ceased for an appreciable instant its laboured progress, began to nose
the air uncertainly, and then in a short series of jerky swoops rose,
again and again, to an altitude of some hundred feet or so. There it
poised, came about in its sweep, rose once more, and finally began to
settle with steadily increasing velocity.
We stood spellbound. One could literally hear the breathing of the
crowd. The suspense was too horrible. Ernie—our darling Ernie! Could
nothing be done to save her?
“’Ware below there!” shouted the taller of the two policemen.
And just then the bow of the ship grazed the roof of the corner house
past which it was dropping. There sounded a familiar _tick-tock_. The
machine started off in a new direction, bumping along the house-fronts,
till finally with a shock of tearing wood and a crash of splintered
glass it succeeded in bunting its way half through a second-story
window, midway of the block. Where it lodged!
A distinct gasp of relief escaped from the crowd,—followed by a feebly
started cheer, which rose and swelled in volume as with clang of bell
and clatter of flying hoofs the hook-and-ladder company swung round the
corner of the street and bore down upon us.
The next few moments passed for me in a confused sort of dream. When I
finally came to myself I found that I was sitting on the lowest step
leading up to the house in the window of which the airship was lodged.
Miss Brown sat beside me, firmly clasping her own hand, the while she
murmured,—
“We mustn’t faint, my love. We mustn’t! If your dear mother can stand
the strain, everybody else should _gladly_!”
The firemen and policemen were gathered in an official group in the
gutter, and around them sported and pranced a delighted bunch of
street-boys. Mother had disappeared.
In another moment the house door opened, and a whitecapped maid came
down the stairs to say to me,—
“Your mamma wishes you to go home to your little brother now, miss. The
young lady is quite safe inside. They will follow when the crowd has
gone. My! what a fright we’ve had. That there flying-airship-machine not
only broke the window, but tore out the sash! I thought it was Judgment
Day.”
Well, somehow I managed to get home, where I clasped trembling little
Robin in my arms.
“What has happened, Ellie?” he sobbed.
“Ernie went flying, honey,” I answered, and looked at the clock. The
whole incident had passed in exactly thirteen minutes! If I had not the
evidence of my own eyes I should never believe it.
Finally the excitement subsided. The crowd gradually dispersed. Ernie,
in a quelled and chastened frame of mind, her hand clasped tight in
mother’s, returned.
They brought sad news of the flying-machine. It seems that while the
policemen and hook-and-ladder crew still stood discussing the best
method of bringing it down,—perhaps some three minutes after my
departure from the scene,—the motor again started up, the car took a
last fatal leap backward, and fell two stories to the street,—where it
was shattered into so much kindling wood. Which goes to show just how
much we have to be thankful for!
“Oh dear!” grieved Ernie, plaintively. “Who could have suspected our
surprise would turn out so! Where’s Geoffrey? Has anybody seen him?”
It appeared upon investigation that Geof had been to the basement-door
to inquire “if all were well within.” He was very white and
wild-looking, Rose said, and seemed ashamed to come in.
I should have liked it better if he had come and faced mother on the
spot; but instead he sneaked off home,—Geof is certainly a queer fellow
in some ways,—and that evening confessed the whole affair to Uncle
George, asking for money to pay whatever damages we are responsible for,
and legal protection for himself and Ernie. For he imagined that they
were in some way publicly liable, and might be arrested at any moment.
Uncle George was very angry, the more so since any display of inventive
activity on Geoffrey’s part is extremely distasteful to him. He called
upon mother this morning to acquire further details, and remarked with a
flourish of his cane that he had “thrashed Geof soundly.”
Uncle George is always primitive, and generally mother disapproves of
his methods; but this time she returned, with a flash of her maternal
eye, that “it was just what Geoffrey needed.” Nevertheless, she herself
believes in what might be called “reformatory” punishments. So Ernie
took her dinner in bed last night, where she would have plenty of time
to think, while _we_ answered the questions of the boarders, and Haze
interviewed quite a string of enterprising reporters on her behalf! He
really managed rather well, I fancy, and finally convinced them that
there was not much of a “story.”
The matter, however, did not end there for Ernie; for this afternoon
when she came home from school mother called her into the nursery, and
pointing to the pretty plaid dress on which she had been working when
the excitement began, remarked,—
“My dear, since you are so anxious to be helpful I shall let you finish
your dress yourself. The material is cut, and the lining basted. I will
give whatever directions you may need, but dressmaking is not nearly so
difficult an art as the construction of flying-machines. Besides, if you
are busy with your needle, I shall not worry about you.”
Poor Ernie! her face was a study. She simply hates sewing. “It makes her
toes prick,” she says. Also, it will mean giving up all her playtime for
weeks to come, and she must be careful and not botch, since she will
have to wear the result of her labours.
On the whole, I think her punishment was even more severe than
Geoffrey’s. But neither of the culprits complains. Rather they _glide_
about the house in such a beatific state of Christian humility that one
knows it cannot last.
“I don’t believe in hitting a fellow when he’s down,” remarked Haze to
me this evening. “But I’m glad they realise what they’ve done. Apart
from the frightful publicity of the thing, I _miss the flying-machine_.
There is nothing to keep the draughts off my head at night, and the
workshop is not what it was!”
Thursday, December 11.
This afternoon mother called on Mrs. Burroughs. She is the lady whose
house Ernie broke into with the flying-machine, and I forgot to say how
lovely she was about it. “Surprised, of course,” as Ernie admitted, “but
_so_ pleasant.”
Mother intended calling yesterday, to arrange about the broken glass,
etc.,—for which, fortunately, Uncle George said he would pay,—but she
was flat, poor dear, with a nervous headache, and so had to put it off.
Ernie was rather shaken, too, and Robin quite excited and feverish.
As he continued to have a little “temperature” this morning, I did not
give him his reading lesson till afternoon. He is really getting on very
nicely, when one considers the disadvantages against which he has to
fight;—not only his ill health, but he has had so many stories read to
him, and is so far advanced for his age in other ways, that it is hard
for him to read:—“I see a Cat. Does the Cat see me?” If he did not wish
to crush Georgie’s rising conceit, I think we would have a struggle
teaching him.
He said to me to-day when the lesson was over,—“Oh, Ellie, I do hate
cats,—all but Rosebud!” and sighed prodigiously. It is amusing to hear
Robin sigh. He is such a little boy, and the sigh is so very big. I told
him he would make an invaluable passenger aboard a sailing vessel, for,
if the wind died down, it would only be necessary for him to sigh once
or twice to blow the ship right into port.
This idea tickled him mightily, and he sighed again even louder than
before, and then he said he would tell me a story. I love Bobsie’s
stories,—they are so original. Here is the one he told this afternoon:
“Once there was a Crusader, and his name was Max, and he lived up a tree
in the Holy Land.”
“What sort of a tree, Robin?” I asked.
“It was a nut-tree,” Bobs replied, “and there were chestnuts on it, and
hickory-nuts, and peanuts, too. The Crusader and the squirrels what
lived with him used to eat them all day long. But one time the squirrels
had gone out on a visit, and the Crusader was sitting on a branch alone,
and he saw a Griffin go by. And the Griffin was muttering and murmuring
to his self, ‘Oh, you wait, my fine lady, till I get home, and then
won’t I have you for my tea! Oh! ho! my fine madam, just you wait, and
then we’ll see!’ So Max, he knew right away that that meant a Princess;
and he slid down the trunk of the tree, an’ he ran right up to him, an’
he shouted in his ear,—
“‘_Where’s_ that Princess you have hid?’
“And the Griffin jumped, but then he pertended it was only a burr what
he had in his foot, and he said,—
“‘Princess? Princess? I haven’t any Princess, my dear fellow. What are
you talkin’ about?’
“And just then Max he heard a sobbing sound, which was the Princess
weeping, and he shouted,—
“‘Oh my! not much you haven’t! I hear her crying this very instant, an’
if you don’t tell me where she is, I shall cut your head slam bang off!’
“But the Griffin he was v-e-r-y clever, and he said, ‘What do you mean,
old nosey? Why, that’s only my sick grandmother that you hear. She has
an influenza, and so she’s _got_ to sniff!’
“But the Crusader was not so easily fooled as all that, and he took up
his sword, an’ he cut off the Griffin’s head! bang!! And then he looked
around for the Princess, an’ after a while he found her in a pit what
the Griffin had dug. And then the Crusader, and the Princess, and the
squirrels all went and lived in the Griffin’s castle, ’cause the
Princess didn’t know how to climb trees, and anyhow Max was tired of
nuts.”
* * * * *
Just as Bobsie finished his story mother came in from her call, and as
we wanted to hear all about it, she took him in her lap in the big
rocker, while I seated myself on the hassock at her feet. Mrs.
Burroughs, she said, was charming,—so cordial and friendly, and would
not listen to anything about “damages.” She seemed endlessly amused at
Ernie’s escapade, and laughed and laughed over it. Then she would break
off to apologise, and say she fully realised how great the shock must
have been to us;—till some freshly funny aspect of the adventure would
strike her, she would laugh again, and mother would laugh, too.
Finally they began to talk of other things. It seems that Mrs. Burroughs
had had a little boy who was an invalid. His name was Francis. He was
ill for five years with some spinal trouble, and died when he was seven.
Mother told me the sadder details later, for Robin takes his illness so
much as a matter of course that we never like to say anything before him
that would be apt to make him realise, or arouse apprehensions. Mrs.
Burroughs’ husband had died some years previous, and so she was left
quite alone, except for an aunt, an old lady of nearly seventy, who
fortunately was out making calls Tuesday afternoon, and so escaped the
excitement of Ernie’s invasion.
Mrs. Burroughs then asked mother a number of questions about Robin. She
said she had often noticed his little pale face at the nursery window as
she passed our house, and she wondered if he ever got out. Mother
answered that we could not let him go very often this winter, for he
took cold so easily, and his crutches seemed to tire him.
Then Mrs. Burroughs flushed a beautiful rose colour, hesitated, and
said, in a breathless little way, that her boy, Francis, had had a
wheel-chair for the last couple of years of his illness from which he
had gotten a great deal of comfort and pleasure. She had often wondered,
seeing Robin at the window, if it would not be nice for him, too. Half a
dozen times, she said, she had been on the point of sending it over.
“And it shall come to him this evening. I don’t know what has held me
back so long! You will let your dear little son accept it as a gift from
my Francis, will you not, Mrs. Graham?” she pleaded. “Children have no
feeling about taking presents from one another,—and I should be so very,
very glad. For Francis always loved to give!”
Of course, mother could make but one answer,—and how splendid the chair
will be for Robin! Now he can get out on the mild, sunny days, which was
impossible for him when he was dependent only on Ernie’s sled. Dear
little fellow!—he is delighted with the prospect, and we have great
hopes of the good it will do him.
And how kind of Mrs. Burroughs to think of it, and offer it the way she
did,—without any hint of patronage or condescension. She also asked with
what mother called “a hungry look” if she might not run in sometime and
make Bobsie’s acquaintance, and she invited Ernie and me to call upon
her, too. I shall love to go, and even Ernie admits that perhaps it
won’t be so bad, since Mrs. Burroughs seems to be “a delicate sort of
person” who understands how “others feel.”
Really it is rather pathetic the way Ernie has brightened up since we
have had the offer of the chair. I think in her secret heart she
considers herself responsible;—a sort of unappreciated _dea ex machina_,
as it were. And certainly it is an unlooked for and lovely end to what
might have proven a very terrible adventure.
Saturday, December 13.
The sun shone bright and beautiful this morning, there was no wind, and
the streets were clear of snow, so Bobsie went for a ride in his new
wheel-chair. What do you think he wore? The dearest little fur-lined
overcoat, and a fur cap with a military cockade, almost the exact
duplicate of those belonging to Georgie which I was mean enough to envy
the last time he came to see us!
This is the way it happened. The wheel-chair did not come from Mrs.
Burroughs Thursday evening as we had hoped. Robin kept watching for it,
and listening for the bell. I waited, too, but all in vain. I don’t know
which of us went to bed the more disappointed. The next day, Friday, it
rained. Robin could not have gone out under any circumstances,—but it
was not until late in the afternoon, after hours of waiting, that the
chair finally arrived.
It was left at the basement door by Mrs. Burroughs’ maid with a big
bundle and a little note. Mother read the note, while I undid the
bundle, cutting all the strings, you may be sure, and wondering what it
might contain. Inside the wrapping paper there was a dear little steamer
rug;—such a pretty, serviceable plaid, and warm as warm can be. Then
came the overcoat, the fur cap with close ear-laps, just such as they
are wearing this winter, and a charming pair of fur-lined gloves!
But,—could we accept so much?
“Listen, Bobs,” said mother, and read the note aloud:
“My Dear Robin:—
“The wheel-chair which I am sending, and the coat and cap,
belonged to a little boy whom I wish you might have known
and loved. His name was Francis. If you had known him, you
could not have helped loving him, I am sure. He was sick a
great deal of the time, like you, and always so patient and
good. Your mother tells me that you are good, too, and that
is why I want you to have his things. I had to alter the
coat and cap a little, or you would have had them before
this, for my Francis always liked his clothes just so,—in
the very latest style. Perhaps you feel that way, too!
Please wear them,—and I hope you will enjoy the chair very
much. It will make me happier to know that another little
boy is making use of my boy’s things.
“With love to your mother and yourself, believe me,
“Your friend,
Clara Cecilia Burroughs.”
Now was not that a lovely note?
“Will you take the things, Bobsie dear?” said mother.
“’Course I will,” answered Bobs with a sympathetic sniff. He had felt
the sadness underlying the gentle words, and stood quite grave and
serious as we tried on the coat and gloves. They fitted as if they had
been made for him, and how charming our Robin looked!
“I’ll have to be very good when I wear these,” he remarked,
quaintly:—but, alas, for resolutions!
As I said, we took our first walk this morning, and Robin was so
comfortable in his new chair with the steamer rug tucked close about his
little thin legs! The street was full of his “friends,” and Bobs beamed
on them with gracious condescension. A pretty glow of excitement burned
in his cheeks; his eyes were bright as stars; he did not look like a
little invalid boy.
“People will think I am riding just because I am so Rich,” he remarked,
looking down at his fur-lined gloves;—and that moment turning the corner
of Washington Square, whom should we meet but Georgie and his nurse, out
for a morning stroll, too.
“Hello!” says Georgie, his eyes nearly popping out of his head with
amazement,—“Where’d you get those things?” For, naturally, he had never
seen Bobs attired so gorgeously before.
“Boy gave ’em to me,” answered Robin, loftily.
“What boy?” questioned Georgie. And then before Robin had time to
reply,—“Pooh! I wouldn’t take coats an’ things from anybody, ’cept just
my papa. I’d be ashamed to wear other people’s clothes!”
“No, you wouldn’t! Not the way I do!” shouted Robin, with flashing eyes.
“This coat belongs to an Angel, I’d like to have you know! And nobody’d
let you wear it,—you’re too bad!”
“Robin! Robin!” I cried. “What would Francis think if he could hear you
now?”
Robin instantly subsided; and, indeed, it was not necessary for him to
say more. Georgie was quite quelled and done for. The idea of the Angel
coat was more than he could grapple with. He walked along beside the
chair in a state of wondering, but subdued, solemnity.
After a while he began timidly to stroke the fur on Robin’s cuff.
“Is it warm?” he asked.
“Yes, it is,” answered Robin, still a trifle defiant.
“Suppose you tell Georgie about the things,” I said,—for Robin was
clever enough to appreciate that the impression he had created, though
delightful to his vanity, was not strictly in accordance with fact.
“Well,” he muttered, unwillingly, “Francis is an angel now, and this was
his coat. And I’m sick like he was, and good, too, and that’s why I
needn’t be ashamed to wear it.”
“So long as you _stay_ good,” I answered.
And Robin blushed and hung his head, while Georgie sighed. He did not
entirely understand, even yet, but somehow the tension of his prosaic
little mind was relieved.
Nevertheless, he was very respectful and polite to Robin all the rest of
the walk, and the explanation must have set him thinking, I suppose, for
this afternoon while Bobs was upstairs taking a nap, who should appear
at our door but Georgie, this time under the care of William, the
coloured butler.
“Here,” he said, handing me a square package, prettily done up with
tissue paper and red ribbon. “This is for Bobbie, because he is sick.
Tell him it’s the one with the picture of the tiger. He likes that best,
but I like the Brownie Books.”
“Oh, thank you, Georgie dear,” I said, kissing his little ruddy face.
“What made you think to bring it over?”
“I wanted him to have something to ’muse himself with,” said Georgie,
“and mamma said I might, if only I would stop teasing.”
“It was very kind of you, honey,” I answered, and Georgie beamed.
Sometimes I am ready to admit that I am unjust to Georgie. It isn’t his
fault that he has all the things I want for Robin, to be sure.
And now I must write something that I dread to put down in black and
white;—but there is no use shirking. We have to face it. The Hancocks
are going! The news came quite unexpectedly to us all, and it is
nobody’s fault.
Mrs. Hancock saw mother this evening, and explained that Mr. Hancock’s
married sister had come to the city and taken a furnished house, and it
had always been understood between them that when this happened she and
Mr. Hancock would rent a floor. She said she was really sorry to leave
us, that she had no complaints to make; but they were anxious to be
settled before Christmas, and felt obliged to give up their rooms next
Saturday. That would give us a whole week in which to rent them, and she
hoped we would have no trouble.
But, oh dear! we haven’t even had any applications for Mrs. Hudson’s
room yet. It seems to be an unlucky season, or something, and when the
Hancocks go, I don’t see how we are going to get on at all!
We will have only Miss Brown left, and she pays less than anybody else
because her room is so small. Can a family of seven people live on ten
dollars a week? That sounds like a problem in a Lady’s Magazine; but I
fancy the answer will prove very different from those printed, if we are
unlucky enough to have to try it.
“I have such a queer feeling whenever I look at Miss Brown,” confessed
Ernie, as we put away the dinner dishes,—Rose having begged for an
unexpected afternoon out. “Sort of as if we were a Cannibal family, and
she was the last captive we had left. Just think, she means muttonchops,
and beefsteak, and milk for Robin, and butter, and eggs, and everything
except rent! We must guard her carefully, Elizabeth, and see to it that
she does not escape!”
Poor Miss Brown! I had had somewhat the same feeling myself, though I
would not have thought of expressing it in exactly Ernie’s words.
I think mother must have guessed from our faces how worried we were,
for, as soon as the dishes were finished, she sat down at the piano and
began to play the jolliest lot of college airs. And soon we were all
singing and laughing; to hear us you wouldn’t have thought we had a care
in the world. Certainly, for a time we forgot we had! Even Haze shut up
his Cæsar, and joined in the frolic.
Now wasn’t that exactly like mother,—and no one but her?
“We’ll think it out together, Elizabeth,” she whispered, as I bade her
good-night. “Don’t worry, dear.”
Monday, December 15.
Mother and I have had our consultation, and we feel better. It was
rather like a general and his adjutant preparing for a siege. First, we
mustered our resources,—the house; so much coal in the cellar, furnace,
and range; Miss Brown’s seven dollars a week, Hazard’s three: next, the
demands that were to be met,—lighting (always an expensive item at this
season of the year); milk for Robin; and the table expenses generally.
“The first thing to be done is to dispense with Rose,” said mother,
pencil on lip. “Apart from the question of wages, she eats a great
deal!”
At this we could not help laughing. The parsimonious picture presented
was certainly ludicrous;—but, on an income of ten dollars a week, every
potato counts, and Rose has never been either efficient or economical.
We have kept her for her cheapness and general good temper. She has
washed the dishes, cooked, after a fashion, and attended a _great_ many
funerals,—apparently the more the merrier.
“It’s ma cousin’s step-brudder’s lil’ boy, dis time, Mis’ Graham,” she
explained to mother, Saturday afternoon. “That ain’ no very close kin,
’cordin’ to some folks’ way ob reckonin’, Ah know. But Ah’m one o’ them
that believes in keepin’ up the dispectability ob the fambly tie. C’n Ah
go?”
Of course, mother answered that she might, and consequently Ernie and I
washed the dinner dishes. So, though perhaps Rose will be sorry to leave
us, since she once confessed to Robin in an unconsidered burst of
confidence, she considers us “a right sma’t fambly to do fer,” we cannot
feel that she will be much of a loss; and, as we know she can get a
place any time she wants it with her sister “at a swell boa’ding house
in the fash’nable distric’s,” we are relieved of responsibility on that
score.
So now it is settled;—and after next Saturday when the Hancocks leave we
are to do everything ourselves, washing, cooking, sweeping, and all. I
can’t say that I look forward to the experiment with any particular
“thrill,” but mother is great to work with, and somehow we’ll pull
through.
“Perhaps you will be willing to admit by this time, Elizabeth,” remarked
Haze this evening, looking up from _Treasure Island_, “that I was right,
and you were wrong. My salary comes in pretty conveniently just at
present, eh?”
Certainly, Haze’s salary is one of the things we are counting on,—but,
for all that, I can’t help grieving over him, poor dear. Though he does
not utter a word of complaint, I know he realises more keenly every day
the magnitude of the sacrifice he has made. He was not cut out for a
business-man and finds it hard to adjust himself to the new conditions.