and his two hands actively employed as fly-catchers. Suddenly he
remembered having amused himself the day before in oiling his sled
runners, using the striped stockings for wipers; but he did not
trouble Kathleen just then with the tidings. The blue-striped
stockings were not found. Then came a difficulty with his new boots.
"Aow! they pinch!"
"Where, sir?"
Master Will, not being able to say exactly where, was left to get used
to the new boots as well as he could.
"Now see, here's your new suit; an' be careful with it, mind--careful
as iver was. It's me afternoon out; and if ye go tearin' the cloos on
ye, ye'll jist mind thim yersel, or else go in tatthers wid yer
grandmamma."
This speech had no more wholesome effect on Will than to cause him to
stick out his tongue at Emily, while Kathleen, standing behind him,
arranged his buttons and his drapery generally.
"Now, if you could only be as good as you're purty," exclaimed
Kathleen, wheeling Will suddenly round before his tongue was quite in
place again, "you'd do well enough."
With a few finishing touches to Emily's sash ribbon, Kathleen went off
to make her own gorgeous toilet for her afternoon out.
The dinner was next to be gotten through with. But that was not an
unpleasant hour to Will. After dinner the children were permitted by
their mother to amuse themselves under the shadow of the great elm
behind the house. She knew that with Emily this permission simply
meant liberty to sit quietly beneath the overhanging branches, gazing
dreamily over the soft summer landscape, or listening to the sweet
sounds that stirred the air around and above her. But with Will it
might be more broadly interpreted into leave for frequent raids over
fences and through bars for butterflies and beetles, or any luckless
rover that strayed along. So she explained to her son in this wise:--
"Will, dear, remember that your grandmamma is coming for you, and you
must not soil or tear your clothes by running about. Play quietly in
the shade. The time will not be long now."
"Yes, mum."
Such implicit obedience as this "Yes, mum" implied! In fact, there was
the promise in it of every one of the cardinal virtues.
The two children then went away through the long hall, whose doors
stood wide open in the warm summer afternoon, and Will, dragging along
the slower-footed Emily, hurried on to the elm tree.
"Don't pull so, Will; I shall drop my basket, and my spool and
thimble will roll away."
"What do you want to bother with work for this beautiful afternoon?"
inquired Will, slackening his pace.
"I promised mamma I would try and finish it this week," said Emily,
"and I like to keep my word."
"I thought the machine sewed."
"So it does; but mamma says I must learn just the same as if there
were no machines."
"Well, I'm glad I'm not a girl, to sit pricking my fingers, and
jabbing needles in and out all day."
Patience was not one of Will's virtues.
How lovely it was out under the elm! The sweet-scented grass was warm
with the afternoon sun, and musical with the chirp and hum of its
insect homes. The bees fluttered in and out over mamma's rose garden,
and all the air was filled with the delicate fragrance of the roses.
Emily, seated on the great gnarled elm roots, drank in all the sweet
scents and sounds, her forgotten work-basket lying overturned in the
grass before her. Will spread himself out at full length on the
ground, and kept his eyes open for chippers and spiders, and all the
busy little things that crept, or leaped, or flitted around him. Now
and then the afternoon hush was broken by the faintly tinkling bells
of a horse-car turning some distant corner, the rumbling of a heavy
team going over the dusty turnpike, or the voices of the belfry clocks
calling the hour to each other from the steeples of the neighboring
city.
Master Will, however, soon became tired of this quiet. He scrambled
up, and wandering away into the rose garden, lifted caressingly to his
cheek the beautiful pink blossoms which leaned towards him from amid
the green leaves. He was looking for a choice little bud to fasten in
Emily's hair; and when he found it, he came whistling out into the
clear grassy spaces again, a little bird in a bough overhead tilting,
and twittering, and eying him askance.
Will rushed up to Emily, and hung the bud in her ear; he rearranged it
in the blue ribbon of her hair, so that it nodded sleepily over her
nose; he dropped it, as if it were a tiny pink egg, in the soft golden
moss of curls which he upturned on his sister's head. Then he threw it
away, and stamped on it; for Emily had drawn a book from her pocket,
and deep in some fairy under-world story, was unmindful of his roses
and his pains.
He ran recklessly away into the rose garden; he caught a bumblebee; he
pursued a daddy long-leg with the watering-pot, going deeper and
deeper all the time among the briery branches. The crashing of the
stems caused Emily to come up from fairy-land a moment.
"Have a care, Will, dear. The roses have thorns. You may tear your
nice jacket."
Crash, crash! rip, rip! The rose trees are dragging at Will with their
prickly fingers. With great effort he burst away from them, and rushed
out, with no worse mischance than a rent in his trousers.
"Aw! aw! aw!"
All the little knolls seemed to take up Will's sorrowful cry, and
repeat it.
"You must not tear or soil your clothes."
Every cricket in the grass seemed to be screaming these words of his
mother, and here was her luckless son with two green spots on his
stockings, and a grievous rent in his new pantaloons.
It was Kathleen's afternoon out; she had warned him, and there was no
help in that direction. He looked mournfully over his shoulder at the
damages with a vague idea that he had perhaps some undeveloped
capacity for mending.
[Illustration: "YOU'LL SEE HOW NICELY I'LL SEW IT."]
"Couldn't you pin it up nicely?" he inquired, in most insinuating
tones, of Emily, whose eye just then met his.
Emily burst into a merry laugh.
Will was mute with indignation, and tingling to his finger's ends,
with this untimely mirth. His flashing eyes asked if this were a time
for jesting.
"Come here, Willy, boy, and you'll see how nicely I'll sew it, not pin
it. Never fret about it, dear; I will explain to mamma that you were
really not so much in fault. It was only rather a mistake to get in so
far among the bushes. If you had been chasing the cat, or turning
somersets, she might, perhaps, be vexed; but poh! she will excuse
this."
Will, unseen by Emily, wiped away with his thumb one big tear after
another out of the corner of his eye.
"She is a good sister, anyhow, and I am a mean fellow ever to get mad
with her, and say rude things to her," he said to himself, as Emily
darned, and chatted, and bade him be of good cheer.
"My stockings, too, sister. There's a great green grass stain on both
of them, and grandmamma expects us to be _so_ nice."
Will coughed to choke down a sob.
"Perhaps you may have time to change them, Will. I will help you. But
we must get the pantaloons all nicely done first."
So this kind sister stitched, and taught unconsciously as she
stitched, lessons of love and patience, lessons of cheerful
helpfulness and sweet unselfishness, which Will never forgot.
More than once, in after life, when, in heedless pursuit of life's
roses, he had been wounded by its thorns, he remembered that sweet
face of consolation, those dear hands held out to aid him, and all the
sunshine and the song of that sweet summer afternoon, and fresh peace
and hope came to him with the remembrance.
"It's all finished now, the very last stitch; and now for the
stockings. Let me see the spots."
Will put his two heels firmly together, turned out his toes, pulled up
his puffy pantaloons, and stooped his head and strained his eyes to
look for them.
They were but little ones, after all, and a brisk rubbing with the
handkerchief, and a judicious pulling down of the trouser bindings,
almost concealed them. They were just in time with their repairs; for
grandmamma's yellow-wheeled carriage was coming up the avenue.
E. G. C.
OUR DAILY BREAD.
A little girl knelt down to pray
One morn. The mother said,
"My love, why do we ever say,
Give us our daily bread?
Why not ask for a week or more?"
The baby bent her head
In thoughtful mood towards the floor:
"We want it fresh," she said.
[Illustration: LITTLE WILLIE.]
WILLIE'S PRAYER.
One sweet morning little Willie,
Springing from his trundle-bed,
Bounded to the vine-wreathed window
And put out his sunny head.
It was in the joyous spring-time,
When the sky was soft and fair,
And the blue-bird and the robin
Warbled sweetly everywhere.
In the field the lambs were playing,
Where the babbling brook ran clear;
To and fro, in leafy tree-tops,
Squirrels frisked without a fear.
In his ear his baby-brother
Baby-wonders tried to speak,
And the kiss of a fond mother
Rested on his dimpled cheek.
Zephyrs from the fragrant lilacs
Fanned his little rosy face,
And the heart's-ease, gemmed with dewdrops,
Smiled at him with gentle grace.
Gliding back with fairy footsteps,
Willie, dropping on his knees,
Softly prayed, "Dear God, I love you!
Make it always happy, please!"
SQUIRRELS.
How pretty little squirrels look perched in the branches of a tree! I
like to watch them as they nimbly run up the trunk or spring from
bough to bough. One or two are generally to be seen in a clump of
great old beeches near a house in the country where I usually spend
some happy weeks in summer; and I will tell you a story of a little
squirrel whose acquaintance I made there last summer.
I happened to be up very early one morning, long before breakfast was
ready or any of the family were down, and I went out into the garden
to enjoy the fresh, sweet smell of the early day. The cows were
grazing in the field beyond, and now and then lowing a friendly
"good-morning" to each other. Some ducks were waddling in procession
down to the pond, quacking out their wise remarks as they went. The
little birds were singing lustily their welcome to the new-born day.
Even the old watch-dog came yawning, stretching, blinking and wagging
his tail in kindly dog-fashion to bid me "good-day" in the summer
sunshine.
As I stood under the great beech trees, taking in with greedy eye and
ear the sights and sounds of country-life so refreshing to a Londoner,
I heard something fall from one of the trees, then a scuffle, and
immediately afterward a white Persian cat belonging to the house
bounded toward me in hot pursuit of a dear little squirrel. I was just
in time to save the poor little animal by stepping between it and the
cat. The squirrel passed under the edge of my dress and made off again
up another tree; so pussy lost her prey.
Soon afterward, when we were at breakfast, the butler told us that one
of the little boys of the village, who had lost a pet squirrel, had
asked if he might look for it in the garden of the house. It had first
escaped into some trees in the park, and he had traced it from them
into the garden. It at once occurred to me that this must be the
little creature I had saved from the cat. I remembered how it made
straight toward me, as if asking me for protection from its enemy,
which only a tame squirrel would do; and I proposed, when breakfast
was over, that we should go out and help in the search.
Little Jack Tompkins stood under the beech trees, looking with
tear-stained face up into the branches. Suddenly I saw his face
brighten, and he called out, "I see un, ma'am; I see un! If so be no
one warn't by, I be sure he'd come to I."
I need not say we retreated to a distance; then Jack called up the
tree in a loud whisper, "Billee, Billee!" and in a minute down came
the little creature on to his shoulder. I can tell you Jack was a
happier child than he had been when he came into the garden. And when
I told him what a narrow escape "Billee" had had from the cat, he
said, "It would be hard if a cat eat he, for our old puss brought he
up with her own kits." Then he told us how the squirrel, when a tiny
thing, had dropped out of its nest and been found by him lying almost
dead at the foot of a tree, and how he had carried it home and tried
whether pussy would adopt it as one of her own kittens. The cat was
kind; the squirrel throve under her motherly care, and became Jack's
pet and companion.
Now, children, in this instance it was all very well to keep a tame
squirrel. "Billee" seemed happy leading the life he was accustomed to;
he had been fed and cared for by human beings from his infancy, and
might be as incapable of finding food and managing for himself in a
wild state as a poor canary would be if let loose from its cage. But
generally it is cruel to imprison little wild birds and animals who
have known the enjoyment of liberty.
[Illustration: THE SQUIRREL.]
PUPPET.
Puppet had two occupations. She had also a guitar and a half-bushel
basket. These things were her capital--her stock in trade.
The guitar belonged to one of her occupations, the half-bushel basket
to the other.
In consideration of her first employment, she might have been called a
street guitarist. In consideration of her second, she might have been
called a beggar--a broken-bits beggar.
Puppet would have been considered, among lawyers, "shrewd;" or, at a
mothers' meeting, "cunning;" or, among business men, "sharp." That is
to say, she knew a thing or two. She knew that being able to sing no
songs was a disadvantage to her first occupation, as a large hole,
half way up her basket, was an advantage to her second.
It seems odd that a hole in one's begging basket should be an
advantage.
But because of the hole, she had always behind her a crowd of dogs,
that seemed to have been just dropped from the basket, the last one
never having fairly got his nose out; and because of the dogs she was
known as "Puppet" all over the city.
To be known by a characteristic name is of great advantage to a
beggar.
If Biddy, looking from the basement door, says to cook, "Och, an'
there comes up the street our little Puppet, with her dogs all behind
her, carrying her basket," cook is much more likely to see the broken
bits "botherin' roun' on the schalves o' the cubbid," than she would
be if Biddy should say, "Shure, an' thir cams to us a dirty beggar, it
is."
But it is with Puppet's first occupation, and not her second, that we
have to do. If you had not read more descriptions of faces within the
last year than you can possibly remember in all the years of your life
put together, I would tell you what sort of face Puppet's was; that it
was a bright face, with blue eyes, just the color of the blue ribbon
that went first round the guitar's neck, and then round Puppet's; that
Puppet's teeth were as white as the mother-of-pearl pegs that held her
guitar strings at the bottom; that her cheeks were as white as the
ivory keys; that her hair was long, and yellow--just the shade of the
guitar's yellow face.
But that would be very much like a dozen other faces that you have
seen; so I will only say that it was a smiling little face.
It smiled as it bent over the guitar, while the little fingers picked
their ways in and out among the strings; and it smiled yet more
sweetly as she looked up to catch the coppers thrown from the fourth
and fifth story, and sky-parlor windows.
Puppet once lived with a man who said that he was her uncle; and she
believed him so thoroughly, that she let him box her ears whenever he
felt like it, till he died. Since then Puppet had lived almost
friendless and alone.
One hot July day Puppet was wandering through the streets of the great
city, with her little guitar under her little arm. The city did not
seem so great to Puppet as it does to some of the rest of us, because
she was born and brought up there.
"O, dear," sighed Puppet, "_what_ a mean place you are!"
No one had given her a copper since the cool of the morning. People
seemed to have a fancy for spending their coppers on soda-water and
ice-cream.
"What shall I do?" moaned Puppet. Whatever should she do? Puppet must
have coppers, or she could not live.
She sat in a cool, shaded court, close to the busy street; but she
couldn't get away from the heat, and the noise, and the people
sighing, like herself, "O dear, O dear!"
"I'll try once more," said Puppet, tuning her guitar.
She played "Home, Sweet Home," with variations. But all the people who
heard her were suffering, because their homes in the city were rather
hot than sweet. "Home, Sweet Home" could win no pennies from "city
folks" in July.
Then Puppet whistled to her guitar accompaniment a little "Bird
Waltz," and whirled on the pavement in time, till I doubt if she
herself knew whether the guitar had gone mad, and were waltzing about
her, or she were waltzing about the guitar.
A boy came dancing into the court, singing,--
"O, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad!
O, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad!"
But he danced out again, without leaving a penny behind him; so it
would have been just as well if he had never come in. Still, he amused
himself for a few minutes, which not many people were able to do in
that hot July midday.
Puppet went from the little court, and wandered on and on. At last she
left the city far away behind her.
And out and away from the city there were green fields.
Puppet had heard of green fields, but she had never seen any face to
face before. As she looked at them, she had a dim remembrance that she
had heard that they were covered with long, waving grass. But all
these fields were close shaven, like the beautiful mouse-colored
horses in the city.
It was pleasant, but not very exciting to a city girl. The city girl
presently grew tired of it.
"There seem to be houses farther along," she said; "I'll go and play
there."
Puppet slung the little guitar about her little neck, and started off
again.
Presently she came to a cottage with a little green yard in front of
it, and in the middle of the little green yard was a great green tree.
Puppet sat down on the grass, leaned against the tree, and felt very
hungry.
A lady was sitting by an open window, sewing. She was sitting so that
Puppet could see only a bit of her left cheek, and her dark hair, just
beginning to turn gray, and her right hand as she brought the needle
up from her work. From what she did see, Puppet thought that she would
give her something to eat, if she could but get her attention. Surely,
she must be often hungry herself, or why should she have so many gray
hairs?
Puppet, leaning against the tree, ran her fingers over the guitar
frets in light harmonies; but the lady did not look.
Her thoughts must be far away, in a quiet and happy place, that
Puppet's harmonies should seem a part of that place.
The guitar broke into a low, mournful minor. Still the lady gave no
heed to Puppet.
Puppet was feeling very hungry. She would play the Fandango. That
_must_ rouse any one. She began at the most rattling part.
The gray-haired lady looked round quickly. "Bless me, bless me! what's
this?" Seeing a little girl out by the tree, she put her sewing on the
table, and came to the door and into the yard.
"Dear me! a little girl with yellow hair, and I just to have been
dreaming of a little girl with yellow hair!"
"Is anything the matter with my hair, mum?" Puppet stopped playing,
and ran her hands through the yellow mass of uncombed locks.
"Ah, no, little girl! there is nothing the matter with your hair.
Only--" The lady was thinking how soft, and fine, and curly was the
yellow hair of which she had been dreaming.
"What do you want?" asked the lady.
"I'm very hungry," said Puppet, "because of the walk, and--and--and
all," concluded Puppet, remembering that the lady could not
understand.
"Come in, then."
Puppet went in. Up in one corner of the sitting-room were a little
tip-cart and a doll. Puppet ate her bread and meat, looking hard at
the tip-cart.
"Where is it, mum?"
"Where is what, child?"
"The child, mum." Puppet pointed to the tip-cart.
"Gone, my dear," said the lady, softly.
"Dead?" Puppet remembered that that was what they said about her uncle
when he went away. It was the only going away that she had ever known.
"Yes, I suppose so," said the lady, with a little shiver.
"That's bad, mum."
"No, not bad," said the lady, sorrowfully. "It is just right that it
should be so."
"But it must be lonesome like, unless there were kicks and things."
Puppet was still thinking of her uncle.
The lady wondered what the child could mean, and not knowing, said,--
"What's your name? How could I have forgotten to ask your name?"
"Puppet."
"That's a funny name. And where do you live?"
"Two or three miles away from here."
"Have you walked here to-day?"
"Yes, mum."
"What should make the child walk so far, I wonder?"
"Money, mum, and things to eat."
"Have you eaten enough?"
"Yes. I must go home now, or I shall be late."
"Are you sure you know the way?" asked the lady, a little anxiously.
"You're such a little thing!"
"O, yes, mum! Go as I came."
"Well, good by."
"Good by, mum."
But was Puppet _sure_ that she knew the way?
* * * * *
The next morning, a man walking on a road that ran by the edge of a
meadow, was going to his work.
Hark! What did he hear? Was it a cry! was it a child's cry? And what
was that? It sounded like a fiddle. He stopped to look around.
"I declare, we've had a high tide in the night!" said he, and trudged
on.
But what was that? _That_ was certainly a child's cry.
The man looked sharply about.
"It can't be she," he said. "Folks from heaven wouldn't cry, even if
they were let to come--at least, if they were little children."
And so he still looked sharply about. And looking, what did he see?
He saw great haystacks of meadow hay out in the meadow, with the
tide-water all about them. Then his eyes were fixed on one particular
haystack. On its top, with her yellow hair and smiling face in sight,
was--it could not be, though--but it was--a little girl, and dangling
by the side of the stack was a guitar with a yellow face. The man
waded through the water that lay between the dry land and the stack.
"Crawl down to my shoulders;" and he stood by the side of the stack
till she was on his shoulders, with her arms about his neck.
[Illustration: {Puppet, with her guitar, sitting on top of a haystack}]
"How came you there?"
"I went everywhere to try to get home, and it was dark, all but the
moon; and I saw the stack, and a board went from the ground to the top
of it."
"Sure enough, the prop."
"And I was so tired!"
"Poor child!"
"And I never saw the water come before, and it was only wet enough to
wet my feet when I got up."
"Well, well! We'll go home and get something to eat."
The man walked into his kitchen with the little girl and the guitar on
his shoulders.
"Why, John, are you back? Dear me, if there isn't that same
child--Puppet!"
John went off to his work again. Puppet ate her breakfast, and told
her story, and then said,--
"Please, mum, may I play with the cart?"
And because of her yellow hair, she might play with the cart.
"But aren't you sick, and oughtn't you to take some medicine, and go
to bed?" asked the lady, whose hair had grown gray over sickness and
medicine.
Puppet meditated. She felt very well. She thought that she had rather
play with the tip-cart than to take medicine. So she played all day,
and went to bed at night.
At night John come home from his work, and, as usual, heard of all
that had happened through the day.
"I wish we could keep the little thing, John, dear. She has yellow
hair, just like--"
"Yes," said John, "I saw."
"And she'd be _such_ a comfort!"
"If she didn't die by and by," said John.
"But, John, dear, just think of a little thing like her spending the
night in the middle of a meadow, with the water all about her."
John thought. And he thought that if she could stand that without
being sick, she could stand their love without dying.
So Puppet and the guitar live with John and the gray-haired lady.
MARY B. HARRIS.
[Illustration: "MIKE ROLLED OVER AND OVER TO THE FOOT OF THE STEPS."
See p. 169.]
MERRY CHRISTMAS.
All the hill-side was green with maples, and birches, and pines. The
meadows at its foot were green, too, with the tufted salt grass, and
glittering with the silver threads of tide braided among its winding
creeks. Beyond was the city, misty and gray, stretching its wan arms
to the phantom ships flitting along the horizon.
From the green hill-side you could hear the city's muffled hum and
roar, and sometimes the far-off clanging of the bells from its hundred
belfries. But the maples and birches seemed to hear and see nothing
beyond the sunshine over their heads and the winds which went
frolicking by. Life was one long dance with them, through the budding
spring and the leafy summer, and on through the grand gala days of
autumn, till the frost came down on the hills, and whispered,--
"Your dancing days are all over."