FOURTH OF JULY.
Of course, with such a troop of children as there was at Kayuna, Fourth
of July was a wildly exciting time. They were always up at unearthly
hours in the morning, and used up, before breakfast, an immense supply
of giant torpedoes and fire-crackers, by way of opening the day. Later,
they were allowed free range of the back-kitchen, in order that they
might carry out, all by themselves, the grand performance of the day.
This was making and freezing a great can of ice-cream, with no
interference, even to the extent of a suggestion, from the cook. This
was always eaten by the assembled family, on the piazza, at five in the
afternoon.
In the evening all the people in the neighbourhood gathered on the
piazza and lawn, to see the display of a great quantity of fireworks,
which Dr. Ward always had sent out from town. So they wound up the
Glorious Fourth in a very patriotic manner.
It was really very good-natured of Dr. Ward to allow the display on his
grounds, for it always took Thomas and one of the other men all the next
day to take away the débris, clear up the lawn, and restore things to
their usual trim order.
This particular Fourth really began the night before.
Hilda Mason had been invited to come and spend the night with Cricket
and Eunice, in order to be on hand in the morning. It was barely dark
when the three children decided it was quite time to go to bed, in order
to shorten the long hours that stretched before to-morrow morning. Nurse
had put up a cot in Cricket’s room for Hilda, close beside the larger
bed, so it was quite like sleeping all together.
They were far too much excited to settle down very soon, especially as
it was earlier than their usual bedtime, so they frolicked and built
tents of the sheets, and ended up with a game of tag around the
foot-board. But this speedily brought Eliza to the scene, with a very
peremptory order “to go to sleep, and not disturb everybody in the house
with their jim-jams.”
Thus commanded, and being tired by this time, they were quite ready to
subside, and very soon, after numberless “good-nights” and “don’t you
wish it was to-morrows,” they settled down.
Cricket woke first. The room was already beginning to grow light.
“Oh, girls, girls!” she cried, scrambling out of bed. “We’ve overslept,
I know. There’s the sun rising now.” There certainly was light behind
the trees, as she looked from the east windows.
“Funny we don’t hear the boys,” said Eunice, sitting up and trying to
rub the sleep out of her eyes. “I’m awful sleepy—seems as if we’d just
gone to bed.”
“I should say it did. How quiet everything seems. Hilda, wake up! it’s
morning.”
“I don’t care,” returned Hilda, sleepily, turning over.
“But it’s Fourth of July! Do get up! We want to get ahead of the boys.”
For two boy cousins, Will and Archie Somers, were visiting them.
“Oh, dear!” yawned Hilda, who was always a sleepy head. “I think I’d
rather not have any Fourth of July.”
“But the Fourth’s here, and we’ve got to have it!” said Cricket, pulling
the sheet from under Hilda. “Get up, you lazy girl. I’m all dressed.”
For Cricket dressed as she did everything else, “like a streak of
greased lightning,” as Donald said.
“Oh, I’m getting up!” and Hilda turned out reluctantly.
“I’m going to the boys’ door, while you’re finishing,” said Cricket.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” She slipped out into the hall, as still as a
mouse. It was very dark out there, and she had to feel her way along.
Suddenly, ahead of her, came a glimmer of light, and a tall, white
figure appeared, that startled Cricket so that she turned, with a
scream, to run back. It was only Eliza, who, aroused by the children’s
voices, was coming from the nursery to see what was the matter, but
Cricket was blinded by the sudden light, so that she did not recognize
her. She lost her bearings, turned to the left instead of the right, and
the next moment she was plunging head-foremost down the stairs, with a
crash that in two minutes assembled a white-clad household.
“What is the matter?” asked everybody, hurriedly, of everybody else.
Doctor Ward sprang down the staircase to investigate. At the bottom lay
a little heap.
“Cricket!” he exclaimed, with his heart in his mouth.
“I guess I’m all right, papa,” came a scared little voice from the heap,
“but I don’t know, ’xactly, where I am.”
Her father lifted her up, and felt of her arms and legs.
“No bones broken. Is your back all right? and your head? In the name of
common-sense, child, what are you doing around the house, all dressed,
at midnight?”
“Why, it’s morning,” said Eunice and Hilda together, who, with the
others, had gathered at the foot of the stairs, everybody asking
questions and talking at once.
“It’s morning, and it’s the Fourth of July,” explained Eunice, “and we
got up, and Cricket was going to wake the boys, and get a rise out of
them. Is Cricket hurt?”
The doctor was still feeling Cricket’s back, and her mamma was rubbing
her hands anxiously, but they all laughed at Eunice’s explanation.
“Morning, dear child? It’s just ten minutes of twelve,” she answered,
looking at the tall hall clock. “Just midnight.”
“Midnight!” cried all the three girls, incredulously. “We saw the sun
rising, anyway,” said Hilda, bewildered.
“The moon, you mean,” said the doctor, laughing.
“You’re sure you’re not hurt, darling?” he added. “Well, since Cricket
is not killed, it proves to be a good joke.”
“She must be hurt somewhere,” persisted mamma, still anxiously. “How
could a child go head-foremost down stairs and not be hurt?”
“Nobody could but Cricket,” said her father, kissing her; “but I am
coming to the conclusion that this young woman is not built of ordinary
human material, but on the principle of indestructible dolls. She always
comes right side up with care.”
“I thought I was killed just at first,” said Cricket, sitting up
straight on her father’s knee, and still looking bewildered, “for the
house seemed just to open and let me down, and the first thing I knew,
papa was calling ‘Cricket.’”
“But now,” said mamma, “since nobody is seriously injured, you children
may go back to bed and sleep quietly—if you can—the rest of the night.
And remember that you must not one of you get up in the morning till you
are called. That’s the only safe way. Eliza will call you at five
o’clock, and you must not stir till then.”
In view of the circumstances, the children were quite willing to promise
this, and soon quiet reigned again.
It was broad daylight in good earnest when the children opened their
eyes next, in response to Eliza’s call. Their night’s experience seemed
very far away in the light of day. The boys were already up and out, and
were firing torpedoes at the girls’ windows. Cricket felt a little stiff
and lame at first, but that soon wore off. She really did seem to be of
some material unlike other children, for her constant accidents rarely
disabled her, and she seldom had even a bad scar. When she nearly cut
her finger off in the hay-cutter once, so that it hung by a thread of
skin, she clapped it on and ran to her father, and it grew together like
two pieces of melted wax. Deep cuts healed as if made in soft pitch. She
had fallen from innumerable trees, and would come crashing through the
branches, and land on the ground, stunned for a moment, perhaps, but
with no further injuries. She was very slightly built, without an ounce
of superfluous flesh on her slender bones, and she was very agile and
flexible. She used to amuse her sisters by sitting on the ground and
twisting both legs around her neck, like a clown in the circus. When she
fell, she fell as a baby does, without making the slightest effort to
save herself, and probably this was the reason why she escaped serious
injury.
[Illustration: CELEBRATING THE FOURTH OF JULY.]
When the girls appeared, the boys were ready with a fire of jokes
concerning the midnight adventures. Archie suggested that it would be a
good plan to pin a big label to the moon, so they need not mistake it
again for the sun. Will chanted,—
“The Man in the Moon
Came up too soon,
And waked the girls too early.
Cricket ran into the hall
And got a great fall,
And made a great hurly-burly.”
Fortunately, Cricket did not mind teasing, else her life would have been
a burden.
By breakfast they had fired off dozens of packages of giant torpedoes
and an unlimited number of fire-crackers, and went trooping into the
house, feeling, they said, as if they had been up for at least six
weeks.