before, so we are much impressed.”
Oh, why did not the hassock yawn beneath him and swallow him up! To
discuss him as if he were a piece of furniture! Laugh away! The
crackling of thorns under a pot....
Day before yesterday he had been so easily _grand seigneur_, so
tolerantly charmed: to-day he wished he had not come. Why didn’t she
speak? If only they were out of doors; in a room with pictures and
cushions a man is at such a disadvantage.
“If you’ll come over to my house, I’ll show you the biggest rat-hole you
ever saw—it’s in the stable!” he said desperately. It was a good deal to
do for a girl, but she was worth it.
“Oh! Oh!” she breathed, and her eyes widened.
“Maybe you can see the rat—he doesn’t often come out, though,” he added
honestly.
She shuddered and twisted her fingers violently.
“No! No!” she whispered revoltedly. “I—I hate ratths! I dreamed about
one! I had to have the gath lit! Oh, no!”
Frightened at this long speech, she looked obstinately in her lap,
though he tried persistently to catch her eye and smile.
Their mothers’ voices rose and fell; they chattered meaninglessly.
Ladies talked and talked: they never did anything to speak of, they only
talked.
She would not look at him: at his wits’ ends, he played his highest
card. If she were of mortal flesh and blood, this would interest her.
“Look here! Do you know what Boston bull pups are? Do you?”
She nodded vigorously.
“Well, you know their tails?”
She nodded uncertainly.
“You know they’re just little stumps?”
“Oh, yeth!” she beamed at him. “My Uncle Harry’th got a bulldog. Hith
name ith Eli. He liketh me.”
“Well, see here! Do you know how they make their tails short? _A man
bites ’em off!_ A fellow told me——”
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” She shuddered off the hassock, and rushed to her mother,
gasping with horror.
“He thayth—he thayth—” words failed her. Broken sobs of “Eli! Oh, Eli!”
filled the parlor. He was dazed, terrified. What had happened? What had
he done? He was shuffled disgracefully from the room; apologies rose
above her sobbing; the door closed behind Dicky and his mother.
Waves of rebuke rolled over his troubled spirit.
“Of all dreadful things to say to a poor, nervous little girl! I am too
mortified. Richard, how do you learn such dreadful, dreadful things?
It’s not true.”
“But, mamma, it _is_! It truly is. When they are little a man bites them
off. Peter told me so. He puts his mouth right down——”
“Richard! Not another word! You are disgusting—perfectly disgusting. You
trouble me very much.”
He retired to the clothes-tree in the side yard—there were no junipers
there—and cursed his gods. To have made her cry! They thought he didn’t
care, but oh, he did! He felt as if he had eaten a cold, gray stone that
weighed down his stomach. The cat slunk by, but he threw nothing at her,
and his neighbor’s St. Bernard puppy rolled inquiringly into the hedge,
stuck there, and thrashed about helplessly, but he said nothing to
frighten it. He thought of supper—they had spoken of cinnamon rolls and
little yellow custards—but without the usual thrill. What was the
matter? Was he going to be sick? There seemed no outlook to life—one
thing was as good as another. He regarded going to bed with a dull
acquiescence. As well that as anything else. It might be eight o’clock
now for all he cared.
At night his mother came and sat for a moment on the side of the bed.
“Papa doesn’t want you to feel too bad, dear,” she said. “He knows that
you never meant to frighten Cecelia so. You know that little girls are
very different from little boys in some ways. Things that
seem—er—amusing to you, seem very cruel to them. To-morrow would you
like to send her some flowers and write her a little note, and tell her
how sorry you are?”
He could not speak, but he seized his mother’s hand and kissed it up to
her lace ruffle. The cold, gray stone melted away from his stomach;
again the future stretched rosily vague before him. In happy dreams he
did the honors of the rat-hole to a sweet, shy guest.
In the morning he applied himself to his note of apology; his sister
ruled the lines on a beautiful sheet of paper with a curly gold “P” at
the top, and he bent to his task with extended tongue and lines between
his eyes. Hitherto his mother had been his only correspondent. He
carried her the note with a sense of justifiable pride.
“It’s spelled all right,” he said, “because every word I didn’t know I
asked Bess, and she told me.”
_My dear Cecelia_:
I am going to send you some flowrs. I am sory they bite them of but
they do. I hope you did not hafto lite the gas. we are all well and
haveing a good time. with much love I am your loving son.
RICHARD CARR PENDLETON.
“Bess did the periods, but I remembered the large I’s myself,” he added
comfortably. “Is it all right?”
His mother left the room abruptly, and he, supposing it to be one of her
many suddenly-remembered errands, was mercifully unconscious of any
connection between himself and the roars of laughter that came from his
father’s study.
“Just as it is, mind you. Lizzie, just as it is!” his father called
after her as she came out again; and though she insisted that it was too
absurd, and that something was the matter with her children, she was
sure, nevertheless she kissed him with no particular occasion, and held
her peace nobly when he selected a hideous purple blossom with spotty
leaves, assisted by the interested florist.
His offering was acceptable, and if, on the renewal of an acquaintance
destined to grow into a gratifying intimacy, he learned from bitter
experience that more than one subject was tabooed, that more than one
sudden emotion must expect no answering sympathy, how was he to evade
the tribulations of his kind? This cup was prepared for them from the
beginning. If earthly bliss were flawless, should we concern ourselves
at all with heaven?
That day she met him on her walk, and smiling almost fearlessly, offered
him a camel animal cracker! True, the most obvious projection was bitten
off, and that process is the best part of animal crackers; but then, she
was only seven! It is not an age to which one looks for the most
brilliant altruism.
He gave her in return a long-cherished cane-top of polished wood, cut in
the shape of a greyhound’s head, with eyes of orange-colored glass. She
seemed almost to appreciate it. He had been offered a white mouse for it
more than once.
For two long months the Little God led him along the primrose way. The
poor fellow thought it was the main road; he had yet to learn it was but
a by-path. But the Little God was not through with him.
Her brother, an uninteresting fellow at first, had improved on
acquaintance, and though he scoffed at Dicky’s devotion to his
sister—thinking her a great baby—he had come to consider him a friend.
One day, late in April, he led Dick out to a deserted corner of the
grounds, and for the sum of a small red top and a blue glass eye that
had been a doll’s most winning feature, consented to impart to him a
song of such delicious badness that it had to be sung in secret. He had
just learned it himself, and the knowledge of it admitted one to a sort
of club, whose members were bound together by the vicious syllables.
Dicky was pleasantly uncertain of its meaning, but it contained words
that custom has banished from the family circle. They crooned it
fearfully, with faces averted from the house, and an exhilarating sense
of dissipation.
[Illustration: “’_Yelly belly, yelly belly._’”]
“_Yellow belly, yellow belly, come an’ take a swim!
Yes, by golly, when the tide comes in!_”
As he slipped back to the house alone, practising it furtively and
foretasting the joys of imparting it to Peter, the stableman, Cecelia
appeared suddenly from behind a large tree. She was all smiles—she was
not afraid of him any more. Dancing lightly on one foot, she waved her
bonnet and began to sing, bubbling with laughter. Horror! What did he
hear?
“_Yelly belly, yelly belly, comin’ take a thwim!
Yith, by——_”
“Oh, stop! Cissy, stop it! You mustn’t sing that!” he cried wildly.
She looked elfish.
“Why not? Dicky thingth it,” she said with a happy smile.
She had a heavenly habit, left from babyhood, of referring to her
interlocutor and occasionally to herself in the third person.
“But girls mustn’t sing it,” he warned her sternly. “Don’t you dare
to—it’s a secret.”
She danced farther away.
“Dicky thingth it. Thithy thingth it!” she persisted, and as he scowled
she pursed her lips again.
“_Yelly belly, yelly belly——_”
“I won’t sing it! I won’t!” he cried desperately. “I won’t if you’ll
keep still! So there! I tell you I won’t!”
She stopped, amused at his emotion. All ignorant of his sacrifice, all
careless of his heroic defense of her, she only knew that she could
tease him in an entirely new way.
And the Little God, knowing that Dicky would keep his word, and that
Peter would never get the chance for the scandalized admiration once in
store for him, strutted proudly away and polished up his chains. His
victim was secure.
Her brother, on learning the facts, suggested slapping her well—good
heavens!—and having nothing more to do with her, for a mean, sneaking
tattle-tale. Here was an opportunity to break his bonds. But to those
who have served the Little God it will be no surprise to learn that it
was on that very evening that he made his famous proposal to the
assembled family, namely, that he and Cecelia should be really engaged
like her Uncle Harry and Miss Merriam, and in a little while marry and
set up housekeeping in the guest chamber.
“That’s what Miss Merriam is going to do,” he explained, “and Cissy’s
grandma is sorry, too; it doesn’t leave her any place for company but
the hall bedroom. But they’ve got to have the room, she s’poses.”
“That will do, Richard! You are not to repeat everything you hear. And I
am afraid I need the guest chamber. What should we do when Aunt Nannie
comes?”
“Oh, Cissy could have her crib right in the room. She wouldn’t mind Aunt
Nanny,” he replied superbly. “She always sleeps in a crib, and she
always will. A bed scares her—she’s afraid she’ll fall out. I could
sleep on the couch, like Christmas time!”
But in the manner of age the wide world over, they merely urged him to
wait. There was plenty of time. Time! and she might be living in the
house with them!
It was that very night that he reached the top of the wave, and
justified the Little God’s selection.
He came down to breakfast rapt and quiet. He salted his oatmeal by
mistake and never knew the difference. His sister laughed derisively,
and explained his folly to him as he swallowed the last spoonful, but he
only smiled kindly at her. After his egg he spoke.
“I dreamed that it was dancing-school. And I went. And I was the only
fellow there. And what do you think? _All the little girls were
Cecelia!_”
They gasped.
“You don’t suppose he’ll be a poet, do you, Ritch.? Or a genius, or
anything?” his mother inquired anxiously.
“Lord, no!” his father returned. “I should say he was more likely to be
a Mormon!”
Dick knew nothing of either class. But the Little God knew very well
what he was, and was at that moment making out his diploma.
_The End_
❦
By A. Conan Doyle
THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES
A Sherlock Holmes Novel
Illustrated by Sidney Paget
❦
_The London Chronicle_, in a review headed
“THE ZENITH OF SHERLOCK HOLMES,”
says:
“We should like to pay Dr. Doyle the highest compliment at our command.
It is not simply that this book is superior in originality and
construction to the earlier adventures of the great detective. Dr. Doyle
has provided a criminal who, as Mr. Holmes admits, is indeed a foeman
worthy of his steel.[1] Hitherto he has found it comparatively easy to
unmask his antagonists. But in the present case he finds himself
checkmated again and again. There is pitted against him a skill nearly
equal to his own, and he wins the game almost by a hair.”
Footnote 1:
“I tell you, Watson, this time we have a foeman who is worthy of our
steel.”—_Sherlock Holmes._
$1.25
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THE BLAZED TRAIL
❦
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The inspiriting breath of the great pine woods is in this dramatic
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_Third Edition._ $1.50.
* * * * *
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_Third Edition._ $1.50.
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THE HOUSE WITH THE GREEN SHUTTERS
❦
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_The critics differ as to with what other master George Douglas should
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_The London Times_ says: “Worthy of the hand that drew ‘Weir of
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_Harper’s Weekly_: “If Thomas Hardy had written of Scotland, instead
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Hardy, Stevenson, Zola, Flaubert, Balzac, and Æschylus.
Eighth Edition. $1.50.
By Henry Wallace Phillips
RED SAUNDERS
His Adventures, West and East
❦
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whose most delightful quality is its unstudied naturalness. The critics
are all laughing, not at the book, but with it.
* * * * *
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even between the covers of a book.”—_N. Y. Evening Post._
“Mark Twain has written no more delicious stories.”—_Philadelphia
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“A delightful study of life in the West.”—_Newark Call._
“The wind blows through it, and the meaning of it is health and
joy.”—_N. Y. Sun._
“The creator of Red Saunders has an exuberant sense of humor.”—_N. Y.
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Second Edition $1.25
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------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Changed “her little courtesy” to “her little curtsy” on p. 107.
2. Changed “liebchen” to “Liebchen” on p. 86.
3. Silently corrected typographical errors.
4. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
5. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Madness of Philip, by Josephine Dodge Daskam