"What is what?" said I.
"You said you were playing, sir," said he, "and I don't know exactly
what you mean."
"Why," said I, scratching my head hard in a mad quest for a definition,
for I couldn't for the life of me think of the answer to his question
offhand, any more than I could define one of the elements. "Playing
is--why, it's playing, laddie. Don't you know what it is to play?"
"Oh, yes," said he. "It's what you do on the piano--I've been taught to
play on the piano, sir."
"Oh, but this is different," said I. "This kind is fun--it's what most
little boys do with their toys."
"You mean--breaking them?" said he.
"No, indeed," said I. "It's getting all the fun there is out of them."
"I think I should like to do that," said he, with a fixed gaze upon the
soldiers. "Can a little fellow like me learn to play that way?"
"Well, rather, kiddie," said I, reaching out and taking him by the
hand. "Sit down here on the floor alongside of me, and I'll show you."
"Oh, no," said he, drawing back; "I--I can't sit on the floor. I'd catch
cold."
"Now, who under the canopy told you that?" I demanded, somewhat
impatiently, I fear.
"My governesses and both my nurses, sir," said he. "You see, there are
drafts--"
"Well, there won't be any drafts this time," said I. "Just you sit down
here, and we'll have a game of marbles--ever play marbles with your
father?"
"No, sir," he replied. "He's always too busy, and neither of my nurses
has ever known how."
"But your mother comes up here and plays games with you sometimes,
doesn't she?" I asked.
"Mother is busy, too," said the child. "Besides, she wouldn't care for a
game which you had to sit on the floor to--"
I sprang to my feet and lifted him bodily in my arms, and, after
squatting him over by the fireplace where if there were any drafts at
all they would be as harmless as a summer breeze, I took up a similar
position on the other side of the room, and initiated him into the
mystery of miggles as well as I could, considering that all his marbles
were real agates.
"You don't happen to have a china-alley anywhere, do you?" I asked.
"No, sir," he answered. "We only have china plates--"
"Never mind," I interrupted. "We can get along very nicely with these."
And then for half an hour, despite the rich quality of our
paraphernalia, that little boy and I indulged in a glorious game of real
plebeian miggs, and it was a joy to see how quickly his stiff little
fingers relaxed and adapted themselves to the uses of his eye, which was
as accurate as it was deeply blue. So expert did he become that in a
short while he had completely cleaned me out, giving joyous little cries
of delight with every hit, and then we turned our attention to the
soldiers.
"I want some playing now," he said gleefully, as I informed him that he
had beaten me out of my boots at one of my best games. "Show me what you
were doing with those soldiers when I came in."
"All right," said I, obeying with alacrity. "First, we'll have a
parade."
I started a great talking-machine standing in one corner of the room off
on a spirited military march, and inside of ten minutes, with his
assistance, I had all the troops out and to all intents and purposes
bravely swinging by to the martial music of Sousa.
"How's that?" said I, when we had got the whole corps arranged to our
satisfaction.
"Fine!" he cried, jumping up and down upon the floor and clapping his
hands with glee. "I've got lots more of these stored away in my
toy-closet," he went on, "but I never knew that you could do such things
as this with them."
"But what did you think they were for?" I asked.
"Why--just to--to keep," he said hesitatingly.
"Wait a minute," said I, wheeling a couple of cannon off to a distance
of a yard from the passing troops. "I'll show you something else you can
do with them."
I loaded both cannon to the muzzle with dried pease, and showed him how
to shoot.
"Now," said I, "_fire_!"
He snapped the spring, and the dried pease flew out like death-dealing
shells in war. In a moment the platinum commander of the forces, and
about thirty-seven solid silver warriors, lay flat on their backs. It
needed only a little red ink on the carpet to reproduce in miniature a
scene of great carnage, but I shall never forget the expression of
mingled joy and regret on his countenance as those creatures went down.
"Don't you like it, son?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said, with an anxious glance at the prostrate
warriors. "They aren't deaded, are they?"
"Of course not," said I, restoring the presumably defunct troopers to
life by setting them up again. "The only thing that'll dead a soldier
like these is to step on him. Try the other gun."
Thus reassured, he did as I bade him, and again the proud paraders went
down, this time amid shouts of glee. And so we passed an all too
fleeting two hours, that little boy and I. Through the whole list of his
famous toys we went, and as well as I could I taught him the delicious
uses of each and all of them, until finally he seemed to grow weary, and
so, drawing up a big arm-chair before the fire and taking his tired
little body into my lap, with his tousled head cuddled up close over the
spot where my heart is alleged to be, I started to read a story to him
out of one of the many beautiful books that had been provided for him
by his generous parents. But I had not gone far when I saw that his
attention was wandering.
"Perhaps you'd rather have me tell you a story instead of reading it,"
said I.
"What's to tell a story?" he asked, fixing his blue eyes gravely upon
mine.
"Great Scott, kiddie!" said I, "didn't anybody ever tell you a story?"
"No, sir," he replied sleepily; "I get read to every afternoon by my
governess, but nobody ever told me a story."
"Well, just you listen to this," said I, giving him a hearty squeeze.
"Once upon a time there was a little boy," I began, "and he lived in a
beautiful house not far from the Park, and his daddy--"
"What's a daddy?" asked the child, looking up into my face.
"Why, a daddy is a little boy's father," I explained. "You've got a
daddy--"
"Oh, yes," he said. "If a daddy is a father, I've got one. I saw him
yesterday," he added.
"Oh, did you?" said I. "And what did he say to you?"
"He said he was glad to see me and hoped I was a good boy," said the
child. "He seemed very glad when I told him I hoped so, too, and he gave
me all these things here--he and my mother."
"That was very nice of them," said I huskily.
"And they're both coming up some time to-day or to-morrow to see if I
like them," said the lad.
"And what are you going to say?" I asked, with difficulty getting the
words out over a most unaccountable lump that had arisen in my throat.
"I'm going to tell them," he began, as his eyes closed sleepily, "that I
like them all very, very much."
"And which one of them all do you like the best?" said I.
He snuggled up closer in my arms, and, raising his little head a trifle
higher, he kissed me on the tip end of my chin, and murmured softly as
he dropped off to sleep,
"You!"