IN THE GARRET.
The garret of the old stone house was a mine of wealth to the children.
It was a huge place, extending over the whole house. It had many
unexpected angles and sudden little descents of two or three steps in
different places, over the rambling additions.
Four generations of Wards had lived at Kayuna, and so there was a most
delightful accumulation in the garret. Of course there were lines of old
trunks, piled with ancient dresses and quaint bonnets dating from the
beginning of the century. There were stacks of old furniture in various
stages of going to pieces. There were piles of musty books, in
strange-smelling leather bindings. There were big bundles of
closely-tied up feather-beds, like huge, soft cannon-balls. These made
magnificent barricades when the children played that they were
bombarding forts.
It was as hot as mustard up there in the summer-time, of course, but the
children never minded the heat. Then there were the long, rainy days
that came occasionally, when it was a simple delight to scamper up there
directly after breakfast, to hear the rain pelting cheerfully on the
roof, and the wind whistling through the window-casings, “like a boy
with his hands in his pockets,” Cricket said.
The whole troop had been there one day. It had rained early in the
morning, and though it cleared up before eleven, the children played on
until they had quite exhausted their resources.
They had sailed across the ocean in search of America, in a huge old
sofa turned upside down. They had been shipwrecked, owing to a sudden
parting of the back and sides of their bark, and then they were chased
by cannibals, represented by Hilda and Edith Craig and an imaginary
host.
Little Kenneth, the usual victim on these occasions, had been caught and
prepared for a feast, till rescued by Cricket and Hilda in a valiant
charge.
They had played the Chariot Race in Ben-Hur, with Zaidee and Helen as
horses, harnessed to an old wheel-chair, with Edith as charioteer, while
Cricket drove a dashing pair, consisting of Eunice and Sylvie Craig.
Hilda and Kenneth were occupants of the amphitheatre, and cheered on the
contestants, as they raced around the great chimney in the centre of the
house.
That naturally suggested the burning of Rome, with Nero, personated by
Eunice, fiddling, as she sat on a very high and very insecure tower,
built of trunks and chairs and three-legged tables, while the
inhabitants of the city tore around to save their property.
Then they tied themselves up in bags, drawn over their feet and around
their waists, for tails, and played they were mermaids, disporting
themselves among the rocks and seaweeds, represented by boxes and old
drapery, properly arranged on one of the lower levels of the floor.
This lasted until Kenneth, trying to imitate the older girls in diving
off a bowlder on to a feather bed beneath, missed his balance and fell
entangled in the bag that served him for a tail. He bumped his poor
little head and made his nose bleed, and was borne off shrieking, by
Eliza, who just then appeared on the scene.
Then the Craigs and Hilda had to go home to dinner, and the twins went
out to play.
After dinner, Cricket and Eunice wandered up stairs to the garret again.
“What let’s do now?” asked Eunice, as they sat among the ruins of Rome.
“Why, let’s—” Cricket looked vaguely around. “Let’s dress up in those
clothes up there.”
Some old clothes of Dr. Ward’s, and of Donald’s, hung up on the wall.
“Oh, that will be fun,” cried Eunice, jumping down. “We haven’t dressed
up this summer, once.”
They slipped out of their gingham dresses and petticoats, and with much
giggling and merriment got themselves into the boys’ clothes.
The trousers were so long that they had to cut off the legs, to allow
their feet to come out at all, and the vests and coats were anything but
a tight fit.
“This coat is too fat for me,” Cricket said, dubiously, studying the
effect.
Eunice caught up a small pillow and stuffed it up behind Cricket’s back
under the coat.
“But now I look hump-backed,” objected Cricket, twisting herself double
to get a rear view.
“Never mind, we’ll play you are hump-backed,” returned Eunice, always
ready of resource, as she patted the pillow into a nice, round hump.
“We’ll play that we’re Italians, and you can be that poor little
Pickaninny, or whatever his name was, that mamma read us about last
night.”
“Then we’ll be tramps. Oh, let’s go out doors, and go round to the
kitchen and scare cook!”
This proposal was received with applause by Eunice.
“Wait till I slip down stairs into papa’s office, Eunice,” Cricket
suggested next, “and I’ll get some court-plaster to patch up our faces,
and no one will ever know us. We’ll have piles of fun!”
Cricket was gone a long time, and came back giggling and breathless.
“I heard some one in the hall,” she said, “so I didn’t dare go down
stairs, and I just got out of the bath-room window on to the office
roof, and I climbed down the trellis and went in the office window, and
just as I found the court-plaster case, I heard some one coming, so I
had to run like fury, and I just flew out the window, and didn’t I skip
up the trellis lively!” gasped Cricket, taking breath.
“Then I heard some one in the hall, so I had to stay in the bath-room
ever so long, and I thought they’d never go. And here’s the whole case,”
she said, producing it.
“But suppose that papa wants the case before we can get it back?” asked
Eunice, selecting a big piece.
“Hope to goodness he won’t, or I’ll get a wiggin,” said Cricket, calmly,
applying, as she spoke, a good-sized strip over one eye, while the
corner of Eunice’s mouth disappeared under a black patch.
“Oh, Cricket, how funny you look!” Eunice exclaimed, when she had
completed her own face. Cricket’s left eye had vanished, and two long
strips on the other side, right over her dimples, completely disguised
her. She had stuck a broad-brimmed, ragged hat on the back of her curly
head, and streaked what was visible of her face and her hands with soot
from the chimney.
“You are the funniest girl!” Eunice cried, fairly doubling up with
laughter, as Cricket extricated a little black paw from her voluminous
coat sleeve, and said, in a whining voice,—
“Please, ma’am, I’m a poor widdy, and I have seven small children, and
my wife is dead, and I’m blind and deaf and dumb, and I can’t talk on
account of my bad rheumatics, and will you give me some ice-cream and a
cup of coffee?”
After they had laughed themselves sore, they concluded that they were
ready to set out, so they stole cautiously down. Eunice had bundled her
long braid on top of her head under a battered old felt hat, jammed well
over her ears, and nobody would have known the two dirty little wretches
that crept quietly over the stairs. It was the middle of the afternoon,
and as everybody was napping, the coast was clear. They slipped out the
side door into the shrubbery, and through that to the road, climbing the
low stone fence. Then they came up the lane to the back door.
Cook was nodding on the shady back piazza, as the grotesque little
figures stole up the steps. Cricket crept softly up and laid a grimy
little finger on the end of cook’s unconscious nose.
Cook opened her eyes with a start.
“Howly Moses!” she howled, thinking she had the nightmare. “Get away wid
yer.”
“I’m a poor widdy,” whined Cricket, holding out her hand. “I’ve got
seven small children, and my back is so lame that I can’t talk.”
“He means he can’t work,” struck in Eunice. “He doesn’t understand
English very well, and he’s so deaf anyway, he can’t hear what he’s
saying,” she explained to cook, who sat staring.
“Please, mum, if you’ve any very nice chocolate pudding, I feel as if I
could eat a little,” said Cricket, with a remembrance of dessert. “I had
a very light breakfast,” folding her hands over the pit of her stomach.
“I’ll light-breakfast yer, yer young imperence,” growled cook, quite
awake now. “Git off these premises in the shake o’ a dyin’ lamb’s tail,
or I’ll know the raison whoy.” Cook was a large woman, and as she slowly
rose out of her chair, she towered like a mountain above the children,
who instinctively dodged her threatening hand.
“Git out of this, immijit! Shure I’ll have no tramps here.”
“We’re not tramps,” said Eunice, changing base. “We’re selling things.”
“It’s selling things ye are, are ye? and shure, where’s the things ye’re
afther sellin’?”
“We’re selling post-holes,” said Cricket, promptly, as her eye fell on a
particularly large hole near by, that had been freshly dug for a
clothes-post. “We’ve brought some with us.”
“Post-holes, is it?” cried cook, enraged, and suspecting a joke; “we’ll
see how yer like post-holes, drat yer imperence,” and before Cricket
could dodge, she had swung her by the shoulders off the steps, and
jammed her very forcibly into the hole.
“Sell post-holes again, will yer? I’ll sell yer post-holes for yer!”
cried cook, angrily.
“Stop, cook!” screamed Eunice, hanging on her arm; “it’s Cricket, cook,
and it’s me.”
Cook paused with uplifted arm, and Cricket, decidedly the worse for
wear, took the opportunity to scramble out of the hole, exclaiming,
“We’re only pretending, cook, and we truly didn’t mean to scare you so
badly.”
Cook looked down on the little figures, about a third as large as
herself, and laughed grimly.
“Scare me, is it? Shure, I think the shoe’s on the other fut. But you’re
always up to your tricks.”
“Oh, you didn’t really scare me,” said Cricket, “only you did hurt me a
little when you grabbed me by the nape of the arm. But I wouldn’t have
told if Eunice hadn’t.”
“But I didn’t want you to get hurt, Cricket. Come on, let’s go into the
orchard and get some harvest apples. Good-by, cook,” and the little
tramps ran off, hand in hand.