his victim’s path.
“Oh, all right, young feller!” called the bass, enraged at the grins and
applause of the other men, “all right! Just you wait till Sunday, that’s
all!” If Edgar had not teased him so, he would not have added: “I know
what’ll happen then, if you don’t.”
[Illustration: “’_You’re going to be bounced, that’s what._’”]
“What?” Edgar inquired derisively, catching up with him.
“You’re going to be bounced, that’s what,” said the bass irritably.
“Aw, come off! I ain’t either!”
“Well, you ought to be, the whole pack of you,” the bass continued
decidedly. “Bag and baggage! And a good riddance, too. No choirboy
camping-out _this_ summer!”
Edgar dropped behind and mused. “Who told yer?” he called.
“Ask Fellowes—and if he don’t lick you, I will!” retorted the bass,
making a quick grab, which Edgar easily evaded.
He summoned his mates immediately; the question was laid before them.
Had they heard that they were to be bounced? Did they believe that the
two weeks’ camping-out, the object of all their endurance and loyalty,
the prize of their high calling, was to be discontinued? Tim was deputed
to inquire on Saturday afternoon. He returned disconsolate; they shoved
each other significantly.
“What’d he say? What’d he say?”
“He says mos’ prob’ly not. Says it costs too much. Says maybe a
picnic——”
“Aw! old chump! Goin’ to bounce us, too?”
“I dunno. I guess so. I didn’t ask him that. I just says to him, ‘Aw,
say, Mr. Fellowes, ain’t us boys goin’ campin’?’ An’ he says, ‘I guess
not this year, Tim, mos’ prob’ly. Maybe a picnic——”
[Illustration: “’_Well, I bet he don’t bounce me!_’”]
“Well, I bet he don’t bounce me! I betcher that, I betcher, now!”
Edgar strutted before them. They regarded him with interest.
“Whatcher goin’ to do?” they asked respectfully.
“What’ll I do? I’ll—I’ll bounce myself!” he called over his shoulder, as
he strode home.
His moody air during supper convinced Mr. Ogden that something was up.
Ever since he had discovered Edgar’s demand for an additional ten cents
a Sunday, on the ground that his mother thought him worth more, and his
later daring strike for five cents further salary, which the choirmaster
had innocently considered abundantly justified and paid out of his own
pocket, Mr. Ogden, who, having heard rumors of wild dissipations in the
peanut and root-beer line, had pounced upon his son returning plethoric
from pay day, and promptly annexed the extra fifteen cents, was
convinced of the necessity of surveillance for this wily wage-earner,
and formed the habit of escorting him regularly on pay nights, alone at
first, later assisted by Mrs. Ogden, who accompanied the family group as
a self-constituted and final auditor. It has frequently been remarked
that a great grief may bind together once disunited members of a family;
it is extremely improbable that any affliction whatever could have
produced among the Ogdens such a gratifying _esprit de corps_ as
resulted from their unfeigned interest in pay day. But when Mr. Ogden
had shadowed his son to no more secluded and dangerous spot than the
church-yard, and saw him in earnest conclave with his attentive mates,
he went, relieved, about his own business, reassured by the words
“campin’ out” and “Sunday afternoon,” that he caught from behind a
convenient tombstone. He was utterly unconscious that the scene he had
left was far more menacing to his household than even the most
disfiguring fight of his warlike son’s varied repertoire. But so it was.
Haranguing, promising, taunting, threatening, Edgar led them, finally
subdued, into one of the most satisfactory rehearsals of the year.
❦
They waited till quarter of eleven on Sunday, and finally the men
marched in alone, somewhat conscious and ill at ease, followed by a
red-faced, determined rector, and a puzzled visiting clergyman. They
sang “_O happy band of pilgrims_,” but it was remarked by the wondering
congregation that they did not look happy themselves. There was no music
but the hymns, which, as they had been altered to well-known numbers,
were chanted lustily by the inhabitants of the pews, thus winning the
sincere admiration of the visiting clergyman.
[Illustration: “_And made a speech that will adorn the parish annals for
many a year._”]
“Really, such well-trained congregational singing is quite rare,” he
remarked afterward to the rector, and was somewhat surprised at the
short answer: “It shall certainly never occur again.”
It had gone hard with the vested choir but for Mrs. Ogden. Mr. Fellowes
pleaded in vain; in vain the Ladies’ Auxiliary passed resolutions; the
rector was firm. It was only when Mrs. Ogden swept in upon him in his
study, a chastened, still apprehensive boy under one arm, followed by
half a dozen women similarly equipped, and made a speech that will adorn
the parish annals for many a year, that he yielded, respectfully
convinced.
Edgar had met his Waterloo, and lived, so to speak, under a consequent
military surveillance, with much of his prestige gone, his pay docked
for a month, and the certainty of approaching warm weather, when it
would be impossible to take cold, and nothing but a summons to the choir
invisible could excuse him from rehearsals here, to render the future
all too clear to him. In the words of the processional,
“_His tongue could never tire
Of singing with the choir._”
To-day, if you should attend evensong at St. Mark’s, you will beyond a
doubt be delighted with a silver voice that appears to proceed from a
violet-eyed boy with a sweet expression.
“_It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord!_” the voice declares
melodiously, but it is doubtful if its owner is in a thankful frame of
mind. He would in all probability prefer to be with his brother Samuel,
who is at present touring the West triumphantly with a Methodist
revivalist, rendering “_Where is my wandering boy to-night?_” to weeping
congregations for ten dollars a week and his traveling expenses. And
even this success leaves Squealer dissatisfied; he would far rather be
in his father’s position—first tenor in the Denman Thompson Old
Homestead Quartette—and sing “The Palms” behind the scenes, when the
stereopticon vision of the repentant prodigal thrills the audience.
It would seem that your artistic temperament is doomed to discontent.
Whereas Mrs. Ogden, who cannot carry a tune, is perfectly satisfied with
fine laundry work.
[Illustration: “_Perfectly satisfied with fine laundry work._”]
THE LITTLE GOD AND DICKY
“Where are you going?” said somebody, as he slunk out toward the
hatrack.
[Illustration: “_He turned like a stag at bay._”]
“Oh, out,” he returned, with what a vaudeville artist would call a good
imitation of a person wishing to appear blamelessly forgetful of
something he remembered quite distinctly.
“Well, see that you don’t stay long. Remember what it is this
afternoon.”
He turned like a stag at bay.
“_What_ is it this afternoon?” he demanded viciously.
“You know very well.”
“_What?_”
“See that you’re here, that’s all. You’ve got to get dressed.”
“I will not go to that old dancing-school again, and I tell you that I
won’t, and I won’t. And I won’t!”
“Now, Dick, don’t begin that all over again. It’s so silly of you.
You’ve got to go.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s the thing to do.”
“Why?”
“Because you must learn to dance.”
“Why?”
“Every nice boy learns.”
“Why?”
“That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up from
the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to your
father. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Get right up—you must expect to
be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop crying—a great boy
like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you know very well you
aren’t crying for that at all. Come along!”
His sister flitted by the door in an engaging _déshabillé_, her
accordeon-pleated skirt held carefully from the floor, her hair in two
glistening blue-knotted pigtails. A trail of rose-scented soap floated
through the hall.
“Hurry up, Dick, or we’ll be late,” she called back sweetly, secure in
the knowledge that if such virtuous accents maddened him still further,
no one could blame her. His rage justified her faith.
“Oh, you shut up, will you!” he snarled.
[Illustration: “_Secure in the knowledge that if such virtuous accents
maddened him still further, no one could blame her._”]
She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the rest
of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for the sin
that deceived even her older sister, who was dressing her.
A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the course
of events there.
“Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don’t know where the blue one is—it
doesn’t matter; that is just as good. Yes, it is. No, you can _not_. You
will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without. I don’t know
why.
“Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings.
Nonsense—your legs are warm enough. I don’t believe you. Now, Richard,
how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left and right to stockings. You
have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up,
then. Because they are made so, I suppose. I don’t know why.
[Illustration: “’_Stop your scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick._’”]
“Brush it more on that side—no, you can’t go to the barber’s. You went
last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don’t know how to
trim hair. Anyway, there isn’t time now. It will have to do. Stop your
scowling, for goodness’ sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes no
difference, you must carry one. You _ought_ to want to use it. Well, you
should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I don’t
know why.
“Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday
before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw
such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put
them right with Ruth’s. That’s what the bag was made for. Well, how do
you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly! You
will knot the strings. I don’t care if they do carry skates that
way—skates are not slippers. You’d lose them. Very well, then, only
hurry up. I should think you’d be ashamed to have them dangling around
your neck that way. Because people never _do_ carry them so. I don’t
know why.
“Now, here’s your coat. Well, I can’t help it, you have no time to hunt
for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it’s not far. And mind you
don’t run for Ruth every time. You don’t take any pains with her, and
you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes,
you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way,
Richard. Men don’t dance with their sisters. Because they don’t. I don’t
know why.”
He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his
scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She
tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality capable of
extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension,
and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at
every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This
gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.
“I think you might stop. Everybody’s looking at you! Please stop, Dick
Pendleton; you’re a mean old thing. I should think you’d be ashamed to
carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter
me I shall tell papa—you _will_ care, when I tell him, just the same!
You’re just as bad as you can be. I shan’t speak with you to-day!”
[Illustration: “_Going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school._”]
She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed
his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and
passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a
brother and a plush bag going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school;
but his heart was hot at the injustice of the world and the hypocritical
cant of girls, and her thoughts were busy with her indictment of him
before the family tribunal—she hoped he would be sent to bed. Life is
full and running over with just such rosy deceits.
He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the
head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper.
This destroyed his friend’s balance, and a cheering scuffle followed.
Life assumed a more hopeful aspect. In the other dressing-room his
sister had fluttered into a whispering, giggling, many-colored throng;
buzzing and chuckling with the rest, she adjusted her slippers, and
perked out her bows, her braids quivering with sociability.
A shrill whistle called them out in two crowding bunches to the polished
floor.
Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss
Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! there she
was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that pulled out
like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking
castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond a doubt.
“Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!”
The large man at the piano, who always looked half asleep, thundered out
the first bars of the latest waltz, and the business began.
[Illustration: “_A line of toes rose gradually._”]
Their eyes were fixed solemnly on Miss Dorothy’s pointed shoes. They
slipped and slid and crossed their legs and arched their pudgy insteps;
the boys breathed hard over their gleaming collars. On the right side of
the hall thirty hands held out their diminutive skirts at an alluring
angle. On the left, neat black legs pattered diligently through mystic
evolutions.
The chords rolled out slower, with dramatic pauses between; sharp clicks
of the castanets rang through the hall; a line of toes rose gradually
towards the horizontal, whirled more or less steadily about, crossed
behind, bent low, bowed, and with a flutter of skirts resumed the first
position.
A little breeze of laughing admiration circled the row of mothers and
aunts.
“Isn’t that too cunning! Just like a little ballet! Aren’t they
graceful, really, now!”
“_One_, two, three! _One_, two, three! Slide, slide, cross; _one_, two,
three!”
There are those who find pleasure in the aimless intricacies of the
dance; self-respecting men even have been known voluntarily to frequent
assemblies devoted to this nerve-racking attitudinizing futility. Among
such, however, you shall seek in vain in future years for Richard Carr
Pendleton.
“_One_, two, three! _Reverse_, two, three!” If you want your heels
clipped, step back inadvertently into Master Pendleton’s domain. No
matter how pure your purposes, you will illustrate the inevitable doom
of the transgressor against nature’s immutable limitations; you will be
severely nipped. And it will be just—he is triumphantly following the
rules.
The whistle shrilled.
“Ready for the two-step, children!”
A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better the two-step
than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your two-step; it does
not require temperament. Any one with a firm intention of keeping the
time and a strong arm can drag a girl through it very acceptably. It was
Dicky’s custom to hurl himself at the colored bunch nearest him, seize a
Sabine, so to speak, and plunge into the dance. He had his eye on Louise
Hetherington, a large, plump girl, with a tremendous braid of hair. She
was a size too big for the class, but everybody liked to dance with her,
for she knew how, and piloted her diminutive partners with great skill.
But she had been snapped up by the six-year-old Harold, and was even now
guiding his infant steps around the hall.
Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously. Heaven send Miss
Dorothy was not looking at him! She seemed to have eyes in the back of
her head, that woman.
“Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet!” said somebody.
Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little
girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously. For the
first time, free from all personal connection with them, he discovered
that those motions were pretty.
She was ethereally slender, brown eyed, brown haired, brown skinned. A
little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped above her knees; her ankles
were bird-like. The foot on which she poised seemed hardly to rest on
the ground; the other, pointed outward, hovered easily—now here, now
there. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed lightly;
one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the time.
Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step: that metronomic dance
would not have recognized itself under her treatment.
[Illustration: _“Thethelia,” she lisped._]
Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the
art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the
loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time,
and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to
sympathize with clay.
“Don’t they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!”
he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.
“What’s your name?” he asked abruptly after the dance.
“Thethelia,” she lisped, and shook her hair over her cheek. She was very
shy.
“Mine’s Richard Carr Pendleton. My father’s a lawyer. What’s yours?”
“I—I don’t know!” she gasped, obviously considering flight.
He chuckled delightedly. Was ever such engaging idiocy? She didn’t know.
Well, well!
“Pooh!” he said grandly, “I guess you know. Don’t you, really?”
She looked hopelessly at her fan, and shook her head. Suddenly a light
dawned in her big eyes.
“Maybe I know,” she murmured. “I gueth I know. He—he’th a really
thtate!”
“A really state? That isn’t anything—nothing at all. A really state?” he
frowned at her judicially. Her lip quivered; she turned and ran away.
“Here, come back!” he called, but she was gone.
“Ready for the cotillion, children!” and Miss Dorothy, her arms full of
long, colored ribbons, was upon him.
There was a rumbling chord from the piano, a mad rush for the head of
the line. A rosy blonde, with big, china blue eyes, dragged her
protesting sailor-suited partner to the front, and glared triumphantly
at the roly-poly couple behind her. They stared at each other
desperately—they had had their dreams of precedence—and suddenly, as the
robbers stood far apart and swung their arms carelessly high, the
roly-poly couple crouched down, slipped between them, and emerged at the
head of the procession!
The march began. Dicky, linked to a tomboy in white duck, who whistled
the march correctly as she swung along, had fought for a place behind
his late partner, and as they clambered into adjacent chairs he nudged
her violently and whispered, “I’m going to choose you!”
She smiled shyly.
“All right,” she said.
Miss Dorothy approached with the favors. A violent hissing and snapping
of fingers burst out from the line. They wriggled on their chairs. Miss
Dorothy paused, threateningly.
“Perhaps we had better not have any cotillion,” she said sternly. “If I
hear another hiss—” There was a dead silence.
Dicky sat primly, looking at the ceiling. As he had expected, a broad
violet streamer fell in his lap. He leaped to the floor, seized Cecelia
by her skirt, hustled the tomboy, as in duty bound, within the purple
leash, and beckoned to the next girl in the row. They arranged
themselves three abreast, and he drove them, to the inspiring two-step,
across the room, in line with two other drivers similarly equipped. On
the return trip they were confronted by three bands of prancing little
boys, perilously realistic in their interpretation of the pretty figure,
and as they met in the middle, with a scramble of adjustment, the steeds
paired off neatly, and the flushed drivers, more or less entangled in
their long ribbons, accomplished an ultimate two-step.
“Now, you choose me,” he commanded, as they scrambled into the chairs.
Again she smiled, again she hid her cheek with her hair.
“All right,” she said again.
In vain Louise Hetherington made signs to him; in vain the rosy blonde
snapped her fingers—he was blind and deaf. He slipped into the broad
blue ribbon she held out to him at arm’s length, and cantered cheerfully
before her, her slave forever. How lightly she floated on behind them!
Not like that tomboy Frances, who clucked at her team as if they were
horses, and nearly ran them down; nor like that silly, fat,
yellow-curled Gladys, who bubbled with laughter and hung back on the
satin reins until her team nearly fell over. Cecelia swam like
thistledown in their wake, and slipped the ribbon over their heads with
all the effect of a scarf dance.
[Illustration: “_How lightly she floated on behind them!_”]
“That will do for to-day,” said Miss Dorothy, gathering up the ribbons,
and they surged into the dressing-rooms, to be buttoned up and pulled
out of draughts and trundled home.
She was swathed carefully in a wadded silk jacket, and then enveloped in
a hooded Mother Hubbard cloak; she looked like an angelic brownie. Dicky
ran up to her as a woman led her out to a coupé at the curb, and tugged
at the ribbon of her cloak.
“Where do you live? Say, where do you?” he demanded.
Her hair was under the hood, but she hid her face behind the woman.
“I—I don’t know,” she said softly. The woman laughed.
“Why, yes, you do, Cissy,” she reproved. “Tell him directly, now.”
She put one tiny finger in her mouth.
“I—I gueth I live on Chethnut Thtreet,” she called as the door slammed
and shut her in.
His sister amicably offered him half the plush bag to carry, and opened
a running criticism of the afternoon.
“Did you ever see anybody act like that Frannie Leach? She’s awfully
rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice—wasn’t that dreadful? What made
you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She’s an awful baby—a regular
’fraid-cat! We girls tease her just as easy—do you like her?”
“She’s the prettiest one there!” he said.
His sister stared at him.
“Why, Dick Pendleton, she is not! She’s so little—she’s not half so
pretty as Agnes, or—or lots of the girls. She’s such a baby. She puts
her finger in her mouth if anybody says anything at all. If you ask her
a single thing she does like this: ‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’”
He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it? Had he not seen
that adorable finger, those appealing eyes?
“And she can’t talk plain! She lisps—truly she does!”
Heavens! Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his! Brains,
technical knowledge, experience of the world, these he had never looked
to find in her; but perceptions, feminine intuitions—were they lacking,
too?
Poor deluded sex! What shall emancipation, what shall higher education
profit you that cannot even now discern what charm has entangled your
brothers and husbands?
“She puts her finger in her mouth! She can’t talk plain!” Alas, my
sisters, it was Helen’s finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de
Poitiers stammered!
He listened calmly to his sister’s account of his infatuation and its
causelessness.
“Why, she’s a nice little girl,” said his aunt, smiling, “but, really,
she can’t be called exactly pretty. There is something rather attractive
about her eyes.”
In this wise may Mark Antony’s aunt have dismissed the very Serpent of
old Nile herself!
“I should like,” he said to his mother the next day, “to go and see
her.”
“Well, you can go with me to-morrow, perhaps, when I call on Mrs.
Weston,” she assented.
“What? Why, of course not! Men don’t go calling in pumps. Your best
shoes will do. Are you crazy? A straw hat in February! You will wear
your middy cap. Now don’t argue the matter, Richard, or you can’t go at
all.”
Seated opposite her on a hassock, their mothers chatting across the
room, his assurance withered away. There was nothing whatever to say,
and he said it, adequately perhaps, but with a sense of deepening
embarrassment. She took refuge behind her hair, and they stared
uncomfortably at each other.
[Illustration: “_Seated opposite her on a hassock._”]