because it’s a cool place. I used to keep it in the pantry, but
the Morse baby always found out where to look for it. She climbs
everywhere.”
“I think that Morse baby is more trouble than the kid,” said Edith.
“But can’t I go up and get the sirup, Mrs. Chick? I’d like to so much.”
Mrs. Chick considered. She was tired, and did not wish to go herself;
but could Edy be trusted with a lamp?
“Just hand down that candle from the mantel-piece, Edy. There,” said
she, after lighting it, “that’s safe enough! The pitcher is right on
the closet floor, under the lowest shelf, behind a box. Will you be
very sure not to carry the candle into the closet?”
“Oh, no, indeed! Oh, _yes_, indeed, I mean! And I’ll be, oh, so
careful!”
“Well, if you’ll remember to set the candle down by the chamber door, I
think there’ll be no danger.”
“Yes, Mrs. Chick, I will,” said Edith, and danced away joyfully. It was
almost an unheard-of thing for her to be trusted with a light, and she
enjoyed it. She held the candle aloft, and peered rather cautiously
about the unfinished room next door to Jimmy’s. The whole house was so
queer, she thought, and Mrs. Chick put things in such droll places.
“If mamma knew I had this candle she’d be nervous. She talks to me
about lamps and things as if I was a baby; but I guess she’ll find out
I know as much as Kyzie. Kyzie singed her hair once. Father thinks I
can’t take care. I mind all that’s said to me; I mind beautifully.
“Now, I wouldn’t forget what Mrs. Chick told me about this candle, not
for anything! She told me to set it down by the closet door!”
Ah, Edith, a mistake already! She told you the chamber door!
“I remember a great deal better than Gertie Mercer. She can’t remember
eight times nine to save her life. Let’s see, the pitcher’s on the
closet floor behind a box.”
She opened the closet door, the candle still in her hand. What a
delicious odor of apricots and peaches! Did Mrs. Chick keep her fruit
here too? Such a funny woman!
Edith set her candle down by the closet door, and knelt just in front
of it, the bottom of the candlestick almost touching the skirt of her
frock! But as she peered into the closet she forgot there was anything
in the world but a sirup pitcher and some apricots and peaches. That
candlestick with the candle in it was as far away from her thoughts, to
say the least, as the moon in the sky.
But the candle did not forget. It is the duty of a lighted candle
to set fire to anything that is put in its way; and presently, when
Edith by a quick movement thrust her skirt right into the flame of the
candle, what could you expect but a blaze?
Before Edith could explore the closet floor and take out the sirup
pitcher, the blaze was creeping up the back of her frock. She knew
nothing about it till the smell of burning woollen reached her
nostrils; and at the same instant she felt a dreadful sensation of
heat, and knew that she was on fire! She screamed in horror,—
“Mrs. Chick! Mrs. Chick! Fire! Fire!” Oh, how far it was down-stairs!
Could Mrs. Chick hear?
But Mrs. Chick was not in the kitchen. Feeling rather uneasy about
Edith, she had followed her up-stairs, and was on the upper landing
when the child called. She heard the first cry, and came at once to her
aid, followed by Jimmy.
I rejoice to say that the flames had not reached Edith’s hair. Mrs.
Chick wrapped her in her best rug, which was quite spoiled by the
means, to say nothing of the little girl’s pretty red frock; but the
dear child herself was unharmed.
VI
JIMMY’S BUTTER
“DON’T cry so, you dear little girl; there is no harm done,” said Mrs.
Chick. “Why, Jimmy-boy! I wish you were asleep. Run right back to bed,
and don’t be so scared. Sister wasn’t hurt a bit.”
All this while Mrs. Chick, having undressed Edith, was rocking her in
her arms like a baby.
“I was a naughty, heedless girl,” said Edith. “I ought to have told
you mamma never trusts me with any kind of a light except a taper in a
tumbler. But I thought I was going to be so careful this time.”
“’Twas all my fault, dearie. I knew you weren’t one of the
stop-to-think kind. You’ll learn by and by,” replied Mrs. Chick
soothingly, as she placed the trembling, exhausted child in bed between
lavender-scented sheets, and turned to leave her.
“’Twas all my fault,” repeated the good woman to herself. “Thank Heaven
no harm came of it! but I should think I was old enough to know better.
I’m so weak-minded about children; can’t deny ’em anything they ask for!
“Now, there’s that cream. I’ve no business to let Jimmy churn it
to-morrow morning. Something will happen to it, as sure as my name’s
Biddy Chick; and I can’t afford to lose the cream. It needs a steady
hand to bring butter, and I’ll do the churning myself before he wakes
up.”
After this exciting adventure with the candle, it was some time before
the children could compose themselves to go to sleep. Mrs. Chick had
planned to do an unusual amount of work next day, and wanted an early
breakfast; but she had not the heart to waken her young guests.
“Let ’em have a good rest, poor little things! I remember how I used to
hate to be called up when I was a child; though, to be sure, I knew I’d
got to work, and that makes a difference. Bless me! how I did have to
work!”
It was eight o’clock, and the sun was quite high, when the children sat
down to their breakfast of omelet and waffles. The maple-sirup had been
forgotten after all, and Mrs. Chick had to go up-stairs for it.
“I’ve saved the cream for you to churn, Master Jimmy,” said she,
watching his smiles as she spoke.
“I ought to have got it out of the way by half-past five, and all made
into balls; but I don’t have a nice little boy like you come visiting
me every day, and I can’t bear to disappoint you.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Chick,” said Jimmy.
He supposed it would be nothing but fun to make butter, and secretly
hoped he might be allowed to pat it into balls.
After breakfast he followed his kind hostess into the shed, and saw her
pour a jar of rich cream into the green churn. She placed a chair for
Jimmy beside the churn.
“All you’ve got to do,” said she, “is to turn the handle of the churn
’round and ’round and ’round.”
“Oh, that’s nothing; I can do it just as easy,” replied Jimmy.
Mrs. Chick laughed.
“It’s harder than you think, little dear. But when you are tired of it
you can let me know. I shall be close by in the kitchen, making pies.”
“Look here! see what I’m doing! You never churned any butter, now did
you, Edy?”
“No,” said Edith; “and I don’t want to. I’d rather help Mrs. Chick make
pies.”
For two minutes Jimmy was triumphant.
“How easy it goes! How well I do it!” he thought. “My arms must be
pretty strong.”
But nobody was there to hear or see him. Mrs. Chick had gone into the
kitchen, and was talking to Edith about buttering the plates for the
pies. Through the open shed door he espied the kid nibbling leaves from
some low bushes. The little Morse baby, who never stayed at home if
she could help it, had brought her black doll just inside Mrs. Chick’s
yard, and was rolling her in the sand.
“What a dirty baby to do that!” thought Jimmy.
Still he almost wished she would come into the shed; he did not enjoy
being alone.
He turned the handle of the churn ’round and ’round and ’round. He was
growing tired.
“Mrs. Chick!” he called out, “I think the butter is done.”
But Mrs. Chick paid no attention. She was telling Edy how hard she used
to work when she was a little girl named Biddy Roberts, and lived in
England.
“Perhaps,” said she to Edy, “they wouldn’t have called me Biddy if they
had known I was going to marry a man by the name of Chick!”
“Mrs. Chick!” called Jimmy again.
“Well, what is it, dear?” said she from the kitchen.
“The butter’s done, I guess. Will you please come and see if the butter
is done?”
Mrs. Chick was very busy. She had put some pie-crust on a deep plate,
and was scalloping the crust into a kind of high wall all around the
plate, ready to hold a rich custard.
“I think it’s done; I do truly,” repeated Jimmy.
“No, sonny; the butter can’t have come yet. What are you doing? Don’t
take off the cover of the churn, Jimmy-boy. Only keep on turning the
handle ’round and ’round and ’round.”
“Why, that’s just what I did do! Why, I’ve turned it ’round forty-two
hundred times. I know I have. Can’t I stop now and get a drink of
water?”
Mrs. Chick laughed. She was a woman who laughed very easily.
“Yes; get some water if you like.”
There was a large olla (oya) in one corner of the shed, covered by a
white soup-plate. The water in it was always cold. Jimmy left the churn
at once, and went to the olla, and stood to take a long breath. Then he
ran to the pantry for a tumbler; he did not like to drink from the tin
dipper which sat in the soup-plate.
But while he was gone for the tumbler, the Morse baby slipped into the
shed, making hardly any noise. She came in with that dirty, dirty doll,
as full of sand as a pepper-box is full of pepper. She climbed into
Jimmy’s chair, lifted the cover off the churn, which was only set on
edgewise, and said, “Diny, oo go in dare!”
And then she plumped Dinah head-first into the churn.
Nobody heard or saw her. What made her do it? It is of no use trying to
guess. She might have thought such a sandy doll ought to have a bath.
Or perhaps she was making believe Dinah had been naughty, and she was
shutting her up in the closet.
At any rate, as soon as the miserable black object was safe in the
churn, Baby Morse ran away to chase the kid, and forgot all about her
doll.
When Jimmy had drunk two tumblers of water, and rested a long
while,—for he was not in the least haste,—he went back to the churn.
The cover was off.
“I did not know I took that off,” said he. And he put it on again
quickly.
Then he turned the handle ’round and ’ro-ound and ’ro-o-ound. But how
ha-rd it went! Much harder than before. How heavy the cream had grown
all at once! Mrs. Chick had warned Jimmy that it would seem to grow
very heavy at the last.
“Do come, Mrs. Chick!” he cried eagerly. “The butter’s done now. I know
it’s done. It breaks my arm off to turn it ’round.”
Mrs. Chick had just put her second pie into the oven. She went out to
the shed, wondering what Jimmy meant, for she was sure the butter had
not come. She took off the cover of the churn and looked in.
“Why! what’s this?” cried she.
She put in her hand then, and drew out that dirty, dirty doll.
She could not help laughing, though she was very sorry. It was quite
too bad to spoil so much cream, and she was by no means a rich woman.
“I’m glad I didn’t put in all my cream,” she thought. “I had sense
enough to save out half of it.”
But she was just as much amused as either of the children. She never
was cross or sad, whatever happened.
“Of course Baby Morse has been here,” said she; “nobody else would cut
up such a caper. But I haven’t seen her or heard a sound of her all the
morning.”
“I saw her,” said Jimmy. “She was playing in the dirt with that horrid
black thing; but who’d ’a’ thought of her dropping it in the churn?”
Then they had another hearty laugh, all three of them; and Jimmy never
dreamed that he had been at all to blame. The cream was the color of
Mrs. Chick’s gray gown. She poured it into a pan, to save it for the
animals, and then washed the churn.
“I won’t scold the boy; it was all my own fault,” thought she. “It’s
well I’m going to take these children home to-day. If they were to stay
here much longer, I should let ’em pull the house down over my head.—Do
you hear what I say, Biddy Chick?”
Mrs. Dunlee was very much surprised that afternoon to see Edy walk into
the house wrapped in an old shawl of Mrs. Chick’s, which almost tripped
her up at every step.
“O mamma!” she cried, throwing up her arms, “my dress was just burnt
off me! The back of it, I mean.”
And while Mrs. Chick was trying to tell the story, Edith began to laugh
and cry wildly.
“O mamma!” said she, casting herself on her mother’s neck, “you always
did just right with me; you knew best when you wouldn’t trust me with
candles and things. I _am_ the careless-est girl!”
“There! I’m glad you’ve found it out,” retorted Kyzie. “You never
believed it when anybody else said so.”
Mamma raised a warning finger, and Kyzie was ashamed, and held her
peace. She was the dearest girl in the world, but liked to lecture
Edith; and Mrs. Dunlee thought Edith did not need any lectures now. She
was feeling very humble.
“O mamma!” she went on, “I should think you’d tie my feet and hands
with a rope! yes, I should! Too bad I burnt up Mrs. Chick’s pretty rug!
But then, oh, dear! just think, you know, if there hadn’t been any rug!”
To divert their minds, Mrs. Chick told the story of Jimmy’s butter.
They were much amused; but the funniest part of it was to hear her
say,—
“But it was all my fault. I needn’t have been so weak-minded.”
When she left next morning there was a roll under the wagon-seat done
up in brown paper. She had not known that the roll was there till she
got home, when she found it contained a beautiful rug—a far better one
than had been burned.
“Just like Mrs. Dunlee! She knew if I should see it before I came away
I should hate to take it. And what’s this? A bran new shawl! Well,
well, well! She’s a good woman, if there is one. Do you hear what I
say, Biddy Chick?”
VII
THE BOY FROM NEW YORK
IN October a little boy came from New York with his father to visit
Major Irwin. It was Gilly’s cousin, Dick Somers; and Dick was destined
to get Jimmy into trouble.
He was a boastful boy. He told wonderful stories about the city of New
York, where the houses went as high as Jack’s beanstalk, and the people
had so much money that they almost threw it away.
Dick had left a dog at home which seemed to him now as large as a small
burro. Yes, he was sure of it. A dog much brighter than Punch Dunlee,
as well as vastly handsomer.
Dick had a beautiful sister; there was no one like her in California.
She had been married six weeks before this in church; and “I tell you
what, they spread carpets all over the streets for Maggie to walk on;
yes, they did!”
Gilbert only laughed at these remarkable tales; but they annoyed Jamie,
because they made him feel so very inferior.
He tried in his turn to remember and relate strange things that had
happened to him or that he had seen; but he did not succeed very well.
Dick despised rattlesnakes, horned toads, gophers, and road-runners.
He wouldn’t believe there are quicksands in California, where you can
“slump down, down, clear out of sight.”
“Pooh! you needn’t tell _me_!”
It was very discouraging to talk to Dick; still Jimmy was always ready
to talk.
One Saturday morning, Dick and Gilbert came over to the Dunlees’ to
play with Jimmy, who was glad to see them. It was very still in and
about the house that morning. Mr. Sanford had been gone to the city
of Washington for many weeks, and it always seemed odd without Mr.
Sanford. To-day papa was visiting a sick man just out of town; Mrs.
Porter, over the way, had borrowed the baby; Kyzie and Edith were
having a botany lesson with Aunt Vi somewhere in a canyon; and Lucy had
gone to Lincoln Heights to spend the day.
“What a merry time the little boys seem to be having in the stable!”
remarked Mrs. Dunlee to Vendla, as they heard the sound of childish
laughter floating in on the air.
She had asked Jimmy to get some hens’ eggs; for she and Vendla were to
make some cake for tea by a new recipe. There was no haste about the
eggs, however. Vendla stood by the pantry window rolling out pie-crust
with a glass rolling-pin, and would not be ready to begin upon the cake
till her four pies had gone into the oven.
Ah, that cake which had not been baked yet, that cake by the new rule!
If Mrs. Dunlee and Vendla had only known what strange thing would
happen to it that afternoon they certainly would not have made it at
all! But they did not know; and Mrs. Dunlee very soon took down a large
baking-pan and buttered it, saying to herself all the while that she
hoped the baby was behaving well at Mrs. Porter’s. She missed him, and
missed her three girls, and thought what a happy mother she was with
five such dear children. Yet, after all, she was not sorry to have them
out of the house for once on a Saturday morning.
“There’s Jimmy laughing again, above the other boys. He’s a noisy
child; I wonder if Baby Eddy will be as fond of fun as Jimmy? Well, at
any rate, I hope they’ll both grow up to be good.
“‘And if they fall, or if they rise,
Be each, pray God, a gentleman.’”
Now it was time for the cake.
“Jimmy, Jimmy!” called Mrs. Dunlee from the window. “You may bring the
eggs now.”
All this while the little boys in the stable had been chatting, and had
hardly thought of the eggs.
“Billy Dow thrashed me last night,” said Gilbert, shaking his fist at
the rafters. “But I tell you I paid him off.”
“Paid him off, that big fellow?” said Jimmy.
“Of course! Did you s’pose Gilly was going to forgive him?” cried the
little cousin from New York contemptuously. “Would you forgive a boy
that thrashed you, Jimmy Dunlee?”
“Ye-es,—if I couldn’t catch him! If he was ever so much larger’n me!”
was Jimmy’s candid reply.
Gilly laughed. “_I_ don’t forgive ’em ’cause they’re big! If I didn’t
dare hit Billy, I could call him awful names, and run out my tongue at
him; couldn’t I? Guess he won’t try to thrash _me_ again!”
“What did you call him?” asked Jimmy, much interested.
“‘Billee! Billee!’ says I, as loud as I could screech; ‘Billee, you’re
an old monkey-wrench!’ says I.”
“Why!” exclaimed Jimmy, struck by Gilly’s boldness. “Why-ee! I’ve had
some o’ those big boys call me a monkey; that’s bad enough!”
“Yes; but I said monkey-wrench,” said Gilly proudly.
“I was the one that told him the word!” cried Dick, eager to share in
the praise; “it’s a word they have in New York.”
Not one of the three little boys thought of asking, “What is a
monkey-wrench?” It sounded like something too bad to be talked about.
“What’s that queer noise?” asked Dick.
It was John laughing all by himself in the stall at what the boys were
saying. But when Jimmy peeped through the slats of the stall at the
pretty chocolate-and-white cow, John stood there looking as solemn as
an owl.
“We’ll get our eggs first, and then go in and play with Jessie,” said
Jimmy, thinking this a great pleasure. But Dick, who had hardly ever
seen a cow, was secretly afraid of Jessie’s “hooks.”
“Let’s see which’ll get the most eggs,” said he, beginning to climb the
ladder to the mow.
And now began a hand-and-knee exploring-expedition after eggs.
“Needn’t dig so deep,” said Jimmy, as Dick thrust both arms up to the
elbows in the straw.
“Well, but I’ve found an egg, Jimmy Dunlee, and you haven’t! Just as
yellow! Do you keep yellow hens?”
The laugh was now against Dick, who “didn’t know everything,” so Gilly
said, “even if he did come from New York.”
“I’ve found two eggs,” said Gilly, “so, now, what you think?”
“And I’ve found four,” cried Jimmy, trying to pitch his voice on a
subdued key. Too much triumph might be impolite to his guests.
“Why, here are two more, makes four. I found ’em myself,” said Gilbert
grandly. “What does your mamma do with so many eggs?”
“She’s going to put these in a cake.”
“I like mince-pies better’n cake,” returned Gilbert.
“I don’t eat ’em,” responded the boy from New York disdainfully, “and
my mamma’s fankful I don’t!”
“What _do_ you eat?” asked Jimmy.
Dick considered a moment.
“Apple-pie and cream candy and wedding-cake. Sometimes I eat bread and
butter—if there’s jelly on it.”
“Oh!” said Jimmy with great respect, mingled perhaps with a little envy.
Did this come of living “back East” in New York? What more delightful
than to be Dick Somers, and live where you have wedding-cake every day
of your life!
“But,” ventured Jimmy with rising courage, “maybe this will be
wedding-cake that mamma’s going to make. She didn’t say.”
The other boys laughed, and Dick said,—
“Pooh! I know better’n that! Say, none of your sisters ever went and
got married, did they, Jim?”
Went and got married! His little sisters! Jimmy pondered on this
foolish question. Dick meant it as an insult to his mamma’s cooking, no
doubt, though he could not see how. Making sport of her cake, indeed,
and before it was baked!
Jimmy had tried to be polite to the boys as his guests; but boys who go
visiting ought to be polite too.
“Dick Somers!” cried Jimmy in a towering rage, “you stop that! I don’t
care if you did come from New York, you don’t know any more about my
mamma’s cake than you do about—about horned toads, so there!”
It was just here that the pleasant voice called from the pantry window,—
“Jimmy, Jimmy, you may bring the eggs now.”
It was well that something should cut short Jimmy’s angry speech. It
was not safe to discuss horned toads above all things with Dick. Jimmy
always grew furious to hear Dick talk so wisely about them, when, as
Gilly said, “he wouldn’t know one from a caterpillar;” whereas Jimmy
had raised a whole family of the queer little creatures, and knew them
like A B C.
VIII
THE MISSING CAKE
IT was pretty warm that Saturday afternoon, but a strong southerly
breeze was blowing. Vendla had just set the last clean dishes on the
pantry shelf, and gone up-stairs, when her mistress heard the sound of
something falling, and, going into the pantry, found that the screen
had fallen out of the window. Jimmy stood just outside, talking with
John, and the screen had fallen close to Jimmy’s feet.
“Here, little one,” said John, “if you’ll hand that up to me, I’ll
pound it in so it won’t come out. But what made you ask about
quicksands?”
“Oh, to tell Dick Somers! He won’t believe a word I say.”
“That’s the little fellow from New York, is it? Well, you tell him it’s
all true. He _can_ sink up to his ears in a quicksand, and he may try
it if he wants to.”
“There! there! I knew it all the time,” cried Jimmy. “I wish you’d
tell him I did see two live rattlesnakes, and I did see—oh, lots of
road-runners! He thinks I’m a pretty nearly fool! Almost!”
Mrs. Dunlee heard this scrap of conversation as Jimmy was entering
the house. He came along to the pantry, looking rather vexed and
discontented. His mother suspected he was thinking of the New York boy,
and wondered a little that he should be so anxious to go that very
afternoon to return his visit. Dick did not seem to be a very agreeable
companion, yet he had a sort of fascination for Jimmy.
Jimmy-boy lingered about the pantry. The frosted cake “made by a
new rule” sat cooling on a platter, and the flies outside on the
window-screen were wildly longing to get in and have a share; but the
wire they beat against was hard and strong, and would not let them in.
Jimmy did not blame the flies for desiring the cake. It was certainly
beautiful to behold. Could Dick Somers ever have seen anything more
spotlessly fair, even in the great city of New York?
“Mamma, is this a wedding-cake?”
“No, dear; we only have wedding-cake when people are married.”
“Oh, I forgot that! ’Course we don’t!”
Jimmy looked abashed. How could he have been so stupid? He knew now
why the boys had laughed at him. Yes, and why Dick Somers was always
enjoying such an astonishing amount of wedding-cake. Dick’s sister had
been married in church, and the whole city had been carpeted for her to
walk on, or so Dick pretended. And naturally there had been bushels
and bushels of cake.
“When are you going to cut this, mamma?”
“To-night, my son.”
“Oh, goody! Wish I had a piece this minute to carry to the boys! Dick
Somers thinks we don’t have anything good out here. Why, mamma, he just
makes fun of everything in California!”
“You may give him a piece to-morrow, Jamie.”
“May I?”
The little boy gazed wistfully at the cake. He knew mamma had frosted
it on purpose to please her children; she and papa never ate any
frosting.
“It does look so smooth and nice before it is cut up. If Dick could
only see it all whole!”
Jimmy seemed to be talking to himself, rather than to his mother,
and Mrs. Dunlee did not answer him. But she recalled the remark
afterwards, indeed that very evening, after something had happened of
which I am about to tell you.
“I must go up-stairs now to change my dress,” said she.
Jimmy followed her out of the pantry, and she shut the door.
“Where are you going, my son?” asked papa a little later, coming home
from his ride, and meeting Jimmy running off at full speed.
“To Gilly Irwin’s, papa; mamma said I might.”
Jimmy was in a hurry,—Mr. Dunlee observed it,—in an unusual hurry. And,
as he rushed away like a whirlwind, he paused an instant to pick up a
basket which stood under the large pepper-tree.