and you
told me what was just as bad as a lie about it!”
And the warm-hearted, offended little mother burst out crying, and sobbed
with her head on Johnny’s dusty shoulder.
Nothing she could have said would have gone to Johnny’s heart of hearts
as those sobs did. He forgot his alarming illness as he caught her in his
arms, and said, imploringly,—
“Oh, mammy, my darling mammy, please don’t cry like that; I’ll die before
I’ll ever tell you a lie, or act you one, again. Oh, please say you
forgive me!”
Of course Tiny felt obliged to help with the crying, and when Mr. Leslie,
coming home to a deserted house, traced his family to the barn, he came
upon a place of wailing.
At first, he was inclined to laugh, but when he heard of the deceit which
had followed Johnny’s first effort at smoking, he looked very grave. No
one, however, could doubt Johnny’s penitence, and as he lay on the lounge
in his mother’s room, while the heavy thunder and sharp lightning seemed
to fill the air, and waves of deathly sickness rolled over him, he made
some very good resolutions, which were not forgotten, as such resolutions
sometimes are, after his recovery.
The orator of the day was somewhat paler than he usually was when he took
his place upon the barrel which he had previously assisted to the grove,
the next morning.
[Illustration]
He read the Declaration of Independence in a voice which reached the ears
of his most distant listener with perfect distinctness, and when he had
finished, and the applause had subsided, he added, “out of his head,” as
Tiny proudly announced.
[Illustration]
“I’ve got a declaration of my own to make, now—it’s not at all long, so
you needn’t worry—it’s just this: Folks sometimes think they’re being
independent, when they’re only being most uncommonly foolish, and you
never need think that anything you’re afraid to have anybody know is
independence—it’s pretty sure to be sneaking meanness! And I’ve heard
somebody that knows more than all of us put together, say that if we
want to be presidents and things, and govern other folks, we’d better
begin on ourselves!”
And Johnny stepped, in a dignified manner, from the barrel to a box, and
thence to the ground, amid a storm of applause, while Mr. Leslie rose and
bowed gracefully, from his place among the audience, in acknowledgment of
the tribute paid him by the orator.
A prisoner in a dungeon may be one of those “freemen whom the Truth makes
free,” and an absolute monarch may be “the servant of sin.” Each one of
us must frame for himself his own especial Declaration of Independence.
CHAPTER II.
THINKING AND THINKEPHONES.
It is a great pity that little boys’ legs are so short; they have to
hurry so much, and a pair of good long legs, like those of the stately
giraffe, for instance, would be such a convenience to a small boy, who
wished to run home from school—half a mile—ask his mother something, and
be back again, inside of five minutes.
It is difficult to think and run both at once, but something like this
was passing through Johnny’s mind, as he tore home to ask if he might
spend his shiny new half dollar in going to the circus with “the other
boys.”
[Illustration]
Flaming posters on all the available fences and walls, had been
announcing for some days that Barnum was coming, and that there would
be two afternoon and two evening performances, “presenting in every
respect the same attractions.” Mr. Leslie had an engagement for the first
afternoon, but he had promised to take Tiny and Johnny, and as many
neighbor children as chose to join the party—with mothers’ and fathers’
consent, of course—on the second afternoon, and with this promise Johnny
had been well content.
But when he went to school, on the morning of the first day, he found
that several of his schoolmates had arranged to go that afternoon, and
they soon succeeded in talking him into a belief that life would not be
worth living unless he could join them.
“You see, Johnny,” said Ned Grafton, solemnly, “some of the ‘feats of
strength and agility’ are about as hard to do as it would be for you or
me to turn ourselves inside out and back again, and it stands to reason
that they’ll not do them so well the second day as they will the first,
when they’ve just had a rest; and the beasts and things always roar and
fight more the first day, because they’re mad at having been shut up in
their boxes and jolted about so; and then, forty things may happen to
hinder your father from taking you to-morrow, and just think how you’d
feel, if you were the only fellow at school who hadn’t been! You couldn’t
stand it at all! So just cut home, and explain it to your mother, and ask
her to let you come with us to-day, and we’ll wait for you here.”
“I’ll tell you what I can do,” said Johnny, eagerly, “I’ve half a dollar,
all my own, left from my apple money, so I’ll take that, and then I can
go with papa to-morrow, too,—I wouldn’t like to hurt his feelings, nor
Tiny’s either.”
“Well, I should think your mother’d have to say yes to that,” said Ned,
“and you’ll be luckier than the rest of us, if you go twice; but hurry
up—you know it begins at three, and it’s after two, now.”
So Johnny hurried up, and was so perfectly breathless when he reached
home, that he gasped for several minutes before he could begin to shout
through the house for his mother.
His very first shout was enough; it was given at the foot of the front
stairs, and, as his mother was in the dining-room, it reached her
instantly, and without losing anything by the way. She came out at once,
and boxed his ears lightly with the feather-duster, saying,—
“Johnny Leslie! This is _not_ a deaf and dumb asylum. Did you imagine,
when you came in that it was?”
“I didn’t know you were so near, mammy dear,” panted Johnny, “and I’m in
the worst kind—I mean, a dreadful hurry, I don’t see why there couldn’t
be a thinkephone, so that we could just think things at each other, it
would save so much time. The boys are all waiting for me, and they want
me to go to the circus with them this afternoon, because Ned Grafton
says the first performance is always the best, before the beasts get the
roar out of them, and before the people are tired, so mayn’t I take my
own half dollar, and go with them, and then I can go with papa and Tiny
to-morrow, too—it isn’t that I don’t want to go with him, but I want to
have the best of it!”
“Is any grown person going with the ‘boys’?” asked Mrs. Leslie.
“N-o, mamma,” replied Johnny, hesitatingly, “at least, they didn’t say
there was, and I don’t believe there is, but some of the boys are quite
old, you know—Charley Graham is ’most fifteen—and there isn’t any danger;
all the things are in cages, except the Tattooed Man.”
“I’m ever so sorry, dear,” said his mother, putting her arm around him,
“but indeed I don’t feel willing to have you go without some grown
person. There will be a very great crowd, and I don’t know all the boys
with whom you want to go, and you might be led into all sorts of dangers.
And it is all nonsense about the beasts getting the roar out of them
by to-morrow; poor things! they’ll keep on roaring as long as they are
caged. So you must be patient. I really think you’ll enjoy it more with
papa to explain things, and Tiny to help you.”
“But they’re all waiting for me!” said Johnny, choking down a sob, “and
something may happen between now and to-morrow—it’s a great while! Oh,
_please_, dear mammy! I’ll be just as careful as if papa were there, and
come right straight home when it’s out!”
Johnny’s mother looked nearly as sorry as he did.
“Dear little boy,” she said, “I know just how hard it is, and how foolish
it seems to you that I am afraid to trust you there without papa, or some
other grown person, and _you_ know how dearly I love you, and now you
have a chance to wear my sleeve in earnest; you must run back and tell
the boys that you cannot go till to-morrow, and then come home to me, and
I’ll comfort you.”
Johnny turned away without a word; he did not quite shake off his
mother’s arm, but he drew away from under it, and ran, not to keep the
boys waiting, back to the schoolhouse. But it was not the light-footed
running which had brought him home, and although, before he reached the
playground, he had conquered his tears, because he was ashamed for the
boys to see them, his voice trembled as he said,—
“Mother says I can’t go to-day,—that I must wait till to-morrow, and go
with papa.”
The boys all knew Johnny’s mother, more or less; those who knew her more
adored her, and those who knew her less admired her profoundly, so there
were no jeers or tauntings upon this announcement, but they all looked
sorry, and Ned Grafton said,—
“We’re awfully sorry, old fellow, but we can’t wait—it wants only five
minutes of three now; good by.”
There was a general rush, and the boys were gone. Johnny walked home very
slowly, thinking bitter thoughts.
[Illustration]
“I just believe it is because mamma never was a boy!” he thought. “If
papa had been at home, and I’d asked him first, he’d have let me go!
Ladies don’t know about boys—they can’t. Mamma knows more than most
ladies, but even she doesn’t know everything.”
The circus tent was in plain sight all the way home; it stood on a vacant
lot about half way between the school and Mr. Leslie’s house, and, just
as Johnny entered the gate, a burst of gay music came to his ears. His
mother stood on the porch with a little basket in her hands. It was very
full, and covered with a pretty red doily. Tiny and little Pep Warren,
from next door, were jumping up and down on the porch, and the baby was
tottering from one to the other, chuckling, and talking in what they
called “Polly-talk.”
“Johnny,” said his mother, eagerly, as he came heavily up the walk, “Tiny
says there are lots of blackberries in our field, and I want you and Pep
to go with her and get some for tea. You’ll have to eat up what is in the
basket first, and then you can fill it with blackberries. And I’m going
to lend you Polly!”
Johnny’s dull face brightened a little; he and Pep were great friends; he
liked picking blackberries when he did not have to pick many, and to have
Polly lent to them for even so short and safe an expedition as this was
an honor which he appreciated.
[Illustration]
“Oh, thank you, mamma!” he said, almost heartily, as he took the basket,
and they started down the lane together, he and Pep holding Polly between
them, with one of her chubby hands in a hand of each, and Tiny marching
on in front. Pep sympathized deeply upon hearing of Johnny’s woe, but
added, at the same time:—
“I can’t help being sort of glad, Johnny, that you’ll not see it before I
do. You know mamma is going to let me go with all of you to-morrow.”
Johnny thought this was a little selfish in Pep, but he did not say so,
and the party reached the blackberry bushes in harmony. Polly was even
funnier than usual. She was just at that interesting age when babies
begin trying to say all the words they hear, and the children were never
tired of hearing her repeat their words in “Polly-talk.”
[Illustration]
It was necessary to empty the basket first, of course, so they chose a
nice grassy spot at the edge of the field, where the woods kept off the
afternoon sun, spread the little red shawl which Tiny had brought, seated
Polly on it, and themselves around it, and opened the basket. There
were two or three “lady-fingers,” labelled “For Polly,” three dainty
sandwiches, three generous slices of loaf cake, and three oranges.
“I think your mother is the very nicest lady I know, except _my_ mother!”
said Pep, through a mouthful of loaf-cake, and Johnny, who had just
bitten deeply into his sandwich, nodded approvingly.
The lunch was soon finished, and then they began, not very vigorously,
to fill the basket with blackberries, laughing at Polly as she tangled
herself in a stray branch, and then scolded it.
Johnny put his hand in his pocket for his knife to cut the branch, and
drew it out again, as if something had stung it—there was his half
dollar! Then he remembered that he had taken it when he went to school in
the morning, because he had half made up his mind to buy a monster kite.
At that moment the music struck up once more in the distant tent. Johnny
stopped his ears desperately.
“If I keep on hearing that, I shall go!” he said to himself.
He could not pick blackberries and stop his ears at the same time. The
music swelled louder and louder. Then came a cheer from the audience.
Johnny looked round for the other children. They were all standing
together; Pep was holding down a branch for Polly, and he and Tiny were
laughing as the little lady stained her pretty fingers and lips with the
ripe berries.
“She’s all safe with them; they’ll take her home,” he whispered to
himself, as he slipped into the wood, unseen by the other children.
“Suppose you had your thinkephone _now_, Johnny Leslie!” somebody seemed
to say inside of his head, “you’d like your mother to know what you’re
thinking _now_, wouldn’t you?”
[Illustration]
“Papa would have let me go—mamma’s never been a boy, and she don’t know
anything about it!” said Johnny, stubbornly, and speaking quite aloud. He
ran fast as soon as he was through the wood, and, never stopping, handed
his half dollar to the doorkeeper, and went in. The vast crowd bewildered
him; he could not see a vacant seat anywhere, nor a single boy that he
knew, but a good-natured countryman pushed him forward, saying:—
“Here, little fellow, there’s a seat on the front bench for a boy of your
size.”
[Illustration]
He struggled past the people into the place pointed out to him, and
leaned eagerly over the rope. The clown was in the ring performing with
the “trick donkey,” and everybody was roaring with laughter.
The donkey wheeled around suddenly, and flashed out his heels, just as
Johnny, recognizing a boy on the other side of the tent, leaned still
farther forward and nodded.
[Illustration]
Johnny had a dim impression that he had been struck by lightning; the
roaring of the crowd sounded like thunder; he did not remember what came
next.
It was some minutes before the other children missed him; then they
called him several times at the top of their voices, and, when he neither
came nor answered, Tiny began to cry. Pep wished to explore the wood, but
Tiny fairly howled at the idea of being left alone with Polly.
“I just believe,” she sobbed, “that some of the elephants and tigers and
things have broken out of the circus, and got into the wood, and eaten my
Johnny all up, and if we stay here they’ll eat us up, too!”
And, taking Polly’s hand, she set off up the lane toward the house. Pep
followed her, greatly troubled. If the “elephants and tigers and things”
really were in the wood, he was missing a glorious opportunity! His
heart swelled at the thought of throwing a big stone at the elephant,
demolishing the tiger with a club, and leading the rescued Johnny home
to his glad and grateful mother! But Tiny was only a girl, and a badly
frightened one at that; they had been trusted with baby Polly, and
something seemed to tell him that it was his duty to see his charge
safely home, and lay the case before Mrs. Leslie, rather than to rush
into the wood and leave them frightened and alone.
[Illustration]
Mrs. Leslie was sitting in the back porch, peacefully sewing, when
the three children came up the garden walk, and she saw at once that
something was the matter.
“Why, where’s Johnny, Pep?” she asked, anxiously, “and what has
happened?” and she sprang up, dropping her sewing.
“We don’t know, ma’am,” said Pep, looking scared, “Tiny and I were
holding down the branches for Polly to pick, and when we looked ’round,
Johnny was gone, and I’m afraid he went into the wood, and that some of
the circus beasts have carried him off!”
“Have any of them broken loose? Did anybody tell you?” gasped Mrs.
Leslie.
“No ma’am,” said Pep, “but I don’t see what else could have gone with
him.”
“Run home, dear,” said Mrs. Leslie, “I’m sorry to send you away, but I
must go look for Johnny. Take Polly to the nursery, Tiny, and I’ll send
Ann up to you.”
And, only stopping to speak to the servant, Mrs. Leslie sped down the
lane and into the wood, calling “Johnny! Johnny!”
It was a very small wood, and she soon satisfied herself that her boy was
not there. She ran up the lane, intending to go to Mr. Leslie’s office,
and see what he thought had better be done next, when the front gate
opened, and the man who had shown Johnny to a seat, came in with the poor
little boy in his arms.
[Illustration]
Johnny was still insensible, and at the first glance, his mother thought
that he was dead. Her face grew as white as his, and it was with great
difficulty that she kept herself from falling.
“Don’t be scared, ma’am,” said the farmer, kindly, “the little feller’s
only fainted, and his hurt ain’t but a trifle—the donkey’s hoof just
grazed him kind of sideways. If it had struck him square, it would have
finished him, but a miss is as good as a mile.”
While he was speaking, the farmer had laid Johnny on the bench in the
porch, and now he went hastily to the pump, and brought a dipperful of
water to Mrs. Leslie.
“A little of that will bring him to,” he said, and as she gently bathed
Johnny’s face and head, his new friend fanned him gently with his own
large straw hat, and in two or three minutes the little boy “came to,”
and sat up, feeling strangely dizzy, and wondering where he was, and what
had happened.
“There!” said the farmer, putting on his hat, and then making a bow,
“Good afternoon, ma’am—he’ll do now,” and he was gone before Mrs. Leslie
could even thank him.
“I went to the circus, mammy!” said Johnny, feebly, and throwing his arms
around his mother’s neck as he spoke, “and the donkey was quite right to
break my head, only I don’t see how he knew, or how _you_ knew, and if
I’d really had the thinkephone, then you could have stopped me. But I’m
not good enough to wear your sleeve any more—you’ll have to take it back!”
Johnny had been very much interested about knights, a few weeks before,
when his mother had told him some stories of the Knights of the Round
Table, and how each one chose a lady whom he might especially honor, and
for whom he was always ready to do battle, and wore her token, a glove,
or a silken sleeve, or something of the kind that she had given him, and
how Launcelot wore the sleeve of the fair Elaine. They were ripping up a
silk gown of Mrs. Leslie’s, which was to be made over for Tiny, at the
time of one of these talks; it was a summer silk, soft, and of a pretty
light gray color, and he had begged one of the sleeves. His mother had
humored him, and twisted the sleeve around his straw hat.
“Be my own true knight,” she had said, as she gave him his decorated hat,
and Johnny had fully intended to render her all knightly service and
homage. So that now, when he had so flagrantly deceived and disobeyed
her, he felt that he was degraded, and had no longer any right to wear
her token.
“We will not talk about that now, dear,” said his mother, very gently and
gravely, “You must go to bed at once, and have a mustard plaster on the
back of your neck. Does your head ache much?”
“I should think it did!” said Johnny, feebly, “it feels as big as the
house, with an ache in every room!” and he closed his eyes.
He was feverish at bedtime, and his mother, too anxious to go to bed, put
on a soft wrapper, and drew the easy-chair to his bedside. She had sent
for the doctor, but he was not at home, and she could not hope to see him
now, until morning.
Johnny moaned and muttered a good deal in his sleep, through the night,
but toward morning he grew quiet, and when he woke, the pain was nearly
gone, but he felt very weak and forlorn. The doctor came, and said he had
better stay in bed until the next day, and against this advice he felt no
desire to rebel.
“Mamma,” he said, earnestly, when the doctor had gone, “I wish I felt
well enough to want to go with papa and Tiny and Pep and the rest of
them, right badly. I don’t feel punished enough.”
His mother stooped to kiss him.
“The punishing will not help you for next time,” she said, “unless you
see just where the fault was. When did the going wrong begin?”
Johnny was silent for a few moments; then he said,—
“I think it began when I said to myself that you didn’t know about boys
because you were a lady. Then, when I found I had my half dollar in my
pocket, and heard the music, that seemed to make it all right,—I made
myself believe that if papa had been at home, he would have let me
go,—only I didn’t really and truly believe it, for he never does let me
do things that you don’t.
“But, mamma, don’t you think it would be a splendid thing if there really
were thinkephones? Something like telephones, you know, only for thinks
instead of words? You see, if you and I had one, you would always be able
to stop me when I was going to do anything bad! I had such a queer dream
last night, when my head hurt so; I thought somebody had really and truly
invented thinkephones, and I was hearing everybody think, and some of
the people that I had liked ever so much were thinking such disagreeable
things that I did not like them any more, and they heard me think that,
and then _they_ didn’t like _me_ any more, and things were getting into a
most dreadful mess when you came in and cut the wires, and then the dream
stopped, and I went into a nice quiet sleep.”
“So you see,” said his mother, smiling at this remarkable dream, “that
if anybody ever should invent the thinkephone, it will make more trouble
than pleasure, for no one, not even the best people, would be ready to
have all their thoughts known to any other human being. But, dear Johnny,
Who is it to whom all our thoughts lie bare, Who hears them just as if we
spoke, Who, if we ask Him, can take away the wicked ones, and put good
and holy ones in their place?”
“It is the Saviour, mamma,” said Johnny, reverently, “and if I had just
asked Him yesterday, when I heard the music, and found the half dollar
in my pocket, that would have been better than stopping my ears. But it
seems to me that just when I am most bad and need Him the most, I forget
all about Him.”
“We can teach our minds, as well as our bodies, to have habits,” said his
mother, “and the habit of sending up a quick, earnest prayer, whenever
we are especially tempted, will often save us from yielding to the
temptation, when there is nothing else to do it. Even if I could read
your thoughts, I cannot always be with you, and I could not always help
you, but the Saviour is always near, and always ‘mighty to save,’ from
small things as well as great, and you can _think_ to Him, and know that
it will be just the same as if you had spoken.”
Johnny was obliged to keep rather quiet for several days, but he was much
more patient and gentle than he had ever been before during a slight
illness, and he seemed sincerely pleased when he heard what a good time
Tiny and Pep and the rest of his small friends had had at the circus.
Tiny had been much impressed by seeing the identical donkey that had come
so near to breaking Johnny’s head.
“I didn’t half like that part,” she said. “I wanted that donkey punished
for kicking you, Johnny.”
“He didn’t do it on purpose, Tiny,” said Johnny, indulgently. “You see,
I stuck my head out over the rope, and, though I couldn’t help thinking
at first that he knew and did it to punish me, I know now that that
was foolish. And I’m really very much obliged to him! If nothing ever
happened to folks, I don’t believe they’d think of anything!”
Mrs. Leslie left Johnny to decide for himself whether or not he should
give her back her sleeve, and, very sorrowfully, he brought her his hat
to have the “token” ripped off.
“It wouldn’t be fair for me to keep it on, mamma,” he said, “when I
deserted Polly and Tiny and you all at once. But please don’t cut it
up, or anything,—just put it away safely, and the very first time I’ve
been tempted right hard, and remembered what you said, and been helped
through, then I’ll ask you to put it on my hat again!”
CHAPTER III.
LETTER AND SPIRIT.
Tiny and Johnny congratulated themselves, and each other, at least once a
week, upon being the children of an editor.
You will think, perhaps, that they had literary tendencies, and hoped to
grow up into co-editors? Not in the least! They each wondered, as they
groaned over “composition day,” how anybody could be found willing to
spend the greater part of his time either in writing, or in reading what
other people had written; they knew that at least a column of the “large
print” in their father’s paper, was always written by himself, and they
had often seen him plodding through pages of bad writing, which must be
read and decided upon, so that, proud as they were of him for being able
to do these things, and much as they admired him, I am afraid they pitied
him even more.
[Illustration]
“Poor papa!” they would say to each other, when they saw him at his desk,
with a mountain of manuscript before him; and sometimes, I must confess,
Mr. Leslie echoed this sigh, for an editor’s life is not invariably “a
happy one,” any more than a policeman’s is.
[Illustration]
No, their pleasure in having an editor for their father was a very
practical one; among the many books which were sent to him for review
were numbers of nice story and picture books for children; among the
“exchanges” which came to the office were delightful picture papers,
selected, apparently, with a view to playroom walls and scrap-books. And
last, but by no means least, there was the waste-paper basket! They had
learned the signs and tokens, and whenever a very fat manuscript was
being read, they would ask eagerly,—
[Illustration]
“Did she send any stamps, papa?”
They were so nearly sure that the fat manuscript would prove “not
available for the purposes of, etc.,” that the whole thing hinged on
the stamps—if she had sent them, why then, of course, she must have her
“old manuscript” back, if she wished it; but if she had not, then, oh,
then! there were all those sheets of paper, perfectly blank on one
side, anyhow. And what with colored envelopes, and pamphlets printed on
pink and blue paper, and envelope bands, and monograms, and occasional
coats-of-arms, that waste paper basket, with skilful handling of its
contents, had yielded many a handsome kite.
Its contents had been given over to Johnny, and those of the rag-bag to
Tiny, at the same time, but they preferred to make partnership affairs
of both. As the rag-bag yielded sails for boats, and covers for balls,
and “bobs” for kites, so did the waste-paper basket yield colored paper
wherewith to dress paper dolls, and stiff cards which made excellent
cardboard furniture, not to mention those pieces of blank-on-both-sides
writing paper, which could be cut into small sheets and envelopes. And if
a monogram is really handsome, why should not one person use it as well
as another?
[Illustration]
Johnny was beginning to be famous for his kites, and as he was a
warm-hearted and generous little boy, with a large number of friends, he
frequently made a kite to give away. Tiny was always ready to help him,
and was particularly “handy” at making the devices of bright paper with
which the kites were generally ornamented, and pasting them neatly on.
When the kite was very large, she did even more than this, and Johnny
never gave one away, without explaining that Tiny had shared in the
making.
They had been saving all the best paper of every sort lately for the
largest kite they had ever undertaken; it was so large that it was
already named the Monster, and it was stretched, half finished, upon
the floor of the spare garret, where it would not be disturbed. It was
designed for a birthday present to one of Johnny’s very best friends, and
everybody in the house was interested in it. It was to be pure white,
with a pair of wings, and a bird’s head and tail, in brilliant red paper,
pasted upon one side, and on the other, in large blue letters, the
initials of the boy for whom it was intended.
But, with the perversity of things in general, or rather because it had
been a very warm summer, and most of the poor authors had been taking
holidays as much as they could, the waste-paper basket of late had not
been worth the trouble of emptying.
[Illustration]
So it was with no very great expectations that Johnny went to it
one Saturday morning to see if by chance there should be a rejected
manuscript of sufficient length to satisfy the Monster. No, there was
nothing there but a letter written on both sides of the paper, a few
pamphlets, likewise without blank sides, and some envelopes and postal
cards. Johnny was turning away with a natural sigh, and the conviction
that, if the Monster was ever to be finished, he must make a small
appropriation out of his Christmas money, when behold! on the floor, just
under the edge of the desk, and hidden by the basket, he spied a lovely
manuscript; large sheets, firm, white, unruled paper, written upon only
on one side.
He jumped for it with a joyful exclamation, but stopped as suddenly—had
it been _thrown_ down, and missed the basket, or had it fallen, and been
neglected for the moment, because it was hidden by the desk and basket?
[Illustration]
If Mr. Leslie had only been there, how quickly these questions could have
been answered! But alas! he had left home that very morning, to be gone
two days; and must a whole precious Saturday be lost on account of what
was, perhaps, after all, only a needless and foolish scruple?
Then the two Johnnys—you may have observed that there are two of
you?—began an argument something like this:—
Johnny No. 1. You’d better not take that thing till you’ve asked your
father about it. It looks to me as if it had merely fallen from the table.
Johnny No. 2. But papa won’t be back till Monday morning, and I can’t
wait. Bob’s birthday is next Wednesday, and the kite’s only half done now!
No. 1. That makes no difference. It is not the question. And you might at
least ask your mother what she thinks, and let her decide.
No. 2. Mamma never knows anything about papa’s papers; I’ve heard her
say so a dozen times. And why should it have been on the floor if it was
worth anything?
No. 1. You know quite well that your father never throws on the floor
things which are meant for the basket, and that it looks much more as if
it had fallen from the table. Come, put it back, and either wait till
Monday, or go and buy the rest of the paper you need.
No. 2. Papa’s a very careful man, and he wouldn’t have gone off for two
days and left anything worth while on the floor. It was almost in the
basket, and it’s all the same, and I mean to take it, so there!
The other Johnny made no reply to this conclusive argument—in fact, he
had no time, for the wrong Johnny rushed out of the library, shouting:—
“Tiny! Oh, Tiny! come at once! Here’s enough to finish the Monster, tail
and all!”
[Illustration]
Tiny dropped some very important work for her best doll without a
moment’s hesitation, and reached the garret almost as soon as Johnny did.
“Oh, that’s perfectly lovely!” she panted, “and it’s more than enough!
But oh, Johnny,” she added, in a changed tone, “if we should ever write
poems and stories and things, after we’re grown up, do you believe that
some dreadful editor will let his children make kites out of them?”
“I’m afraid he will, of mine,” said Johnny, frankly, “for that’s about
all they’d be good for, but you write much better compositions than I do,
Tiny, for all you’re so much younger than I am, so perhaps the editors
will print yours. But it does seem a sort of shame, when you think of
all the time it must take them to do it, and how flat they must feel
when it turns out to have been for nothing. Now this one”—looking at it
critically—“is really beautifully written, and on such good paper. Why,
even the paper must cost them ever so much! I say, Tiny, it’s just as if
we had to put on five dollar gold pieces, or gold dollars, for bait when
we go fishing, and then had them nibbled off without catching anything.
I’ll tell that to papa—I think he might make a story, or a poem, or a
fable, or something out of it—don’t you?”
“Yes, it’s just the kind of thing they use for a fable,” said Tiny,
approvingly, and so, in steady work at the kite, enlivened by such
intellectual conversations as this, the day flew by, and by evening the
Monster was finished, tail and all.
There had been more than enough of the strong white paper for everything,
and Tiny had carefully cut the “bobs” out of it, fringing each one at
both ends. The colored paper for the enterprise had been on hand for some
time, and Mrs. Leslie put the crowning glory on, by drawing a monogram
to take the place of the separate initials of Bob’s name, which were to
have adorned one side of the kite. This monogram was cut by Tiny’s deft
fingers from pink and blue paper, and carefully pasted together in the
middle of one side.
Johnny had so entirely succeeded in silencing his scruples about the
manuscript, that he would probably never have thought of it again, if it
had not been rather forcibly recalled to his memory. It had not occurred
to Tiny to ask any questions about it; such streaks of luck had come
to them before, and she had perfect faith in Johnny. So when, at the
dinner-table, on Monday, Mr. Leslie said to his wife,—
“I’ve somehow mislaid a very bright article by Mrs. —— which I meant to
use in the next number. Did you empty the waste basket, dear, or did the
children?”
Before his mother could answer, Johnny, with a very red face, and a lump
in his throat, had told the whole story.
Mr. Leslie looked exceedingly grave.
“I am very much annoyed by the loss of this manuscript,” he said, “for
even should Mrs. —— have a rough draft of it, she will be obliged to
take the trouble of making a second copy, and should she not, it will
be necessary for me to pay her for it, as if I had used it. But that is
not the worst of it, Johnny. If we deliberately stifle our consciences,
after a while, we cease to hear from them. Do you remember asking me what
‘Quench not the Spirit’ means?”
“Yes, papa,” said Johnny, in a choked voice.
“I think, then, that you remember what I told you, my boy, and I shall
pray that you may not again forget it. And now, the next thing is,
reparation, so far as you can make it. You must write to Mrs. —— and tell
her the whole story.”
“Oh, papa! please! I’ll do _anything_ else!” said Johnny, piteously. “But
won’t you _please_ write for me, and let me sign it, or put that it’s all
true, at the bottom?”
“No, my son,” said his father, firmly, “you must do this yourself, and I
shall take it as a proof of real repentance, if you do it promptly, and
without complaint.”
Johnny said not another word, and that evening, when he bade his father
good-night, he handed him a letter, saying meekly,—
“You’ll direct it for me, won’t you, papa?”
“Certainly, I will, my dear boy,” said his father, throwing his arm
around Johnny’s shoulder, and drawing him near for another kiss.
“And you’ll read it, and see if it will answer? Indeed, I did my very
best!” said poor Johnny.
“I don’t doubt it, dear boy,” said his father, warmly, “and I shall add a
few lines to tell Mrs. —— so.”
“Oh, will you do that? Thank you very much, dear papa!” said Johnny, and
he went to bed with a wonderfully lightened heart.
This was his letter:—
“DEAR MRS. —— Perhaps you will think I have no right to call
you that, when you hear what I have done. I took a story of
yours, which I heard papa say was a very bright one, and used
nearly all of it to finish a Monster Kite, which Tiny and I
were making. Tiny is my sister, but she knew nothing about
the way in which I took the story. It was this way. Papa lets
us have everything which he puts into the waste-paper basket,
but people don’t seem to have written much lately, and we had
not near enough. On Saturday morning I went to look. There was
nothing of any account in the basket, but your story had fallen
on the floor, and I made myself believe that I thought it had
been thrown at the basket, and missed it. Papa was away and
was not coming back till Monday, and we were in a great hurry
to finish the Monster for Bob Lane’s birthday, so I just took
it, and let Tiny think I found it in the basket, which was as
bad as a lie, though I didn’t say so. Now, I am so sorry that
I don’t know how to tell you, but that is not enough. If I
could unpaste your story, I would, but we put on a great deal
of paste—you have to, you know, or it don’t stick—and some of
it is all cut into fringe, for the bobs. But what I mean to say
is this: if you have any little boys, or little nephews, or
know anybody you would like to give that kite to, I will send
it right on. I have money enough, I am pretty sure, to pay for
expressing it, and I know a way of fixing it so that it will
not break. I sent one to my cousin. Will you please let me know
_at once_, if I may send it, and oblige,
“Yours very sorrowfully and very respectfully,
“JOHN LESLIE.”
It had taken Johnny three good hours to write and copy that letter. His
father made no alteration in it, merely adding a few courteous lines to
express his own regret for what had happened, and to say that he believed
his boy had repented his fault very sincerely, and had done his best with
the enclosed letter.
Mrs. —— was not a monster, if the kite was. She laughed till she cried,
and then cried a little till she laughed again, over Johnny’s letter.
Then she answered it, and this is what she said:—
“MY DEAR JOHN,—You have my hearty forgiveness. And I would like
very much to have the kite for my son, who is nearly as old as
I imagine you are, and has never yet made one. But you must
allow me to pay the expressage; I can only accept it on that
condition. I have a rough copy of the article which helped to
make the Monster, and from this I will make a fair copy for
your father to-day and to-morrow. Please tell him so, with my
kindest regards,—and that I hope it will circulate as widely as
will the first one, and in as high circles! I should very much
like to hear from you again; if you will write once in a while,
so will I, and some day, I hope, you and my boy will meet and
be friends. In the meantime, believe me sincerely and cordially
your friend,
“MARY ——.”
Johnny proved the sincerity of his repentance still further by the
perfect willingness with which he packed the Monster for his journey.
Tiny helped him, having first, by working very carefully, soaked off the
monograms, not much the worse for wear, and, as they were so fortunate
as to have some gilt paper in stock, the rough spot was covered with a
shining star.
An explanation was made to Bob, who, not having expected a kite, or
indeed any birthday present at all from Tiny and Johnny, was quite
resigned to wait, with so brilliant a prospect ahead of him, until one
or two more unfortunates had contributed a large enough supply of waste
paper. If they had known how eagerly it was welcomed, it might have
helped to console them a little, poor things!
The children built a third Monster for themselves, after Bob’s was
finished, and on this they pasted, in large gilt letters, upon a blue
ground, the motto they intended to use if they should ever have a
coat-of-arms—“Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.”
“Only I suppose it will have to be in Latin then,” said Johnny, as he
smoothed down the last letter of the last word, “and perhaps, by that
time, I’ll know enough Latin to do it myself!”
CHAPTER IV.
THE FIRST MOVE.
There were just two things which could keep Johnny quiet for more than
two minutes at a time; one was having some one read aloud to him, and
the other was playing checkers. He could read to himself, more or less,
but stopping once in a while to spell a long word, or to wonder what it
means, breaks the thread of the most entertaining story, so whenever
anything very attractive-looking in the way of books and magazines came
into the Leslie family, Johnny coaxed his mother to read it aloud.
But it is one thing to hear reading because you have begged for it, and
have been running and jumping enough to make keeping still not only
possible but really quite pleasant, and another to hear it because your
mother asks you to stay in the house until it clears up, or your cold is
well.
New Year’s Day had been bitterly cold and raw, and Johnny, coming from
the well-warmed church in the morning, had stopped on the way home to do
a little snowballing. He had “cooled off,” as he expressed it, rather too
quickly, and the result was an unpleasant cough. Now Johnny did not in
the least object to drinking the agreeable beverage made of Irish moss
and lemons and sugar, which his mother had prepared for him, but it was
hard work to stay in the house when all the other boys were building a
snow-fort, and making ready for a magnificent battle.
[Illustration]
“Oh, mammy dear!” he implored, “if you’d ever in your life been a boy,
you’d know how I feel when I look out of the window! If you’ll let me out
for just one little hour, right in the middle of the day, I’ll put on
my rubber-boots, and my overcoat, and my fur cap, and my ear-tabs, and
wind my neck all up in Tiny’s red scarf, and not stand still one single
moment—oh, please, please! They’re just building the tower!”
“Poor Johnny!” said Tiny, with much sympathy, “would it hurt him that
way, mamma?”
“Yes, dear, I’m afraid it would,” said Mrs. Leslie, and turning to
Johnny, she asked, “My Johnny, were you quite in earnest, when you said
you would try to win back my sleeve?”
“Why mammy! of course I was!” he answered, opening his eyes very wide,
and for a moment forgetting his woes. No opportunity which he considered
large enough had yet occurred, for him to try to win back his mother’s
“silken sleeve,” which he had worn twisted around his hat to show that he
meant to render her knightly service, and which he had given back to her
the day after the circus, because he felt that he was unworthy to wear
it, and he often looked at it sorrowfully as it hung, where he had placed
it, above his mother’s picture, in his little room.
[Illustration]
“Very well,” she said, gently pulling him down upon her lap, and turning
his face away from the distracting window. “Imagine that you are really
a knight, and that you are storm bound in my castle, as the foreign
knight was in Sintram’s. You’d be too polite, in that case, I hope, to be
grumbling and howling because you were compelled to pass a whole day in
the charming society of the lady of the castle—now, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes, mamma, I suppose I should,” admitted Johnny, reluctantly,
“but somehow it doesn’t seem exactly the same thing. You see, the snow
may all be melted before you let me out again, and when the real old
knights were storm bound, or anything, they always knew that their
enemies and battles and things would keep!”
“Very well then,” replied his mother, promptly, “that gives you a chance
to be just so much more knightly than the ‘real old knights’ were! And if
you don’t give another howl, or scowl, or grumble, all day, but are my
very best Johnny, instead of my second best or third best, I’ll twist my
sleeve around your new school cap this very night!”
“Oh, mammy! will I really and truly be winning it, that way?” asked
Johnny, eagerly.
“Indeed you will,” said his mother, kissing him, “for you’ll never, even
if you should some day be a soldier, and fight for your country, find a
worse enemy, or one that will take more conquering, than my third-best
Johnny Leslie!”
Johnny returned the kiss with interest, and then, resolutely turning his
back to the window, he said,—
“Tiny, if you’ll bring your old black Dinah here, I’ll get out all the
blocks, and my pea-shooter, and my little brass cannon, and we’ll make a
huge fort, and put Dinah in the tower, and storm it! You don’t mind our
making a muss here, mammy, if we clear it up again, do you?”
[Illustration]
“Not a bit,” said his mother, cheerfully, while Tiny, with a little
scream of delight rushed off for Dinah. The playroom stove was out of
order, and the children were obliged to play in the dining-room, which
made Johnny’s imprisonment all the harder to bear.
Tiny came back presently, with an assorted cargo, presided over by Dinah,
in the basket.
“I brought all my tin housekeeping things,” she explained, as she
proceeded to unload. “I thought we could put them on top, and they’d make
such a lovely clatter when the fort fell!”
“Now, that’s what I call really bright!” and Johnny nodded his head
approvingly. “It’s almost a pity you’re a girl, Tiny—you’d be such a
jolly little fellow if you were only a boy!”
[Illustration]
It made Tiny very happy when Johnny approved of her, so the building of
the fort went merrily on with so much laughing and talking that Mrs.
Leslie, who was in the kitchen, not “eating bread and honey,” but making
doughnuts, looked in once or twice to see if any of the children’s
friends had called. And when the stately fort, with its tin battlements,
at last yielded to the fierce attack of the brass cannon and the
pea-shooter, used after the manner of battering-rams, she rushed to the
scene of conflict with the dreadful certainty that the stove had been
knocked over, but an invitation to help hurrah for the victory quieted
her fears.
The ruins had just been picked up and repacked in the basket, when Ann
came in to set the dinner table, and Johnny found, to his astonishment,
that the morning was gone.
“But there’s all the great long afternoon yet!” he thought, ruefully,
“and mamma will have to lie down, I’m afraid, and Tiny’s going to
that foolish doll-party, and—hello! if I keep on this way I shall say
something, and, if I do, Tiny will stay at home; it would be just like
her, she’s such a good little soul. Brace up, Johnny Leslie, and win your
sleeve!”
And Johnny marched up and down, and tried to sing “Onward, Christian
Soldier!” but only succeeded in coughing.
“Mamma, I wish to whisper something to you,” said Tiny, after dinner.
“Don’t listen, please, Johnny,” and she whispered, “Don’t you think it
would be dreadfully mean for me to go to the doll-party, mamma, when poor
Johnny has such a cough and can’t go out? Because if you do, I’ll stay at
home, and I wouldn’t mind it, or not so very much, if Johnny would play
with me as he has played this morning.”
“No, darling,” whispered her mother, “Johnny would not be so selfish as
to wish you to stay; and the other little girls you are to meet would be
disappointed, for they all know about your new Christmas doll. So run and
get ready, and Ann will carry you and your daughter across the street.
You will have a great deal to tell us when you come home, you know.”
Tiny went, but not very briskly, and, when she was gone, Johnny said,—
“I’ll bet—I mean I _think_ I know what Tiny said, mamma; didn’t she offer
to stay at home from her doll-party?”
“What a brilliant boy!” said his mother, smiling. “She did, but I knew
you would not like her to make such a sacrifice; she has been counting
upon the party for a week.”
“No, indeed!” said Johnny, warmly, “I hope I’m not such a great bear as
all that! But it was a jolly thing for the dear little soul to do, and
I’ll not forget it.”
“Would you like me to read to you again, dear?” asked his mother, when
she had put the finishing touches to Tiny’s dress, and seen her off.
“No, Mrs. Mother, thank you,” said Johnny, stoutly, “I am going to read
to myself, and you are going upstairs to lie down for at least an hour.
You’re making your back ache face, and if you don’t lie down I’ll not eat
one single doughnut or gingerbread—so there!”
“I couldn’t stand that, of course,” said his mother, laughing, and
kissing him, “and I find my back does ache, now you mention it, so I will
take you at your word, my own true knight!”
If they had been looking out of the window just then, they would have
seen a bright-faced little girl running up the walk, and before Mrs.
Leslie had started upon her upward journey the door-bell rang, and
there was Johnny’s especial friend, Kitty McKee, with a little basket
of rosy apples, and permission to spend the afternoon, “if it would be
convenient.”
To say that Johnny was glad to see her but faintly expresses his
feelings. She was a year or two older than he was, and he considered
her friendship for him a flattering thing. She played checkers so well
that his occasional victories over her were triumphs indeed, and, what
was better still, she never lost her temper with her game. So, after
performing a war dance around her while she took off her cloak and hood,
Johnny rushed for the checker-board, and Mrs. Leslie, with an easy mind
and a tired body, went upstairs for a delightful nap.
Johnny took a white checker in one hand, and a black one in the other,
mixed them up under the table, and held up his hand, asking,—
“Which’ll you have?”
“Right,” said Kitty, and, as it happened, that gave Johnny the first move.
The battle was fierce, but the advantage which the first move had given
Johnny was followed up until he felt so sure of victory that he began
to grow a little careless, and was startled by losing a king and seeing
Kitty gain one in rapid succession. Then he resumed his caution; his hand
hung poised over the piece he was about to move until he had taken in
all the possible consequences. Slowly he pushed his man to the back row;
two more well-considered moves and the game was his!
Perhaps the triumph of winning the first game made him too
self-confident; at any rate, victory perched upon Kitty’s banner for
the rest of the afternoon, and when the early dusk fell they drew their
chairs to the cheerful fire, quite willing to exchange their battle for
Tiny’s eager account of the doll-party.
Mrs. Leslie had come down, rested and refreshed, and presently Mr. Leslie
was heard stamping the snow from his boots in the porch, and Kitty said
she really must go, if she did live only next door but one, and Mr.
Leslie said it was highly personal for her to rush off the minute she
heard his fairy footsteps, and he should step in and tell her mother they
were keeping her to tea. Kitty thanked him with a kiss, and the supper
was a very cheerful one. When it was over, the meeting adjourned to the
parlor, and Mr. Leslie found a Christmas _Graphic_ and a _London News_
and a number of _Punch_ in his pockets, and it was time for Kitty to go
home and for Johnny to go to bed before anybody knew it. Tiny had gone an
hour ago, too sleepy even to wish to sit up longer.
[Illustration]
When Mrs. Leslie came to tuck Johnny up and give him his last dose
of cough mixture and last good-night kiss, she took down the sleeve,
saying,—
“You’ll find it on your cap in the morning, my own true knight.”
“But, indeed, mamma,” said Johnny, earnestly, “I don’t think I’ve half
won it. It hasn’t been hard at all, but the very pleasantest day since
Christmas Day.”
“And why has it been so pleasant?” asked his mother, drawing a chair to
the bedside and sitting down. “Begin at the beginning, and tell me.”
[Illustration]
“Why, you know all that happened, mammy,” replied Johnny. “But I’ll go
over it, if you like. First, I had some good fun with Tiny, because she
played fort so nicely, and then you made us laugh with the doughnut woman
and gingerbread man, and then Kitty came with those beautiful apples, and
then I beat her the very first game of checkers we played—and I don’t see
why in thund—I mean _why_ I didn’t beat her any more, for we played six
games after that, and she beat me every single one. And then Tiny made us
laugh telling about the doll-party, and then papa kept Kitty to tea, and
gave us those jolly papers, and if that isn’t a pretty good day, I should
like to know what is!”
“But you didn’t begin at the beginning,” said his mother. “Now I am going
to suppose. Suppose, when you found you could not go out this morning,
you had kept on looking out of the window and watching the boys until
your vexation and disappointment had made you cry, I am very certain
that would have set you to coughing, and then your body would have felt
worse, as well as your mind. Suppose that, instead of offering to play
with Tiny, and doing it heartily, you had been cross and sulky, and hurt
her feelings, and had spent the morning bemoaning your hard fate, and
thinking how ill-used you were; you would have been in such a bad way by
dinner-time that my doughnut woman and gingerbread man would scarcely
have made you smile, and by the time Kitty came, the sight of your face
would have been enough to make her turn round and go home again. Fretting
and fuming all the afternoon would have left you too tired of yourself
and everything else to care for Tiny’s account of the party and papa’s
papers. In short, everything would have looked to you the ugly color of
your own dark thoughts.”
“Then it’s just like checkers!” exclaimed Johnny, sitting up in bed; “if
you get the first move, and make that all right, the rest is pretty sure
to come straight.”
“Yes,” said his mother. “There is a French proverb which means, ‘It is
only the first step that costs.’ If we make the first step, or the first
move, in the right direction, we have gone a good deal more than one step
toward the right end.”
“And it’s like checkers in another way,” said Johnny, thoughtfully; “if
we’re too uncommonly sure we’re all right, and can’t go wrong, we get
tripped up before we know it. I do believe that the reason why Kitty beat
me every time but that one, was because I felt so stuck up about the
first game that I didn’t try my best afterward; I thought I could beat
her anyhow.”
“That is very likely,” answered his mother. “And now you see how needful
it is to ask that we may obey God’s ‘blessed will’ in all things—not only
large, important-looking things, which only come once in a while, but in
the veriest trifles, or what seem to us like trifles, that are coming all
the time. Sometimes I think that _there is no such thing as a trifle_,
Johnny. Good-night, darling—you will find my sleeve on your helmet in the
morning, my own true knight!”
CHAPTER V.
INALIENABLE RIGHTS.
As time went on, from that Fourth of July when Johnny had reason to
change his views about independence, and as he thought more about that,
and other matters connected with it, he grew only the more firmly
convinced that any of his rights which trod upon the toes of other
people’s rights, were only wrongs under a false name.
The boys at his school nearly all liked him; he “went into things” so
heartily, that he was wanted on both sides in all the games that had more
than one. But with all his love of fun, the boys soon found that there
were some sorts of fun—or what they called so—for which it was useless
to ask his help. So when recess came, the morning before school closed
for the summer, a group of boys gathered in a corner of the playground,
whispering together, and did not ask him to join them. He felt a little
left out in the cold, for some of his best friends were in the group, but
he was not naturally suspicious, and his mother had brought him up in a
wholesome fear of imagining himself injured or slighted.
“Always take good-will for granted, Johnny,” she said to him once, when
he fancied himself neglected by somebody, “at least until you have the
most positive proof of ill-will.”
[Illustration]
So he joined some of the smaller boys, who did not seem to have been
invited to the conference, and made them supremely happy by getting up a
game of football.
He had just parted from one of the larger boys, on his way home from
school that afternoon, and was near his gate, when a little fellow, the
youngest of all his schoolmates, stuck his head cautiously out of the
nearly closed gate, and, after seeing that the coast was clear, said in a
mysterious whisper,—
“Hold on, Johnny, will you? I’ve got something to tell you, but if you
ever say I told you, you’ll get me into the awfullest scrape that ever
was!”
If little Jamie Hughes had been talking to anybody but Johnny, he would
have exacted a very solemn “indeed and double deed and upon my sacred
honor I’ll never tell!”
But the boys all felt very sure, by this time, that Johnny would not do
them an ill-turn, no matter what chance he might have; so Jamie went
hurriedly on, linking his arm in Johnny’s as he spoke, and drawing him
inside the gate and up the walk, as if he feared being seen.
“You see, they didn’t mean me to hear,” said Jamie, talking very fast,
“but it wasn’t my fault. I was up the apple tree cutting my name, and
two of them were under it, and one of them said, ‘The old gentleman will
open his eyes, for once in his life,’ and then the other said, kind of
uneasy, ‘I don’t think we need take _cannon_ crackers; wouldn’t the small
ones do just as well?’ and then I began to sing, and they never let on
they heard me, but the first fellow said: ‘My dear boy, my grandfather
expressly requested that the salute in his honor should be fired with
cannon-crackers!’ and then they both burst out laughing, and walked away,
and I never thought, till ever so long afterward, that that one who spoke
last hadn’t a grandfather to his name, and I’m sure they’re going to do
something to—to Mr. Foster.”
“What makes you think that, Jamie?” asked Johnny, kindly, “It may be all
a joke; perhaps they saw you up there, and are just putting up a game on
you.”
Jamie shook his head.
“No, they’re not!” he said, very positively, “they both jumped like
everything when I began to sing, and the one who said little crackers
would do turned as red as a beet. Now, Johnny, I came to you because I
knew you wouldn’t give me away, and because I thought you could think of
some way to checkmate them, and you’d just better believe it’s what I
think! You know Mr. Foster always leaves his window wide open at night,
and the ceilings are so low in that house where he boards that anybody
could throw a pack of crackers into a second-story window easy enough.
I was in his room once, and his bed’s right opposite the window, and
suppose those fellows should throw so hard that the crackers would hit
him in the face, or light in the bed and set the clothes afire? I can’t
tell you all I know, or you’d believe me, and spot the fellows in a
minute, and then _they’d_ spot _me_, and I wouldn’t give much for my skin
if they did!”
[Illustration]
Jamie would have been a good deal more nervous than he was if he had
known that Johnny had already, and without the least difficulty,
“spotted the fellows.” Jamie was a timid little boy, and his affection
for Mr. Foster, who was the teacher of mathematics at the school, had
grown out of that gentleman’s patient kindness to him. Mr. Foster never
mistook timidity for stupidity, but he was a very clear-headed man,
with little patience for boys who tried to make shifts and tricks do
duty for honestly-learned lessons. So the school was divided into two
pretty equal camps concerning him. The boys who really studied hard were
his enthusiastic admirers, and those who studied only enough to “pull
through,” as they expressed it, were very much the reverse. But when it
came to a question of “fun,” things were sometimes a little mixed, and it
seemed, in this particular case, as if some of the boys had thoughtlessly
gone over to the enemy, and then been somewhat dismayed when they saw
where they were being led.
Johnny was very much troubled by what he had heard, and the more he
thought of it the less he liked it. A pack of cannon-crackers, flung
at random through a window, and flung all the harder by reason of the
flinger’s haste to put himself out of sight, might do untold mischief.
Beside the possibility that they would start a fire in the room, there
was another even worse one—they might explode dangerously near the face
of the sleeping victim.
No, the thing must be stopped; but how to stop it? He thought of asking
the boys, point-blank, what they were whispering about, but, even should
any of them give him a truthful answer, they would probably suspect
that somebody had suggested the question to him, and then, of course,
remember Jamie’s presence in the tree. He thought of giving Mr. Foster
a confidential warning, but, if it took effect, it would be open to the
same objection, and he did not like to think of the life Jamie would lead
for the next few months were he even suspected of being the informer.
Johnny’s face wore so puzzled and hopeless an expression, that evening
after he had learned his lessons, that his father said, kindly,—
“There’s nothing so desperate that it can’t be helped somehow, my boy;
what’s the special desperation this evening? Grief at the prospect of a
temporary separation from your beloved studies?”
Johnny laughed a little at that.
“Oh, no, papa!” he said. “I like one or two of them well enough, but I
think I can stand it without them for a while. I wish I could tell you
all about what’s the matter, but I haven’t any right to. I will ask you
a question, though. Can you think of any kind of game, or spree, or
anything that would make the fellows at school take such an early start
on the Fourth that they wouldn’t have time for anything else first?”
Mr. Leslie had not in the least forgotten how he had felt and acted when
he was a boy, and he also remembered various things which Johnny had said
from time to time about the way in which Mr. Foster was regarded by the
boys, so he had no great difficulty in guessing that some mischief was
on foot which Johnny was anxious to forestall, but could not hinder by
attacking the enemy on high moral grounds.
“I should not be much of an editor if I had not enough invention and to
spare for such an emergency as that,” said Mr. Leslie, smiling; “How many
fellows are there, altogether?”
Johnny thought a minute, and then said,—
“Only thirty, papa, since the mumps broke loose—we had over forty before
that.”
“I’ll call around to-morrow, just before the exercises are over,” said
Mr. Leslie, “and ask permission to address the meeting. By a curious
coincidence, a plan for jollifying the Fourth was seething in my brain
before you spoke, and I think a trifling alteration will make it fit the
case to a nicety.”
Johnny fell upon his father’s neck with smothering affection, and went to
bed with a light and easy heart; if “papa” undertook the business, all
would go right.
“And he didn’t ask me a single question, except about how many of us
there were!” said Johnny to himself, proudly, “What a first-class boy he
must have been himself!”
Mr. Leslie was on very good terms with the principal of Johnny’s school,
and had no difficulty in obtaining leave to “address the meeting.” His
address was an invitation to attend an all-day picnic, on the Fourth of
July, and included teachers as well as scholars. Two hay-wagons, half
filled with hay, were to be the vehicles, and a brass band was to be in
attendance. The refreshments, Mr. Leslie stated, would be simple, but
abundant, nobody need feel called upon to bring anything, but anybody who
chose to bring fruit, and could bring it from home, would have the thanks
of the community.
[Illustration]
“It is not usual,” concluded Mr. Leslie, “to impose conditions in giving
an invitation, but I must ask a promise from all of you, as we are to
start at seven, sharp, on our collecting tour, not to leave your homes
that morning until you are called for. We shall have a long drive to
take, and I wish to have it over before the heat of the day begins. Will
all the boys who agree to grant me this favor raise their right hands?”
Most of the right hands flew up as if their owners had nothing to do with
it; there was a very short pause, and then the remainder followed. Johnny
drew a long breath of intense relief. He knew that, although some of
the boys were anything but strictly truthful, they would consider it “a
little too mean” to break their pledge to their entertainer, and besides,
Mr. Leslie had said, emphatically, that there would be no hunting for
absentees, but simply a call at each door.
That picnic was unanimously pronounced the most brilliant of this, or
of any, season. Mr. Leslie was voted “as good as forty boys,” and the
woods rang again with laughter and joyous shouting. But when a long tin
horn had given the signal which had been agreed upon, and the boys were
gathered together for the return, Mr. Leslie mounted a convenient stump.
“Boys!” he said, as the noisy throng grew silent to listen, “No Fourth of
July celebration is complete without a speech, so I feel called upon to
make a short one. How does the Declaration of Independence begin?”
“‘All men are born free and equal, and endowed with certain inalienable
rights!’” shouted at least half the party.
“And what does ‘inalienable’ mean?” pursued the orator.
Silence. And then somebody said doubtfully, “Something you can’t lose or
give away?”
“Exactly,” said Mr. Leslie. “So, as we travel through life, we are to
bear in mind this fact, that no matter how great, or wise, or rich, or
powerful, or poor, or oppressed, or injured we may be, we are bound to
respect the ‘inalienable rights’ of other people, and that we shall never
gain anything really worth gaining, or that will bring a blessing with
it, by disregarding those rights.
“I will not undertake to tell you what they are; I think we can generally
tell nearly enough for all practical purposes by two ways; remembering
what we consider our own rights, and imagining what we should consider
our rights, were we in the places of the people with whom we are dealing.
We have had a happy day, I think; I know I have——”
“So have we!” in a vast shout from the audience——
“——and I have been pleased to see what good Republicans you all may be,
if you choose. I see you are pleased with my pleasure, and I want to
ask you all to remember, as each day closes, leaving its record of good
or evil, that the longest life must close some time, and that nothing
will be of much value to us then, but the Master’s ‘Well done, good and
faithful servant.’ Thank you for listening to me so patiently. This day
will be a pleasant memory, I hope, for all of us.”
“Three cheers for Mr. Leslie!” shouted the “fellow” who had not any
grandfather, and the amount of noise that followed was truly astonishing.
But a good many people’s ideas of what it is to be manly underwent a
gradual change from that evening.
“If Johnny’s father thinks so—why, there’s nothing mean about Johnny’s
father! I should hope we all knew that!”
CHAPTER VI.
LEANING.
A pair of shiny steel skates had been among Johnny’s Christmas presents,
and had very nearly eclipsed all the rest, although he had many pretty
and useful things beside.
He had never yet learned to skate, for the only good skating-pond was at
some little distance from his home, and he had no big brother to take
him in hand, and see that he had only the number of falls which must be
accepted by nearly every one who ventures on skates for the first time.
But the winter following the famous picnic of which I have just told you,
Pep Warren’s almost grown-up brother Robert was at home, because he had
strained his eyes, and been forbidden to study for a month or two; but,
as he sensibly observed, he didn’t skate on his eyes, and, being a big,
jolly, good-natured fellow, he gave Pep a pair of skates exactly like
Johnny’s, and offered to teach both the little boys to skate.
He had made this offer privately to Johnny’s mother and father before
Christmas, for he had heard Johnny bewailing himself, and saying he
didn’t believe he ever should learn to skate till he was as old as papa,
and then he wouldn’t wish to!
Robert said nothing at the time, but made his kind offer in season for
Kriss Kringle to learn that nothing he could bring Johnny Leslie would so
delight his heart as a pair of steel skates would.
Johnny came home from his trial trip on the new skates with his
transports a little moderated. He was “not conquered, but exhausted with
conquering,” and quite ready to go to bed early that night, and to submit
to a thorough rubbing with arnica first. His head ached a little. Some of
the numerous and hitherto unknown stars which he had seen still danced
before his eyes, and he felt as if he had at least half-a-dozen each of
elbows and knees.
[Illustration]
“You see, mamma,” he said, confidentially, as his mother’s soft, warm
hand, wet with comforting arnica, passed tenderly over the black and blue
places, “I looked at the other fellows, and it seemed to me it was just
as easy as rolling off a log. Rob was cutting his name and figures of
eight and all sorts of things while Pep and I were putting on our skates,
and I thought I had nothing to do but sail in—begin, I mean, and it would
sort of come naturally, like walking!
“I think Pep must have been born sensible—he hardly ever wants to do
foolish things, the way I do, and, when Rob held out his hand, Pep just
took it, and went very slowly at first, exactly as Rob told him, and, if
you’ll believe it, he could really stand alone, and even strike out a
little, before we came home!
[Illustration]
“But I started out alone to meet Rob, and, first thing I knew, my feet
went up in the air, as if they had balloons on, and down I came, whack!
right on the back of my head! I tell you, I saw Roman candles and
rockets, but Rob helped me up, and only laughed a little, though I must
have looked dreadfully funny, and then he took my hand, and told me how
to work my feet, and I got along splendidly, till I felt sure my first
flop was only an accident, and that I could go alone well enough. So I
let go of Rob’s hand, and kept up about two minutes, and was just crowing
to myself when everything seemed to give way at once, and the ice flew
up and hit all my knees and elbows, and there I was in a heap, with my
skates locked together as if they were a padlock. Rob sorted me out, and
tried not to laugh, till I told him to go ahead, and then he just roared!
He said if I’d only been lighted, I’d have made such a gorgeous pin-wheel!
“Perhaps you’ll think I’d had enough—I thought I had then myself, but
just before we started for home I believed I really had got the hang of
it this time, so I let go again. I struck out all right, and went ahead
for two or three yards, and Rob and Pep had just begun to clap their
hands and hurrah when before I knew what had happened I was sure I felt
my backbone coming out of the top of my head, and there I was again,
sitting down as flat as a pancake, and feeling a good deal flatter! I
didn’t try any more after that, but just took off my skates and came
home.”
Mrs. Leslie could not help smiling at this graphic account of Johnny’s
first attempt at skating, but when she tucked him up and gave him his
last kiss, she said,—
“Johnny, do you know of what your adventures to-day have made me think? A
verse in the Bible—‘Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall.’ Nearly all our falls come from being very sure we can stand, and
from refusing the offered help.”
“Pep didn’t fall once,” said Johnny, thoughtfully, “though it was his
first skate, too, and he’s younger than I am. Yes, I see what you mean,
mamma, and I hope I’ll remember it at the right time—but I’m so apt not
to remember till afterward!”
“That is why we are taught to ask that God’s grace ‘may always
prevent’—that is, go before to smooth the way—‘and follow us,’” replied
his mother, as she stooped to give him another last kiss.
Johnny applied his lesson to his next attempt at skating, and came home
triumphant, saying,—
“We didn’t fall once, mamma, either of us, and Rob let us go a little way
alone, but he skated backward, just in front of us, and caught us every
time we staggered much.”
But in two weeks, during which time the skating remained good, Rob’s
pupils ventured fearlessly all about the pond, without a helping hand,
and had even begun to try to cut letters and figures—though not, it must
be admitted, with any great amount of success. Mrs. Leslie declared that
she must see some of the wonderful performances of which she heard so
much, so one bright afternoon, when the mildness of the air threatened to
spoil their fun before long, she wrapped Tiny and Polly warmly up, hired
Mr. Chipman’s safest horse and best wagon, and drove in state to the pond.
The boys were delighted, and did their best, but of course, in his
eagerness to excel himself, Johnny managed to fall once or twice, and Rob
was obliged to testify that this was now quite unusual.
Then they begged for Polly—Tiny had been allowed to leave the wagon when
it first arrived, and was successfully and joyfully sliding.
“Oh, do let us have Polly, if it’s just for five minutes, mamma!” said
Johnny, eagerly. “We’ll take off our skates and give her a slide. It’s
first-rate sliding, here by the bank, and it’s quite safe.”
So Miss Polly, chuckling with delight, was lifted from the wagon, while
Johnny and Pep pulled off their skates, but she was a little frightened
when she felt the slippery ice under her feet, and “hung down like a rag
doll,” as Johnny said, instead of putting herself in sliding position.
[Illustration: THE SKATING LESSON.]
“Stand up straight, Polly, and put your feet down flat, _so_,” said
Johnny, as Polly slid helplessly along on the backs of her heels, resting
all her little weight confidingly upon the boys. And, after two or
three earnest explanations from Johnny and Pep, she suddenly seemed to
understand; she stiffened up, grasped a hand on each side, and went off
in such style that the boys had almost to run to keep up with her, and
she obeyed her mother’s call very unwillingly.
“Wasn’t it fun to see her little face, though!” said Johnny, as he and
Pep walked home, having declined the proffered drive for the sake of a
little more skating. “I think she thought something had made her feet
slippery, all of a sudden—she’d never been on ice before.”
The thaw came very soon after this, as thaws will come, even when people
have new steel skates, but happily, there are always tops and marbles,
and, as some wise person has remarked, “When one door shuts, another
opens.”
[Illustration]
Johnny did not play marbles “for keeps”; his father had explained to him
that taking anything without giving a fair return for it is dishonesty,
and as he quite understood this, he had no desire to “win” marbles from
boys who could not shoot so well as he could, but he enjoyed playing
fully as much as anybody did, and found the game exciting enough when
played merely for the hope of victory.
It was in the midst of a very even game that the school bell rang one
morning. Johnny and one other boy were the champions; the rest had “gone
out.” They lingered for one more shot—two more—then just a third to
finish the game, and then, as they hurried into the schoolroom, they
found that the roll had been called, and they were marked late.
Johnny had intended to take one more look at his history lesson, but
there was no time. He was sure of it all, except two or three dates, and
of course, one of those dates came to him—or rather, didn’t come; it
was the question that came. The next boy gave the answer, and Johnny’s
history lesson for the first time that term, was marked “Imperfect.”
This vexed him so, that he gave only a small half of his mind to his
mental arithmetic, and he lost his place in the class,—lost it to a boy
who was almost certain to keep it, too.
Thinking of this misfortune, he dropped a penful of ink on his spotless
new copy-book, and, although he promptly licked it off, an ugly smear
remained, and the writing teacher reproved him for untidiness. So he was
very glad when two o’clock struck, and he could go home and tell his
mournful story, for he had an uncomfortable feeling, under the injured
one, that the real, responsible cause of his misfortunes was one Johnny
Leslie.
When his mother had heard it all with much sympathy, she paused a moment,
and then repeated these words,—
“‘That they who do lean only upon the hope of Thy Heavenly grace, may
evermore be defended by Thy mighty power.’”
A sudden light came into Johnny’s face, and he exclaimed,—
“That was it, mamma dear! I wasn’t leaning on it at all, and of course,
I went down! I know all about it now. I didn’t get up when you called me
the first time, and I said my prayers in a hurry, just as if they were
the multiplication table, and I didn’t wait to read the verse in my
little book—I meant to do it after breakfast, but the marbles rattled
in my pocket, and I forgot all about it, I was in such a hurry to have
a game before school. And I wouldn’t stop to think, when the bell rang,
except a sort of make-believe think that a minute more would not make me
too late to answer to my name, and so I lost the chance to go over those
dates. And the question I missed in mental arithmetic was a mean little
easy thing, if I’d had my wits about me, but I was worrying about the
history, and I made that dreadful blot because I was thinking of both,
and did not look, and dug my pen down to the bottom of the inkstand. It’s
just like ‘The House that Jack built.’”
[Illustration]
“Yes,” said his mother, “I don’t think anything, the smallest thing,
stands quite alone; it is fast to something else that it pulls after it,
so we must keep a sharp lookout for the first things. We can’t rub out
this bad day—it is like the blot on your copy book; you will keep seeing
the mark, even if you don’t make another. But then, you can use the mark,
with the dear Saviour’s help, to keep you from making another. To-morrow
will be another day. You know Tiny and you like Tennyson’s ‘Bugle Song’
so much, here is something else he said,—
‘Men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves, to higher things.’
So to-morrow you must stand on this thoughtless, careless Johnny, who
forgets what he ought to remember, and be the Johnny you _can_ be, if
you ‘lean only on the hope’ of that Heavenly grace which God gives to His
faithful children.”
It was an humble, but bright and hopeful Johnny who sprang up at the
first call the next morning, and started for school, with fresh courage
and resolution.
Try not to be defeated, little soldier, but, if defeats come, do you too
try to make them stepping-stones to victory.
CHAPTER VII.
THE EXTRA HORSE.
Johnny did not have a great deal of time for thinking. It is difficult
to think when one is running, or jumping, or hammering, or shouting, and
still more difficult when one is asleep! He often intended to “take a
think” about something that bothered him, after he was in bed, and before
he went to sleep, but somehow, no matter how wide awake he supposed he
was before he began thinking, he always found, before he had finished,
that it was next morning, and time to get up.
But he actually walked all the way home from school, one day, without
shouting once at anybody; he came and sat down in the sewing-room, after
he had put his books away, and was so quiet for five minutes that his
mother was just going to ask him if his head ached, when he suddenly
asked her,—
“Mamma, would you object to my keeping a peanut-stand—out of school
hours, you know, I mean?”
“Not at all,” replied Mrs. Leslie, “if you were obliged to earn your
living at once, and that were the only way in which you could possibly do
it. But papa and I are both anxious that you should earn your living in
a way which will help as many people as possible to earn theirs, and if
you were to set up a peanut-stand now, while you are trying to learn a
better way, I am afraid it would hinder our plans for you.”
Johnny’s eyes had sparkled when his mother began with “Not at all,” and
now he looked a good deal disappointed.
“Yes, mamma,” he said, meekly, “I see that’s your side of it, but may I
just tell you my side?”
“Of course you may!” said Mrs. Leslie, smiling, and stopping her sewing
long enough to give him a hug and kiss. “I always like to hear your side,
even if I can’t agree with it, and I know you trust me enough to come
over to my side, even when you can’t see why.”
“It would be queer if I didn’t, mamma,” he said, drawing his stool
closer, and resting his arms on her knees, “you’ve come out right so
often when I was pretty sure you wouldn’t, you know. Now, its just this
way—I know you and papa aren’t rich, and I know I oughtn’t to ask you
for any more money than you give me now, but I do want more, dreadfully,
sometimes! F’r instance, here’s Tiny’s birthday next week, and I’ve only
twenty-five cents to buy her a birthday present with, and she really
needs a new doll; that old dud she carries about isn’t fit to be seen,
but what kind of a doll can you buy for twenty-five cents? And then your
birthday will be coming along, and then papa’s and then Easter, and I
want to give presents and send cards to lots and lots of people, and how
can I do it without any money?”
Mrs. Leslie could not help laughing.
“O Johnny, Johnny!” she said, “you’re as bad as the old woman who called
her lazy maids on Monday morning: ‘Come girls! Get up! It’s washing day,
and to-morrow’s ironing day, and Wednesday’s baking day—here’s half the
week gone, and you not out of bed yet!’ Dear little boy, we can’t have
more than one day at a time, and here you are borrowing trouble for
almost a whole year!”
“Well, anyhow, mamma,” said Johnny, laughing in spite of himself, and
looking a little foolish, “Tiny’s birthday is, most here, and if I might
buy a quarter’s worth of peanuts, and sell them, and then invest the
money again, I do believe I’d have a dollar before it was time to buy her
present.”
“And I wonder,” said his mother, “how many of your lessons you would
learn, and on how many errands you would go for me, and how many
steps you would save for papa, when he comes home tired, and how much
carpentering you would do for Tiny and her little friends? No, darling,
if you can’t quite see what I mean, you must just trust me. You can help
a great many people, in a great many ways, without money, and it is all
beautiful practice for you, against the time when you can help them with
money too; but just now, your main business is to see that papa and I are
not disappointed in the man that, with the dear Father’s help, we are
trying to help you to grow into. Keep your heart and your eyes open, and
you’ll see plenty of chances without the peanut-stand.”
Johnny looked, and felt, a good deal disappointed, but he was a boy of
his word, so he said resolutely,—
“I promised to trust you, mamma, and I will, for although you never were
a boy, papa was, and I sometimes think he’s a kind of one yet; but you
see I can’t help feeling pretty badly about it. Perhaps it’s partly from
sitting still so long—my legs are all cramped up. Come out and race me
just twice ’round the house,” he added, coaxingly. “I should think _your_
legs would be as stiff as pokers, sitting sewing here the way you do, for
half a day at a time!”
“They do feel a little stiff,” said Mrs. Leslie, springing up, and
dropping her sewing into the never-empty basket, “but for all that, I
think I can beat you yet, Mr. Johnny.”
She took off her apron and tucked up her skirt a little, and Johnny made
a line on the gravel-walk with a stick.
“Now, mamma, are you ready? One, two, three, off!” and away they skimmed,
down the walk, across the grassplot; into the walk again, over the line,
around once more, and then—
“There!” said Mrs. Leslie, triumphantly, “you’re beaten again, Johnny
Leslie!”
“I don’t care,” said Johnny, panting, and very red in the face, “you’re
only a foot ahead this time, mamma, and at that rate, I’ll be two feet
ahead, next time.”
The dinner-bell rang while Mrs. Leslie was smoothing her tumbled hair and
straightening her dress.
“I have an errand that will take me almost to the park this afternoon,
Johnny,” she said, at dinner, “Tiny is going with me, and if you’d like
to go, I will call for you at three, and ask to have you excused from the
writing hour, and then we can have a whole hour in the park before we
need come home to supper. Shall I?”
This was an extremely pleasing arrangement, and when the time arrived, a
happy party took seats in the horse car, for the park was more than two
miles from Mr. Leslie’s house, and the last part of the way was decidedly
an “up-grade.”
“Oh mamma!” exclaimed Tiny, “how will these two poor horses pull such a
car full of people up that steep hill? It’s too much for them! Suppose we
get out and walk?”
Tiny was always on the watch about the comfort of horses and dogs and
cats.
Just then the car stopped, and a third horse, that had been standing
patiently under a tree near the sidewalk, was fastened to the pole in
front of the other two, and, with his help, the car went easily up the
slope.
[Illustration]
“That’s nice,” said Tiny, looking greatly relieved, “I didn’t remember
that they kept an extra horse here, mamma; how good it must make him
feel, when the poor tired horses stop and say, ‘That hill’s a great deal
too steep for us to drag this great heavy car up it’; and then he says,
‘Hold on, I’m coming. You can do it easily, with me to help you!’”
“But, then,” said Mrs. Leslie, “just think how much of his time he spends
standing under the tree, doing nothing but wait.”
“Why, mamma,” put in Johnny, “you know he knows the car will be along
presently, and while he’s waiting he’s resting from the last trip,
and getting up his muscle for the next one, so it isn’t exactly doing
nothing, even when he’s standing still.”
“And you don’t imagine that it makes him feel sorry that he hasn’t a
special car of his own to pull, but must just help other horses pull
theirs?” pursued Mrs. Leslie.
“I should think he’d be pretty foolish if he felt that way,” said Johnny,
confidently; “he’s doing something just as good, in fact, I think perhaps
it’s better, for he must make the two regular horses feel good every time
they come ’round there. Oh mamma, you’re laughing! You’ve made me catch
myself the worst ki—I mean dreadfully! I see just what you mean; you
might as well have said it; you think that till I am old enough to have a
car of my own, I ought to be an extra horse!”
“But how could Johnny be a horse, mamma?” asked Tiny, deeply puzzled.
They were out of the car by this time, and Tiny amiably joined in the
laugh which greeted this question.
“I’ll explain how he could when we sit down by the lake, darling,” said
her mother, “You and Johnny walk on slowly, now, while I stop here for a
few minutes and leave my work—the parcel, Johnny, please!”
For Johnny was marching off with the parcel under one arm, and Tiny under
the other.
When they were comfortably seated on the shady green bank by the lake,
Mrs. Leslie explained to Tiny that she did not really expect Johnny to
turn into a horse, but that everybody who is looking out for chances to
help other people over their hard places will be sure to find plenty to
do.
“The world has a great many tired people in it,” said Mrs. Leslie, “and
a great many sick and sorrowful and discouraged and disappointed people,
and what a beautiful thought it is that the very smallest and weakest of
us may give help, and comfort, and encouragement, every day of our lives,
if we only will.”
“You do, mamma,” said Johnny, softly, stealing his hand into his mother’s
as he spoke, “and so does papa, but I’m afraid I’ve been too busy with my
own fun and things to try to help the poor tired ones pull, but I truly
mean to turn over a new leaf. I shall put it in my prayers,” he added,
reverently, and—“when, do you think, is a good time for me to think,
mamma? The time never seems to come.”
“While you are dressing in the morning and undressing at night would be
very good times,” said his mother, “just before you say your prayers, you
know. You can think over in the morning what you need most for that day,
and at night what you have done and left undone. I know your dressing and
undressing don’t take long,” she added, smiling, “but one can do a good
deal of thinking in a few minutes, if one gives the whole of one’s mind
to it.”
The red sun, peeping under the tree beneath which they were sitting,
reminded Mrs. Leslie to look at her watch. It was high time to start for
home, and Tiny and Johnny, as the car went down the steep hill, looked
out with much affectionate interest for the “extra horse,” and softly
called good bye to him, as he stood quietly under the tree, panting a
little from his last pull, and patiently waiting for the next.
I wonder how many of the dear little men and women who will read this
are training for their own life race by watching for chances to help
the hard-pressed runners who have started. Here is a motto for all of
you; the motto which a noble and earnest man has already given to many
people—“Look up, not down; look out, and not in; look forward, not back;
and lend a helping hand.”
And if you want his authority for this beautiful motto, it is easily
found, for you will all know where to look for these words,—
“Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.”
CHAPTER VIII.
“LONG PATIENCE.”
Tiny and Johnny were planting their gardens, and Jim Brady was helping
them. Johnny had happened to mention to Jim that he liked a garden very
well, after the things were up, but that he did hate digging; and Jim,
after thinking hard for a minute, had said,——
“See here! If you’ll teach me some of the things you’re learning at
school, of evenings, after my day’s work is done, I’ll dig your garden
for you, and do it better than you can, for I’m a good sight stronger
than you are, and I’ll help you keep it clean all summer, too. Is it a
bargain?”
Johnny hesitated. He did not like Jim’s tone. It was quite true that
Jim was the stronger of the two, but Johnny thought it showed bad taste
to mention it in that defiant sort of manner. And he did not see any
particular fun in teaching Jim, especially on summer evenings. But it
would be a great thing to have such good help with his garden as he knew
Jim would give, so he swallowed his pride, and said, as graciously as he
could,—
“All right. You come up after tea this evening, and we’ll begin. We have
tea at six, and I’ll hurry through mine, and then, when it’s too dark to
work any more, we can come into the playroom and have the lesson.”
You will remember that it was this Jim Brady who had given Johnny his
first, and—there is reason to believe—his last cigar, and so led him,
though quite unintentionally, into his first act of deceit to his mother.
And the remembrance of this act was a very sorrowful one, for although
Johnny, as you know, had both confessed and repented, and had been freely
forgiven, the shameful act remained, never to be undone. Do you ever
think of that, when you are tempted to do some mean, wicked thing?
Mrs. Leslie had called on Jim, at his bootblacking stand, soon after this
occurrence, and had a long talk with him, and the next time the boys met,
Jim had said, severely,—
“If _I_ had an Angel for a mother, Johnny Leslie, I’d be shot before I’d
behave anyhow but on the square to her, and now I’ll put you on your
honor—if you find you’re learning anything she wouldn’t like, from me,
you’ve only to let me know, and I’ll cut you dead!”
This was a rather mixed statement, but Johnny understood it, and felt
himself blushing. It seemed to him that Jim had somehow got things
backward, but his recent downfall had humbled him, in more ways than one,
so instead of replying, as he was greatly tempted to, that if anybody
did any cutting, he would be the person to do it, he merely said, rather
shortly,—
“Very well, I guess I know a little more about my mother than you do, so
you attend to your mother-minding, and I’ll attend to mine!”
“Glad to hear it,” said Jim, easily, “but _my_ mother’s what the
dictionary-talkers call a traydition; I never saw her, so I’d find it
a little impossible to mind her, don’t you see? But I’ll tell you one
thing—if your mother ever cares enough about me to give me a little extra
minding to do for her, I’ll see what I’m equal to in that line, perhaps!”
Johnny had reported this speech to Mrs. Leslie, and she had begun to work
on the suggestion. Jim had already set his mark to a promise not to smoke
until he was twenty-one, and, although he did not know it, Mrs. Leslie
was trying to find him a situation where he would have a certain, if
small, salary, and be less exposed to temptation than he now was. She was
very glad when she heard of the bargain which Johnny had made, and she
presented the new scholar with a slate and spelling book, at once. She
also gave the schoolmaster a little advice.
[Illustration]
“You must remember, Johnny,” she said, “that Jim has had no chance
to learn anything, compared with your chances, and you mustn’t look
superior, whatever you do. Whenever you feel very grand, just imagine
how it would be if papa should write to you in Greek, and talk to you in
French and Latin, and then call you a little stupid because you could not
understand him.”
Tiny looked rather mournful when she heard of the new arrangement, but
she brightened up, presently.
“Is he a very big boy indeed, Johnny?” she asked.
“Why, no,” said Johnny, considering, “at least, he’s not much bigger
than I am, Tiny. He’s only about half a head taller, but he’s a good deal
thicker.”
“What did you say you’d teach him?” pursued Tiny.
“Oh, all the things I’m learning at school, I s’pose!” replied Johnny,
“we didn’t settle about that, exactly, for I don’t know yet how much he
knows—he can’t write, but maybe he can read a little—I hope so, for it
must be awfully stupid work to teach people their letters. But why do you
want to know, Tiny?”
“I have a reason,” said Tiny, nodding her head wisely. “You needn’t think
you know all of everything, Johnny Leslie!”
“I never said I did!” retorted Johnny, warmly; then he looked at Tiny,
and began to laugh, she was so little, and was trying so hard to look
wise and elderly.
“You may laugh if you like,” she said, serenely, “_I_ don’t mind. But if
you don’t know what you are going to teach him, perhaps you know what
you’re not. Are you going to teach him to sing?”
Johnny accepted Tiny’s gracious permission, and laughed a good deal, but
at last he answered,—
“No, Tiny, I’m not going to teach him to sing. I am quite sure about
that. Mamma says I can sing straight ahead first rate, but she never knew
me to turn a tune yet. I wish I could sing the way you do,” he added,
regretfully, “I’m so full of sing sometimes that I don’t know what to do,
but I can’t make it come out.”
They were sitting on the back porch, pasting their scrap-books, and Mrs.
Leslie was sewing at the window.
“Never mind, Johnny,” she said, consolingly, “you’ll not ‘die with all
your music in you’ while you do so much shouting.”
“Very well, then,” said Tiny, with a look of great satisfaction, “when
Jim comes, I shall tell him that if he will dig my garden for me, I will
teach him to sing.”
Mrs. Leslie expected to hear Johnny first laugh, and then try to dissuade
Tiny from carrying out her plan, but to her surprise, he did neither. He
said,—
“I shouldn’t wonder if he’d do it, Tiny; he’s all the time whistling, and
he whistles just like a blackbird, so very likely he’ll be glad to learn
to sing, too.”
When Jim came that evening, Tiny and Johnny were both in the garden, and
as Tiny had not yet met Jim, Johnny introduced them thus,—
“Tiny, this is Jim. Jim, this is my sister Tiny, and she wants to be in
our bargain, too. Go ahead, Tiny.”
And so encouraged, Tiny went ahead.
“I have a garden, too,” she said, “but Johnny knows more of everything
than I do, except singing, and I thought perhaps you’d like to learn to
sing, and if you would, I’ll teach you that, and then, if you think it
is worth it, will you just do the hard digging for me? I can do the rest
myself, watching you and Johnny.”
A very gentle look came over Jim’s bold face, as he answered,—
“If you’ll teach me how to sing, Miss Tiny, it will be worth as much to
me as all Johnny can teach me of other things, and I’ll be proud and
happy to take charge of your garden.”
“Oh, thank you very much!” said Tiny, warmly. “What a nice, kind boy you
are! Do you mind if I watch you while you dig?”
“Not a bit!” said Jim, cheerfully, “I’m not bashful. But you’d better sit
down.”
“Wait a minute, and I’ll bring you your camp-chair, Tiny,” said Johnny,
and he raced to the porch for Tiny’s small chair, while Jim pulled off
the coat which he had put on as a mark of respect to Mrs. Leslie, whom he
hoped to see before the evening was over, and went valiantly to work with
the spade.
“What nice big spadefuls you make!” Tiny said, after watching him a
while. “When I dig, it ’most all slides off while I am picking up the
spade.”
“That’s because you are not quite so strong as I am,” said Jim, smiling,
and turning over an extra large spadeful by way of proving his statement.
The two little gardens were thoroughly dug by the time that it was too
dark to work any more, and Johnny had hoed and raked Tiny’s smooth, while
Jim was digging his. Then they went into the playroom, and Mrs. Leslie
brought them a lamp to light up the lesson.
[Illustration]
“We will have a little singing first,” she said, opening the organ. “Tiny
and I will sing the evening hymn, and you must listen, Jim, and try to
catch the tune.”
Jim listened, and by the time they reached the Doxology, he had joined
them, and went through the tune without a mistake, seeming even to
know the words. His voice was a very sweet tenor, and Tiny exclaimed
delightedly,—
“It will be just as easy as anything to teach him to sing, mamma!”
“I’d have come in sooner,” said Jim, looking very much pleased, “but that
last verse was the only one I knew. I went to Sunday-school a few times
when I was a little boy, and that verse came back to me as soon as you
began to sing it.”
Then Johnny and his pupil sat down by the table, and Mrs. Leslie took
Tiny’s hand and went to the parlor, thinking that the two boys would
manage their undertaking better without an audience.
Johnny felt very much embarrassed, but he plunged in boldly, as the best
way of overcoming his feelings.
“I’ll do you the way they did me, the first day I went to school,” he
began, and taking his First Reader, he opened it, and handed it to Jim,
saying,—
“Just read a little, will you?”
Jim burst out laughing.
“It’s heathen Greek to me,” he said. “I don’t know more than half the
letters. Why, if I’d known how to read, I could have picked up the rest
somehow, and that’s why I asked you to teach me.”
Johnny was about to whistle, but he suddenly recollected his mother’s
warning.
“All right,” he said, composedly; “we’ll begin with the letters, and I’ll
teach you the way mamma teaches Tiny—it’s easier than the way they do in
school. Wait a minute, and I’ll borrow her card, the letters are so much
larger than they are in the spelling-book.”
He came back with a large card, covered with letters in bright colors,
and pointing to A, asked,
“Now, what does that look like to you?”
“It looks something like the tents those soldiers put up when they camped
near here,” said Jim, after looking at it for a moment.
“Very well; that’s A. Now, when you say ‘_A_ tent,’ there you have it,
all right.”
“That’s easy enough to remember,” said Jim, “I thought it would be
harder.”
“I’ll tell you what this second fellow looks like, to me,” said
Johnny, delighted with Jim’s quickness, “it always makes me think of a
bumble-bee, and its name’s B.”
[Illustration]
“That’s queer,” answered Jim, “it does look like a big, fat bee, sure
enough. I guess I can remember that, too.”
It was not easy to find likenesses like these for all the letters, but
when Johnny could not think of anything in the way of a likeness, he told
Jim of something strange or funny that the letter “stood for,” and felt
quite sure, when the alphabet had been “gone through,” that every letter
was firmly impressed upon Jim’s memory.
“Do you want to begin to learn to write now, or wait till you’ve learned
to read?” inquired Johnny, when the reading-lesson was finished.
“I don’t know,” said Jim, “what’s the first thing you do when you learn
to write, anyhow?”
“You make ‘strokes’ first, like that—” and Johnny made a few rapidly on
the slate—“to sort of get your hand in, and then, when you can make them
pretty well, you go on to ‘pot-hooks and trammels’—like these”—and he
illustrated on the slate again—“and when you can make them pretty well,
then you begin to make letters.”
“Well, then, I might as well begin right off,” said Jim, “I don’t have
to know how to read before I can make ‘strokes,’ that’s plain, and if it
takes so long just to get your hand in, the sooner I start, the better!”
“Yes, I think so too,” said Johnny, encouragingly, “for of course, you
needn’t know how to read, to make ‘strokes’ or ‘pot-hooks and trammels’
either, and you see you’ll be all ready, this way, to make the letters,
by the time you can read printing—maybe before. Here, I’ll rule your
slate, but I’ll ask mamma to set you the copy. I can’t make as good
strokes—or anything else for that matter—as she can, and papa says a
copy, any kind of a copy, ought to be perfect.”
Mrs. Leslie willingly set the copy, and guided Jim’s hand over the first
row. Nothing in her look or manner suggested to Jim that her soft white
fingers felt any objection to taking hold of his grimy ones, but from
that time he always asked Johnny for soap and water, when the gardening
was done, and came to his lessons with hands as clean as vigorous
scrubbing could make them.
When he had covered both sides of his new slate with “strokes,” which
Johnny assured him were quite as good as the first ones he had made, they
both decided that the lesson had been long enough for that time, and
parted with cordial good-nights.
“I didn’t know it was so easy to teach people, mamma!” said Johnny,
exultingly, as soon as his pupil was out of hearing, “why, it’s no
trouble at all!”
Mrs. Leslie smiled.
“Jim seems to be a bright boy,” she said, “but you must remember that
his mind is like your garden; things must be planted in it, and you must
wait a while for them to come up. I don’t wish to discourage you, dear,
but learning is a new business to him, as teaching is to you, and I think
this would be a good text for both of you to start with—‘Let not him that
girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.’”
CHAPTER IX.
A CONTRACT.
A three days’ rain which set in the morning after Johnny’s first
appearance as a schoolmaster, put a stop to gardening, and Jim decided
for himself that he was not entitled to any more lessons until he had
done some more work.
This had not been Tiny’s and Johnny’s idea of the contract at all; they
expected Jim to help them whenever they needed help, and intended to keep
on regularly with their teaching, unless some very special engagement
should prevent them. But, as they remembered when they came to talk it
over, they had not made this plain to Jim, and they decided to draw up a
contract, and have it ready for his signature, or rather his “mark,” if,
as Johnny said rather mournfully, “it should ever clear up again.” They
lamented very much not having planted anything before the rain.
“It would be soaking and swelling all the time,” mourned Johnny, “and
come bouncing up the minute the sun comes out!”
They tried shooting some radish seed at the beds with Johnny’s
pea-shooter, from an upstairs window, and had the pleasure of seeing a
flock of hungry sparrows make a breakfast of the seed almost before it
had touched the ground. Johnny was indignant, but Tiny said tranquilly,—
“I’m glad I saw that. It was in last Sunday’s lesson, you know,
Johnny,—about the fowls of the air devouring it up. When things don’t
come up in my head, now, I shall know it was because I didn’t plant them
deep enough.”
It was after it had rained for two days and part of another, that they
drew up the contract, and thus it ran,—
“We are going to teach James Brady all we know, that he wants
to learn, and he is to come every evening, unless we ask
him not to, which we shall not do except for something very
particular, like a birthday party, or having folks here to tea.
And he is going to help us work in our gardens, when we want
help, but he is to come all the same in the evening, whether he
has helped that day or not.
“Signed,
“CLEMENTINE AND JOHN LESLIE
“James Brady.” X HIS MARK
They admired this production so much, that they made arrangements for
framing it, when Jim should have added, “his mark.” The arrangements
consisted chiefly of an old slate-frame, which Tiny painted bright red,
using up her entire cake of vermillion to do it, and Johnny was obliged
to copy the contract in very large letters, to make it fill the frame.
A day of brilliant sunshine followed the three days’ rain. Johnny passed
Jim’s stand on his way from school, reproached Jim for his absence, told
him of the contract, and secured his promise to come that evening at a
quarter past six, sharp. Tiny carefully practised a little song for which
she could herself play the accompaniment, and both the children had their
stock of seeds in readiness, before tea.
When Jim appeared, punctually at the appointed time, Mrs. Leslie came
out on the porch, and wished him good evening, and she noticed with much
pleasure that he had on a clean shirt, and that a fresh patch covered the
knee of his trousers, where a gaping rent had been, four days ago. His
face and hands shone with scrubbing, and his hair with brushing, and he
made the best bow at his command, as he came up the steps.
“You’ll have to come too, mamma,” said Tiny, “for we haven’t quite made
up our minds where the things are to go, and we want you to help us.”
“I’ll bring a camp-stool, and a board for your feet, mamma dear,” chimed
in Johnny, “and you can ‘sit on a cushion as grand as a queen,’ and watch
us work.”
“But I haven’t given papa his second cup of tea yet,” remonstrated Mrs.
Leslie, “nor eaten my piece of cake.”
“You can pour out the tea, and then ask papa to please excuse you, and
you can bring your cake with you,” said Johnny, coaxingly, and to this
Mrs. Leslie consented, although she said something about tyrants. She
came out, presently, with two pieces of cake on a plate, and insisted
upon Jim’s eating one of them, which he did without the slightest
reluctance, and then went vigorously to work. You might have thought a
large farm was being planted, if you had heard the earnest discussion,
and the number and variety of seeds named, and dusk overtook them before
they were half done. It was decided that Tiny’s lesson should be given
first, as her bedtime came before Johnny’s did. The little song was quite
new to Jim, and he could not join in it as readily as he had joined in
the hymn, but Tiny went patiently over it, again and again, until he
caught the air, and knew the words of one verse, and she did not stop
until they were singing together in perfect harmony.
Then she gave him up to Johnny, and considerately left the room. Johnny
brought out the card with a flourish, saying confidently,—
“We’ll just run over the letters again, to make sure, and then we’ll go
on to the a-b-abs. Oh, here’s the contract—you just put your mark to it
there, where we’ve left a place, and then we’ll frame it and give it to
you.”
Jim listened thoughtfully, while Johnny read him the contract, but he
made no motion toward affixing his mark to it.
“It don’t seem to me to be fair,” he said, “you’ll not need much work
done in those little gardens, and here you’ve promised to teach me nearly
every evening; I think I ought only to have a lesson when I’ve done some
work.”
“Oh fiddlesticks!” said Johnny, impatiently, “you’ve worked like
everything already, and besides, we like to teach you; papa says it’s the
very best way to learn things, teaching them to somebody, so you see it’s
just as good for us as it is for you. Come, put your mark there, where
we left the hole for it,” and Johnny dipped the pen in the inkstand, and
handed it to his pupil, who reluctantly made his mark in the “hole.”
“I’ll frame it to-morrow,” said Johnny, “Now for the letters. What’s
that?” and he pointed to V.
Jim pondered a moment, then,—
“That’s A,” he said, confidently.
Johnny controlled himself by a violent effort, pointed out the difference
between A and V, and then “skipped” Jim through the rest of the alphabet.
To his utter consternation, Jim only remembered about half the letters,
and of some of these he was not perfectly certain.
“I didn’t think I was such a stupid,” said poor Jim, humbly, “but I
suppose that’s because I never tried to learn anything before. I thought
I knew half the letters before I began, but the boys must have fooled
me—I’m certain somebody told me that was K,” and he pointed to R.
This made Johnny laugh, and Jim’s humility gave him such a comfortable
feeling of superiority, that he took courage, and went through the
alphabet once more, with tolerable patience. But Jim was too keen-sighted
not to notice the effort which Johnny was making, and when the lesson was
at last over, he said,—
“It’s going to be more of a job than you thought it would, Johnny; I can
see that, and if you want to be off your bargain, I’ve nothing to say.”
But he looked so dull and disappointed, that Johnny’s conscience
reproached him with selfishness, and he said cheerfully,—
“Oh, you mustn’t give up the ship so soon, Jim. I’ll stick to it as
long as you will, and it will get easier after you’ve once learned the
letters. You’d better take your spelling-book home with you to-night, and
then to-morrow you can try to pick out the letters whenever you have a
little time, you know.”
“I will do that,” said Jim, brightening, “and I’ll not forget this on
you, Johnny—you’ll see if I do!”
Johnny went into the parlor, when Jim was gone, and dropped his head on
his mother’s shoulder.
“O mamma!” he said, dolefully, “he’d forgotten nearly every single
letter, and I could see he hardly believed me, when I told him that R
wasn’t K!”
Mrs. Leslie gently pulled Johnny down on her lap.
“You must go out bright and early to-morrow morning, and see if your
seeds are up,” she said.
Johnny looked at her in amazement.
“Why, mamma!” he exclaimed, “they’re only just planted! It will be
several days before they show the least little nose above ground.”
“Oh!” said Mrs. Leslie, but she said nothing more, only looking into
Johnny’s eyes with a little smile in hers.
He suddenly clapped his hands, exclaiming,—
“I see what you mean, mamma! I’m sowing seeds in Jim’s head, and
expecting to see them come up before they’re fairly planted! But indeed,
it’s harder work than digging.”
“‘Fair exchange is no robbery,’” said Mrs. Leslie, laughing at Johnny’s
mournful face. And then she said, quite seriously,—
“I will give you another text, dear; one that I thought of when I was
watching you plant your seeds this evening. ‘The husbandman waiteth for
the precious fruit of the earth, and hath _long patience_ for it, until
he receive the early and latter rain.’ You see, the patience is needed
not only before the seeds come up, but while the plants are blossoming,
and while the fruit is forming, and while it is ripening. It is not being
patient just for a day, or a week, or a month, but for the whole season,
for it says ‘the early and latter rain.’ Now a great many of us can have
a little—a short patience, but it takes much more grace to have the long
patience, and this is what my little boy must strive for.”
[Illustration]
“I don’t think I’m naturally patient, mamma,” said Johnny, with a sigh.
“No, I don’t think you are,” replied his mother, “but Tiny is, and her
patience will be a great help to you, if you will only let it, just as
your courage and energy are a help to her, for she is naturally timid,
and a little inclined to be faint-hearted. You have a chance now to win
a great victory, and, at the same time, you are running the risk of a
great defeat; but you must not try to have patience for the whole thing
at once—ask every day for just that day’s patience. You know when it
is that we don’t receive; it is when we ‘ask amiss.’ All our fighting
for our Great Captain will be in vain, unless we are ‘strengthened
with all might, according to His glorious power, unto all patience and
long-suffering, with joyfulness.’ We will see, next Sunday, how many
times we can find this word ‘patience’ in the Gospels and Epistles; you
will be surprised, I think, to find how often it is used.”
“It will be a help to remember, mamma,” said Johnny, with a more hopeful
look, “working in the garden, first. And I shall say ‘long patience’ to
myself ever so many times, before we begin our lessons.”
So instead of going to bed with the discouraged feeling which the lesson
had left, Johnny went with a vigorous determination not to be beaten, and
he added to his evening prayer a petition for patience.
“If it hadn’t been for that contract, I wouldn’t have come a step
to-night,” said Jim, as they finished planting the gardens, the next
evening, “but I thought I would try one more shot, and then, if it’s like
last night, you must just let me off, and burn the contract up.”
“Indeed I shall not!” said Johnny, stoutly, “there it is, all framed and
glazed, and here I am, and there you are, and you’ll not get off till you
know how to read, and then you’ll not wish to!”
[Illustration]
We will not follow Johnny through all the discouragements and
encouragements which attended his career as a teacher; but you will be
glad to hear that, with that help which is always near, he conquered,
and that by the time he and Jim were husking the corn which the little
gardens had yielded, Jim could read as fluently as his teacher could, and
was beginning to write a legible, if somewhat uncertain hand. He had
shown a real talent for music, and, having learned all that Tiny could
teach him, was joyfully and gratefully taking lessons from Mrs. Leslie.
“And just suppose my patience had turned out to be only the short kind,
Tiny!” said Johnny, as Tiny and he, with heads close together, proudly
popped the corn from their own farms.
CHAPTER X.
NEIGHBORS.
The desk next to Johnny’s had been vacant for a long time, and he did
not like this much, for he was a sociable boy, and although of course,
no great amount of conversation was permitted during school hours, it is
something to be able to make faces to a sympathetic desk-mate. There was
not an absolute rule against talking in the school which Johnny attended.
The teacher had said, at the beginning of the term,—
“Now, boys, I don’t forbid you to speak to each other during school
hours, if you have anything really worth saying on your minds, and
will speak so that you will not disturb your neighbors, but all long
conversations can be saved till school is out, and I hope you will be
honorable enough not to talk foolishly, or to take advantage of this
permission. If I find it necessary, I shall resort to a rule, so you have
the matter in your own hands.”
It had not been found necessary, so far, although the school was full,
excepting that one vacant seat next to Johnny’s.
“It may be a coincidence, you know, Tiny,” said Johnny, one day, when he
had been lamenting his lonely lot to his sister, “but I don’t know—I
have a kind of a sort of an idea that it isn’t.”
“What is a coincidence, anyhow, Johnny?” inquired Tiny, who was never
above asking for information.
“It’s two things happening together, accidentally, that look as if they
had been done on purpose,” explained Johnny, with the little air of
superior wisdom that he always wore when Tiny asked him a question that
he could answer. I am afraid he sometimes hunted up one or two long
words, to be worked into his next conversation with Tiny, purely for the
purpose of explaining to her! It was so pleasant to see her large eyes
raised admiringly to his face.
“But why shouldn’t it be a really and truly coincidence, Johnny?” pursued
Tiny.
“Oh well, because Mr. Lennox said one day that he thought Harry Conover
and I might be shaken up together, and equally divided, to advantage, and
Harry’s the quietest boy I ever knew, so it’s pretty plain what he meant
by that. And I’ve noticed how he does with the other boys; he finds out
where their weak spots are, and then tries to brace them up there, but
while he’s trying, he sort of keeps things out of their way that would be
likely to make them slip up, and so I s’pose that is what he is doing to
me. But it’s very stupid to be all alone, and I wish another boy would
come—then he’d have to use that desk, for it’s the only one that’s left.”
Two or three days after this talk with Tiny, Johnny rushed in from school
in a state of great excitement, exclaiming, as he entered the room where
his mother and sister were sitting,—
“The seat’s taken, mamma! And it wasn’t a coincidence, Tiny! Mr. Lennox
made a little sort of a speech to me, all by myself, after school; he
knew this boy was coming, and he saved the seat on purpose for him, and
I’m dreadfully afraid he’s a prig! He didn’t act the least bit like a new
boy, he just studied and ciphered and wrote as if he’d been going there
all his life! And whenever I spoke to him, he just looked at me—so!”
and Johnny’s round face assumed an expression of mild and reproachful
surprise, which made Tiny laugh, and even made his mother smile, though
she shook her head at him at the same time, saying reprovingly,—
“Johnny, Johnny, you know I don’t like you to mimic people, dear!”
“I beg your pardon, mammy darling!” and Johnny poked his rough head into
his mother’s lap, “that sort of went off of itself! But indeed, I didn’t
talk much to him, and it was about very useful things. He hadn’t any
sponge, and I offered him mine, and he was hunting everywhere but in the
right place for the Danube river, and I just put my finger on the map,
and said, ‘Here it is,’ and he didn’t so much as say ‘thank you!’ And
at recess I said, ‘Do you love cookies, Ned?’—his name is Ned Owen—and
he said, with a sort of a sniff, ‘I don’t _love_ anything to eat,’ so I
thought I’d—I’d see him further before I’d give him one of your cookies,
mamma!”
“Now Johnny Leslie,” said his mother, smoothing his hair softly with her
nice little cool hands, “you’ve taken a prejudice against that poor boy,
and if you don’t stop yourself, you’ll be quarrelling with him before
long! Something I read the other day said that, when we find fault with
people, and talk against them, there is always envy at the bottom of our
dislike. I don’t think it is quite always so, but I do believe it very
often is. While you are undressing to-night, I want you to sort yourself
out, and put yourself just where you belong.”
Johnny hung his head; he did not have to do a great deal of sorting to
find the truth of what his mother had said.
There was a careful completeness about everything the new boy had done,
which, to a head-over-heels person, was truly exasperating.
And as days passed on, this feeling grew and strengthened. There was a
curious little stiffness and formality about all Ned Owen said and did,
which Johnny found very “trying,” and which made him overlook the boy’s
really pleasant side; for he had a pleasant side, as every one has, only,
unfortunately, we do not always take as much pains to find it as we do to
find the unpleasant one.
It seemed to most of the boys that Ned did not mind the fun which was
certainly “poked” at him in abundance, but Johnny was very sure that he
did. The pale, thin face would flush suddenly, the slender hands would
be clinched, either in his pockets, or under cover of his desk. Johnny
generally managed to keep himself from joining in the fun, as it was
considered by all but the victim, but he did this more to please his
mother than because he allowed his conscience to tell him the truth.
Boys are not always so funny and witty as they mean to be and think
they are. There was nothing really amusing in calling Ned “Miss Nancy,”
and asking him what he put on his hands to whiten them, and yet these
remarks, and others of the same lofty character, could raise a laugh at
any time.
But deep under Johnny’s contempt for Ned, was the thorn of envy. Before
Ned came, Johnny had stood first in just one thing. Twice a week the
“Scholar’s Companion” class was required to write “sentences”; that is,
each boy must choose a word out of the spelling and defining lesson, and
work it into a neatly turned sentence of not less than six, or more than
ten lines. Johnny liked this; it seemed to him like playing a game, and
he had stood at the head of the class for a long time, for it so happened
that no other boy in the class shared his feeling about it. But now,
Ned went above him nearly every other time, and they changed places so
regularly, that this too became a standing joke among the other boys.
Johnny was walking home from school one day with such unnatural
deliberation, that Jim Brady, whose stand he was passing without seeing
where he was, called out with much pretended anxiety,—
“You’re not sunstruck, or anything, are you, Johnny? I’ve heard that when
folks are sunstruck, they don’t recognize their best friends!”
Johnny laughed, but not very heartily.
“I beg your pardon, Jim,” he said, “I didn’t see you, really and truly—I
was thinking.”
“All right!” said Jim, cordially, “it’s hard work, thinking is, and sort
of takes a fellow’s mind up! I know how it is myself.”
While he was speaking, a little lame boy, ragged, dirty, and totally
unattractive-looking, shuffled up, and waited to be noticed.
“Well, Taffy,” said Jim, with a gentleness which Johnny had only seen
displayed to his mother and Tiny, before, “did you sell them all?”
[Illustration]
“I did, Jimmy!” and the ugly, wizened little face was brightened with
a smile, “every one I sold—and look here, will you?” and he held up a
silver quarter.
“Well done, you!” and Jim patted him approvingly on the back. “Now see
here; here’s two tens and a five I’ll give you for it; you’ll give me one
of the tens, to buy your papers for you in the morning, and the fifteen
will get you a bed at Mother Rooney’s, and buy your supper and breakfast.
You’d better peg right along, for it’s quite a walk from here. Be along
bright and early, and I’ll have the papers ready for you.”
The little fellow nodded, and limped away.
“Who is he, anyhow?” asked Johnny, when he was out of hearing.
“Oh, I don’t know!” and Jim looked embarrassed, for the first time in his
life, so far as Johnny’s knowledge of him went. “He’s a little beggar
whose grandmother or something died last week, and the other people in
the room kicked him out. You see, your mother had just been reading us
that piece about neighbors—about that old fellow that picked up the one
that was robbed, and gave him a ride, and paid for him at the tavern,
and then she said it ought to be just the same way now—we ought to be
looking out for chances to be neighborly, and it just happened—”
Jim had grown quite red in the face, and now he stopped abruptly.
“I think that was jolly of you,” said Johnny, warmly, “how near you did
he live, before he was kicked out?”
“About two miles off, I should say, if I was to survey it,” and Jim
grinned, recovering his composure as he did so.
“I often wonder at you, Johnny Leslie,” he continued, “and think maybe
you came out of a penny paper story, and were swapped off for another
baby, when you were little!”
“What on earth do you mean?” asked Johnny, impatiently. He was somewhat
afraid of Jim’s sharp eyes and tongue.
“Oh, nothing much,” replied Jim, “it’s just my little lively way, you
know. But your mother don’t think neighbors need to live next door to
each other; you ask her if she does!”
“Oh!” said Johnny, “why can’t you say what you mean right out, Jim?”
“Well, I might, possibly, I suppose,” and Jim looked thoughtful, “but
I’ve a general idea it wouldn’t always give satisfaction all round, and
I’m the last man to hurt a fellow-critter’s feelings, as you ought to
know by this time, Johnny!”
“I must go home,” said Johnny, suddenly, “Goodbye, Jim.”
“Goodbye to you,” responded Jim, affably, “I’ll be along as usual, if
you’ve no previous engagement.”
“All right—but look here, Jim,” and Johnny wheeled abruptly round again,
“why do you buy that little Taffy’s papers for him?”
“You’d better go home, Johnny—you might be late for your tea, my dear
boy!”
“Now, Jim Brady, you tell me!”
“Because the big boys hustle him, and he can’t fight his way through
because he’s lame. Now get out!”
Johnny obeyed, but he was thinking harder than ever, now. And a sort of
refrain was running through his mind—a sentence from the story Jim had
recalled to him: “And who is my neighbor?”
* * * * *
“Do you know, Johnny,” said Tiny, a few days after Johnny had met Jim,
and heard about Taffy, “I don’t believe you mean to—but you are growing
rather cross. Perhaps you don’t feel very well?”
Johnny burst out laughing; Tiny’s manner, as she said this, was so very
funny. It was what her brother called her “school-marm air.”
“That’s much better!” said Tiny, nodding her head with a satisfied look,
“I was ’most afraid you’d forget how to laugh, it’s so easy to forget
things.”
“Now Tiny!” said Johnny, with the fretful sound in his voice which had
struck her as a sign that he didn’t feel well, “you say a thing like
that, and you think you’re smart, but it isn’t easy to forget things at
all, some things, I mean. I do believe folks forget all they want to
remember, and remember all they want to forget!”
“I don’t know of anything _I_ want to forget,” remarked Tiny, “and I
should not think you would either. Is it a bad dream?”
“No,” replied Johnny, “I don’t suppose it is, though sometimes it kind of
seems to me as if it might be, and I’m a little in hopes I’ll wake up and
find it is, after all!”
“But I do not wish to forget my bad dreams,” said Tiny, “for after
they’re over, they are very interesting to remember, like that one about
walking on the ceiling, you know, like a fly. It was dreadful, while it
lasted, but it pleases me to think of it now. Aren’t you going to tell me
what it is that you ’most hope is a dream?”
“I don’t know,” said Johnny, doubtfully, “you are a very nice little
girl, Tiny, _for_ a girl, but you can’t be expected to know about things
that happen to boys. Though to be sure, this sort of thing might happen
to girls, I suppose, if they went to school. You know that new boy I told
you about?”
Tiny nodded.
“Well, he isn’t having much of a good time. The other fellows plague him.
But I don’t see that’s it’s any of my business, now; do you?”
“I’m afraid—” began Tiny, and then stopped short.
“Out with it!” said Johnny, impatiently, “you’re afraid—what?”
“I’m afraid that’s what the priest and the Levite said,” finished Tiny,
slowly.
“What do you?—oh yes, I suppose you mean about the Good Samaritan, and,
‘now which of these was neighbor?’ Is that what you’re driving at?”
Tiny nodded again, even more earnestly than before.
“Now that’s very queer,” said Johnny, musingly, “but Jim said almost
exactly the same thing. He’s picked up a little lame fellow—no relation
to him at all, and no more his concern than anybody’s else—and he’s
keeping the boys off him, and behaving as if he was the little chap’s
grandmother, and I do believe it is all because of things mamma has
said to him. He doesn’t know about Ned Owen; what he said was because I
happened to catch him grandmothering this little Taffy, as he calls him,
but it was just exactly as if he had known all about everything. It’s
very well for him; he isn’t all mixed up with the other bootblacks, the
way I am with the boys at school, and he can do as he pleases, but don’t
you see, Tiny, what a mess I should get myself into, right away, if I
began to take up for that boy against all the others?”
[Illustration]
Tiny replied with what Johnny considered needless emphasis,—
“I don’t see it at all, Johnny Leslie, and what’s more, I don’t believe
you do either! The boys at school would only laugh at you, if the worst
came to the worst, and I’m pretty sure, from things Jim has told mamma,
that the kind of boys he knows would just as lief kick him, or knock him
down, if they were big enough, as to look at him! And if you’d stand up
for that poor little boy, I think some more of them would, too. Don’t you
remember, papa said boys were a good deal like sheep; that if one went
over the fence, the whole flock would come after him; sometimes, I wish
I could do something for that boy! I don’t see how you can bear to let
them all make fun of him, and never say a word, when it made you so mad,
that time, when those two dreadful boys tried to hang my kitten. It seems
to me it’s exactly the same thing!”
Tiny’s face was quite red by the time she had finished this long speech,
and Johnny’s, though for a very different reason, was red too. He had
been angry with Tiny, at first, but before she stopped speaking, his
anger had turned against himself. She was a little frightened at her own
daring in “speaking up” to Johnny in this way, but she soon saw that her
fright was needless.
“Tiny,” he said, solemnly, after a rather long pause, “you can’t expect
me to wish I was a girl, you know, they do have such flat times, but I
will say I think its easier for them to be good than it is for boys,—in
some ways, anyhow,—and I think I must be the beginning of a snob! You
didn’t even look foolish the day mamma took Jim with us to see the
pictures, and we met pretty much everybody we knew, and my face felt red
all the time. I’m really very much obliged to you for shaking me up. I
shall talk it all out with mamma, now, and see if I can’t settle myself.
To think how much better a fellow Jim is than I am, when I’ve had mamma
and papa and you, and he don’t even know whether he had any mother at
all!” And Johnny gave utterance to his feelings in something between a
howl and a groan. To his great consternation, Tiny burst into a passion
of crying, hugging him, and trying to talk as she sobbed. When he at
last made out what she was saying, it was something like this,—
“I thought you were going to be mean and horrid—and you’re such a dear
boy—and I couldn’t _bear_ to have you like that—and I love you so—oh,
Johnny!”
Johnny may live to be a very old man; I hope he will, for good men are
greatly needed, but no matter how long he lives, he will never forget the
feelings that surged through his heart when he found how bitter it was to
his little sister to be disappointed in him. He hugged her with all his
might, and in a very choked voice he told her that he hoped she’d never
have to be ashamed of him again—that she shouldn’t if he could possibly
help it.
And after the talk with his mother that night, he hunted up the “silken
sleeve,” which he had worn until it was threadbare, and then put away so
carefully that he had a hard time to find it. It was too shabby to be
put on his hat again, but somehow he liked it better than a newer one,
and he stuffed it into his jacket, when he dressed the next morning,
about where he supposed his heart to be. He reached the schoolhouse a few
minutes before the bell rang, and found everybody but Ned Owen laughing
and talking. He was sitting at his desk with a book, on which his eyes
were intently fixed, held before him, but his cheeks were flushed, and
his lips pressed tightly together.
Johnny did not hear anything but a confusion of voices, but he could
easily guess what the talk had been about. He walked straight to his
desk, and, laying his hand with apparent carelessness on Ned’s shoulder,
he glanced down at the open history, saying, in his friendliest manner,
which was very friendly,—
“It’s pretty stiff to-day, isn’t it? I wish I could reel off the dates
the way you do, but every one I learn seems to drive out the one that
went in before it!”
The flush on Ned’s face deepened, and he looked up with an expression of
utter astonishment, which made Johnny tingle with shame from the crown of
his head to the soles of his feet. And Johnny thought afterward how, if
the case had been reversed, he would have shaken off the tardy hand and
given a rude answer to the long-delayed civility.
Ned replied, very quietly,—
“It is a little hard to-day, but not half so hard as—some other things!”
And just then the laughing and talking suddenly stopped, for Mr. Lennox
opened the door, but Johnny had already heard a subdued whistle from one
quarter and a mocking “Since when?” from another, and, what, was worse,
he was sure Ned had heard them too.
To some boys it would have been nothing but a relief to find that, as
Tiny had suggested, Ned’s persecutors were very much like sheep, and,
with but few exceptions, followed Johnny’s lead before long, and made
themselves so friendly that only a very vindictive person could have
stood upon his dignity, and refused to respond. Ned was not vindictive,
but he was shy and reserved; he had been hurt to the quick by the
causeless cruelty of his schoolmates, and it was many days before he was
“hail fellow well met” with them, although he tried hard not only to
forgive, but to do what is much more difficult—forget.
As for Johnny, when he saw how, after a trifling hesitation, a few
meaningless jeers and taunts, the tide turned, and Ned was taken into
favor, his heart was full of remorse. It seemed to him that he had never
before so clearly understood the meaning of the words, “Inasmuch as ye
did it _not_ to the least of these My brethren, ye did it not to Me.”
Some one has likened our life to a journey; we keep on, but we can never
go back, and, as “we shall pass this way but once,” shall we not keep a
bright lookout for the chances to help, to comfort, to encourage? How
many loads we might lighten, how many rough places we might make smooth
for tired feet! Not a day passes without giving us opportunities. Think
how beautiful life might be made, and, then,—think what most of us make
of it! Travellers will wander fearlessly through dark and winding ways
with a torch to light their path, and a slender thread as a clue to
lead them back to sunlight and safety. The Light of the World waits to
“lighten our darkness, that we sleep not in death.” If we “hold fast that
which is good,” we have the clue.
CHAPTER XI.
BATTLE AND VICTORY.
“It’s a queer world, and no mistake.”
Jim looked unusually grave, as he gave Johnny the benefit of these words
of wisdom. Johnny was on his way home from school, and he had stopped to
show Jim a certain knife, about which they had conversed a good deal,
at various times. It had four blades, one of them a file-blade; it was
strongly made, but pretty too, with a nice smooth white handle, and a
little nickel plate on one side, for the fortunate owner’s name. They had
first made its acquaintance from the outside of a shop-window, where it
lay in a tray with about a dozen others of various kinds, all included in
the wonderful statement,—
[Illustration]
“Your choice for fifty cents!”
Johnny and Jim had both chosen immediately, but as Johnny, who was
beginning to take an interest in politics, remarked, it was one thing to
nominate a knife, and quite another to elect it! A slight difficulty lay
in the way of their walking boldly into the store, and announcing their
choice; neither of them had, at that precise moment, floating capital to
the amount of fifty cents!
“And some fellow who _has_ fifty cents will be sure to snap up such a
bargain before the day’s over,” said Johnny, mournfully. “What fun it
must be to be rich, Jim; just to walk into a store when you see anything
you like, and say, ‘I’ll take that,’ without even stopping to ask how
much it is.”
“Yes, it sounds as if it would be,” said Jim, “but though I can’t exactly
say that I’m intimate with many of ’em, it does seem to me, looking at it
from the outside, as it were, that they get less sugar for a cent than
some of us ’umble sons of poverty do!”
And Jim winked in a manner which Johnny admired all the more because he
was unable to imitate it.
“I don’t see how you can tell,” said Johnny, “and I think you must be
mistaken, Jim.”
“Well now, for instance,” replied Jim, who delighted in an argument, “I’m
taking what the newspaper-poetry-man would call an ever-fresh delight
in those three jolly warm nightshirts your mother had made for me. I’d
never have saved the money for ’em in the world, if she hadn’t kept me up
to it, and I feel as proud as Cuffee, every time I put one on, to think
I paid for every stitch of it—I can’t help feeling sort of sorry that
it wouldn’t be the correct thing to wear them on the street. Now do you
suppose your millionaire finds any fun in buying nightshirts? I guess
not! And that’s only one thing out of dozens of the same sort. See?”
“Yes,” answered Johnny, thoughtfully, “I see what you mean; I didn’t
think of it in that way, before. But, all the same, I’d be willing to try
being a millionaire for a day or two. And I do wish the fellow in there
would kind of pile up the other knives over that white one till I can
raise money enough to buy it!”
It is needless to say that the shopkeeper did not act upon this
suggestion—perhaps because he did not hear it; and yet, by some singular
chance, day after day passed, and still the white-handled knife remained
unsold. And then Johnny’s uncle came to say goodbye, before going on a
long business journey, and just as he was leaving, he put a bright half
dollar in his nephew’s hand, saying,—
“I’ll not be here to help keep your birthday this year, my boy, so will
you buy an appropriate present for a young man of your age and inches,
and give it to yourself, with my love?”
Would he? Uncle Rob knew all about that knife, in less than five minutes,
and then, as soon as he was gone, Johnny begged hard to be allowed to
go out after dark, “just this once,” to secure the knife; he felt so
entirely sure that it would be gone the next morning!
But it was not. And its presence in his pocket, during school hours, had
a rather bad effect upon his pursuit of knowledge. On his way home, as I
have said, he stopped to show his newly-acquired treasure to Jim, and he
was a little disappointed that Jim did not seem more sympathetic with his
joy, but simply said, thoughtfully,—
“It’s a queer world, and no mistake!”
[Illustration: THE NEW KNIFE.]
“I don’t see anything so very queer about it, myself,” said Johnny,
contentedly, adding, with a little enjoyment of having the best of it,
for once, with Jim, “papa says, that if we think more than two people
are queer to us, we may be pretty sure that we are the queer ones, and
that the rest of the world is about as usual—at least, that’s the sense
of what he said; I don’t remember the words exactly.”
“I wasn’t thinking of myself just then, for a wonder!” said Jim, with
the slightly mocking expression on his face which Johnny did not like.
“It’s a good enough world for me, but when I see a little chap like Taffy
getting all the kicks and none of the halfpence, I don’t know exactly
what to think. He’s taken a new turn, lately; twisted up with pain, half
the time, and as weak as a kitten, the other half.”
“Where is he, anyhow?” asked Johnny.
“Well,” said Jim, turning suddenly red under his coat of tan, “I’ve got
him round at my place. The fact is, it was too unhandy for me to go and
look after him at that other place; it was noisy, too. He didn’t like it.”
Several questions rose to Johnny’s lips, but he repressed them; he had
discovered that nothing so embarrassed Jim as being caught in some good
work. So he only asked,—
“But how did my new knife make you think of Taffy?”
“Oh, never mind!” and Jim began to walk away.
“But I do mind!” said Johnny, following him and catching his arm. “And I
do wish you wouldn’t think it is smart to be so dreadfully mysterious.
Come, out with it!”
“Very well, then,” said Jim, stopping suddenly, “if you don’t like it,
maybe you’ll know better another time. It made me think of him because
I have been meaning to buy him one of those knives as soon as I could
raise the cash, but I’ve had to spend all I could make lately for other
things. The little chap keeps grunting about a knife he once found in
the street, and lost again; and he seems to fancy that when he’s doing
something with his hands he don’t feel the pain so much. He cuts out
pictures with an old pair of scissors I happened to have, whenever I can
get him any papers, but he likes best to whittle, and he broke the last
blade of that old knife of mine the other day; he’s been fretting about
it ever since. I’m glad you’ve got the knife, Johnny, since you’re so
pleased about it, and wanted it so, but I couldn’t help thinking—” and
here Jim abruptly turned a corner, and was gone before Johnny could stop
him.
“I should just like to know what he told me all that yarn for!” said
Johnny to himself; a little crossly. “He surely doesn’t think I ought
to give my knife, my new knife, that uncle Rob gave me for a birthday
present, to that little Taffy? Why, I don’t even know him!”
And Johnny tried to banish such a ridiculous idea from his mind at once.
But somehow it would not be banished. The thought came back to him again
and again; how many things he had to make life sweet and pleasant to him;
how few the little lonely boy, shut up all day in Jim’s dingy bed room,
the window of which did not even look on a street, but on a narrow back
yard, where the sun never shone. The more he thought of it, the more it
appealed to his pity. And here was a chance,—but no, surely people could
not be expected to make such sacrifices as that.
He managed to shake off the troublesome thought for a few minutes, when
he showed the knife to his mother and Tiny. They both admired it to his
heart’s content, and said what a bargain it was, and what a wonder that
nobody had bought it before, and what a suitable thing for him to buy for
Uncle Rob’s birthday present to him. But, when he went up to his room,
the question again forced itself upon him, and would not be shaken off.
Over and over again in his mind, as they had done that other time, the
words repeated themselves,—
“And who is my neighbor?”
He did not see Jim again for several days, and this made him unreasonably
angry. It seemed to him that Jim had taken things for granted altogether
too easily. How did Jim know that he, Johnny, was not waiting for a
chance to send the knife to poor little Taffy?
But was he? He really hardly knew himself until one day when, by dint of
hard running, he caught Jim, and asked him,—
“See here! How’s that little chap, and what’s gone with you lately?”
“He’s worse,” said Jim, gruffly, “and I’m busy—that’s what’s gone with
me. I can’t stop, I’m in a hurry.”
“Oh, very well!” said Johnny, in an offended tone. “I thought we were
friends, Jim Brady, but I’ll not bother you any more. Goodbye.”
“Johnny,” said Jim, putting his hand on Johnny’s shoulder as he spoke,
“can’t you make any allowance for a fellow’s being in trouble? I can’t
stop now, I really and truly can’t, but I’ll be on the corner by the
library this afternoon, and if you choose to stop, I’ll talk all you want
me to.”
“All right, I’ll come,” said Johnny, his wounded self-love forgotten at
sight of Jim’s troubled face.
He hurried home, and, with the help of an old table knife, he managed
to work ten cents out of the jug that he had “set up” for a Christmas
present fund. With this he bought the largest picture paper he could find
for the money. Then he gathered together a handful of pictures he had
been saving for his scrap book, wrapped the knife first in them, then
in the large paper, and then tied the whole up securely in a neat brown
paper parcel.
When he saw Jim that afternoon he asked him as cautiously as he could
about Taffy’s needs, and at last he said,—
“Jim, why haven’t you told mamma about him, and let her help you?”
“It seemed like begging. I didn’t like—” and Jim stopped, looking very
much embarrassed.
“Well, I mean to tell her as soon as I go home,” said Johnny, resolutely,
“for I know she’ll go and see him, and have something done to make him
better, and—Jim, I must go now, but will you please give this to Taffy,
with my love?”
And, putting the parcel in Jim’s hand, Johnny turned, and ran home.
But was he really the same Johnny? Had wings grown on his feet? Had his
heart been suddenly changed into a feather? He whistled, he sang, he
stopped to turn somersets on the grass in the square. No one but his
Captain had known of the battle. None, but the Giver of it, knew of the
victory.
CHAPTER XII.
FASTING.
Johnny had been talking to his mother, as he often talked, about a Bible
verse which he did not fully understand—
“But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face,
that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which seeth
in secret,”—and she had told him that a sacrifice, to be real and
whole-hearted, must be made not only willingly, but cheerfully; “not
grudgingly, or of necessity, for God loveth a cheerful giver.”
“I don’t wonder at all at that, mamma,” Johnny had replied, “when you
think how hateful it is to have people do things for you as if they
didn’t wish to. I’d rather go without a thing, than take it when people
are that way.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Leslie, “people do sometimes say ‘oh bother’ when
‘certainly’ would be more appropriate,”—Johnny laughed, but he blushed
a little, too—“and ‘directly,’ or ‘in a minute,’” continued his mother,
“when it would be more graceful, to say the least of it, to go at once,
without any words. We forget too often that ‘even Christ pleased not
Himself,’ and we fret over the disturbing of our own little plans and
arrangements, as if we were all Great Moguls.”
“You don’t, mammy,” and Johnny kissed his mother in the particular spot,
just under her chin, where he always kissed her when he felt unusually
affectionate.
“Oh, yes I do, dear, oftener than you know,” said Mrs. Leslie, “but I
am trying all the time, and when I am nearly sure that I am going to be
cross, I go away by myself, if I can, for a few minutes, where I can
fight it out without punishing any one else, and when I can’t do that, I
ask for strength just to keep perfectly still until pleasant words will
come.”
“You’ve been practising so long, mamma,” said Johnny, wistfully, “that
you’re just about perfect, I think; but I don’t believe I will be, if I
live to be as old as Methusaleh! I wish I had some sort of an arrangement
to clap on the outside of my mouth, that would hold it shut for five
minutes!”
“But don’t you see, dear,”—and Mrs. Leslie laughed a little at Johnny’s
idea—“that if you had time to remember to clap on your ‘arrangement,’ you
would have time to stop yourself in another and better way?”
“Yes, mamma, I suppose I should,” admitted Johnny, “but it somehow
seems as if the other way would be easier, especially if I had the
‘arrangement’ somewhere where I could always see it.”
“But don’t you remember, dear,” said his mother, “that even after Moses
lifted up the brazen serpent, the poor Israelites were not saved by it
unless they looked up at it? That came into my mind the other day when
we were playing the new game—‘Hiding in plain sight,’ you know. Every
time we failed to find the thimble, it was in such ‘plain sight’ that we
laughed at ourselves for being so stupid, and then I thought how exactly
like that we are about ‘the ever-present help.’ It is always ready for
us, and then we go looking everywhere else, and wonder that we fail! And
I think you would find it so with your ‘arrangement.’ You would see it
and use it, perhaps, for a day or two, and then you would grow used to
it, and it would be invisible to you half the time, at least.”
This game of “Hiding in plain sight” was one which Ned Owen had recently
taught them, and it was very popular both at school and in the different
homes. A thimble was the favorite thing to hide; all but the hider either
shut their eyes or went out of the room, while he placed the thimble in
some place where it could be very plainly seen—if one only knew where to
look for it! Sometimes it would be on a little point of the gas fixture;
sometimes on top of a picture-frame or mantel-ornament, and then the
hider generally had the pleasure of seeing the seekers stare about the
room with puzzled faces, and finally give it up, when he would point it
out triumphantly, and they would all exclaim at their stupidity.
[Illustration]
The rule was, that if any one found it, he was merely to say so, and not
to point it out to the rest.
Johnny was very much impressed with his mother’s comparison, and
resolved, as he said to himself, to “look sharper” for the small chances
of self-denial which come to all of us, while large chances come but to
few, or only at long intervals. There was a poem of which Mrs. Leslie was
very fond, and which Tiny and Johnny had learned just to please her,
which had this verse in it:—
“I would not have the restless will
That hurries to and fro,
Seeking for some great thing to do,
Or secret thing to know.
I would be dealt with as a child,
And guided where to go.”
And another verse ended with,—
“More careful, than to serve Thee much,
To please Thee perfectly.”
Tiny and Johnny were given to “making believe” all sorts of startling
and thrilling adventures, in which they rescued people from avalanches,
and robbers, and railway-accidents; and, to do Tiny justice, all this
making believe did not in the least interfere with the sweet obedience
and thoughtfulness for the comfort of others which marked her little life
every day. She was much more practical than Johnny was, and would never
have thought of these wonderful “pretends” by herself, but she was always
ready to join him in whatever he proposed, unless she knew it to be
wrong, and he was quite proud of the manner in which she had learned from
him to invent and suggest things in this endless game of “pretending.”
[Illustration]
But while it did her no harm at all, I am afraid it sometimes made
Johnny feel that the small, everyday chances which came in his way
were not worth much, and this was why his mother had made her little
suggestions about self-denial. So, though Johnny still hoped that he
could think of, or discover, some “great thing,” he resolved to be very
earnest, meanwhile, in looking out for the small ones.
He had just begun to study Latin, and it was costing him many groans, and
a good deal of hard work. He did not exactly rebel against it, for he
knew how particularly his father wished him to be a good Latin scholar,
but he expressed to Tiny, freely and often, his sincere wish that it had
never been invented.
He went back to school immediately after dinner, one day, in order to “go
over” his lesson once more. He had studied it faithfully the afternoon
before, but one great trouble with it was that it did not seem to “stay
in his head” as his other lessons did when he learned them in good
earnest.
“It’s just like trying to hang your hat up on nothing, mamma,” he said,
mournfully, as he kissed his mother goodbye.
He had counted on having the schoolroom entirely to himself, so he felt a
little vexed when he saw one of the smaller boys already at his desk in a
distant corner, and his “Hello, Ted! What’s brought you back so early?”
was not so cordial as it was inquiring.
He realized this, and felt a little ashamed of himself when Ted answered,
meekly,—
“I didn’t think I’d be in anybody’s way, Johnny, and if I don’t know my
map questions this afternoon, I’ve got to go down to the lower class!”
The little boy’s face looked very doleful as he said this; it would not
be pleasant to have his stupidity proclaimed, as it were, in this public
manner. Not that his teacher was doing it with any such motive as this.
Teddy had missed that particular lesson so frequently, of late, that Mr.
Lennox was nearly sure it was too hard for him, and that it would be only
right, for Teddy’s own sake, to put him in a lower class; and this was
why, if to-day’s lesson, which was unusually easy, proved too hard for
him, the change was to be made.
“You’re not in my way a bit, Ted,” said Johnny, heartily, “and this
bothering old Latin is as hard for me as your map questions are for you,
so we’ll be miserable together—‘misery loves company’ you know.”
With that Johnny sat down and opened his book, but his mind, instead of
settling on the lesson, busied itself with the unhappy little face in the
corner.
“But if I go over there and help him,” said Johnny, to himself, almost
speaking aloud in his earnestness, “I’ll miss my own lesson, sure!”
“And suppose you do,” said the other Johnny, “you will only get a bad
mark in a good cause, but if Teddy misses his, he will be humiliated
before the whole school.”
“But papa doesn’t like me to have bad marks.”
“Don’t be a mean little hypocrite, Johnny Leslie! If your father knew all
about it, which would he mind most, a bad mark in your report, or a worse
one in your heart? And besides, you’ve twenty-five minutes, clear. You
can do both, if you’ll not be lazy.”
That settled it—that, and a sort of fancy that he heard his mother
saying,—
“Even Christ pleased not Himself.”
He sprang up so suddenly that Teddy fairly “jumped,” and went straight
over to the corner, saying, as he resolutely sat down,—
“Here, show me what’s bothering you, young man, and perhaps I can help
you. Don’t stop to palaver—there’s no time!”
But Teddy really couldn’t help saying,—
“Oh, _thank_ you, Johnny!” and then he went at once to business.
“It’s all the capitals,” he said, “I can learn them fast enough, when
I’ve found them, but it does seem to me that the folks who make maps hide
the capitals and rivers and mountains, on purpose. Now, of course Maine
has a capital, I s’pose, but can you see it? I can’t, a bit.”
“Why, here it is, as plain as the nose on your face,” said Johnny, and
put his finger on it without loss of time.
Teddy screwed up his eyes and forehead as he looked at the map, saying
finally,—
“So it is! I _saw_ that, but it looked like ‘Atlanta,’ and I didn’t see
the star at all.”
This was repeated with almost every one; Teddy was unusually quick at
committing to memory, but he made what at first seemed to Johnny the most
stupid blunders in seeing. However, the lesson was learned, or rather,
Teddy was in a fair way to have it learned, and Johnny was back at his
Latin, fifteen minutes before the bell rang. And, to his astonishment,
the Latin no longer refused to be conquered. He had done good work at it,
the day before, better work than he knew, and now, feeling how little
time he had left, he studied with unusual spirit and resolution. When the
bell rang, he was quite ready for it, and his recitation that afternoon
was entirely perfect, for the first time since he began that terrible
study. He did not know how much more he had gained in the conquest of
his selfishness; but all large victories are built upon many small ones,
and the same is, if possible, even truer of all large defeats. Habit is
powerful, to help or to hinder.
And a most unexpected good to little Ted grew out of that day’s
experience; one of the things which prove, if it needs proving, that we
never can tell where the result of our smallest words and deeds will
stop. One of Johnny’s young cousins had recently been suffering much
from head-ache, which was at last found to be caused wholly by a defect
in her eyes. They saw unequally, and a pair of spectacles remedied the
defect and stopped the head-ache, beside affording much enjoyment for
the cousinhood over her venerable appearance. Johnny was puzzling over
Teddy’s apparent stupidity in one way, and evident brightness in another,
when he suddenly remembered his cousin Nanny, and clapped his hands,
saying to himself as he did so,—
“That’s it, I do believe! He can’t see straight!”
Johnny lost no time in suggesting this to Teddy, who, in his turn, spoke
of it to his mother. She had already begun to notice the strained look
about his eyes, and she took him at once to an oculist. The result was,
that he shortly afterward appeared in a pair of spectacles, and told
Johnny with some little pride,—
[Illustration]
“The eye doctor says that, as far as seeing goes, one of my eyes might
about as well have been in the back of my head; and it seems queer, but
everything looks different—I didn’t know so many things were straight!
And you won’t catch me missing my map questions any more! Why, the places
seem fairly to jump at me, now. And—and—I do hope I can do something for
you before long, Johnny, for it’s all your doing, you know. If you hadn’t
helped me that day, there’s no telling when I’d have found it out.”
“Don’t you worry about doing something for me, Ted,” said Johnny, kindly.
“You’ve done enough, just putting on those spectacles. You look exactly
like your grandfather seen through the wrong end of a spyglass!”
CHAPTER XIII.
A CHANCE FOR A KNIGHTLY DEED.
After that first perfect Latin lesson, Johnny’s road to success seemed
in a measure broken, and though he by no means achieved perfection every
time, his failures were less total and humiliating, day by day, and,
to use his own beautiful simile about the hat, he began to find “pegs”
in his head whereon he could hang his daily stint of Latin. But it was
still hard work; there was no denying that; and if his affection for
his father had not been very strong and true, the task would have been
still more difficult. But somehow, whenever Mr. Leslie came home looking
more tired than usual, or turned into a joke one of the many little acts
of self-denial and unselfish courtesy which helped to make his home so
bright, it seemed to Johnny that it would be mean indeed to grumble over
this one thing, which he was doing to please his father.
[Illustration]
He had been much impressed by the manner in which he had learned that
first perfect lesson, for, on the previous Sunday, when he had recited
the verses which told how the five barley loaves and two small fishes had
fed the hungry multitude in the wilderness, he had thought, and said,
that it must have been easier for those people who saw the Master perform
such miracles, to follow him, than it was now for those who must “walk by
faith” entirely, with no gracious face and voice to draw them on.
His mother did not contradict him, just then; she rarely did, when he
said anything like that; she preferred to wait, and let him find out for
himself, with more or less help from her. So she only answered, this
time,—
“Was the thimble really hidden last night, Johnny? You know I was called
away before anybody found it, and you were all declaring that this time,
you were sure, it couldn’t be ‘in plain sight.’”
Johnny laughed, but he looked a little foolish, too, as he answered,—
“Why no, mamma—it was perched on the damper of the stove. I declare, that
game puzzles me more and more every time we play it; I might as well be
an idiot and be done with it! But what made you think of that just now,
mamma dear?”
“I suppose it came into my mind because I want you to look a little
harder before you let yourself be quite certain about the miracles,”
replied his mother, “and I will give you a sort of clue. You know papa’s
business is a very absorbing one, and you often hear people wondering
how he finds time for all the other things he does, but I never wonder;
it seems to me that he gives all his time to the Master, and that he
is so free from worrying care—so sure he will have time enough for all
that is really needful, that he loses none in fretting or hesitating;
he just goes right on. There is a dear old saying of the Friends that I
always like—‘Proceed as the way opens.’ Now if you will think about it,
and about how uses for money, and for all our gifts and talents, come in
some way to all who are in earnest about using them rightly, perhaps you
will see what I mean. ‘A heart at leisure from itself’ can do a truly
wonderful amount of work for other people.”
A dim idea of his mother’s meaning had come into Johnny’s mind, even
then, and suddenly, after he had done work which he had thought would
fill half an hour, in fifteen minutes, a flash of light followed, and he
“saw plainly.”
I cannot tell you of all the small chances which came to him daily, but
many of them you can guess by looking for your own. He tried hard to
remember what his mother had said about willing service and cheerful
giving. “Oh bother!” was not heard very often, now, and when it was, it
was generally followed speedily by some “little deed of kindness” which
showed that it had been repented of.
He was rushing home from school one day in one of his “cyclones,” as Tiny
called the wild charges which he made upon the house when he was really
in a hurry. It was a half-holiday, and most of the boys had agreed to go
skating together, just as soon as some ten or fifteen mothers could be
brought within shouting distance. The ice was lasting unusually late, and
the weather was delightfully clear and cold, but everybody knew that a
thaw must come before long, in the nature of things, and everybody who
skated felt that it really was a sort of duty to make the most of the
doomed ice, while it lasted.
Johnny was like the Irishman’s gun in one respect—he could “shoot round
a corner;” but he did not always succeed in hitting anything, as he did
to-day. The anything, this time, happened to be Jim Brady, and as Jim was
going very nearly as fast as Johnny was, neither had breath enough left,
after the collision, to say anything for at least a minute. Then Jim
managed to inquire, between his gasps,—
“Any lives lost on your side, Johnny?”
“No, I b’lieve not,” said Johnny, rather feebly, and then they both
leaned against the fence, and laughed.
“I was coming after you, Johnny,” began Jim, and then he stopped to
breathe again.
“Well, you found me!” said Johnny, who, being smaller and lighter than
Jim, was first to recover from the shock, “but tell me what it is,
please, quick, for I’m in a hurry!”
And almost without knowing that he did so, he squared his elbows to run
on again. Jim saw the motion, and his face clouded over.
“I can’t tell you everything I had to say in half a second, so I’ll not
bother you; maybe, I can find somebody else,” and Jim began to walk off.
Johnny sprang after him, caught his arm, and gave him a little shake,
saying as he did so,—
“See here, Jim Brady, if you don’t stop putting on airs at me like this,
I’ll—I’ll—” and he stopped for want of a threat dire enough for the
occasion.
“I would,” said Jim, dryly, “but if I were you, I’d find out first what
airs was—were—and who was putting ’em on. I see you’re in a hurry, and
I’m sorry I stopped you. Let go of my arm, will you?”
“No, I won’t!” said Johnny, “so there now! And if you won’t be decent,
and turn ’round, and walk towards home with me, why, I’ll walk along with
you till you tell me what you were going to say. I never _did_ see such
a—” and again Johnny stopped for want of a word that suited him.
Jim made no answer, and his face remained sullen, but he turned at once,
and the two walked on arm in arm, toward Johnny’s home.
“Well,” said Johnny, presently, “we’re ’most there. Are you going to say
anything?”
“I wouldn’t, if it was for myself—not if you hung on to me for a week!”
and Jim’s face worked; Johnny even thought his voice trembled a little.
“Taffy’s sick,” continued Jim, “and I can’t find out what ails him. He
says he don’t hurt anywhere, but he won’t eat, and as far as I can make
out he don’t sleep much, and he feels as if he was red hot. And all he
cares for is when I am with him evenings, and read to him. That old
Turkess where I have the room sort of looks after him; she knows I’ll
look after her if she doesn’t! But it must be lonesome for the little
chap all day, and yet I daresn’t lose any more time with him than I do
now, or I wouldn’t have the money—I mean—oh, I can’t leave my business
for anybody! And I thought, maybe, you’d give him an hour two or three
times a week, Johnny; so I set a fellow to mind my stand, and if you
_can_ come, and your mother doesn’t mind, I’ll show you the way.”
Johnny was silent a moment. How the sun shone, and how the pond sparkled
and glittered! Three or four of the boys, at a distant street corner,
beckoned frantically to him with their skates, to hurry him.
Perhaps you think Johnny must have been very selfish, to hesitate even
for a moment, but then, you know, you are looking at him, and not at
yourself! Before Jim’s sensitive pride had time to take fire again, the
answer was ready.
“I’ll do it, Jim,” said Johnny, cordially, “if you’ll wait half a second
till I ask mamma—she always likes to know where I am.”
“Thank you,” said Jim, briefly, and then, with a sudden thought, he
asked,—
“Have you had your dinner yet?”
“Why no! I forgot all about it!” and Johnny suddenly realized that he was
alarmingly hungry.
[Illustration]
“You see,” he added, “I had a big sandwich at recess, and somebody gave
me an apple, so I can just ask mamma to save me something, and go right
along with you; you can’t be away from your stand all the afternoon, I
suppose.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind!” said Jim, firmly, “I’ll wait for you
out here, so go in, and eat as much as you can hold. I’m in no hurry
whatsomever!”
And Jim leaned against the fence with as much composure as if the keen
March wind had been a June zephyr.
He felt a little surprise, however, when Johnny, without another word,
marched into the house and left him there; a surprise which did not
last long, for in less than five minutes, Mrs. Leslie’s hand was on his
shoulder, and she was gently pushing him up the steps, and into the
dining-room.
“Oh please, Mrs. Leslie!” and Jim’s face grew suddenly red, “I’m not fit.
I didn’t wait to fix up—I’m not a bit hungry!”
His distress was so evidently real, that Mrs. Leslie paused, half way to
the table.
“I’ll compromise,” she said, laughing, “since you are too proud to come
in anything but full dress, you shall hide yourself here, and we’ll
pretend you didn’t come in at all!”
[Illustration]
She opened the door into the neat, cosey inner kitchen. No one was there,
and Jim sat down by the fire with a feeling of great relief. For dinner
had just been put on table, in the dining-room; Tiny, in spotless white
apron and shining yellow curls, stood by her chair, and he murmured to
himself,—
“I’d ’a’ choked to death, first mouthful!”
The dining-room door was not quite closed, and presently he heard Tiny
saying,—
“Oh, please let me, mamma! I want to—please!”
And then she came softly in with a tempting plate of dinner, which she
set upon the table.
“There!” she said, “there’s some of everything there, except the pudding,
and I’ll bring you that when we have ours. I’m so glad you came to-day,
because there’s a Brown Betty. I think you’d better sit this way, hadn’t
you? Then you can look at the fire; it looks nice, such a cold day.”
It was all said and done with such simple sweetness and good-will, that
Jim’s defences gave way at once.
“Thank you, Miss Tiny,” he said, with the grave politeness which never
failed him when he spoke either to her or to her mother, and he sat down
at once in the place she had chosen—for worlds he would not have wounded
that gentle spirit. And he found it no hardship, after all, to eat the
dinner she had brought him; what “growing boy” could have resisted it?
[Illustration]
After dinner, when the comforting food had done more than he knew to
put him in good-humor, Mrs. Leslie asked him many questions about
Taffy, filling a basket as she talked, with jelly and delicate rusks
and oranges. A few of the questions were by way of making sure that the
place was a safe one for Johnny. She meant to go herself, the next day,
to see the little boy, but she did not wish to interfere to-day with the
arrangement which Jim had made. So the two boys went off together, and
Jim, sure now of Johnny’s good-will, and a little ashamed of his own
“cantankerousness,” as he called it to himself, talked about Taffy all
the way, but only as they neared the door of the dreary lodging-house did
Jim succeed in saying what lay nearest his heart.
“I haven’t told you the worst of it, Johnny,” he said, in a troubled
voice, from which all the usual mocking good-nature was gone, “the
little chap has somehow found out that he’s dying, and—he’s afraid!”
There was no time for more; they were already on the stairs, and Johnny
gave a sort of groan; who was he to comfort that little trembling soul?
“Oh,” he thought, “if mamma were only here!”
CHAPTER XIV.
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.
The room they entered was much more neat and clean than Johnny had
expected to find it, and there was even some attempt at decoration,
in the way of picture cards and show bills tacked upon the dingy
walls. A stove, whose old age and infirmities were concealed by much
stove-blacking, held a cheerful little fire, and the panes of the one
window were bright and clear. The bed, which looked unpleasantly hard,
and was scantily furnished, had been pulled to a place between the fire
and the window, and Taffy, sitting up against a skilfully arranged
chair-back and two thin pillows, looked eagerly towards the door as it
opened. The sharp, thin little face brightened with a smile, as he saw
Jim, but he did not speak.
[Illustration]
“Taffy,” said Jim, gently, “here’s Johnny Leslie. He’s come to see you,
and read to you a little bit. He’s Miss Tiny’s brother, you know, and
Mrs. Leslie’s son. Won’t you shake hands with him?”
Taffy held out his hand, nodding to Johnny with much friendliness.
“Oh, yes,” he said, in a voice so low and hoarse that Johnny bent nearer
to catch his meaning. “I’ll shake hands with him; I thought it was some
strange boy, but that’s different.”
[Illustration]
“And see,” continued Jim, opening the basket, and setting out the things
upon a rough pine table, which held a pitcher of water and a tumbler,
two or three medicine bottles, a very small orange, and a big red apple,
which Johnny recognized; he had given it to Jim a day or two ago. The
little fellow’s eyes sparkled as he saw the pretty eatables come out of
the basket, one after another, and he stroked the glass which held the
bright-colored jelly, saying hoarsely,—
“That’s pretty, that is. His folks must be rich,” and he nodded toward
Johnny.
“I must go now,” Jim said, not noticing this last remark of Taffy’s, “but
Johnny will stay awhile, and after that it won’t be long till I’m home.
Be a good boy, and don’t bother Johnny; he’s not used to you like I am.”
Jim went, with a very friendly goodbye; and Johnny was left alone with
Taffy, who eyed him shyly, but did not speak.
“Wouldn’t you like some of this jelly?” asked Johnny, hastily; “I can put
some in this empty tumbler for you, you know, so as not to muss it all up
at once.”
Taffy shook his head.
“Well, then, an orange?” went on Johnny. “I know a first-rate way to fix
an orange, the way they do ’em in Havana, where they grow. Papa showed
me, the winter he went there. Shall I do one for you? I don’t believe you
ever ate one that way.”
Taffy nodded eagerly, opening his parched lips, but still not speaking.
So Johnny hunted up a fork, and then, with Taffy’s knife, cut a round,
thick slice of skin, about the size of a half-dollar, off the stem and
blossom ends of the orange. These pieces of skin he put together, and
stuck the fork through them. Then he peeled half the orange, cutting off
all the white skin, as well as the yellow, then he stuck it on the fork,
at the peeled end, finished peeling it, and handed it to Taffy, who had
been looking on with breathless interest.
“There!” said Johnny, “you just hold on to the fork, and bite, and you’ll
get all the good part of the orange, and none of the bad.”
“Now wasn’t that first-rate?” he asked, as Taffy handed him back the
fork, with the “bad” of the orange on it.
Taffy laughed delightedly. His shyness was quite gone, but Johnny saw
that his breath came with difficulty, and that it cost him an effort to
speak.
“When I get well, and go sellin’ papers again,” he said, “I’ll fix up
oranges that way on sticks. Folks would buy ’em, hot days; now don’t you
think they would?”
“Why, yes,” said Johnny, seeing he was expected to answer, “I daresay
they would.”
“The old woman down there,” and Taffy pointed to the floor, “_she_ says
I’m dyin’. Don’t you think she’s just tryin’ to scare me? Now _don’t_
you, Johnny Leslie?”
Johnny was dismayed. What should he say? He sent up a swift, silent
prayer for help, then he spoke, very gently.
“Taffy, you’ve heard Jim tell about my mother, haven’t you?”
Taffy silently nodded.
“Well, suppose, while I’m here, my sister Tiny was to come, to say mother
wanted me to go home; do you think I’d be afraid to go—home, to mother
and father, you know?”
Taffy shook his head.
“Then, don’t you see,” pursued Johnny, and in his earnestness he took the
little hot hands, and held them fast. “That when our Father in Heaven
says He wants us, we needn’t be afraid to go? Mother says we oughtn’t to
be—not if we love Him.”
Johnny was afraid that Taffy would not understand, but he did. Since Jim
had taken charge of him, he had begun to go to Sunday-school, and having
quick ears and a good memory, he had learned fast.
“But s’pos’n we ain’t minded him?” and the feverish grasp on Johnny’s
hands grew tighter.
“We _haven’t_ minded Him, any of us,” said Johnny, softly, “and that’s
why our Saviour died for us. Now see here, Taffy; if a big boy was going
to whip you, because you’d taken something of his, and Jim stepped up,
and said, ‘Here, I’ll take the whipping, if you’ll let him go,’ then you
wouldn’t be whipped at all. Don’t you see?”
“I didn’t know it meant just that,” said Taffy, “what made Him do it,
anyhow, if He didn’t have to?”
“Because He loved us—because He was so sorry for us!” Johnny’s voice
trembled as he said this; it seemed to him that he had never before fully
realized what the Saviour had done for the world. “He wanted to have us
all safe and happy with Him in Heaven, after we die, and it’ll be only
our own fault, if we don’t get there—just the same as if a wonderful
doctor was to come in, right now, and tell you to take his medicine, and
he’d make you well, and then you wouldn’t take the medicine.”
“But I would, though!” said Taffy, eagerly, and as if he half believed
it would happen. “I’d take it, if it was ever so nasty, but the doctor
Jim fetched, he said he couldn’t do nothing for me, only make me a little
easier. Do you s’pose he knew?”
“Yes,” said Johnny, gravely, “I’m afraid he did, Taffy; but we needn’t be
afraid, either of us. The Saviour is stronger, and cares more about us,
than all the doctors in the world.”
Taffy did not answer; he lay back, looking up through the window at the
little patch of blue sky that showed between the tops of the tall houses.
Johnny could not tell whether or not his words had given any comfort. He
read a little story from a paper Tiny had sent, and Taffy listened with
eager interest; then a distant clock struck four, and Johnny rose to go.
Taffy made no objection to being left alone, but when Johnny took his
hand for goodbye, he said,—
“Come to-morrow. I want to hear more about Him.”
“I will if I can,” said Johnny, “but I go to school, you know. To-day was
a half holiday.”
Taffy made no answer to this, but he nodded and smiled, as Johnny backed
out of the door.
Mrs. Leslie went the next day to see the poor little boy, and many times
after that; Tiny was allowed to go once or twice, but she was not so
strong as Johnny was, and felt everything more keenly, so her mother did
not think it best to let her go often.
And now Johnny had a full chance to test his desire for self-denial.
Taffy could not himself have told why he preferred Johnny to every one
else, but so it was, and many were the hidden battles which Johnny fought
with self-love, not always coming off conqueror, but struggling up again,
after each defeat, with a fresh sense of his own helplessness, and a
stronger dependence on the “One who is mighty.”
It was hard to tell just when Taffy passed out from under the cloud of
fear into the full sunshine of the “knowledge and love of God,” but, as
his poor little body grew weaker, the eager soul seemed to strengthen,
and be filled with love and joy. Then he began to express his wish that
“everybody” might be told about the Saviour, and he lost no chance of
telling, himself, when kind-hearted neighbors came in to help Jim with
him.
The words “obedient unto death” having once been read and explained to
him, seemed constantly in his mind, and once, after lying still for a
long while, he said,—
“They killed Him—cruel! cruel!—and He never stopped ’em, and now see how
nice and easy He lets me lie here and die in my bed!”
It was the evening before Easter Sunday, that lovely festival which is
finding its way into all hearts and churches; the last bell was ringing
for evening service, and Johnny had just taken his seat, with his mother
and Tiny, in the church which they attended, when, to his great surprise,
Jim stepped quietly in, and sat down beside him. Jim was very neatly
dressed in his Sunday suit, but the flaming necktie which he usually wore
was replaced by a small bow of black ribbon. His face had a gentle and
subdued expression quite unusual to it, and Johnny felt sure, at once,
that Taffy was gone.
[Illustration]
As the boys knelt side by side in the closing prayer, their hands met in
a warm, close grasp, and a smothered sob from Jim told how deeply his
heart was touched.
Taffy had died that evening, very peacefully, in his sleep, a few minutes
after Jim came home from his work.
“And I somehow felt as if, maybe, I’d get a little nearer to him, if I
was to come to church,” said Jim, in a subdued voice, as he walked part
of the way home with Mrs. Leslie, “and I thought, maybe, you wouldn’t
mind if I came to your pew, it seemed sort of lonesome everywhere.”
Mrs. Leslie made him very sure that she did not “mind,” and would not, no
matter how often he came there.
And he came regularly, after that. At first he sat with his friends; then
he chose a sitting among the free seats in the church, and sat there,
but he found that, in this way, he was apt to have a different place
every Sunday, and this he did not like. It made him feel as if he did not
“belong anywhere,” he told Johnny; so, as soon as he could command the
money, he rented half a pew for himself, and after that he nearly always
brought some one with him. Once or twice it was the old woman who kept
the eating-stand where he usually bought his lunch; sometimes it was a
wild, rather frightened-looking street Arab, sometimes a fellow bootblack.
He evidently enjoyed doing the honors of his half pew, but there was a
deeper and better motive under that; the soul that has heard its own
“call” is eager that other souls should hear, too.
CHAPTER XV.
MORE CHANCES.
Perhaps, if you had seen Johnny starting for school on a certain Thursday
of which I mean to tell you, you would have thought that somebody was
imposing on his good nature, for he carried in his book-strap a very
large bundle, so large, that there was scarcely room enough left in the
strap for his geography and arithmetic. But a glance at his face would
have told you that he did not feel in the least “put upon,” for he looked
very well satisfied, and ran back, when he reached the gate, to give his
mother an extra kiss.
The bundle contained a great deal of sewing for a woman in whom Mrs.
Leslie was interested, and it meant that Johnny was to be trusted to go
quite alone to this woman’s home, which was a long way from his own,
and near the park. He was to go after school, and when he had done his
errand, he was to be allowed to go to the park, and watch a base-ball
match which was to take place that afternoon, until it should be time to
come home to tea. And this was not all. By way of saving precious time,
he was to take his dinner to school with him, and eat it at the noon
recess, and there it was in Tiny’s new straw basket—three sandwiches,
two hard-boiled eggs, with a little paper of salt, a very large and a
middling-sized piece of gingerbread, and a slice of yesterday’s “queen of
puddings.”
[Illustration]
“You’d better save a sandwich and the gingerbread to eat at the park,”
said Mrs. Leslie, as she packed this delightful dinner, “you can wrap
them in this nice piece of paper—see, it is that large brown envelope in
which my handkerchiefs came—for it will not be best to take Tiny’s basket
with you, you might so easily lose it. You can leave it in your desk, and
bring it home to-morrow. And be sure to ask somebody what time it is, as
soon as the sun is down to the tops of the trees in the park—you can see
them quite well from the base-ball ground, you know—and don’t stay later
than half past five, dear.
“All right, mamma,” said Johnny, cheerfully, “what a jolly dinner! I hope
I shan’t be too hungry at twelve to save the cake and sandwich, but I
don’t know!”
Mrs. Leslie laughed, but she made another sandwich, and cut another slice
of cake, and perhaps it was the recollection of this generous deed which
sent Johnny back for one more kiss.
He had hard work to keep his thoughts where they belonged during school
hours, but he succeeded pretty well, for he thought it would be “mean”
not to behave at least as well as usual, with such a treat in prospect.
He also succeeded in saving the cake and sandwich. “But I couldn’t have
done it,” he thought, as he wrapped them in the nice brown envelope,
ready for an immediate start, when school should be out, “if mamma hadn’t
put in that last sandwich and piece of cake!”
Some proverb maker has said that “chosen burdens are light,” and Johnny
certainly did not seem weighed down by his burden, as he hailed a horse
car, and stepped gayly on board. When they came to the “up-grade” he felt
like shaking hands with the patient extra horse, and telling him how
many good thoughts he had caused. And then he resolved to be more on the
lookout for chances to help the heavily-laden; perhaps he had kept too
near home with his efforts; he would try to do more.
He did not put into words, in his mind, the feeling that he had so many
things to make him happy, that he ought to hand some of his happiness
on to less favored people, but it was some such feeling as this which
prompted his resolve, and made him shyly offer his envelope-full of lunch
to a very ragged and dirty little newsboy, who was being hustled out of
the car by the conductor. It was accepted without the least shyness,
and also without any very special thanks; but Johnny, craning his neck
backward as the car moved on, saw the delighted face of the little
fellow, as he opened the envelope, and was more than satisfied. It set
him thinking of Taffy, and that was a thought which always filled his
heart with a sort of quiet Sunday happiness.
He found the house where he was to leave the bundle, without any trouble,
and his knock was answered by the woman for whom it was intended. She
was a gentle-faced, tired-looking little woman, and she held on one arm
a sturdy baby-boy, who seemed trying to make himself heavier by kicking
and struggling. She attempted to take the bundle with her free hand, but
Johnny held it fast, saying pleasantly,—
[Illustration]
“If you’ll tell me where you want it put, Mrs. Waring, I’ll take it in
for you.”
“Oh, thank you,” she answered, “you’re very kind—right in here, please,”
and she led the way to a room which would have been quite pretty and
attractive, if it had been in order, but it was evident that Master Baby
had had everything his own way, at least for the past few hours.
[Illustration]
“I can’t keep things straight five minutes,” said his mother, wearily,
“as fast as I get settled with my work at the machine, he’s into
something, and I have to jump up and take it away from him. Some of the
kind ladies I sew for have given him nice playthings, but no—he just
wants everything he can’t have, and he’s got so heavy, lately, that I
can’t take him about with me as I did. There’s a parcel of work that
I promised to take home this afternoon, and I don’t see how I’m going
to do it, for the neighbor that offered to mind him had to leave home
unexpectedly, and it isn’t safe to trust him for five minutes, let alone
two hours!”
“Maybe I could leave it on my way home,” said Johnny, “where’s it to go?”
“You’re very kind,”—she said, gratefully, “but it’s quite the other way
from your house, and besides, I’ve forgotten the number, though I know
the house when I come to it. No, I’ll just have to wait till to-morrow,
but I did want the money to-night.”
Johnny stood irresolute for a minute or two; could he give up his chance
to watch that game of base-ball? But was not this another chance? Yes, he
would do it!
“See here, Mrs. Waring,” he said, earnestly, “if it’s only to watch the
little chap, and keep him out of mischief, I could do that, as well as
anybody. He doesn’t seem afraid of me, and he has lots of things here to
play with. You just go, and I’ll stay here till you come back—I suppose
you’ll be back by five?”
“Oh yes, easily,” she replied, “and I’d trust you with the baby quick
enough, for there’s not many boys would offer, but I’m afraid your mother
will worry about you if you stay so long. And besides, I’d hate to keep
you in the house such a nice, bright afternoon.”
“Mamma wouldn’t worry,” said Johnny. “She doesn’t expect me home till tea
time; and you needn’t mind keeping me in, just for once.”
There was a little more talk about it, and then Mrs. Waring consented
to go, and Johnny was left alone with the baby, whose name, as he had
ascertained, was Phil, and who seemed quite pleased with his new nurse.
He was a good-natured, rollicking baby, and he pulled Johnny about the
room, talking in his own fashion, and trying one sort of mischief after
another, looking up with roguish laughter as Johnny gently stopped him.
But at last his fat legs seemed to grow tired, and he subsided on the
floor, where he actually remained quiet for five minutes, trying to make
his wooden horse “eat” a large India-rubber ball. Johnny found he was
tired, too, and he sat down on the sofa, where, unfortunately, he had
thrown his school books. He picked up his mental arithmetic.
[Illustration]
“I’ll not study,” he said, as if he were answering some one, “but I just
want to see if to-morrow’s lesson is hard.”
[Illustration]
It began with,—
“If it takes four men three days to build five miles of stone wall, how
much can one man build in a day?”
What a question! Johnny’s forehead puckered, he grasped the book as if
he would pinch the answer out, and gradually slipped down on the sofa,
until he came near joining the baby on the floor. Meanwhile, Master Phil,
tired of feeding a horse who would not eat, began to wrestle with the
table-cover, and a large Bible, which lay near the edge of the table,
fell to the floor with a bang, narrowly missing the baby’s head.
[Illustration: MINDING THE BABY.]
Johnny sprang to his feet, thoroughly roused and frightened, for Phil,
startled by the crash, and also expecting the “Naughty baby!” and little
slap on his hands which always followed any unusual piece of mischief,
burst into a roar, although he was quite unable to squeeze out a single
tear.
But this Johnny was too much alarmed to notice, and, picking up the
offender as if he had been made of glass, the amateur nurse felt him very
carefully all over, to find out if any bones were broken!
When he came to the little sinner’s ribs, Phil made up his baby mind that
he was being tickled instead of scolded, and roared again, but this time
with laughter, in which Johnny could not help joining, though he was
provoked both with his interesting charge and himself.
“You little rascal!” he said, catching Phil up, and rolling him on the
sofa; “don’t you dare to wriggle off there till I straighten up the muss
you’ve made—do you hear me?”
“Phil vely good boy now!” saying which, the baby folded his fat hands
together, and actually sat still until the table was restored to order.
Johnny gave the whole of his mind to his business, after this, and when
Mrs. Waring came back, she paused outside the window to look and listen,
and she laughed as she had not laughed for many a day. For there was her
“troublesome comfort,” on Johnny’s back, shouting and shrieking with
laughter, while Johnny cantered up and down the room, rearing, bolting,
plunging, and whinnying.
“I don’t know how to thank you enough, dear,” she said, gratefully, when
she at last opened the door. “I’ve got my money, and bought all I shall
need for three or four days, and the walk’s done me good, and you’ve
given baby such a game of romps as he hasn’t had in a month of Sundays.
Poor little soul, it goes to my heart to pen him up so, but how am I to
help it? He’ll sleep like a top to-night, and so shall I. You tell your
dear mother that I say she has a son to be proud of.”
Johnny colored high with pleasure, and plans for missionary work among
unplayed-with babies began to flock into his mind. He said nothing of
them, however, remembering, just in time, one of his father’s rules,—
“Never promise the smallest thing which you are not sure of being able to
perform.”
So he only said, heartily,—
“I’m very glad if I’ve helped you, Mrs. Waring; he’s a jolly little chap,
and it has really been good fun for both of us. But I ought to tell you—I
began to study a little, when he seemed busy with his toys, and next
thing I knew, he pulled off the table-cover and that large Bible, and it
wasn’t my doings that it didn’t smash him!”
“Oh well, it didn’t! And a miss is as good as a mile,” said Mrs. Waring,
cheerfully. She was so used to Phil’s hair-breadth escapes, that this one
did not seem worth mentioning.
But Johnny went home, thinking at a great rate. Learning lessons was not
wrong, nobody could say that it was. But it seemed that a thing good in
itself could be made wrong, by being allowed to get out of place.
“It’s like what mamma said about ‘watching,’” he thought; “it isn’t that
we must not ever do anything besides, but we mustn’t let anything ‘come
between.’ If that little scamp had gone to sleep, now, it would have been
no harm at all to pull my chair up to the sofa, so that he couldn’t roll
off, and study till he woke. But he didn’t go to sleep!”
He had almost forgotten the base-ball match, and his brief, but very
sharp feeling of disappointment. The “reward” is sure; not praise and
petting, not the giving back to you that which you have foregone, but
“the answer of a good conscience,” the “peace which the world cannot
give,” the fresh strength which comes with every victory, however small,
and which may, by God’s grace, be wrested even from defeat, when defeat
is made the stepping-stone to conquest.
CHAPTER XVI.
ENLISTING.
It was Sunday, and Jim was walking home from church with the Leslies. A
gradual, but very great change had come over him since Taffy’s death. He
had grown nearly as cheerful as he was before it happened, and did not
seem to be exactly unhappy, but only the day before, Johnny had said to
his mother,—
“I don’t think Jim can be well, mamma; he let slip the best kind of a
chance for taking me off, the way he’s so fond of doing, this morning,
and when I come to think of it, he hasn’t said any of those things for a
good while.”
Mrs. Leslie smiled at Johnny’s conclusion; she did not think that was the
reason, and she said,—
“He looks perfectly well, dear. He is growing fast, and so getting
thinner, but I don’t see any signs of ill health about him.”
“There’s something about him,” said Johnny, in puzzled tones, “I never
knew him to miss a chance of saying one of his sharp things, till lately;
in fact, I used to think he was watching out for them!”
Johnny had not been mistaken in thinking so. Somebody has said that if
we look to the very root of our ill-will against anyone, we shall find
that it is envy; and though this does not, perhaps, always hold good, it
certainly does in many instances. Ever since Jim had known Johnny, there
had been in his heart an unacknowledged feeling of envy, of which he was
himself only dimly aware. Why should Johnny have been given that safe,
pleasant home, with a father and mother and sister of whom he could be
both fond and proud, while he, Jim, was left to fight for even his daily
bread, with no ready-made home and friends, such as most people had? For
even among the boys with whom he was chiefly thrown, many had some place
which they called home, and somebody who cared, were it ever so little,
whether they lived or died. He persuaded himself that it was because
Johnny was “foolish,” and “needed taking down” that he said disagreeable
things to him, but, since Taffy died, he had, as he expressed it to
himself, been “sorting himself out, and didn’t think much of the stock.”
His face, this morning, wore a troubled look, which Mrs. Leslie was quick
to notice, but she had learned that, in dealing with Jim, she must use
very much the same tactics that one uses in trying to tame some little
wild creature of the woods—a sudden attack, or even approach, scared him
off effectually; and although now he no longer ran, literally, as he had
done at first, he would take refuge in silence, or an awkward changing of
the subject.
She had stopped asking him to take meals with them, when she saw how it
distressed him. He was painfully conscious of his want of training, and
shrank from exposing it, and he was shrewd enough to know that there is
no surer test of “manners” than behavior at the table.
But the evening visits, begun with the making of the gardens, and the
reading and singing lessons, she had managed to have continued after the
gardens were frostbitten, and the early nightfall made the evenings long.
Yet even about this she had been obliged to exercise a great deal of tact
and care. Jim had announced that the lessons were to end the moment there
was no more work for him to do, and she knew that he meant what he said,
so, after thinking a good deal, she appealed to Mr. Leslie for help.
“You don’t happen to want kindling-wood just now, perhaps?” he asked,
after thinking a little.
“Don’t I?” she replied. “Why, we _always_ want kindling-wood! I believe
that fair kitchen-maid could burn ‘the full of the cellar,’ as she would
put it, in a week, if she could get that much to burn.”
“Oh, well then,” said Mr. Leslie, cheerfully, “It’s all right. I
happen to know where I can get a wagon load of pine logs and stumps,
in comparison with which a ram’s horn is a ruler! I should think half
a stump, or one log, an evening might be considered a fair allowance,
and you shall have them before the gardens are done for, to make sure.
You can explain to your muscular scholar that, by having a few days’
allowance chopped at a time, the reckless maiden can be kept within
bounds. But Jim will have my sympathy when he comes to those stumps!”
“He will like it all the better for being so hard, I do believe,” replied
Mrs. Leslie, and this proved to be true. When Jim had wrestled for half
an hour with a stump which looked like a collection of buffaloes’ heads,
he sat down to his lesson with calm satisfaction; no one could say that
he had not earned it.
Mrs. Leslie had been very much pleased by his consent to share the Sunday
evening talk—for it could scarcely be called a lesson—without offering
to do anything in return, and, although he had always been respectfully
attentive, she had noticed a growing interest and earnestness, since
Taffy’s death, which made her feel very glad and hopeful.
She could not help thinking, to-day, as she glanced at Jim, of the
great change in his appearance. He had bought a cheap, but neat and
well-fitting suit of dark clothes, and he still wore the little black
necktie. This suit he kept strictly for Sundays, except that he always
brought the coat on his lesson evenings, and put it on when his chopping
was done. He was very careful, now, to be clean and neat, even when he
wore his old clothes.
Extraordinary patches and darns had taken the place of rents and holes,
about which, formerly, he had neither thought nor cared. His face had
always been honest and cheerful, and a new gentleness made it, now, very
pleasant to look at. And he was growing tall. He had always been somewhat
taller than Johnny, and now he overtopped him by a head, a fact which
gave Johnny no satisfaction whatever. Mrs. Leslie bade Jim goodbye at the
gate, with an allusion to their meeting in the evening, and he assured
her that he was coming.
“Something is troubling Jim,” she said to the children, as they all
went upstairs, “and I want very much, if I can do it without asking
impertinent questions, to find out what it is. Perhaps we could help him.”
“_You_ could, mamma dear,” said Johnny, “even if Tiny and I couldn’t.
Jim’s queer; he doesn’t like to talk things out, the way I do—and I’ll
tell you what, Tiny, I think you and I had better leave Jim alone with
mamma a little while, when we’ve finished talking about our verses. He’d
be much more apt to tell her if there were nobody else there.”
Mrs. Leslie kissed her boy very lovingly. He was growing in the grace of
unselfishness and thoughtfulness for others, in a way that warmed her
heart.
Jim brought a great bunch of wild roses to Mrs. Leslie, when he came that
evening, and she thanked him warmly.
[Illustration]
“I did not think they had come yet,” she said, “and I never feel as if
summer were really here to stay until the roses come. Where did you find
them, dear?”
Jim’s heavy face brightened for a moment. He saw that Mrs. Leslie had
called him “dear” without knowing it—just as naturally as she said it to
Johnny, and a wave of happy feeling went over his heart.
“Away out in the country, down a lane,” he said, “but I don’t know
just where. I walked further than I’ve ever gone yet, this afternoon,
straight out into the fields. I meant to go to church, but I felt full
of walk, somehow, and as if my legs wouldn’t keep still, and I got to
thinking, as I went along, and first thing I knew, I was about half a
mile beyond the church! So I just kept right on, and I don’t see what
folks live in cities for, anyhow—even little cities like this. I was
under a big tree, lying on the grass, for an hour or so, and—”
[Illustration]
Jim stopped suddenly, for want of words that exactly suited him.
Mrs. Leslie thanked him again for the roses, and Tiny ran to fill the
“very prettiest” vase with water. And then they settled down to their
talk about the Sunday-school lesson which they had all recited that
morning. It was the story of Nicodemus; his “coming by night” to the
Saviour, and hearing about the “new birth unto righteousness.”
[Illustration]
For these Sunday evening talks, they always sat in the library, and,
unless the evening was quite too warm, a little wood fire sparkled on the
hearth, and no other light disputed its right to make the room cheerful.
Tiny and Johnny had become skilful in building these little fires, in a
way to make them give light, rather than warmth, so to-night, although
the windows were open to the soft summer-twilight air, three or four
pine-knots blazed upon the hearth, and sent dancing shadows about the
room. Mrs. Leslie had noticed that, in this close companionship and half
light, the reserve and restraint which sometimes tied Jim’s tongue seemed
taken away.
[Illustration]
The cause of the trouble which showed so plainly in his face came out by
degrees, as the lesson was discussed.
“I felt somehow, when Taffy died,” he said, “as if I’d been walking the
other way, and I’ve been trying to turn ’round, and travel towards where
I hope he is. And I don’t mean, either, that I’ve been trying just by
myself; I’ve been asking, you know, for help, and it seemed to me I got
it, whenever I asked in dead earnest. And then, when I was going over the
lesson for to-day, it seemed to mean that people who got religion got it
all of a sudden, and didn’t want to do, or say, or think any of the bad
things they’d been full of, any more, and down I went, right there, for
no matter how I try, and ask, and mean, to keep straight, I don’t do it;
in fact, it’s seemed to me lately, that the more I try the more I don’t,
and—and—if it wasn’t for Taffy, and all of you, Mrs. Leslie, I’d just
give the whole thing up, and try to forget it, and be comfortable! It’s
too much to ask of anybody, if it’s that way!”
He spoke with increasing warmth, and in a curiously injured tone, almost
as if he thought he had been deceived.
Mrs. Leslie laid her hand gently on his, saying,—
“Dear Jim, God never asks impossibilities. The new birth is the giving
ourselves wholly to Him, the full surrender, keeping back nothing from
His service. The other part, the making into His likeness, is always the
work of a lifetime. And He knows that; He knows all we have to contend
with. Don’t you remember—‘He knoweth whereof we are made, He remembereth
that we are but dust’—so, while we must not make excuses for ourselves,
beforehand, we may be very sure that, after every unwilling fall, He will
help us up again, and freely forgive us.”
“But there’s something else”—and Jim’s face still looked cloudy—“I don’t
see how it is, anyhow, that after we say we’ll be His, and try to do what
we think He would like, He _lets_ us fall. Couldn’t He keep us up, and
keep us going, in spite of ourselves?”
“My dear,” said Mrs. Leslie, very solemnly, “that is the question which
has puzzled and staggered God’s people for ages, or rather, the people
who are only partly His. And there is no answer for it. All we know is
just this, that there are two great powers abroad in the world, the
power of God, and that of the devil; that if we choose God’s service and
protection, He will join His mighty will to our weak ones, and that then
we can be ‘more than conquerors,’ but that if we let go this stronghold,
we are at the mercy of every sinful impulse and wicked desire. With His
help, we may attain to strength, and victory, and peace, and if we do
not, it is simply because we refuse this ‘ever-present help.’ And when
we turn away from Him, when we withhold our allegiance, we never know
how many others will be turned away by our example, nor how terribly we
may be hindering the coming of God’s kingdom. Questioning and doubting
are worse than useless; we are told that we shall ‘know hereafter,’ and
where we place our love we may well place our trust. Now, I wish you to
do something for me. I wish you to notice how those who are really, with
heart and soul, following the Master are held above the things which
other people count troubles and trials. There are too many who are only
half-heartedly following, and how can these expect more than half a
blessing? And one more thing; you have not yet confessed your allegiance.
If you wished to be a soldier in your country’s army, what would be the
very first thing for you to do?”
“Go to headquarters, and say so, and have my name put down,” said Jim,
slowly and reluctantly.
“Yes. And that is the first thing, now. Own to the world that you are
His, that you mean, with his help, to ‘fight manfully under his banner,’
and then He will ‘surely fulfil’ His part of the contract. Will you do
this, dear?”
There was a breathless pause. Tiny’s hand stole into Jim’s on one side,
Johnny’s on the other; Mrs. Leslie’s motherly hand was pressed lightly on
his head. With a sudden burst of tears, he said, brokenly,—
“I will! I will! I knew I ought to, but the devil’s been putting me off
with all this—this—” he stopped as suddenly as he had begun.
Mrs. Leslie rose and knelt, and the others knelt with her. Briefly and
fervently she prayed for a blessing upon Jim’s resolve, and that he might
be “strengthened with all might” to carry it out.
“Nothing is so dreadful as the want of love and faith,” she said,
presently, “and against this you must fight and pray. Times will come
to you, as they come to all of us, dear, when it must be just a sheer
holding on to that which you have proved; but never, never listen to
those who would take away your stronghold, and who offer less than
nothing in exchange.”
Mrs. Leslie’s good-night kiss when he rose to go—the first kiss he could
remember having received—seemed to him like a seal upon all that she had
said. He felt brave, and strong, and free; the fears which had held him
down were gone, and when, on the following Sunday afternoon, he took the
vows of allegiance to the great Captain of our salvation, there was a
ring of glad triumph in his strong young voice, as if, at the beginning
of the battle, he saw the victor’s crown.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE WRONG END.
There was no doubt about it—Johnny had, to use one of his own
expressions, “got up wrong end foremost,” that morning. Not that he had
really and literally come out of bed upon his head instead of his feet;
that would not have mattered at all, for he would have been right end up
again in a minute. No, it was much worse than that, for the plain English
of it was, that he was in a very bad humor, and did not know it!
What he thought he knew was, that everything went wrong. The fire had
gone out in the furnace, the night before, and his room, although by no
means freezing cold, was uncomfortably chilly. A button snapped off his
new school jacket as he was dressing; the bell rang before he was quite
ready, and he had intended, lately, to be punctual at every meal, “really
and truly”; it was one of the ways in which, without saying anything
about it, he was trying to do right.
He was only a moment or two late, after all; the rest of the family
had only just sat down, and he was in time for grace, but he felt
“flustered.” He was ashamed to grumble aloud when he found the smoking
brown batter-cakes were “only flannel-cakes,” instead of his favorite
buckwheats, but his face certainly grumbled.
He strapped his books together, after breakfast, with a good deal of
needless force; the strap suddenly gave way, and the books flew about the
floor in various directions.
“Bother the old strap!” said Johnny, savagely, as he gathered up his
books.
“I think the old strap has bothered you!” said Tiny, merrily, as she
stooped to help him.
“I wouldn’t be so silly, if I were you, Tiny!” and Johnny turned his nose
up, and the corners of his mouth down, all at once.
“Oh yes you would, don’t you see, Johnny, if you _were_ me!” and Tiny
laughed again. She thought Johnny was being solemn “for fun,” or she
would not have laughed.
Johnny grunted something which sounded a little like “thank you,” as she
handed him the last book, and a nice strong piece of twine, which was
conveniently lying in a little coil on the table. The strap had broken in
the middle, so there was no use in trying to do anything with it, and he
discontentedly used the twine instead. His mother passed through the hall
just as he was tying up his books, and, seeing the broken strap, said
pleasantly,—
“So the new jacket must needs have a new strap to keep it company? How
much will it be? Fifteen cents? Well, here it is—you can buy one as you
come home from school, I am afraid you would hardly have time before.”
Johnny thanked his mother, and kissed her goodbye, with a pretty good
grace; he even said, of his own accord,—
“I’m afraid I pulled a little harder than I needed to, mamma, but the old
thing couldn’t have been good for much, anyway, to break just for that!”
“It will make lovely trunk-straps; and a shawl-strap too. May I have it,
Johnny?” and Tiny measured the pieces approvingly on her finger, as she
spoke. It is needless to say that the articles she mentioned were for the
latest addition to her doll family.
“Oh yes, you may have it, but how girls can be so foolish about dolls—!”
and Johnny marched off, leaving Tiny to make the most of this gracious
permission.
“I was afraid he would want it for a sling or something,” she said,
contentedly. “_You_ don’t think dolls are foolish, do you, mamma?”
“No, darling, or I wouldn’t have helped papa to give you that beauty for
Christmas. I cared more for my dolls than for all the rest of my toys put
together, and while you are such a good mother to your family, and make
such neat clothes for it, and at the same time are such a good little
daughter to me, I shall find no fault with either the dolls or their
mamma.”
Tiny looked very much pleased, and went, in her usual orderly manner,
to put the strap away, until she could coax Johnny into cutting it up
for her. It was remarkable, considering his contempt for the whole doll
race, how much he had done to better its condition! Trunks and furniture,
vehicles of various sorts, and even a complete summer residence, had in
turn been coaxed from him, and not a few of Tiny’s small playmates openly
expressed the wish that they had brothers “just like Johnny Leslie.”
Though the cloud had lifted for a moment, it lowered again as Johnny
walked to school. The twine cut his hand, the wind blew his hat off,
as he was passing Jim’s stand, and I am afraid that Jim’s kindness in
picking up and restoring the wanderer, just before it reached the gutter,
was quite lost sight of because Jim clapped it on Johnny’s head with
rather more force than was strictly necessary.
“Got the toothache?” asked Jim, sympathizingly, as he caught sight of
Johnny’s glum face.
“No; what makes you think I have?” and Johnny “bristled”; he was not a
little afraid of Jim’s sharp tongue.
“Oh, I thought I saw a sort of a swelled-out look around your mouth,”
said Jim, very gravely, “and you don’t look happy; and those two things
are what I heard a big doctor call symptom-atic!”
Johnny’s face cleared a little.
“Look out you don’t choke, Jim,” he said, briskly, and, with a nod by way
of good morning, began to run, to make up for lost time.
He barely did it, and he felt that he was looking red and breathless,
while everybody else had a particularly cool and comfortable
expression—“as if they’d been here a week!” he grumbled to himself.
Things went on in this style all day. He nearly quarrelled with one of
his best friends, at recess, about such a mere trifle that he was ashamed
to remember it, afterward. His sums “came wrong”; he lost a place in one
of his classes; he tripped and tumbled, scattering his books again, just
as he was starting for home; the stationery store was entirely out of
book straps, and although the polite stationer promised to have a very
superior one, direct from the saddle-and-harness-maker’s, by the next
afternoon, at latest, Johnny was not consoled.
So, altogether, he came home in a rather worse humor than that in which
he had gone away, and although, fortunately, nothing happened to cause
an explosion, he certainly did not add to the general happiness at the
tea table. He studied his lessons in silence, for the half hour after tea
which was all the evening time he was allowed for study, and then took up
a book in which he had been very much interested, but it seemed suddenly
to have turned dull, and he rose with unusual promptness, when the clock
struck nine, and bade his father good night. His good night to his mother
came later, when he was snugly in bed.
“Don’t you feel well to-night, my boy?” asked Mr. Leslie, laying a kind
hand on Johnny’s head, as he spoke.
“Oh, yes, papa, I’m all right, I suppose,” replied Johnny, soberly, “but
it just seems as if everything had gone sort of upside down, to-day,
somehow!”
“Will you allow me to try a simple and comparatively painless experiment
upon you, John?”
Mr. Leslie spoke very seriously, but there was a twinkle in his eye which
Johnny well knew meant mischief. It meant fun, too, though, and Johnny
replied with equal gravity,—
“Certainly, papa, unless it is very painful.”
He had hardly finished speaking when, with alarming suddenness, he found
himself standing on his head, his feet held firmly up in the air by
his father’s strong hands. He was reversed, immediately, and Mr. Leslie
inquired,—
“How did the world—or what you saw of it—look to you while you were
standing on your head, my son?”
“Why, upside down, papa, of course!” said Johnny, laughing in spite
of himself as he recalled the queer effect which had come from seeing
everything, apparently, hanging from the ceiling, “without visible means
of support.”
“Do you believe,” continued Mr. Leslie, “that the world really _was_
upside down for a moment?”
“Why no, papa; I’m not such a goose as all that, I hope!”
“And yet,” said Mr. Leslie, thoughtfully, “I think you remarked, a while
ago, that it seemed as if everything had sort of gone upside down to-day.”
“But that’s quite different, papa,” said Johnny, hastily.
“Oh!” said Mr. Leslie, “When mamma comes to tuck you up, suppose you ask
her to tell you the story of The Little Boy and the Field Glass. Good
night, my dear little son, and pleasant, right-side-up dreams to you!”
Johnny went off, almost in a good humor. It was not the first time he
had taken what his father called “an order for a story” to his mother,
and he knew he should hear something entertaining, even though, as his
heart misgave him, he should also be made to feel the point of the story
a little.
His mother laughed when she, heard the “order.”
“I must make haste,” she said, “or you’ll lose your beauty sleep; but,
fortunately, it is not a long story.”
“Once upon a time there was a little boy about five years old, who had
been very ill indeed, and, when he grew well enough to be up and dressed,
the doctor said he must be taken to the sea-side. So his mother took him
for two weeks to a beautiful rocky place on the New England coast.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
“Like Prout’s Neck, mamma?”
“Very much like Prout’s Neck, dear. And she put a little blue flannel
suit, and a big hat on him, and tried to keep him out in the salt air and
the sunshine all day. But he was weak, and grew tired very soon, and did
not seem to feel able to play with the healthy, strong little children,
of whom there were plenty about, and he used to beg to go indoors, and
be read to, so that his mother was very glad when the kind-hearted old
sailor, whose wife kept the boarding-house, offered them the use of a
fine field-glass.
“‘The little man can lie on the rocks and watch the ships go by,’ said
the captain, ‘and he’ll soon lose that peak-ed look he has, and be as
brown as a berry.’
[Illustration: THE FIELD-GLASS.]
“And sure enough, the boy was quite willing, now, to go out and sit on
the rocks, for he was eager to use the wonderful glass, which was to make
the great ships seem almost within reach of his hand. He took the glass,
and when his mother had screwed it to the right length, he put it to his
eyes, and slowly turned about, first toward the sea, then toward the
house where they were lodging, and last to his mother; then he let the
glass drop, with a puzzled, almost frightened look on his little face.
[Illustration]
“‘Why, mamma!’ he said, ‘the ships look miles and miles and miles farther
away, and the captain’s house looks like a pigeon-house, and you look
like a little bit of a girl at the end of a great long lane. And the
captain said it would make everything look large and near.’” Johnny began
to laugh.
“What a little goose!” he said. “He’d turned the wrong end foremost,
hadn’t he, mamma?”
“That was just what he had done,” said Mrs. Leslie, smiling, “and you
should have seen his face clear, and have heard his exclamations of
delight, when his mother showed him how to use the glass, and he turned
it the right way. There was no more trouble about keeping him out of
doors, after that. And now, perhaps you’d like to know who he was. His
name was Johnny Leslie, and he had just had measles.”
“Oh, mamma! Really and truly? I remember all about the sea and the rocks,
but I’d forgotten about the glass. What a little simpleton I must have
been! And I do believe I’ve been growing into a bigger one ever since! I
see what papa meant, now. But just look here, mamma—how _could_ things
have seemed right to-day, any way I looked at them?”
And Johnny gave a rapid sketch of his various annoyances and misfortunes.
“It’s too late to settle all that to-night,” said his mother, “and
besides, I’d rather have you think it all out for yourself, first, so we
will postpone the ‘how’ till to-morrow night. Can you say ‘Let me with
light and truth be blest,’ for me, before I go?”
It was the psalm Johnny had learned for the previous Sunday, and he said
it very perfectly, for he had liked it, and so remembered it better than
he did some things. His mother tucked him up, and kissed him, and left
him with his heart full of love and repentance, and a determination to
“begin all over again” the next morning.
CHAPTER XVIII.
TURNING THE GLASS.
Johnny did a good deal of thinking, at odd times, the next day, and the
more he thought, the more he saw why his mother had wanted him to think,
before their next talk. As he picked up his injuries, and looked at them
one by one, trying to do it as if he had been somebody else, they looked
so very different, that he wondered how he could have been so blind, and
when his mother came, as usual, for the talk, he was inclined to beg
off from going into particulars. But he decided not to, for he was very
certain that he had never yet been sorry for talking things out with his
mother. So he faced the music, and declared himself ready to “begin at
the beginning and go on to the end.”
“What was the first thing that went wrong?” inquired Mrs. Leslie, as she
touched up Johnny’s hair with her nice soft fingers, adding, before he
could answer, “You shall tell me how the things looked to you yesterday,
and then I will turn the glass for you.”
“The first thing,” said Johnny, “was, that when I got up my room
was cold—or no, not exactly cold, perhaps, but sort of chilly and
uncomfortable, and when I opened the register, only cold, cellar-y air
came up; and you know, mamma, that generally, when I turn on the heat,
it’s warm in five minutes.”
“What a comfortable state of things!” said his mother, “to have, always,
a nice warm room in which to wash and dress, and what a good thing it was
that on the very night when, for the first time in weeks, the furnace
fire went out, the weather was so mild that the house was only chilly,
not really cold. Next!”
“A button came off my new jacket, and though it was the last one, and
didn’t matter much, just for one day, it provoked me to have it come off
then, when I was in a hurry.”
“It was such a good thing that it wasn’t the top button!” said his
mother, brightly, “and that I had a new jacket at all, at all! Next!”
“I said my prayers too fast, mamma, and I’m afraid I didn’t think them
much.”
“There is nothing to make up for that, dear,” said his mother, gravely
and sadly; “but the ‘hearty repentance,’ and ‘steadfast purpose’ can
follow even that downfall, as I think you know.”
“I’d be in a bad way if I didn’t, mamma, for it does seem to me that I go
down just as fast as I get up! Then I was provoked that I came so near
being late for breakfast; I was only just in time, you know, for all I’d
got up when I was called.”
“But you were in time, dear, and it was not your fault that the button
came off your jacket, and delayed you, so that should not have worried
you. Well, what came next?”
“Oh mamma, you’ll think I’m only a baby!” and Johnny hid his face in his
mother’s neck. “I was vexed because we had flannel cakes for breakfast,
instead of buckwheat cakes!”
“But they were such very good flannel cakes. And that new maple syrup
would almost have made them seem good, even if they had been poor.”
“I know—it was only because I was in such a bad humor. The next was
my book strap; I suppose I did pull too hard, for I felt like pulling
something. But it was such a nice strap, when it was new, and such a
bother to carry my books in a piece of twine! And the ridiculous things
went flying all over the entry—or ’most all over.”
“And a kind little sister flew to the rescue, and was too loving even
to know that she was growled at,” answered Mrs. Leslie, “and a dear old
mother came forward in the handsomest manner, without even waiting to be
asked, and subscribed the price of a new strap for the sufferer.”
“A dear young, lovely, beautiful mother!” and Johnny gave her a hug which
made her beg for mercy. Then he went on.
“My hat blew off just as I was passing Jim’s place, and he clapped it on
my head about five times as hard as he needed to, but you’ll have to let
me tell the other end of that, mamma. It was nearly in the gutter when he
caught it, and the gutter was full of dirty water and mud, and I never
half thanked him, because I was afraid he was making fun of me. Then I
had to run to make up the time I had lost talking to Jim, and I just
saved my distance—the bell rang before I was fairly in my seat.”
“Then you were in time to answer to your name, and didn’t get a bad mark.
That was a comfort. Next!”
“I was ’most ready to fight Ned, because he said he was taller than I am,
and he walked off and left me, and didn’t come near me all the rest of
the day.”
“And so avoided having a quarrel with you, for I suppose he saw that if
you stayed together you would be very apt to quarrel. I think that was
sensible.”
“Yes, I know it was, now, and I’m very glad he did it, but it only made
me more provoked, then. The next was, I had to do all my sums over twice,
and some of them three times, and I missed a question, and lost my place
in the mental arithmetic class—my place that I’ve kept all this term,
next but one to the head, and ’most all the boys in the class are older
than I am.”
“I have noticed that you were careless about your arithmetic lessons
lately,” said his mother, “I think you have depended too much upon your
natural quickness, and not enough upon study, and I hope that these two
little defeats will be the cause of far greater victories.”
“Yes, mamma, I think they will. I didn’t think it was worth while
to study that lesson much, but I know it is, now. Then I had a most
ridiculous tumble, just as I was leaving the playground, and my books
went flying again. I was glad there was nobody by but one of the little
fellows, and he didn’t laugh a bit. He asked me if I was hurt, as if
he’d been my grandfather, and helped me pick up my books, too; he’s a
good little chap; so that’s the other end of that! Then they hadn’t
any book straps left at the store, and Mr. Dutton couldn’t promise me
one for certain till this afternoon, because he had to have it made at
Skilley’s.”
“Then you will be sure of a good strong, well-made one, for all the work
they do at Skilley’s seems to be well done. It was worth waiting, to have
a better strap, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, mamma, such a little wait as that. I got it this afternoon, and it
is a beauty—nearly twice as long as the old one, and with such a nice
strong buckle. And he didn’t charge a bit more, either. Yes, I see it,
now; I was looking through the wrong end of the spyglass, all yesterday.
But how can anybody see a thing when he doesn’t see it, mamma? I couldn’t
have seen everything this way yesterday, no matter how hard I might have
tried.”
“Are you quite sure about that, dear?” asked Mrs. Leslie. “If you had
tried _very_ hard, from the beginning, don’t you think you could have
turned your spyglass, by school time at latest? When things seem to be
going wrong, we have only to behave as we should do if we had lost some
earthly possession, that we valued very much,—look carefully back to
where the trouble seemed to begin, and then, if we can, set straight
whatever went wrong there. You may be very sure, always, when you feel
as you felt yesterday morning, that you are the one chiefly, if not
wholly, in fault, and you should lose no time in arresting yourself, and
pronouncing sentence.
“And another thing; you had far better accuse yourself wrongly a dozen
times, than anybody else once. Few things grow upon people so fast as
complaining, and suspecting, and fault-finding do; and few faults cause
more unhappiness to the people who commit them, for to anybody on the
look out for slights and disagreeable things, they are to be found
everywhere, and all the time. So watch the beginnings, dear. There is
the whole thing, in two words, ‘Watch and pray.’”
“I hope I’m not going to be one of those dreadful people!” and Johnny
sighed. The “Hill Difficulty” looked rather long and steep, just then.
“I don’t think you are, my darling,” said his mother, cheerfully.
“Knowing the danger is half the battle, and I think you are awake to
it, now. If you wish to think kindly of people, make them think kindly
of you; lose no opportunity to help, and comfort, and do good, and you
will find it more and more easy to believe in the good-will of every one
around you.”
“You’ve turned the field-glass around for me again, mamma. What a poor
concern I’d be if it wasn’t for you! But as long as you don’t give up,
I’ll try not to, though it’s pretty discouraging sometimes; now isn’t it?”
“It would be,” said his mother, with another loving kiss, “if we did not
so well ‘know in whom we have believed.’ He lets us cast _all_ our care
on Him, for He is ‘mighty to save.’ Now good-night, darling. It is high
time you were asleep. To-morrow will be a bright, brand-new day!”
CHAPTER XIX.
AT THE FARM.
When Tiny and Johnny had measles, as they had so many things, together,
one spring, they were both left rather weak and good-for-nothing, so Mr.
Leslie, after a good deal of hunting, found a farmhouse which seemed to
him about what he wanted, and took board there for the whole summer, and
the whole family. He meant to arrange his work so that he could often
take a two-or-three-days’ holiday, beside going home every evening, for
he was never so busy in the summer as he was in the winter, and he felt
the need of rest and change.
[Illustration]
It was a “really and truly farmhouse,” as Tiny said, standing back from
the road, at the end of a long green lane, shaded by tall, thick pine
trees. And, better still, the nearest railway station was five miles
away, and a large, old-fashioned stage, drawn by two tall, thin horses,
met the morning and evening trains.
[Illustration]
The farmhouse was long and low, with a gambrel roof and great dormer
windows, and what garrets that combination makes! It was whitewashed all
over the outside—and the inside, too, for that matter—and had faded green
shutters. There was a large porch at the front door, with benches at each
side, and a small one at the back door, and a wide hall ran straight
through the middle of the house, from one porch to the other.
[Illustration]
The farm was no make-believe affair of a few acres, with only two or
three horses and cows, and a flock of chickens. Orchards and grain
fields, meadows and “truck-patches,” stretched away on all sides, almost
as far as one could see. Twenty sleek cows came meekly every morning and
evening to be milked; six horses were to be watered three times a day;
at least a hundred solemn black chickens, with white topknots, scratched
about the great barn. Turkeys strutted, ducks and geese quacked, and
there was even a pair of proud peacocks. In short, Johnny informed Tiny,
before they had been there a day, that it was exactly the sort of farm he
meant to have when he was grown up; the only difference he should make
would be to have the slide down the side of the haymow a little higher,
and to turn half the farmhouse into a gymnasium.
[Illustration]
Mr. and Mrs. Allen, who owned this land of enchantment, and let people
live in it for six dollars a week, apiece, were kind, comfortable people,
who liked to see their boarders eat heartily, and drink plenty of milk.
[Illustration]
They had two tall sunburnt “boys,” who did most of the farm work, except
in the very busy season, when three or four “hired men” helped them. And
they had two daughters, one a fine, handsome girl, twenty years old, and
the other three or four years older, and with no beauty in her face but
that of a very sweet and pleasant expression. It was this one, whose name
was Ann, who showed the tired travellers to their rooms, on the evening
of their arrival, and waited on them while they ate their supper, and
brought a pitcher of fresh water and a lighted lamp, when she heard
Mrs. Leslie tell the children it was bedtime. She seemed surprised, they
thought, when Mrs. Leslie gently thanked her.
[Illustration]
They found, the next day, that the other daughter was named Julia, and
as time went on, and they saw more and more of the daily life on the
farm, they could not help noticing that, while Julia did her share of the
general work cheerfully and well, it was always Ann who seemed to think
of little uncalled-for kindnesses and helps, although she did this so
quietly and unobtrusively, that it was some time before they observed it.
[Illustration]
Her mother and sister were in the habit of asking her to “just” do this
or that, to run upstairs or “down-cellar” for something; her father and
the boys nearly always came to her for any chance bit of sewing they
wanted done, and even the great watch dog and the sober old yellow cat
seemed to take for granted that she should be the one to feed them. And
the children saw that to all these calls upon her time and attention she
responded not only willingly, but gladly.
Mrs. Allen, good-tempered as she usually was, was sometimes “tried,”
as she expressed it, when things “went contrary,” and Julia, although
generally in a good humor, and sometimes even frolicsome, was inclined
to be fretful if her wishes and plans were crossed; but the pleasant
serenity of Ann’s face was seldom ruffled, and before long the children
found themselves going to her for help and sympathy in their plans and
arrangements, just as her own family did.
“And I tell you, Tiny, she’s first rate!” said Johnny, warmly, one day,
when “Miss Ann” had left her sewing to help him find his knife, and
had found it, too. “Mrs. Allen’s very kind and nice, and Miss Julia’s
thundering—I mean very—pretty, but I do think Miss Ann has one of the
pleasantest faces I ever saw, and I’d be willing to lose my knife, and
have it stay lost, if I could find out how she manages always to know
just what everybody wants, and to do it as if it was what she wanted
herself. I’ve three quarters of a mind to ask her. Would you?”
“Why, yes, I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” said Tiny, after thinking a
minute; “only I would put in, to please not tell unless she really and
truly didn’t mind, for you know she might not like to tell, and yet not
like to say so. I’d make her promise that first, before you say what it
is.”
“I sometimes think you have more sense than I have, Tiny—about some
things, that is,” said Johnny, nodding his head approvingly. “I’ll fix
her that way; and if you see her off in the orchard, or anywhere where it
would be a good chance, I wish you’d tell me.”
To this Tiny agreed, and for several days she and Johnny kept watch over
their unconscious victim, hoping for a chance to see her alone, growing
quite impatient, at last, and declaring that they didn’t believe she ever
did sit down!
“Except to eat her breakfast and dinner and supper,” amended Johnny.
“And to put on and take off her shoes and stockings,” added Tiny; “though
you can do even that sort of hopping about on one foot, for I’ve tried
it.”
“Well, I should think she would be just about tired to death, every night
of her life,” said Johnny; “and yet she’s every bit as nice and pleasant
when she says good night, as she is when we go down to breakfast in the
morning. I tell you what it is, Tiny Leslie, I’m tired of waiting for her
just to happen to sit down where we can catch her. I mean to write her a
note, and ask her to meet us in the haymow, and fix her own time!”
“Why, yes,” said Tiny, joyfully; “that’s the very thing. Why didn’t we
think of it sooner, I wonder? Will you write it right away, Johnny, or
wait till after dinner?”
“Oh, right away,” said Johnny; “dinner won’t be ready for an hour and
more.”
So Johnny asked his mother for a sheet of paper and an envelope, and
wrote very carefully,—
“DEAR MISS ANN:—We want to speak to you about something, but
you don’t ever sit down, or at least we never see you. Can you
meet us in the haymow this afternoon, at four o’clock? If you
haven’t time, we will do something to help you, if you will let
us.
“Very respectfully yours,
“JOHN LESLIE.
“P. S. If you can come, please let us know at dinner time. Any
other time would do.
“J. L.”
The note was duly delivered across the ironing-board, and when they went
to dinner Miss Ann smiled, and nodded mysteriously at Johnny, to his
great delight, and whispered to him, as she handed him his plate,—
“I’ll be there, and you needn’t help me, dear; but I’m just as much
obliged to you as if you did.”
But when she said this, she did not know that a carriage-load of cousins
would arrive that afternoon at half past three, and respond to the very
first cordial request to “Take off your things, now do, and stay to tea?”
[Illustration]
So four o’clock found Miss Ann in the kitchen, not by any means eating
bread and honey, but mixing light biscuit for tea; and when Johnny and
Tiny, having waited impatiently in the haymow for fully five minutes,
went to hunt her up, they found her so engaged, and she said, pleasantly,—
“I hope it’ll keep till to-morrow, dear, for I shall be busy right on
from now till bedtime, I’m afraid. Cousin Samuel’s folks don’t come here
often, and mother’s set her heart on giving them a real good tea.”
“But where’s Miss Julia?” asked Johnny, without stopping to think that
he had no right to ask this question; for he was very much disappointed.
“Oh, she’d just dressed herself all clean for the afternoon,” said Miss
Ann, cheerfully; “so I told her to go along in and talk to ’em, while
mother fixed up. I’d rather cook than talk to a lot of folks, any day
in the year!” And she laughed so contentedly that Tiny and Johnny found
themselves laughing too.
Two or three more days passed, and still Miss Ann was hindered from
keeping her mysterious appointment, until Tiny and Johnny, growing
desperate, marched into the kitchen one afternoon, at four o’clock, and
appealed to Mrs. Allen, who was sitting in the old green rocking-chair,
knitting a stocking, while Miss Ann, her round face flushed with
heat, stood by the stove, waiting for her third and last kettleful of
blackberries to be ready to go into the jars.
“Mrs. Allen,” said Johnny, solemnly, “we’ve been trying for one week
to catch Miss Ann; we want her up in the haymow for something _very
particular_, and every day something happens, and we’ve never seen her
sit down once since we’ve been here, and you’re her mother, and we
thought perhaps you’d not mind telling her she must come!”
Mrs. Allen laughed heartily, but she did something better, too; she put
down her knitting, and, marching up to Miss Ann, took the spoon out of
her hand, saying with good-natured authority,—
“There! you go right along with the children, and don’t show your head
in this kitchen till tea’s ready! Because you’re a willing horse, is no
reason you should be drove to death, and I’m quite as able to finish up
these blackberries as you are!”
So, in spite of her laughing protests, the children dragged their victim
off in triumph, and never let go of her until they had throned her in
state upon a pile of hay.
CHAPTER XX.
THE TIN MUG.
“Now, Miss Ann,” said Johnny, taking charge of the meeting, and quite
forgetting to ask “if she would mind telling,” “we want you to please
tell us how you manage always to seem to like what you are doing, and
to want to do what everybody wants you to do and not to—not have any
_yourself_ at all!”
Miss Ann’s pleasant round face turned even redder than it had been as she
bent over the blackberries, and she seemed too astonished to speak, for a
moment; then she put an arm about each of the children, and gave each a
hearty kiss, and somehow, although Johnny had begun to think he was too
old to be kissed, he did not mind it at all.
“You dear little souls!” said Miss Ann, and Tiny thought there was a sort
of quaver in her voice, “it’s only your own good-nature that makes you
feel that way. Why, I’ve never been able to hold a candle to mother for
work, nor to father and Julia and the boys for smartness, and there was
a time, five or six years ago, when I felt sort of all discouraged. They
couldn’t help laughing at me when I said silly things, and made stupid
blunders, and my ugly face worried me every time I looked in the glass.”
“But you’re not ugly at all!” burst in both the children, indignantly.
Again the color swept over Miss Ann’s face, but she laughed in a pleased,
childlike way, as she said,—
“There you go, again! What sweet little souls you are. I’m real glad you
feel that way, dears, but I know too well it’s only your kind hearts that
make you think so. And it seemed to me that I might about as well give
up, I couldn’t make myself pretty, no matter how hard I tried, nor how I
fixed my molasses-candy-colored hair—every way seemed to make me a little
uglier than the last. And I was so slow,—I was always thinking about that
poor man in the Bible, that wanted so to get into the pool, and while he
was coming somebody else would step down before him. Mother would lose
her patience, and Julia and the boys would laugh, a dozen times a day,
and then I would get all of a tremble with nervousness, and like as not
say something I’d be sorry for the minute it was said, and maybe wind up
with a crying spell. They didn’t any of them know how I really felt, or
they wouldn’t have laughed and joked about it, for kinder folks than mine
you couldn’t find in a day’s walk, and somehow, though it sounds crooked
to say so, that very thing made it hurt all the more. And when mother
said she calculated to take boarders that summer, for we’d had two or
three bad years, and things were getting behindhand, I came near running
away, and taking a service place where nobody knew me. But I couldn’t
quite bring myself to that, and I can’t tell you how thankful I’ve been
ever since, that I couldn’t, for I’d have missed the best thing that ever
happened to me, besides shirking a plain duty, like a coward. The first
boarders that came that season were a dear old lady and her husband. He
was real nice, and not a bit of trouble, but she! I lost my heart to her
the first time I saw her, and I kept losing it more and more all the time
she stayed. She hadn’t very good health, but most well people will give
twice the trouble she did, and never stop to think of it. She was going
to stay all summer, and the way I came to begin waiting on her was a sort
of an accident. Julia made me take up the pail of fresh water to fill her
pitcher, just to plague me, and I found her with her trunk and the top
bureau drawer open, and she sitting down between them, looking very white
and weak.
[Illustration]
“‘I’m not good for much, my dear, you see,’ she said, with that sweet,
gentle smile I grew to love so, ‘I thought I would begin to unpack and
settle things a little, but it’s too soon after the journey; I must have
patience for a day or two—there is nothing here that will not keep.’
“I wouldn’t have believed it, if anybody’d told me beforehand that I
would do it, but I said, just as free as if I’d known her all my life,
‘If you don’t mind my big rough hands, ma’am, I’ll take out your things
for you. There’s a real nice closet, and your dresses will be all creased
if they stay too long in the trunk.’
“She looked as if I’d given her a gold mine, and thanked me, and said she
wasn’t a bit afraid of my hands, but could I be spared? Wasn’t I busy
downstairs? Now I’d only just broke one of the best dishes, and mother’d
told me my room was better than my company, so I said, sort of ugly, that
she needn’t worry; nobody wanted me downstairs, nor anywhere else.
“She put her little soft, thin hand on my great big red one, and said, so
nice and quietly,—
“‘I want you, dear. Will you begin with the tray, and put the things in
the top drawer. There are a few that I want put on that convenient shelf,
and that pretty corner-bracket, but I’ll tell you as you go along.’
“Now most folks would just have said ‘bracket’ and ‘shelf,’ but that
was her, all over! She never missed a chance to say a pleasant word, I
do believe—any more than she ever took one to say anything ugly—and yet
you didn’t feel as if it was all soft-sawder, and just to your face, the
way you do with some people. It seems to me—though I’ve a poor memory,
in common—that I can remember almost every word that was said that first
day, for I turned a corner then, if ever anybody did.
“I’ve wondered, ever since, if it was just one of those blessed chances,
as we call them, for want of a better word, that the Lord sends to help
us along, or whether she’d seen, already, just how things were, and meant
to help me, without letting on she saw—which, as far as I’ve seen, is the
best sort of help, by a long shot! Anyhow, she made some little pleasant
talk about almost everything I took out, a little history of where it
came from, or something like that, and every other thing, it seemed to
me, of her books and pretty nick-nacks, was given to her by her grandson
or granddaughter. In the middle of the tray was a little bundle of raw
cotton, as I thought, but she smiled, and said to please unwrap it, and
I found it was only cotton wrapped, of all things, round an old tin mug.
I’ve such a foolish face, it always shows what I’m thinking, and she
answered, just as if I’d spoke,—
“‘It doesn’t look worth all that tender care, my dear, does it? But look
inside, and see what it is guarding.’
[Illustration]
“And then I saw, wrapped in tissue-paper, and just fitting nicely into
the old mug, a little tumbler, and when I unwrapped it, it was so thin,
I was ’most afraid to touch it, and it looked just like the soap-bubbles
Julie and I used to blow, all the colors of the rainbow, when the light
caught it.
“‘I was puzzling myself how to carry my precious little tumbler,’ she
said, ‘when Nelly—my granddaughter—came in, and she thought of the mug;
it was one she had bought for five cents of a tin-pedler, thinking it was
silver, dear little soul! She had played with it till it was tarnished,
and then put it away in the nursery till she should go to the country;
it would do so nicely for picnics, she said. I did not like to take it,
at first, but I want them to learn to give, so I tried the tumbler in
it, and was surprised to find that it fitted very well, with a little
paper put in between, so I thanked her, and kissed her, and she was more
pleased, I really believe, than she was when she thought her mug was made
of silver.’
“Mrs. Anstiss—her name was Anstiss—didn’t say any more just then, but
after a little she took up the mug, and put it on the shelf in the little
chimney closet. ‘I must take care of it,’ she said, ‘for I feel now that
it is the safekeeper of my dear little tumbler, as well as my Nelly’s
gift. We can’t all be’—I didn’t catch the name she called the glass, it
was some great long word—‘but if we feel like being discouraged because
we are not, why then our best plan is to try to do something for our
superiors. That we _can_ all do; the weakest and humblest of us can help
to clear the way, to make straight paths, and remove stumbling-blocks for
the strong and the capable, and the dear Father will look upon this work,
done for His, as done for Him.’
“She never said another word about the glass all the time she stayed, and
somehow I do believe that was one thing made me remember and treasure up
what she did say. I turned it over and over and over in my slow mind,
and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed to me I’d been too
foolish to live! I’d just been thinking of nobody at all but my stupid
self, instead of trying to help on the smart ones all I could. And now
I’d once begun, you’d be surprised to know how soon things began to come
easy. I couldn’t be thinking of my own awkwardness when I was looking out
for chances to help the others along, and the more I forgot about myself
and my ways, the happier I seemed to get. And before long, for once that
they’d laugh at me and tell me I was clumsy, there’d be twice that one of
them would say, ‘Where’s Ann?’ or ‘Here, Ann, will you just do this? You
did it so well last time.’ And I do believe”—and the plain, broad face,
without one really pretty feature, grew radiant and almost beautiful
with the light of love—“I do believe there isn’t one of them, now, that
wouldn’t miss me like everything, if I was to die!”
“I should rather _think_!” said Johnny, and found himself unable to say
anything more, just because there were so many things he wished to say.
“Oh, please don’t stop!” said Tiny, breathlessly, “it’s such a lovely,
lovely story.”
Miss Ann laughed heartily now.
“Well, of all things!” she said, “I never thought I’d live to tell a
story! Who knows but I’ll be writing one, next? I don’t see how I’ve come
to say all this, only you’ve made so much of me, and sort of flattered
me on with your sweet little loving faces, but I’ve talked quite enough
for all summer; only I would like to say to you a little bit out of a
hymn that Mrs. Anstiss sent me after she went away. I’ve tried to learn
it all, over and over, but I’ve such a poor memory, and I don’t get much
time to sit down, but I did like this verse best of all, and perhaps
that’s one reason why it stayed in my head, though I mayn’t have it quite
straight as to all the words,—
“‘I ask Thee for a thankful love,
Through constant watching, wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles,
And to wipe the weeping eyes;
And a _heart at leisure from itself_,
To soothe and sympathize.’
I do think that’s lovely, now; don’t you?”
[Illustration]
“Yes, indeed!” cried the children, both together, and Tiny added, warmly,—
“It’s all lovely, as lovely as it can be, and that hymn is one of mamma’s
favoritest hymns—aren’t you glad of that? Dear Miss Ann, I wonder if we
can grow up like you, if we begin to try right away?”
Miss Ann looked absolutely startled.
“Oh, my dears!” she said, softly, “like me! You don’t know what you’re
saying. When I think of the Perfect Pattern, and my poor blundering—”
she stopped, and hid her face in her hands, and they both fell upon her
and hugged her so hard that it was a good thing that the distant sound
of the tea bell made her spring up and rush to the house, saying, in
conscience-stricken tones,—
“I declare! While I’ve been sitting here, chattering like a magpie,
mother and Julie have been doing all my work! I ought to be ashamed of
myself.”
“Umph?” grunted Johnny, as Tiny and he followed her more slowly. “_She_
ought to be ashamed of herself! I wonder what we ought to be? Tiny, let’s
begin right straight off. I kept the best whistle myself, when I made
those two to-day; here it is, and you needn’t say a word—you must just
swap with me right away, whether you want to or not.”
CHAPTER XXI.
SEEING WHY.
It was a bright, fresh Saturday afternoon in October, and Johnny, who
had found it a little hard to settle down into school habits again,
after the boundless freedom of the vacation at the farm, remarked at the
dinner-table that he knew just how the horses felt when they went kicking
up their heels all over the pasture, after having been in harness all day.
“And where do you propose to kick up your heels this afternoon?” inquired
Mrs. Leslie, as she filled Johnny’s plate for the second time with Indian
pudding.
[Illustration]
“That’s just what I wanted to consult with you about, mamma,” said
Johnny, “there’s a base-ball match over at the south ground, and a tennis
match at the new court; it’s just the same to get in for either. I’ve
enough of my birthday money left, and I thought if Tiny’d like to go, I’d
take her to see the tennis, I mean, of course, if you’re willing—but if
she couldn’t go, I’d go to see the base-ball match.”
Now Tiny, although she was only a small girl, had that treasure which
Miss Ann considered so desirable—“a heart at leisure from itself,” and
she felt very sure that Johnny would rather help do the hurrahing at one
base-ball match, than watch a dozen games of tennis, so she said at once,—
“Oh thank you, Johnny, you’re _very_ kind, but if mamma will let me, I’m
going to ask Kitty to come this afternoon, and help me dress my new doll,
and cover the sofa you made me.”
Mrs. Leslie understood quite well the little sudden sacrifice which Tiny
had made, but she was not going to spoil it by talking about it, so she
only said,—
“Yes indeed—I always like you to play with Kitty. Ask her to come to tea,
and then Johnny will have a share of her too. And if you’ll ‘fly ’round,’
you and I can make some ginger snaps, first, and then, with the cold
chicken and some dressed celery, we shall have quite a company tea.”
Tiny’s face fairly shone. Of all things, she enjoyed helping her
mother make cake, and it would be especially nice to-day, because the
maid-of-all-work was going out for the afternoon, and they would have
the kitchen quite to themselves. And Johnny, who really did prefer the
base-ball match very much, was entirely satisfied. He could take his fun
without feeling that he was taking it selfishly. It was only one o’clock,
and the match did not begin until two, so Johnny sprang up, saying,—
“I’ll help you ‘fly ’round’! Load me up for the cellar, Tiny.”
Two loadings up cleared the table of all the eatables, and a race, which
was a little dangerous to the dishes, was just beginning, when Mrs.
Leslie said,—
“If you’ll do an errand for me, Johnny, I can take a nice little nap,
after Tiny and I have finished. I don’t think it will make you late for
your base-ball match, if you start at once, for you need not come home
again before you go to the ground.”
“Now, mamma!” and Johnny’s tone was slightly injured as he spoke, “don’t
you suppose I’d do it for _you_, and like to do it, even if it made me
late? You shouldn’t say ‘if’ at all! Waiting orders!”
And he stood up stiffly, drawing his heels together, and touching his cap.
Mrs. Leslie laughed, but she kissed him, too.
“There’s a bundle in it,” she said, “quite a large bundle—some work to
be taken to your friend Mrs. Waring, upon whom you have called so many
times at my invitation. I’m afraid, from what one of her neighbors told
me yesterday, that the poor woman has had very little work lately, and
less than very little money; so I have hunted up all I could for her. And
please tell her, Johnny, that I have some things for Phil, which I will
give her when she brings the work home; and to please bring it as soon as
she can. She will find two car tickets in the bundle.”
“Couldn’t you roll ’em up with the work, and let me take ’em to her now,
mamma?” asked Johnny.
“Why, yes,” said Mrs. Leslie, “if it would not be too heavy for you; but
the other bundle is quite as large as this, dear. Do you think you can
manage so much?”
Johnny lifted Tiny, swung her round once, and set her down with a
triumphant “There!”
“The double load would certainly not be so heavy as Tiny,” said Mrs.
Leslie, “so I will tie them together at once.”
While his mother did this, Johnny marched up and down, whistling, with
Polly on his shoulder. Then a bright idea struck him: he put Polly down,
ran for his shinny stick, thrust it through the twine, and slung the
bundle over the shoulder where Polly had just been.
“I’ll pretend I’m an emigrant, starting for the ‘Far West,’” he said.
“Goodbye, my dear mother, my _dear_ sisters!” and, with a heart-rending
sob, followed by a wild prance down the walk, Johnny was gone.
Now the particular horse car which he was to take only came along every
half-hour. He saw one as he walked up the cross street, about a block
away, and was just going to shout, when he heard a crack and a “flop”;
the shinny stick flew up in the air, and, turning round, he saw his
bundle, a bundle no longer, but a confused heap. The twine, worn through
by the stick, had given way, and the paper had been burst by the fall.
Johnny gathered up the things as best he could, and was vainly trying to
put them once more into portable shape, when a shop door opened, and a
good-natured voice called,—
“Fetch them in here, sonny, and I’ll tie them up in a strong paper for
you.”
He was only too glad to accept this good offer, and the pleasant-faced
woman who had called him made a very neat parcel out of the wreck which
he had brought her, and tied it with a stout string. He thanked her very
heartily, afraid of offending her if he offered to pay for the paper and
string and looking about the little shop for something he could buy.
A soft ball of bright-colored worsted caught his eye, and when he found
the price of it was only ten cents, he quickly decided to buy it for
Phil. He had missed his car, and had nearly half an hour to wait. He
would be late for the match, but—
“Never mind,” he thought, “here’s a first-rate chance to keep from
getting mad!”
So he talked cheerfully with the woman as she wrapped up the ball, and
before the car appeared they were on very friendly terms, and parted with
cordial goodbyes.
But his troubles were not over yet. He had not gone half a mile, when a
“block” took place on the car track, and it was another half-hour before
they were free to move on. But for the bundle, Johnny would have jumped
out and walked, and as it was he started up once or twice, but each time
the driver announced that they were “’most through,” and he sat down
again.
He reached the house at last, and knocked vigorously; he felt that he
had no time to lose. There was no answer, and he knocked again, and then
again, until he was satisfied that anybody, no matter how sound asleep
she might have been, in that house, could not have failed to hear him.
He was strongly tempted to leave the bundle on the step, and run; but he
resisted the temptation, and at last, tired of knocking, sat down on the
step, saying doggedly to himself,—
“She’ll _have_ to come home to her supper!”
And as he said it, she turned the corner of the nearest street, in a
provokingly leisurely manner, leading her baby boy by the hand. Johnny
dropped the bundle and ball on the step, rushed to meet her, poured
out his message, and was gone before the bewildered little woman quite
realized who he was. On he sped, as if he had wings on his heels, to be
suddenly and most unexpectedly stopped by a violent collision with a very
small girl, who had toddled across his path just in time to be knocked
down.
Very much frightened—for, “Suppose anybody did that to Polly!” he
thought—he picked up the baby girl, petted, coaxed and cuddled her, until
she laughed before her tears were dry. He found, to his great relief,
that she was much more frightened than hurt, and was trying to make her
tell him where she lived when her mother appeared, and carried her off,
scolding and kissing her all at once.
“I declare,” thought Johnny, “those old fellows who talked about the
Fates would say I’d better give up this base-ball business! It’s a little
too provoking! I wonder what kind of a trap I’ll find in this field.”
For he had at last come to the open space from which the base-ball ground
had been fenced off; one of those left-out regions consisting of several
fields, which one often finds on the edge of a town or city. It was
covered with high grass and coarse weeds, and in a far distant corner two
or three cows were feeding.
But, as Johnny neared the high fence, thinking that his troubles were
certainly over now, and wondering why he had never before taken this
short cut, something bright caught his eye; a little scarlet hood, not so
very much above the tops of the rank grasses and weeds, and there was
another baby! One hand was full of the ragged purple asters, which grew
among the grass, and her little face was grave and intent. Nobody else
was near, and once more Johnny thought, “Suppose it was Polly!”
The child looked fearlessly up at him as he advanced, and nodded.
“What are you doing, baby, all by yourself, in this big field?” asked
Johnny, in the kind, hearty voice which made him more friends than he
knew of, and the baby answered, gravely,—
“Picking f’owers for my mamma! And _I’m_ not baby. Baby at home.”
“Come on, then, let’s go see him;” and Johnny took the little hand,
groaning to himself,—
“I can’t leave this mite all alone in a field with cows,—suppose it was
Polly!”
[Illustration]
At that moment a wild shout went up from the base-ball ground. The quiet
cows in the corner raised their heads; one stepped forward, caught sight
of the scarlet hood, gave a vicious bellow, and began to run straight for
the baby; and when Johnny, breathless and almost exhausted, scrambled
over the rail fence, which ran around three sides of the field, with the
baby in his arms, he was only just in time—the sharp horns struck the
fence as he and his charge struck the ground, and the enraged cow stood
there, bellowing and “charging,” as long as the hood remained in sight.
[Illustration]
The little girl, quite unconscious of her narrow escape, took Johnny’s
hand once more, and led him gravely on for nearly a block; then she
pointed out a pretty little frame house, standing in a small lawn, and
said, in a satisfied voice, “There!” He rang the bell, and was almost
angry to find that the child had not even been missed.
“Sure,” said the Irish nursemaid, “I tould her to play in the front yard
a bit, and I thought she was there.”
“There’s a cross cow in that field where she was,” said Johnny, briefly.
“You’d better not let her out by herself again, I should think.”
He turned away without stopping for farther explanation. But he did not
go to the ball ground; he walked slowly home, with his mind full of
confused thoughts, eager to pour it all out to his mother. How vexed
he had been at the various delays! How needless, how troublesome they
had seemed! And yet, if that shout had risen five minutes sooner—he
shuddered, and left the picture unfinished. Dear little girl, with her
innocent hands full of “f’owers for mamma!”
Kitty was there when he reached home, and she and Tiny were merrily
setting the table. They were full of sympathy when they found he had not
seen the match, and Tiny’s face glowed with joyful pride in him, when he
told about the baby’s narrow escape.
But the real talk was when his mother came for her last kiss, after he
was in bed; and it was a talk that he never forgot. “This time, dear,”
Mrs. Leslie said, “you can see and understand the great good which came
of the hindrances and interruptions of your plan, and I love to think
that the dear Father has sent you this lesson so early in your life, just
to make you trust him hereafter, when you cannot see. You know what the
loving Saviour said to his weak and doubting disciple: ‘Thomas, because
thou hast seen, thou hast believed. Blessed are they who have not seen,
and yet have believed.’
“I do not mean that we are to excuse ourselves, and give up weakly, for
every small hindrance, but that, when honest effort fails to overcome the
barriers in our path, we are to believe, with all our hearts, that it
is because the dear Father wishes us to go some other way. That is all,
Johnny, darling, ‘the conclusion of the whole matter,’—just to rest on
His love.”
“Mamma,” said Johnny, holding his mother fast in a long, close hug, “I
don’t think I ever loved Him so much as I do to-night; and I don’t think
I’ll ever be really worried, or not long, anyhow, when things seem to go
crosswise again.”
CHAPTER XXII.
THE WAY OF ESCAPE.
“It must have been most beautiful,” said Tiny, “I wonder if it looked at
all like that?” and she pointed to a large, bright star, which seemed
quite alone in the sky, for the sun had only just set, and no other star
could yet be seen near this one.
“I think it was much larger, Tiny,” said Johnny, who was standing close
beside her. “You know if it hadn’t been quite different from the other
stars, no one would have thought it was anything in particular, and the
wise men said, quite positively, ‘We _have seen_ His star in the east,
and are come to worship Him.’ So you see, it must have been different.”
“Yes,” said Tiny, “I didn’t think of that. And how glad they must have
been to see it, for they seemed perfectly certain about what it meant.
They didn’t ask if He really had come, or if the people at Jerusalem
thought He had, but just ‘Where is He?’ And then they found out right
away; I don’t believe they would, if they hadn’t been so certain.”
“And just think,” said Johnny, “how splendid it must have been for them
to be the first ones to tell the people about it, when they got back to
their ‘own country.’ That was even better than it is to be a missionary
now. I wonder if any of the people they told it to laughed at them, and
didn’t believe them.”
“I don’t see how they could,” said Tiny. “Why, you know everybody was
looking for the Saviour, then; and so when the wise men told them how He
had been born just where the prophets had said He would be, and that they
had really seen Him, how could anybody not believe them?”
Tiny and Johnny were standing by the library window, waiting for their
mother and Jim, for it was Sunday evening, and time for the “talk.” The
lesson was about the leading of the star, and it seemed to the children
unusually beautiful, although there was never any lack of interest in
these talks. They were growing impatient, when Jim came in sight, walking
fast, as if he were afraid of being late, but they hastily agreed not
to question him; for Johnny had found that this always annoyed him as
nothing else did. He had a keen eye for “chances” to help his less
fortunate neighbors, and more than once, Johnny had accidentally caught
him giving time, and thought, and even money, although, industrious as
he was, he seldom made more in a day than sufficed his actual needs.
But he seemed so thoroughly disconcerted when anything of this kind was
discovered, that Johnny tried hard to resist the temptation to tease him
which was offered by his sensitiveness on this point.
Mrs. Leslie came down a few minutes after Jim arrived, and a beautiful
talk followed. She had brought an old book about the Holy Land, which
she had recently found at a second-hand book store, and it described in
such good, clear language the state of affairs throughout the world, and
the manners and customs of the people at the time of the birth of our
Saviour, that the children, deeply interested, felt as if they had never
before so clearly realized it all.
And Johnny spoke once more of the happiness of the wise men, in being the
bearers of this great news back to their own country.
“I think it must have been much more interesting to be alive then, than
it is now,” he said, with a little discontent in his voice, “for don’t
you believe, mamma, that it seemed a great deal more wonderful about the
Saviour then, when it was all happening, than it seems now, after so
many, many years?”
“Perhaps it did,” said Mrs. Leslie, “but you know how it was when the
apostles began to tell the good news. Besides being disbelieved, and
persecuted, and imprisoned, and banished, they had to endure something
which, to some people, would be hardest of all—we are told that they were
‘mocked’; that is what you would call at school, being made fun of.”
“I never thought of that before,” said Johnny, “I do believe that must
have been the hardest of all! You see, a person can screw himself up
to something pretty bad, like having a tooth out, or being killed, or
anything; but to see a whole lot of people making faces and laughing at
you—do you believe you could ever stand that, mamma?”
“It would be very hard, and yet it is part of their daily work for some
of our missionaries, at this very day,” said Mrs. Leslie, “I have heard a
missionary who had been preaching and teaching in India say that nothing
delighted some of the natives more than to bait and worry a teacher
until it was next to impossible for him to keep his temper. And no doubt
the wise men had that very thing to contend with, when they went back to
their own country. I think every one has, at some time or other. And then
is, above all other times, the time to ‘let our light so shine before
men that they may glorify our Father which is in Heaven.’ When people
see that the power of God _is_ a power, it nearly always makes some
impression on them. So here is a chance for every one to ‘make manifest,’
and how beautiful the blessing is! ‘That which doth make manifest is
light.’ We are allowed to carry to others the Light of the World.”
This was the end of the talk, for that time, and it made more impression
upon Jim and Johnny than it did upon Tiny, for Jim, as we have said,
carried his sensitiveness too far, often—as in the case of little
Taffy—allowing it to hinder him from asking for help for others, when he
had come to the end of his own ability, but not the needs of the case,
and when such help would have been most gladly and efficiently given; as
for Johnny, he was foolishly alive to ridicule, and many of the slips
of temper which he afterwards lamented were due solely to this cause. A
jeering laugh or a mocking speech always had power to make his face flush
and his hands clinch, and the effect did not always stop there—he often
said things for which he was bitterly sorry as soon as the rush of angry
feeling was past. And somehow it seemed to him that the attacks upon his
temper always took place when he was unusually off his guard, and open to
them.
[Illustration: POOR KATY.]
The effect of this talk upon Jim was very marked. He began, from that
time, shyly to take Mrs. Leslie into his confidence, whenever he felt
that she could help him, and he schooled himself to bear, without
wincing, any and all allusions to the various and unobtrusive acts
of kindness which he was able to perform. And he very soon had the
encouragement of finding his usefulness greatly increased, while he
still had the satisfaction of doing many things which were known only to
himself and those whom he helped. To his firm and resolute character, the
plan of the campaign was more than half the battle, while Johnny, who was
naturally more heedless and forgetful, found great difficulty in keeping
his good resolutions where he could find them in a hurry.
He had, for the time being, quite forgotten this talk about the wise men,
when, one day during the following week, as he was playing with the boys
at recess, a little girl strayed into the playground, with a basket of
apples and cakes, hoping to sell some of her wares to the schoolboys.
Johnny remembered her at once, for she was one of the many people whom
Mrs. Leslie had helped and befriended; she had found the poor child in
great trouble and destitution, a few months before, and had put her to
board with an old woman who only demanded a very moderate amount of work
in payment for the care which she gave the little girl.
[Illustration]
Katy employed her spare time in trying to sell whatever she could pick
up most cheaply, whenever she had a few cents at her command; matches,
sometimes, and what Tiny called “dreadful” cakes of soap; very thick
china buttons, blunt pins, or, when she had not enough even for these
investments, a few apples or oranges, and unpleasant-looking cakes.
She was a solemn and anxious-looking child, and although, through Mrs.
Leslie’s care and teaching, her clothes were nearly always whole and
clean, they had a look of not belonging to her, and Tiny and Johnny,
while they pitied her very much, and were always willing to help her in
any way they could, did not admire her.
It had never before occurred to her to visit the playground with her
basket, a fact over which Johnny had secretly rejoiced, and it was with
a feeling of dismay quite beyond the occasion that he saw her come in at
the gate. She did not see him, just at first, and he was attacked, as he
afterward told Tiny, with a mean desire to “cut and run.” Before he could
make up his mind to do this, however, she recognized him, and a smile
broke over her solemn countenance.
“Why!” she said, in the drawl which always “aggravated” Johnny, “I didn’t
know you went to school here, Johnny Leslie! I’m right glad I came in.
Don’t you want to buy an apple? And don’t some of these other boys want
to? They’re real nice—I tried one.”
“I haven’t any money here, Katy,” said Johnny, briefly, “and I don’t
believe the other boys have, either. And I wouldn’t come here, again, if
I were you; it’s not a good place to sell things _at all_—at least, some
things,” he added hastily, as he remembered how a basketful of pop-corn
candy had vanished in that very yard, a few days before.
Katy’s face grew solemn again, and she was turning to go, with the
meekness which, to Johnny, was another of her offences. But a few of the
boys who were standing near, and who had heard the conversation, saw
how anxious Johnny was to get rid of her, and one of them called out
mockingly, loud enough to be heard all over the playground,—
“Boys! Here’s a young lady friend of Johnny Leslie’s, with some wittles
to sell! His friends in this crowd ought to patronize her!”
The mischief was done, now; the boys flocked around Katy, and being, most
of them, good-natured fellows, as boys go, they said nothing unmannerly
to her, but they contrived, in their politely worded remarks, which
she did not in the least understand, to sting Johnny to the verge of
desperation. And yet, when he thought it over afterwards, nothing had
been said which was really worth minding; it was the manner, not the
matter, and the mocking laughter, which had roused him.
“I think your friends are real nice, Johnny Leslie,” said Katy, as she
turned, with her empty basket, and her hand full of small coins, to leave
the yard, “and I won’t come back, if you don’t like me to, but I don’t
see _why_ you don’t!” and she walked dejectedly away.
But before she reached the gate, Johnny had fought his battle—and won it.
He sprang after her, and held open the gate, as he would have done for
his mother, saying, loud enough for every one to hear him,—
“I’m glad you’ve had such good luck, Katy! Come back every day, if
you like, and you wait for me here after school, and I’ll show you a
first-rate place to buy things, where the man won’t cheat you!”
She thanked him all too profusely, as she went slowly through the gate,
and then he turned, feeling that his face was fiery red, to receive the
volley which he fully expected, and had braced himself to bear. But it
was not exactly the sort of volley for which he was prepared.
“Hurrah for Johnny Leslie!” called one of the little boys; the others
caught it up with a deafening cheer, and an unusual amount of “tiger,”
and Johnny saw that they were quite in earnest.
And then came back to his mind once more the words which had so often
come there, since he had read the quaint and beautiful story of “The
Pilgrim’s Progress from this world to a better,”—“The lions were chained.”
The fact was, several of the boys had heard about Katy through Tiny
and their sisters, but they could not, or rather would not, resist the
temptation to tease Johnny, when they saw the foolish annoyance which her
coming had caused him. It has often been noticed how a word, or even a
look, will turn the tide, in affairs like this, and even in much larger
ones, and Johnny’s bold championship of Katy had done this at once.
It was a good day for her when she invaded the playground, for Johnny
kept his word about showing her where to buy, and, knowing as he did the
things which would be most likely to sell well, the result was that,
after a few lessons, poor little Katy, who was slow rather than stupid,
began to show real judgment in her purchases. She was always modest and
quiet in her manner to the boys, and the result of this was that their
chaffing never passed the bounds of harmless fun. They called her “The
Daughter of the Regiment,” and threatened her with dire penalties, should
she not always come “first and foremost” to their playground with her new
stock.
“I’ve often thought, Tiny,” said Johnny, long afterward, when Katy had
made and saved enough to buy a second-hand counter, have shelves put
in the front room of the two which she and the old woman occupied, and
start a small but promising business. “I’ve often thought of how it would
have been if I _had_ cut and run. And it seems to me that the ‘way of
escape’—about temptations, you know—is right straight ahead!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CIRCULAR CITY.
Mr. Leslie made a discovery.
He had remarked, early in the spring, that when he was really rich, when
he had five or six millions of dollars, he was going to build a city in
the form of a very large circle, only two streets deep, and inside of
this circle was to be an immense farm.
“I shall begin,” he said, “by finding and buying a ready-made farm, for
the farmhouse and barns and orchard and garden must all be old. I shall
put all this in perfect order, without making it look new. Then I shall
build twenty-five Swiss cottages, each with three rooms and a great deal
of veranda. I shall buy twenty-five excellent tents, and hide them about
in the orchard and shrubberies, and I shall invite my friends, fifty
families at a time, to come and stay a month with me on my farm; and if
my friends should all be used up before the summer is over, I will ask
some of them to nominate some of their friends. And in the meantime,” he
added, dropping his millionaire tone of voice suddenly, “if we can find
the farm and the farmhouse, we will make a beginning by going there for
the summer, and planning the rest out.”
The others laughed at this dreadful coming down, but after that it became
a favorite amusement to make additions to the “circular city,” and I
could not begin to tell you all the plans which were made for the comfort
and happiness and goodness of the “circular citizens,” as one thought of
one thing, and one of another. And the best of this popular “pretend”
was, that it set everybody thinking, and it was surprising to find how
many of the plans for the dream-city might, in much smaller ways, of
course, be carried out without waiting for all the rest.
[Illustration]
For instance, when Tiny said that all the little girls should have dolls,
her mother reminded her that she knew how to make very nicely those rag
dolls which one makes by rolling up white muslin—a thick roll for the
body, and a thin one for the arms; coarse thread sewed round where the
neck ought to be, the top of the head “gathered” and covered with a
little cap, eyes and nose and mouth inked, or worked in colored thread,
upon the face, and the fact that the infant has only one leg concealed by
a nice long petticoat and frock.
Mrs. Leslie promised to supply as many “rags” as Tiny would use, in the
making and dressing of these dolls, and it became the little girl’s
delight to carry one of them in her pocket, when she was going for a
walk, and to give it to the poorest, most unhappy-looking child she could
find. There are very few small girls who do not love to mother dolls, and
Tiny’s heart would feel warm all day, remembering the joyful change in
some little pinched face, and the astonished,—
“For me? For my own to keep?”
And when Johnny said that all the sick people should have flowers every
day, his mother reminded him that the “can’t-get-aways” were glad even
of such common things as daisies and buttercups and clover blossoms. And
after that he took many a long walk to the fields outside the town, where
these could be found.
They had all hoped to go back to Mr. Allen’s for the summer, but when
Mrs. Leslie wrote to ask Mrs. Allen if they could be received, Mrs. Allen
replied, that since Ann had married and left them, half the house seemed
gone, and she really didn’t think she could take any boarders this summer.
[Illustration]
“Perhaps you did not hear that Ann was married,” she wrote; “but I miss
her so, all the time, that I feel as if everybody must know it. She’s
married a widower with two little children,—a nice, quiet, pleasant sort
of a man,—but we all told Ann she only took him because she fell in love
with the children! And she does seem as happy as a queen, and, for that
matter, so does he; but it provokes me to think how little we set by her,
considering what she was worth, till after we’d lost her.”
It was a week or two after this letter was received, that Mr. Leslie made
his discovery. He found the farmhouse, the “very identical” farmhouse,
for which he was longing, and he found it when he was not looking for it,
as he was riding a horse which a friend had lent him.
The gate of the long lane which led up to the house was only half a mile
from the railway station, and only eight miles from the town where the
Leslies lived, and two dear old Quaker people, who “liked children,”
lived there all alone, save for their few servants.
“No, they had never taken boarders,” Friend Mercy said, “and she was
afraid the children—her married boys and girls—might not quite like it.”
But Mr. Leslie, at her hospitable invitation, dismounted, and tied his
horse and sat down on the “settee,” under the lilac bushes, and drank
buttermilk and ate gingerbread, and I am afraid he talked a good deal,
and the result of it all was, that, just as he was going away, Friend
Mercy said,—
“Well, thee bring thy wife and little ones to-morrow afternoon, Friend
Leslie, and have a sociable cup of tea with us. I will talk with Isaac in
the meantime, and with thy wife when she comes, and—we’ll see.”
Mr. Leslie had no desire to break his children’s hearts, so, although it
was hard work not to, he did not tell them all that Friend Mercy and he
had said to each other, for fear she should not “see her way clear” to
take them; so he only told of his pleasant call, and of this magnificent
invitation to a real country tea, in the “inner circle”; and they were so
nearly wild over that, that it was a very good thing he stopped there!
Friend Mercy had suggested the four o’clock train, which would give the
children time for “a good run” before the six o’clock tea. So, while Tiny
and Johnny played in the hay, and sailed boats on the brook, the older
people talked; and the result was, that the Leslies were to be permitted
to come and board in the “inner circle,” until the end of September.
[Illustration]
A little talk which Friend Mercy had with her husband that evening, after
the guests were gone, and when he said he was “afraid it wouldn’t work,”
will explain this.
[Illustration]
“Thee sees, Isaac,” she said, “those two dear little things have played
here half the afternoon, and there was no quarrelling, or tale-bearing,
or cruelty. They did not stone the chickens and geese, nor tease Bowser
and the cat; and when I asked John to drive the cows to the spring—which,
I will confess, I did with a purpose—he used neither stick nor stone. I
would not have any children brought here who would teach bad tricks to
Joseph’s and Hannah’s children, for the world; but with these I think we
should be quite safe. Did thee notice how they put down the kittens, and
came at once, when their father called them to go to the train? When they
obey so implicitly such parents as these seem to be, there is nothing to
fear.”
[Illustration]
“Thee has had thy own way too long for me to begin to cross thee now, I’m
afraid, mother,” said Friend Gray, with an indulgent smile. “So, if thy
heart is really set upon it, let them come! The trouble of it will fall
chiefly on thee, I fear.”
It did not seem to fall very heavily. The one strong, willing
maid-of-all-work declared she could “do for a dozen like them.”
Mrs. Leslie and Tiny made the three extra beds, and dusted the rooms
every morning; and both Tiny and Johnny found various delightful ways of
helping “Aunt Mercy and Uncle Isaac,” as the dear old host and hostess
were called by everybody, before a week was out.
The days went by on swift, sunny wings, and everybody was growing
agreeably fat and brown. But, when they stopped to think of it, there was
a shadow over the children’s joy.
They were in the “inner circle”—even the five or six millions, they
thought, could do no more for them; but, oh, the hundreds and hundreds
who were hopelessly outside!
It was not very long, you may be sure, before Aunt Mercy heard all about
the “circular city”; and although at first she treated the whole matter
as a joke, she soon caught herself making valuable suggestions. And then,
when Tiny and Johnny began to lament to her about all the “outsiders,”
she began to think in good earnest, and the day before the next market
day she spoke, and this is what she said,—
[Illustration]
“Father is going to take some chickens to town, to-morrow, and there
will be a good deal of spare room in the wagon. That’s half. He passes
right by the house where a good city missionary lives. That’s the other
half. And the whole is, that if two little people I know would pick
up all those early apples that the wind blew down last night, in the
orchard, and make some nice big bunches of daisies and clover, with a
sweet-william or a marigold in the middle of each, father would leave
them at Mr. Thorpe’s door, to be given round to the poor people.”
Tiny and Johnny went nearly as wild over this announcement as they had
gone over the news that they were to spend the summer in the inner
circle—and then they went to work. By great good fortune, two of the
grand-children came that very day, and asked nothing better than to
help; and when, the next morning, at the appointed hour, which was five
o’clock, these four conspirators brought out their treasures, there was
a barrel of apples, and another barrel of bouquets.
[Illustration]
Uncle Isaac laughed, and said he had no idea what a “fix” he was getting
himself into, when he let Mercy make that speech, but he took the fruit
and flowers, all the same. And after that, it was really surprising to
see the number of things which, it was found, “might as well go to those
poor little ones as to the pigs.”
Wild raspberries, dewberries, blackberries, whortleberries, were all to
be had for the picking; Johnny was told that it was only fair for him to
keep one egg out of every dozen for which he had hunted, and these eggs,
which he at first refused to take, and afterward, when he found that Aunt
Mercy was “tried” about it, accepted, were very carefully packed, and
plainly labelled, “For the sickest children.” Then a very brilliant idea
occurred to Tiny.
[Illustration]
“Do the pigs have to eat all that bonny-clabber, Aunt Mercy?” she asked,
one morning, as David, the “hired man,” picked up two buckets full of the
nice white curds, and started for the pig-pen.
“Why no, deary,” Aunt Mercy replied, “I was saying to father, only
yesterday, that I was afraid we were over-feeding them, but we don’t know
what else to do with it. Had thee thought of anything, dear?”
[Illustration]
“If you _really_ don’t need it,” said Tiny, hesitating a little, “I’ve
watched thee make cottage cheese till I’m sure I could do it; and I
wouldn’t be in the way—I’d be ever so careful, and clear up everything
when I was done. And I thought dear little round white cheeses, tied up
in clean cloths, would be such lovely things to send! Don’t thee think
so, Aunt Mercy?”
Tiny was trying very hard to learn the “plain language”; she thought it
was so pretty.
“Yes, indeed!” said Aunt Mercy, “and of course thee shall! That’s one of
the best things thee’s thought of, dear. Father shall buy us plenty of
that thin cotton cloth I use for my cheese and butter rags, the very next
time he goes to town, and thee shall have all the spare clabber, after
this.”
“But you must let Johnny and me pay for the cotton cloth, Aunt Mercy,”
said Tiny, earnestly. “We’ve been saving up for the next thing we could
think of, and we’ve forty-five cents.”
Aunt Mercy had her mouth open to say “No indeed!” but she shut it
suddenly, and when it opened again, the words which came out were,—
“Very well, deary.”
So Johnny cut squares of cheese cloth, which was three cents a yard at
the wholesale place where Uncle Isaac bought it, and Tiny scalded and
squeezed and molded the white curd into delightful little round cheeses,
and then Johnny tied them up in the cloths.
“And the cloths will be beautiful for dumplings, afterward!” said Tiny.
“Yes, if they can get the dumplings, poor things!” answered Johnny,
soberly.
“There’s a way to make a crust, if the poor souls only knew it,” said
Aunt Mercy, “that’s real wholesome and good for _boiled_ crust and very
cheap. It’s just to scald the flour till it’s soft enough to roll out,
and put in a little salt. And another way, that’s most as cheap, and
better, is to work flour into hot mashed potatoes, till it makes a crust
that will roll out.”
The next time there was a barrel of “windfall” apples to go, Tiny and
Johnny came to Aunt Mercy, each with a sheet of foolscap paper and a
sharp lead pencil, and Tiny said, “Aunt Mercy, will thee please tell us,
quite slowly, those two cheap ways to make apple-dumpling crust?”
So Aunt Mercy gave out the recipes as if they were a school dictation,
and each of her scholars made twelve copies. It took a long time, and was
a tiresome piece of work, but it was a fine thing when it was done!
The twenty-four copies were put in a large yellow envelope, addressed
to “Mr. Thorpe,” and Johnny added a note, in the best hand he had left,
after all that writing,—
“DEAR MR. THORPE,—Will you please put one of these recipe
papers with each batch of apples you give away? They are all
right.
“Very respectfully,
“T. & J.”
This was the beginning of a most interesting correspondence. When Uncle
Isaac came home the next evening, he brought an envelope addressed to “T.
and J.,” and inside was a card, with “John Thorpe” on one side of it, and
on the other, in a clear, firm hand,—
“God bless you both, my dear T. and J. You will never know how many sad
lives you have gladdened, this summer. Is there any moss in your land
of plenty? Have any of your wild-flowers roots? And may I not know your
names?”
Now this was, as Tiny said, “Too beautiful for anything!” especially as
the early apples and all the berries were about gone, and the children
were beginning to wonder what they could find to send next.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE CIRCULAR CITY, CONTINUED.
They wrote to Mr. Thorpe. Of course they did! They promised the moss and
roots, and told him how glad they were that the people had been pleased
with what they sent, and would he be so _very_ kind as to write and tell
them whether he had heard of anybody who had tried the apple dumplings?
“And if any of your people are ill, dear Mr. Thorpe,” wrote Tiny, in her
share of the letter, “and there is anything particular that you would
like for them, will you please tell us, and perhaps it will be something
we can send you.”
The answer to this letter was delightfully prompt. Yes, several of the
women who had shared the apples had “tried” the dumplings, and been much
pleased with them. Were there any more nice cheap dishes? And would it be
too much trouble to print the recipes in large, clear letters? Some of
the poor people who could read print quite easily could not read writing
at all. And there was “something particular.” It was almost impossible
for any of “his people” to buy pure milk, and he felt sure that many
little children were suffering and dying for want of proper food. If he
might have only two or three quarts a week of really pure, sweet milk,
he would give it to those who most needed it.
“But perhaps,” he wrote, “it is not in your power to supply this want,
and if it is not, you must not be troubled. God never asks for any
service which we cannot, with His help, render to Him, and the knowledge
of this should keep us from fretting when we cannot carry out all our
wishes and plans.”
[Illustration]
Tiny and Johnny each received ten cents a week for spending money, and
it did not take them long to decide that, if Uncle Isaac would sell them
three quarts of milk a week, and lend them a milk can, they would send
that milk, if it took every cent of their allowance. Uncle Isaac entered
into the plan with spirit; if they took three quarts of milk a week
“straight along,” he said, it would only be four cents a quart, and he
would lend them a can, and deliver it, with pleasure.
“But that would be skimmed milk, wouldn’t it, Uncle Isaac?” asked Tiny,
doubtfully.
“Oh no,” he answered, “not at all! It shall either be from the milking
over night, with all the cream on it, or, if Johnny chooses, I’ll call
him in time to milk the three quarts that very morning—perhaps that would
be best, for then some of it would keep till next day, if Mr. Thorpe
could find a cold place for it.”
The children were jubilant. There would still be eight cents a week
left, and they admitted to each other that it would have been “very bad”
to be reduced to “nothing at all a week!” And Johnny agreed at once to
do the milking. He had been learning to milk “for fun,” and could do it
quite nicely.
“And that’s a real blessing, Tiny,” he said, “for the milk will be so
nice and fresh, as Uncle Isaac says, that Mr. Thorpe can keep some till
next day. I do hope he has a refrigerator.”
[Illustration]
You will begin to see, by this time, that the things which these little
people were doing by way of sharing their happiness, were not by any
means all play, and that some of them were very downright work. Picking
berries in the hot sun, or even flowers, when one picks them by the
bushel, is not amusing. It always seemed to Johnny, on the milking
mornings, that he had only just fallen asleep when Uncle Isaac gave
him the gentle shaking which had been agreed upon, because a knock or
call would wake the rest of the family needlessly early. Very often
most interesting things, such as building a dam, or digging a pond, or
making a house of fence rails, had to be put aside for hours, that the
“consignment,” whatever it happened to be that time, might be ready
for Uncle Isaac over night. But how sweet and happy was the play which
followed their labors of love, and how small their sacrifices seemed,
when they thought of the little children, crowded, packed, into narrow,
foul-smelling courts and alleys, and, inside of these again, into
stifling rooms!
The long rambles, in which Mrs. Leslie always, and Mr. Leslie sometimes,
joined, in search of mosses and wild-flower roots, were only a delight,
and quite paid for the work of printing the simple rules for cheap
cookery, which Aunt Mercy told them from time to time, as she could
remember.
They caught Uncle Isaac, nearly every time that he took one of their
cargoes, slipping in something on his own account—vegetables, or fruit,
or eggs, and even, sometimes, a piece of fresh meat, when one of his own
sheep had been killed to supply the table.
[Illustration]
“That’s a first-rate way to make a stew, that thy Aunt Mercy gave thee
yesterday,” he said, gravely, to Tiny, on one of these occasions; “but I
thought if I took the mutton, and a few carrots and potatoes, along with
it, it would stand a good deal better chance of getting made than if I
didn’t!”
And Tiny and Johnny delightedly agreed that it would.
Mr. Leslie came home, one evening, looking a little troubled.
“I haven’t seen Jim at his usual place for two or three days,” he
said; “and if I could only have remembered the street and number of his
lodgings, I would have made time to go and ask after him. Please write
the address on a card for me, dear, and I’ll go to-morrow, or send if I
can’t go.”
The happy days in the country had by no means made Tiny and Johnny forget
Jim, in the hot and weary city; and, as Mr. Leslie often saw him at his
stand, messages were exchanged, and gifts of fruit and flowers sent,
which cheered his loneliness not a little, for he missed them more than
even they could guess. Aunt Mercy and Uncle Isaac had heard a good deal
about him, too, by this time; and it so happened that they had come to a
decision concerning him that very day.
So now Aunt Mercy said,—
“I was going to speak to thee of that lad this very evening, Friend
Leslie. Our hired man, David, is obliged to leave us next month, and I
have taken a notion to ask thy young friend to take his place. The work
will not be heavy through the winter, and by spring, with good care and
good food in the meantime, he might well be strong enough to keep on
with David’s work, until our time for hiring extra help comes. And we
think it would be well if he could come at once, while David is still
here to instruct him, and we would pay him half wages until David leaves.
Would thee object to laying our proposal before him, if thee sees him
to-morrow?”
The applause which followed this speech quite embarrassed Aunt Mercy; but
she was made to understand very clearly that Mr. Leslie would not have
the slightest objection to undertaking her mission.
Tiny and Johnny were confident that Jim would come the very next day; and
when Mr. Leslie saw the blank faces which greeted him as he returned, the
next evening, alone, he pretended that he meant to go back to the office
immediately.
“For the office cat is always glad to see me,” he said, “and especially
so when I come alone!”
He received, immediately, an overwhelming apology and testimonial, all in
one. But when it was over, Tiny asked,—
“Why didn’t Jim come with you, papa, really and truly?”
“Jim is slightly ill at his lodging,” said Mr. Leslie. “It is nothing
serious,” he hastened to add, as he saw the anxious faces. “I took the
doctor to see him, and he says Jim has a slight touch of bilious fever.
He is wretchedly uncomfortable, of course, for the old woman of the house
does as little for him as she decently can; but I gave her a talking to,
and the doctor says, he hopes to have Jim on his legs again in two or
three days, though, of course, he will be rather weak for a while.”
This news caused much lamentation, which was instantly changed to joy,
when Uncle Isaac said, quietly, and as if it were the only thing to be
said under the circumstances,—
“If thee will give me the address, Friend Leslie, I will drive in for
the lad to-morrow. Mercy can arrange a bed in the bottom of the spring
wagon, and I think the slight risk we shall cause him to run will be
justifiable, under the circumstances. The kitchen-chamber is vacant, and
he can sleep there, until David goes.”
Mr. Leslie clasped the old man’s hand with affectionate warmth, nor
could he help saying softly, so that only Uncle Isaac heard,—
“‘I was a stranger, and ye took Me in; sick, and in prison, and ye
visited Me.’”
Aunt Mercy asked Tiny and Johnny to help her make ready the kitchen
chamber, the next day, and Johnny will never receive any more delightful
flattery than her gentle,—
“Thee is such a carpenter, Johnny, and so handy, that I thought perhaps
thee could bore a gimlet-hole in the floor, here by the bed, and then fix
a piece of twine along one of the rafters in the kitchen, till it reached
the door-bell—no one-ever rings that, thee knows, and that poor boy may
want something, and be too weak to call.”
[Illustration]
So Johnny arranged the bell-pull, while Aunt Mercy and Tiny tacked
up green paper shades, and white muslin curtains, to the two windows
and spread the straw mattress, first with three or four folded
“comfortables,” and then with lavender-scented sheets and a white
bed-spread, and put a clean cover on the bureau, and on the little
one-legged and three-footed table which was to stand by the bed. Two or
three braided rugs were laid upon the floor, and then, when Tiny had
decorated the bureau with a bunch of the brightest flowers she could
find, the room was all ready, “and too lovely for anything,” as Tiny
said.
[Illustration]
Jim was afraid, at first, that his new friends would not understand why
he could not, try as he might, find voice to say anything, when Uncle
Isaac and David carried him upstairs, and gently placed him on the
white bed. There was a lump in his throat which would not let any words
pass it, but he raised his eyes to Aunt Mercy’s face, with a look which
somehow made her stroke his hot forehead with her soft, cool hands, and
say tenderly,—
“There, my dear, thee is safe and at home, and all thee has to do is to
lie here and get well as fast as thee can!”
He did it, and with everything to help forward his recovery, his strong
young frame soon shook off disease and languor.
[Illustration]
Three weeks after he came to the farm, he was “all about again,” as Aunt
Mercy said, and so eager for work, that he soon left David little to do.
And what famous help he was about the “mission!” He seemed to have an
especial faculty for finding the places where shy mosses and delicate
wild-flowers hid; he had “spotted” every nut tree within five miles
before the nuts were ripe, and he packed their various findings in a way
which excited wonder and admiration.
The “beautiful time” in the inner circle came to an end at last, or
rather, to a pause; nobody was willing to believe it the end. There
were plans and hopes for next year, and for the winter which must come
first, but, in spite of all the hopes, nobody looked very cheerful when
the last evening came, and if Mrs. Leslie and Aunt Mercy did not mingle
their tears with those of Tiny and Johnny, the next morning, it was only
because they felt that they must set a good example even if nobody were
able to follow it!
And you, who are reading this? Are you trying, ever so little, to share
your happiness? Think about it. No one is too poor to do this. Those of
you who enjoy, every summer, a free, happy holiday in the country, can
be “faithful in much,” and those who are themselves suffering privation
can give, always, love and sympathy, and often the “helping hand” which
does so much beside the actual help it gives. And remember, dear children
who are listening to me, that with the “Inasmuch as ye did,” comes the
far more solemn “Inasmuch as ye did it _not_, unto the least of these My
brethren, ye did it not to Me.”
[Illustration]
THE DEAD DOLL
AND OTHER VERSES.
BY MARGARET VANDEGRIFT.
Author of “Little Helpers,” etc.
1 Vol. Square 8vo. Fully illustrated. Uniform with “Davy and the Goblin,”
etc. $1.50.
A charming collection of wise and witty verses for children, many of
which, like “THE DEAD DOLL,” “THE FATE OF A FACE-MAKER,” etc., are very
popular, and have been copied all over the country; and are household
words in thousands of families, where this complete and beautiful edition
will be eagerly welcomed. Among the other poems are
THE GALLEY CAT.
SLUMBER-LAND.
AT SUNSET.
WINNING A PRINCESS.
THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE.
A DREAM OF LITTLE WOMEN.
THE CLOWN’S BABY.
THE KING’S DAUGHTER.
These poems are not only very attractive and interesting to children, but
they also have a great fascination for all who care for children, and for
sweetness and innocence of life.
_Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the publishers_,
TICKNOR & CO., BOSTON.
[Illustration: AT CLOSE QUARTERS THE FIRST DAY AT GETTYSBURG.]
The Recollections of a Drummer Boy.
BY REV. HARRY M. KIEFFER, LATE OF THE 150TH PENNSYLVANIA VOLUNTEERS.
Copiously illustrated with scenes in camp and field. 1 vol. Square 8vo.
Revised and enlarged, and printed from entirely new plates. $1.50.
A new and enlarged edition of this admirable book, which is particularly
adapted for youths, and should be placed in the hands of every lad in the
country, to impart a knowledge of the old war days.
The position of the author, as a clergyman of the Reformed Church,
gives the book a certain value to all persons interested in true and
pure literature, which is also of the greatest power of attraction.
“The Recollections of a Drummer Boy” has become a very popular book for
Sunday-school libraries; and should be read by all old soldiers and their
children. The great demand for the book has compelled the publishers to
issue this enlarged and beautified new edition.
“The author describes the war fever and enlistment, the advance to
Virginia, the battles of Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilderness,
Petersburg, and the end, with a simplicity and straightforwardness that
are full of pathos. The evening camps, the frugal ‘hard tack,’ the long
marches over ‘the sacred soil,’ the Bucktail cantonments under the
dark Virginia pines, the whir of the long roll, the silent watch of
midnight pickets, the songs of the camp, the moans of the hospital, the
white tents on Maryland hills, the joyous rush of artillery coming into
action, the imposing splendors of Presidential reviews—all these and
a thousand other phases of that exciting era are reproduced here with
picturesque fidelity; and once more its readers are ‘Tenting on the old
Camp-ground.’”—_Washington Herald._
_Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price, by the Publishers_,
TICKNOR & CO., BOSTON.
[Illustration]
JUAN AND JUANITA.
By FRANCES COURTENAY BAYLOR.
Author of “On Both Sides,” etc.
1 vol. Square 4to. With many illustrations $1.50.
Miss Baylor’s charming and “ower true” tale has formed (_though only
given in part_) the chief attraction of the “St. Nicholas” for a year,
and in its present and complete form will be heartily welcomed, most
of all by those who have already learned to love its little hero and
heroine, and will eagerly look for the full story of their adventures.
The _locale_ of these events, amid the romantic scenery of Northern
Mexico and Western Texas, is brilliantly and accurately described, with
the ways and habits of the Texans, Mexicans, and Indians. With these
are the records of the young hero and heroine, in and beyond the Cañon
of Roses, and their numerous strange and diverting adventures, making a
volume of rare and permanent interest for young or old.
[Illustration]
THREE GOOD GIANTS.
BY FRANÇOIS RABELAIS.
_Translated by John Dimitry. With 175 Pictures by Gustave Doré and Anton
Robida._
$1.50. Uniform with “Davy and the Goblin,” etc.
“The present beautiful edition of an amusing book cannot fail to amuse
thousands of little ones, who perhaps in these days are growing tired of
‘Gulliver’s Travels,’ ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and ‘The
Arabian Nights.’”—_The Week._
“Coleridge classes Rabelais with ‘the great creative minds, Shakspeare,
Dante, and Cervantes.’ In ‘Three Good Giants,’ children, young and
old, will find a story which will vie in delightful interest with
‘Robinson Crusoe.’ The adventures of the hearty, good-natured old king
Grandgousier, his son Gargantua, and his grandson Pantagruel, all of them
mighty heroes and doers of wonderful deeds, will be read and re-read with
ever-increasing enjoyment. In paper, printing, and binding, ‘Three Good
Giants’ is everything that a choice holiday hook should be.”—_Washington
Transcript._
_Sent, postpaid, on receipt of price by the publishers_,
TICKNOR & CO., BOSTON.
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