THE FEATHER BED
“Do you live around here?” asked Ted, as the new boy made himself
comfortable on the cushion which Jan placed on the grass.
“Yes, in that big red place,” and he pointed across a valley to where,
on the side of a hill, stood a very large house.
“Do you live _there_?” inquired Ted, in some envy. He thought it would
be great fun to live in a house that looked large enough to hold five
or six houses as big as grandpa’s house at Cherry Farm.
“Yes, I live there,” he answered, smiling again.
“It must be fine!” cried Jan, with sparkling eyes. “I’d like to live in
a place like that. I mean for a little while,” she added quickly. “Of
course I like our own home best and there is no place nicer than Cherry
Farm!”
“I should think not!” cried the lame boy, as he looked over the green
fields and at the trees. “I love it here. That’s why I come over this
way every time I can to sit and look.”
“I should think you’d like it over where you live,” and Ted pointed to
the big red house across the valley.
“Oh, yes, it is nice there. But there are so many of us that sometimes
a fellow can’t be quiet unless he comes away by himself. It isn’t all
of ’em who can, worse luck! I can travel better than most of ’em.
There’s some who can’t get away at all.”
“Who?” asked Jan curiously.
“The boys and girls.”
“Do you mean your brothers and sisters?” inquired Ted. “You must have a
large family for such a big house.”
“Family!” cried the lame boy. “Well, yes,” and he smiled. “I guess you
could call it a family, for we all live in one home. But they aren’t
any of ’em my brothers and sisters.”
“They’re not?” cried Jan. “And yet they live with you?”
“Oh, yes. You see that’s the Crippled Children’s Home over there, and
I’ve been in ’most a year trying to get cured,” and he looked at
his lame foot. “It’s a lot better,” he went on. “When I first came I
couldn’t walk at all. But now I can come farther than any of ’em,” and
he seemed quite proud.
“It’s too bad,” said Jan kindly. “Does it--hurt?”
“Not a bit, except when Dr. Wade pulls it and twists it to make it bend
easier. That doesn’t hurt but a little while,” and he smiled bravely.
“He’s trying to cure me.”
“It’s too bad,” murmured Jan again.
“I--I don’t b’lieve I’d like to be lame, and not run and jump and
climb,” said Teddy, looking off toward the Home, and trying not to
glance down at Hal’s lame foot.
“Oh, don’t feel sorry for _me_!” and the lame boy laughed. “I’m lots
better than some. Why, I can even kick a football with my ‘bad’ foot as
I call it, though there are lots of others worse. If I had a football
now----”
“There’s Trouble’s,” suggested Jan, looking at Baby William, who was
sitting in the shadow of the goat cart trying to tickle Nicknack with
blades of grass.
“Who is Trouble?” asked the lame boy curiously.
“He’s our little brother,” explained Ted, and he told his own name and
that of his sister.
“My name’s Hal Chester,” said the lame boy, in his turn. “I live in
New York. I was sent to this place to get cured. It isn’t exactly a
hospital, and yet it’s like one. It’s a Home where lame boys and girls
are cured.”
“Do they cure ’em?” asked Jan softly.
“Oh, yes. Heaps and heaps of ’em. They’re going to cure me, they say.
And I guess they will, for I’m a lot better than when I came. If I had
a football----”
“Oh, yes. I was going to get Trouble’s,” interrupted Ted. “He has a
little rubber one he brings with him. We don’t like him to, as it’s
always falling out of the wagon, and then we’ve got to stop and pick it
up. But he brought it this morning. Hi, Trouble, where’s the football?”
he called to his little brother.
“I bring it. You play game?” he asked, for he loved to kick the
blown-up ball about.
“Well, maybe a little one,” promised Jan. “Are you sure it won’t hurt
you?” she asked Hal, as Ted caught the ball Trouble rolled over to him.
“Sure it won’t. I’m the best kicker in the Home. Course we don’t play
a regular game, but Dr. Wade said it would be good for my foot to
exercise it, and kicking’s the best fun I know. I’ll show you!”
He placed the football on a little pile of dirt, and then, standing
on his “good” foot, he swung the other, which was bent and twisted,
straight at the blown-up ball.
“Plunk!” came the sound, and Trouble’s ball went sailing through the
air.
“Say, that’s a fine kick!” cried Ted. “It’s great!”
“Ee, dat’s great,” echoed Trouble.
“And it went awful far!” added Jan, as the ball rolled and bounced away
down the hill.
“Oh, I’ve done better than that with a regular-sized ball,” explained
Hal Chester. “Wait, maybe I’ll be able to send it farther next time,”
and he started down the slope with a half run and a half jump.
“I’ll get it!” cried Ted after him.
“Pooh! Don’t think I can’t run!” laughed the lame boy over his
shoulder. “I have to wiggle like an eel while I’m doing it,” he went
on, “but I can get there,” and he did, before Ted reached the ball.
Then Hal sent it flying back with another kick and Ted, in his turn,
lifted it high in the air and started it rolling about the grass.
Trouble, too, joined in the little game, laughing and shouting in glee.
“Say, you _can_ kick!” cried Ted admiringly, as Hal came back to the
cushion on which Jan insisted that he take his seat.
“Oh, yes. There’s lots worse things than being lame. I’m ever so much
stronger in my one good leg than some boys are in their two. I can
stand on it all day and not get tired. It comes in good when you’re
waiting for the circus parade,” he added with a laugh.
“I should think you’d want to have two legs alike,” said Jan.
“I do, and some day I’m going to have, Dr. Wade says. But I just have
to wait, that’s all,” and he seemed quite cheerful about it. “No use
kicking, you know--unless it’s a football,” and he smiled at Ted, who
smiled back.
“I didn’t use to have much feeling in my lame foot,” he went on. “And
that was a good thing, ’cause when anybody stepped on my toes it
didn’t hurt. But it does now, and that’s a good sign, Dr. Wade says.
Well, I’ve got to be getting back, they’re calling me to dinner. I’m
glad I saw you,” and he got up from the cushion.
“Calling you to dinner?” asked Jan. “I didn’t hear anyone call.”
“It’s that flag over there,” and Hal pointed to one now waving from
a tall pole in front of the Home. It had not been flying before, the
Curlytops were sure. At any rate they had not noticed the flag until
Hal spoke.
“That’s a sort of dinner bell,” the lame boy went on. “Some of the boys
and girls go off in the woods or fields between meals, or else the
nurses take them, and they are so far off they can’t hear a bell or a
horn. But they can always see the flag, ’cause it’s so high up, and so
when the banner is hoisted on the pole we know it’s meal-time. So I’ll
be hopping along,” and with a wave of his hand he started across the
field, having climbed the fence as nimbly as before.
“Will you come here this afternoon?” asked Ted.
“Maybe. Will you be here?”
“Yes, we’ll come.”
“And may we come to the Home to see you sometimes?” asked Jan.
“Oh, yes, any time you like. ‘Visitors always welcome.’ That’s what it
says over the door. We’re going to have a big party soon, and maybe you
can come to that.”
“We’ll come,” promised Jan.
Then, as soon as Hal was lost to sight down in a little hollow of the
green, grassy fields, the Curlytops talked about him.
“Wasn’t he nice?” asked Ted.
“Yes,” answered his sister. “And he was so jolly about his lame foot,
he almost made you think it was fun to have it.”
“That’s right,” agreed Ted. “And how he could kick Trouble’s football!”
“Me likes him,” said Baby William. “He nice boy!”
“Indeed he is!” laughed Jan. “I wonder what he meant about a party at
the Home?”
The Curlytops found out when they got back to Cherry Farm, for they
asked Grandma Martin.
“Yes, that is a Home for crippled children that was partly rebuilt and
added to last year,” she said. “It has cured many lame little ones.
I guess what Hal meant about a party is that they are getting up a
sort of fair, or entertainment, to raise money. It needs it since they
rebuilt and made an addition to enlarge the place. All the folks around
here are going to help.”
“Are you going to? Can we help?” asked Jan eagerly.
“Well, father was going to give them a hundred dollars,” said Grandma
Martin slowly, “but since he had such bad luck and lost so much I’m
afraid he can’t. But I’m going to bake some cakes so they can sell them
at the fair, and that may help some.”
“I want some cake!” declared Trouble. “I’s hungry!”
“Then you shall have some bread and milk,” answered his mother. “You
mustn’t have cake.”
“I wonder how we could help?” asked Jan of her brother later that
day. “I’d like to raise some money for the Home. We did once for our
Sunday-school by selling lemonade.”
“Maybe we could do that here,” answered Ted. “We’ll ask Hal this
afternoon.”
But Hal, for some reason, did not come back to the field after dinner,
though Jan and Ted went there in the goat cart. Trouble had to have his
afternoon sleep, curling up with his football in his arms, so he did
not go with them.
“Well, we’ll ask him to-morrow,” said Jan, as they drove Nicknack back
across the green grass.
The goat was put in his stable when the Curlytops got back to Cherry
Farm; and then, as it was egg-gathering time, a chore with which they
always helped, they went to get Trouble, for he liked to go with them.
“Trouble! oh, Trouble, where are you?” called Jan, as she came out of
her room with her “chore” clothes on. These garments were an old dress,
stockings and sunbonnet, for sometimes the hens laid their eggs away
under the barn, and to get them one had to crawl on hands and knees.
“Come and get the eggs, Trouble!”
“I tan’t tum now!” answered Baby William.
“Can’t come--why not?” asked Jan. “Where are you?”
“Up de stairs where de softy-softy bed is.”
“Oh, he means in the spare bedroom,” explained Grandma Martin, who
heard what Trouble said.
This room was one seldom used. It had in it a big feather bed,
of the old-fashioned kind, and Baby William always called it the
“softy-softy,” because he sank away down in it when his mother
sometimes, in fun, laid him on it.
“I’ll come and get you,” offered Jan. “You like to come with brother
and me after the chickie eggs, don’t you?”
“Yes. Me like chickie eggs--me sit in some!”
“But you mustn’t do it again. Come with sister now, Trouble, and
to-morrow we’ll go to see Hal kick the football some more.”
“Tan’t tum now--Trouble busy,” was the answer.
“Well, I’ll come and see what you’re busy about,” and with a laugh Jan
ran up the stairs. As she entered the spare room she gave a gasping cry.
“Oh, Trouble!” she exclaimed.
“What’s the matter? Is he hurt?” called Grandma Martin.
“No, but--oh, Trouble! What _have_ you done?”
Then Grandma Martin came, and so did Mother Martin and Ted.
They saw Trouble on the floor, with an edge of the feather bed
pulled down toward him, while he was cutting away at the ticking
with the scissors, having made a big hole, while all about were
feathers--feathers--feathers everywhere.
There were feathers on the floor, on the chairs, scattered over the
carpet, and Trouble himself sat in a heap of them like some big, queer
new bird, with feathers even in his hair.
“Oh, Trouble!” cried Grandma Martin. “Why did you cut my nice feather
bed?”
“Trouble goin’ to make softy-softy cushion for lame boy to sit on,”
was the baby’s answer as he went on snipping away with the scissors,
scattering more feathers about the room.