A PRESENT FROM A FAIRY GODMOTHER.
Arthur, who thought he was certainly to be killed, shut his eyes, and
for nearly a minute lay perfectly still. He opened them on hearing a
trampling of hoofs, a jingling of harness, and a loud “Whoa.” Then, no
longer seeing the dog, he quickly scrambled to his feet. He was right
under the noses of a pair of splendid horses, and behind them was a fine
carriage, from which a beautiful lady was just stepping.
“Why, little boy,” she said, as she took Arthur’s hand and led him away
from in front of the horses, “don’t you know that you came very near
being run over? and that it is dangerous to be playing out here in the
middle of the road? Now run into the house, and ask your mother to brush
your clothes, and don’t ever do so again.”
[Illustration: PRINCE DUSTY AND HIS FAIRY GODMOTHER. (_Page 8._)]
“But I don’t live here,” said Arthur, lifting his dust-covered little
face to the gracious one bent down to him. “I live a long way off, and
I’m a Prince, and Cynthia is a Princess, and we were looking for
adventures, when a big dog knocked me down; but he didn’t hurt Cynthia,
because I defended her, the same as princes do in the stories my own
mamma used to read to me.”
“So you are a Prince, are you?” laughed the lady; “then you must be
‘Prince Dusty.’ Well, if you will get into my carriage, and show me the
way, I will take you home to your castle. But where is your Princess?
What did you say her name was?”
“It is Cynthia,” replied Arthur, “and there she comes now.”
As he spoke, poor, terrified little Cynthia came timidly out from the
bushes where she had been hiding, and crying with fright, for the last
three minutes.
Then the beautiful lady took them both into her carriage, and ordered
the coachman to drive on, while she soothed and comforted the children,
and wiped Arthur’s dusty face with her own embroidered handkerchief.
She looked curiously at him when he told her that his name was Arthur
Dale Dustin, that his dearest mamma and papa were dead, and that he used
to live in New York, but that now he lived with Cynthia’s father and
mother, who were his Uncle John and Aunt Nancy. She asked him several
questions about himself; but always seemed to forget his name and only
called him “Prince Dusty.”
When they reached the Dustin house she kissed both the children
good-bye, and gave Arthur a beautiful copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s
“Fairy Tales,” that she had in the carriage with her. On the fly-leaf
she wrote, with a tiny gold pencil that hung from her watch-chain: “To
Prince Dusty from his Fairy Godmother.” Then she said she must hurry on,
and drove away, leaving the children standing by the roadside and
staring after the carriage so long as the faintest cloud of dust from
its wheels was visible.
As they turned slowly into the front gate, and walked toward the house,
Arthur drew a long breath and said: “Cynthia, that is the very most
beautiful adventure I ever heard of. It’s beautifuller even than the
stories my own mamma used to tell, and I’ve got this lovely book to show
that it is all true.”
Poor Arthur was not allowed to enjoy the possession of his book very
long, for his Aunt Nancy, who had been alarmed at the children’s
disappearance, and now gave them only bread and water for their dinner,
took it from him, and laid it on a high shelf, saying that it was
altogether too handsome a book for a little boy to have.
Arthur begged, and pleaded with tears in his eyes, that he might be
allowed to keep his book, claiming justly that it was his very own, and
had been given to him to do as he pleased with; but all to no purpose.
His Aunt Nancy only said that she would give it to him when the proper
time came; and then, adding that she was too busy now to be bothered
with him, she bade him get out of the house, and not let her see him
again before sundown.
So the sensitive little chap walked slowly away, trying in vain to choke
back the indignant sobs that would persist in making themselves heard,
and feeling very bitterly the injustice of his Aunt Nancy’s action. He
longed for sympathy in this time of trial, and for some friendly ear
into which he might pour his griefs. Even Cynthia’s company was denied
him, for she was seated in the kitchen under her mother’s watchful eye,
taking slow, awkward stitches in the patchwork, a square of which was
her allotted task for each day.
“I’ll find Uncle Phin,” said Arthur to himself, “and tell him all about
it, and perhaps he will somehow find a way to get my book again, and
then I’ll ask him to take me away from here, to some place where I can
keep it always.”
Somewhat cheered by having a definite purpose in view, the forlorn
little fellow started across the fields toward a distant wood-lot, in
which he knew his sympathizing old friend and adviser was at work.
Uncle Phin was a white-headed, simple-hearted, old negro, who, some
years before, had been a slave belonging to Colonel Arthur Dale, of
Dalecourt, Virginia. He had been the constant attendant, in her daily
horseback rides, of the Colonel’s only daughter, the lovely Virginia
Dale, to whom her father had formally presented him, as a birthday gift,
when she was fifteen years old.
Three years later the spirited girl, refusing to marry the man whom her
father had selected for her, ran away with Richard Dustin, a young
Northerner recently graduated from a New England university, who had
accepted a professorship in one of the Virginia colleges. This marriage
proved so terrible a disappointment to her father that, in his anger, he
declared he would never receive a communication from her, nor see her
again, and he never did. The young couple, accompanied by the faithful
Uncle Phin, went to New York. There their only child, a boy, named
Arthur Dale after the grandfather who refused to recognize him, was
born, and there they lived in the greatest happiness until the child was
nearly eleven years old. Then the beautiful young mother died, leaving
Richard Dustin utterly heartbroken. Soon afterward he removed with his
idolized boy and Uncle Phin, who had filled the position of nurse and
constant protector to Arthur from infancy, to the home of his childhood,
a little rocky farm in Northwestern Pennsylvania.
He had but one relative in the world, a brother, who lived near one of
the mushroom-like towns that sprang up during the early days of
petroleum. When, a year after the death of his wife, Richard Dustin was
also laid in the grave, it was in the family of this brother, John
Dustin, that Arthur and Uncle Phin found a home.
Richard Dustin left no property save the rocky farm that was too poor
even to support a mortgage. As his brother John had a large family, the
new burdens now thrust upon him were not very warmly welcomed. In fact
Mrs. Dustin strongly urged her husband not to receive them. She was
Arthur’s Aunt Nancy, a hard, unsympathetic, overworked woman, who
grudged every morsel of food that the new-comers ate, and seemed to
consider that everything given to Arthur was just so much stolen from
her own children.
Uncle Phin, it is true, worked faithfully to do what he could toward
earning the bread eaten by himself and his “lil Marse,” as he persisted
in calling Arthur, but he was old and feeble, and the best that he could
do did not amount to much. The scanty, but neat, city-made wardrobe that
Arthur brought with him to his new home, had not been replenished by a
single garment, and now the boy’s clothes were shabby and outgrown to
such a degree, that his mother’s heart would have ached could she have
seen him.
Although he was a thoughtful, imaginative child, he was remarkably
strong and active for his age. He had learned to read and write at his
mother’s knee, and his father had, during the last year of his life,
found his only pleasure in planning and directing the boy’s education.
Arthur was therefore as far in advance of his cousins in this respect as
he was in refinement and ideas of honor. He was so very different from
them that, though he tried hard to love them and make them love him,
they, with the exception of little Cynthia, to whom he was an ideal of
perfection, united in cordially disliking him.
This dislike was clearly shown, and resulted in many a heartache and
many an unjust punishment to the lonely orphan boy. Many a night he
slipped from his little cot bed in the back shed, and creeping to where
Uncle Phin slept on a hay-mow in the barn, poured his troubles with
bitter tears into the sympathetic ears of the old negro.
Then the faithful soul would open wide his arms, and nestling the fair
head of his “lil Marse” against his broad bosom, would soothe and
comfort him with gentle croonings and quaint quavering plantation
melodies. His singing was always accompanied by a slow rocking motion of
the body, and finally the blue, tear-swollen eyes would close, and the
boy would drop into a sleep full of beautiful dreams, in which he always
saw his own dear father and mother. Then Uncle Phin’s frosted head would
droop lower and lower, until he too was asleep and dreaming of his long
ago cabin home under the magnolia trees of old Virginia. Thus these two
would comfort each other until morning.
Now, choking with a sense of injustice and wrong at the hands of his
Aunt Nancy, little Prince Dusty fled across the fields in search of this
friend. He was filled with the determination to beg Uncle Phin to take
him away from that hated place, to some other where they might live
happily together for always and always.