_The Twins Abscond._
DELIGHTED with their new found shoot-the-chutes, the twins hastily
climbed the stairs to try it again and yet again, finally rolling
off the banisters and landing on the soft fur rug at the foot of the
stairs, breathless and too tired to try even one more climb.
Squatting together in the dim light from the hall lamp that was always
left burning all night, they suddenly remembered that they had started
to run away and immediately began to discuss the question of ways and
means.
Papa Doctor’s big, fur-lined coat, that he always wore when going out
to night calls during the severe weather, hung on the hat rack, and the
cubs knew that its side-pockets were huge and that a Teddy bear might
easily find refuge therein.
While they were deliberating whether or no to seize this method of
escape from the house, their decision was hastened by the sound of the
telephone ringing furiously.
It was a call for Papa Doctor and in a moment he was heard hurrying
about in the room overhead as he sprang into his clothes.
The cubs hesitated no longer, but swarming up the sides of the
greatcoat they dove one into each pocket, and lay there quaking with
fright as Papa Doctor came running downstairs, hastily struggled into
his coat, pulled his sealskin cap down over his ears and hurried away,
pulling on his gloves as he went.
[Illustration]
Whither lay his route the cubs, of course, were unable to divine. They
rode for some distance in a street car and then there was a short walk,
a run up a flight of steps and Papa Doctor was ringing the bell at
the door of a cheap apartment house, a fact which the cubs discovered
by poking their heads one out of each pocket. They grinned at the
thought of how astonished the doctor would be could he know what he was
carrying along with his pills and powders. But they quickly subsided as
the front door swung open all by itself, a habit that the front doors
of flat houses usually follow, and the doctor ran quickly upstairs, up
and up and up five flights to the very top.
[Illustration]
Here a light streamed into the hall from an open door and an anxious,
white-faced woman ran to meet him. And while he divested himself of
his heavy outer garments and went to work over a dangerous attack of
croup, the twins slid warily each out of his respective pocket and
slipped, trembling, to their usual refuge under the bed.
Finally, after an hour’s hard work, the little patient was left in
a satisfactory condition, Dr. North promising to return early next
morning, and after a little, all preparations for the night were
concluded and quiet reigned in the little flat.
For a while the cubs remained quietly where they were, but as they were
not accustomed to sleeping on the hard floor they speedily concluded to
seek for a softer spot.
They knew that their father always slept in Sally’s bed, so without any
more ado, as all was now dark and still, they climbed up on the bed,
rooted their way underneath the bedclothes and were soon snugly and
soundly fast asleep.
It was such a poor, plain tiny room into which the jolly, smiling
face of the round red sun peeped the next morning, but his face grew
several shades less jolly and his smile a trifle less broad as he noted
the thin little face on the pillow and the outline of the poor little
twisted limb lying stiffly under the spotless bedclothes.
Jimmy-boy sighed and stirred feebly, wakening slowly, weak and worn out
after the terrible struggle of the night before.
Presently his eyes opened and the very first thing they fell upon was
two pairs of round, golden-brown ears sticking up out of the bedclothes.
The little fellow raised himself slowly on his elbow, and his thin
little hand crept forth uncertainly and slowly drew first one cub and
then the other from beneath the quilt.
Delight and amazement contended on his wistful little face and he
called for his mother in a tone that brought her running from the wee
kitchen where since daybreak she had been busily working at the fine
sewing that kept Jimmy-boy and herself out of the poor-house.
Together they admired and speculated over the cubs, theorizing over
their strange advent and finally deciding that Dr. North must have
surreptitiously smuggled them in as a new kind of medicine for his
little patient.
But when Dr. North arrived, some time later, he disclaimed all
knowledge of the twins. The city was full of Teddy bears, and all the
little chaps looked alike to him, and it never in the world occurred to
him that they could be the property of his small daughter. Their coming
remained wrapped in mystery that caused Mrs. Gray no little uneasiness.
However, as Jimmy-boy was feeling much better and Dr. North decided
that there would probably be no return of last night’s paroxysm, she
resigned herself to the pleasure of seeing her frail little son
enjoying his play with the jolly-looking bears, hoping devoutly they
would not disappear as mysteriously as they had arrived.
She sat beside his bed, her slender hands busy with her sewing, while
her soft brown eyes smiled approval on the happiness of her boy.
Jimmy-boy was eight years old, but he had never walked. That he never
would walk had been the verdict of several physicians, but Dr. North,
who was deeply interested in the case, was beginning to fancy that he
saw a tiny ray of light, so very faint, however, that he forbore to
express his idea even to Jimmy-boy’s mother.
[Illustration]
All that day the twins sat stiffly upon Jimmy-boy’s bed, while his
active little brain invented queer games in which his imagination made
them take an active part; while he talked aloud, first for one and then
for the other in a queer little growling voice, which he varied from
time to time accordingly as it represented one cub or the other.
At last he fell asleep with the twins clasped close to him, having
passed a happier day than any that he could remember in many a long
year.
As soon as it was quite safe to do so, the cubs wriggled out of the
child’s embrace and started out to investigate their new surroundings
and, above all, to find, if possible, something to put into their
clamoring little stomachs.
It did not take very long to go over the territory included in two
small rooms. Mrs. Gray slept beside Jimmy-boy’s bed in an astounding
arrangement that shut up in the daytime and imposed itself upon a
credulous public as a shabby chest of drawers, which the cubs regarded
with unqualified amazement, as they had never before beheld such a
contrivance. They could see no good reason why the thing did not shut
up and flatten out its occupant and indeed rather expected to see that
event take place at any moment.
Teddy bears, however, never lose any time in speculation, and the cubs
turned their attention to the kitchen, being very much disgusted that
the only available light consisted of an oil lamp, an article which,
like the folding-bed, they had never before encountered, and of which
they were proportionately afraid.
With the aid of a box of matches, however, they raided the larder,
a very slender one, indeed, but they discovered a couple of fresh
eggs intended for Jimmy-boy’s breakfast, and a bottle of rather
blue-looking milk. The eggs they sucked greedily, and after drinking
all the milk they wished for, upset the remainder on the floor.
They were greatly disgusted at being obliged to put up with such short
rations, and resolved as soon as practicable to leave a place where
they could find so very little that was congenial.
[Illustration]
They had about concluded to go to bed, when suddenly without the
slightest warning and like a bolt from a clear sky, something happened
that very nearly put an end to their careers for good and all.
Suddenly out of the darkness, apparently from nowhere at all, sprang a
huge gray cat, eyes flaming and tail high in air, that leaped upon the
terrified cubs, and seizing Jerry by the back of the neck, shook him as
he often had shaken a rat.
Billy, the big coon-cat who was Jimmy-boy’s dear friend and playmate,
had been down in the cellar for several days enjoying a protracted
mouse hunt, and now, returning by devious ways best known to himself,
had surprised the marauders at the very height of their evil doing.
He was too full of fresh game to care anything about eating these queer
looking animals, besides which the flavor of Jerry’s neck was anything
but appetizing. But the lust of killing was in his blood, and he shook
him fiercely, wondering greatly at the toughness of the creature, who
was so much harder to dispatch than a rat.
Oh, how Jerry screamed! Surely never before did Teddy bear raise such
a fearful racket. Luckily for him, Mrs. Gray was awakened by the noise
and now came running out of the bedroom, just in time to prevent
Jerry’s complete undoing.
“Dear old Billy! You thought you were doing your duty,” she exclaimed,
stroking the big fellow, who was purring and rubbing against her, very
proud indeed of what he had done, but on the whole somewhat piqued that
he had not been permitted to complete the good work.
As for Jerry, the chief damages that he had suffered seemed to be done
to Sally’s blue hair-ribbon, that still adorned his neck.
Both he and Tom were extremely glad to be deposited in a place of
safety high on the mantel shelf, there to remain until Jimmy-boy called
for them in the morning.