I’m just as hungry as anything, now, about all the time. My grandmother
says she’s so glad to see me eat again; and so am I glad to eat myself.
Things taste better than they did before. Maybe I shall come back to
school again pretty soon, my father says; but my grandmother guesses not
very, because she thinks I should have a relapse if I did. A relapse is
to get sick when you’re getting well; and, if I should get sick again, O
what should I do! for I want to go out-doors. If they’d only let me go
out, I’d saw wood all day, or anything. There isn’t much fun in being
sick, I tell you, Dorry; but getting well, O, that’s the thing! I tell
you getting well’s jolly! I have very good things sent to me about every
day, and when I want to make molasses candy my grandmother says yes
every time, if she isn’t frying anything in the spider herself; and then
I wait and whistle to my sister’s canary-bird, or else look out the
window. But she tells me to stand a yard back, because she says cold
comes in the window-cracks: and my uncle Jacob he took the yardstick one
day, and measured a yard, and put a chalk mark there, where my toes
must come to, he said. If I hold the yardstick a foot and a half up from
the floor, my sister’s kitty can jump over it tip-top. My sister has
made a Red-Riding-Hood cloak for her kitty, and a muff to put her fore
paws in, and takes her out.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Yesterday Uncle Jacob came into the house and said he had brought a
carriage to carry me over to Aunt Phebe’s; and when I looked out it
wasn’t anything but a wheelbarrow. My grandmother said I must wrap up,
for ’t was the first time; so she put two overcoats on me, and my
father’s long stockings over my shoes and stockings, and a good many
comforters, and then a great shawl over my head so I needn’t breathe the
air; and ’t was about as bad as to stay in. Uncle Jacob asked her if
there was a Billy in that bundle, when he saw it. “Hallo, in there!”
says he. “Hallo, out there!” says I. Then he took me up in his arms, and
carried me out, and doubled me up, and put me down in the wheelbarrow,
and threw the buffalo over me; but one leg got undoubled, and fell out,
so I had to drag my foot most all the way. Aunt Phebe undid me, and set
me close to the fire; and Lucy Maria and the rest of them brought me
story-books and picture-papers; and Tommy, he kept round me all the
time, making me whittle him out little boats out of a shingle, and we
had some fun sailing ’em in a milk-pan. Aunt Phebe had chicken broth for
dinner, and I had a very good appetite. She let me look into all her
closets and boxes, and let me open all her drawers. But I had to have a
little white blanket pinned on when I went round, because she was afraid
her room wasn’t kept so warm as my grandmother’s. Soon as Uncle Jacob
came in and saw that little white blanket he began to laugh. “So Aunt
Phebe has got out the _signal of distress_,” says he. He calls that
blanket the “signal of distress,” because when any of them don’t feel
well, or have the toothache or anything, she puts it on them. She says
he shall have to wear it some time, and I guess he’ll look funny, he’s
so tall, with it on. The fellers played base-ball close to Aunt Phebe’s
garden. I tell you I shall be glad enough to get out-doors. I tell you
it isn’t much fun to look out the window and see ’em play ball. But
Uncle Jacob says if the ball hit me ’t would knock me over now. Aunt
Phebe was just as clever, and let me whittle right on the floor, and
didn’t care a mite. And we made corn-balls. But the best fun was finding
things, when I was rummaging. I found some pictures in an old trunk that
she said I might have, and I want you to give them to Bubby Short to put
in the Panorama he said he was going to make. He said the price to see
it would be two cents. They are true ones, for they are about Aunt
Phebe’s little Tommy. One day, when he was a good deal smaller feller
than he is now, he went out when it had done raining one day, and the
wind blew hard, and he found an old umbrella, and did just what is in
the pictures. The school-teacher that boarded there, O, she could draw
cows and pigs and anything; and she drew these pictures, and wrote about
them underneath.