WHAT DAGO TOLD ON FRIDAY.
Before the bell stopped ringing, some one called Elsie to the house to
get ready for kindergarten, and Phil ran down to the stable with me.
He tied me to an iron ring in one of the stalls by a halter. Of course
any knot that a boy of that size could tie would not keep me a
prisoner very long. By the time he was halfway to school I was free
and on my way back to the house.
I stayed in the laundry nearly all day, for the sun went under a cloud
soon after breakfast, and a cold drizzling rain began to fall. It gave
me the rheumatism, and I was glad to curl up in a big market-basket on
the shelf behind the stove, and enjoy the heat of the roaring fire.
Nora was ironing, and singing as she worked. Not since I left the warm
California garden had I been as peaceful and as comfortable. The heat
made me so drowsy that not even the thump, bump of Nora's iron on the
ironing-board, or the sound of her shrill singing could keep me awake.
I dreamed and dozed, and dozed and dreamed all day, in a blissful
state of contentment.
It was nearly dark when I roused up enough to stretch myself and step
out of the basket. Nora had gone up-stairs and was setting the
supper-table. I could hear the cook beating eggs in the pantry. There
would be muffins for supper. The sound made me so hungry that I
slipped into the dining-room, and hid under the sideboard until Nora
had finished her work and gone back to the kitchen. The cook was still
mixing muffin batter in the pantry. I could hear her spoon click
against the crock as she stirred it, so that I knew she would not be
in to disturb me for some time.
I never saw a table more inviting. After I had leaped up on it, I sat
and looked all around a moment, trying to decide what to take first.
Everything was so good. There wasn't much room to walk about, and when
I stepped over the jelly to reach the cheese, which seemed to tempt my
appetite more than anything, my long tail switched the roses out of
the bowl in the middle of the table. That confused me slightly, and in
trying not to upset anything else I stepped flat into the butter, and
dragged my little plaid flannel skirt through the applesauce. Why they
persist in dressing me in this ridiculous fashion is more than I can
understand.
You may be sure that I would have starved a week rather than have
climbed on that table, if I had had the slightest foreboding of what
was to follow. But how could I know that Miss Patricia was to choose
that very moment for walking into the dining-room? She had just come
in from the street, for she had on her bonnet, and carried an umbrella
in her hand. Phil and little Elsie followed her.
"Oh, you little torment!" she cried, when she saw me, and, before I
could make up my mind which way to jump, she flew at me with her
umbrella, trying to strike me without breaking any of the dishes. I
dodged this way and that. Seeing no way of escape from the room,
I ran up the curtains, over and under the chairs, around and
around,--anywhere to keep out of her way. She was after me at every
step. When I ran up to the top of the high, carved back of the
old-fashioned sideboard, I found myself out of her reach for one
breathless minute. She was climbing on a chair after me, when the
cook, hearing the unusual sounds, opened the pantry door and looked
in.
[Illustration: "'OH, YOU LITTLE TORMENT!' SHE CRIED."]
It was my only chance of escape, and, regardless of where I might
land, I leaped wildly out. I escaped Miss Patricia's umbrella, it is
true, but, just my luck, I went bump into the cook's face, and then
into the crock of muffin batter which she held in her arms. She
dropped us both with a scream which brought everybody in the house
hurrying to the dining-room, and I scuttled up to the highest shelf of
the pantry, where I crouched trembling, behind some spice-boxes. I was
dripping with cold muffin batter, and more miserable and frightened
than I had ever been before in my whole life.
I could hear excited voices in the dining-room. When Miss Patricia
first struck me with the umbrella, Phil had cried out: "Stop that! You
stop hitting my monkey!" Then as she chased me around the room, making
vain attempts to reach me as I scampered over chairs and up curtains,
he seemed to grow wild with rage. He was fairly beside himself and
bristled up like an angry little fighting-cock. "You're a mean old
thing," he shrieked, breaking over all bounds of respect, and
screaming out his words so loud that his father, passing through the
hall, heard the impudent rhyme he had made up the day before:
"Old Aunt Pat,
You're mean as a rat!"
It was just as he yelled this that the cook opened the pantry door,
and I made my fatal plunge into the dark and the crock of muffin
batter.
As I hid behind the spice-boxes I heard Doctor Tremont tell Phil, in a
very stern voice, to march up-stairs, and stay there until he came for
him. It must have been nearly an hour that I hid on that shelf,
waiting for a chance to make my escape. The batter began to harden and
cake on me until I could not move without every hair on my body
pulling painfully.
Things were set to rights in the dining-room after awhile and the
family had supper. Some bread and milk were sent up to Phil. Soon
after I reached the laundry, Stuart found me there. He turned the
hose on me and gave me a rough scrubbing. Then he wrapped me in a
piece of a blanket and took me up-stairs to dry before the fire in his
room. Phil had gone to bed, and was lying there sobbing, with his head
under the pillows when we came in. He wouldn't talk at first, but
after awhile he told Stuart that his father had given him a hard
whipping for speaking so disrespectfully to an old lady like Miss
Patricia, and that he could not go to the table again until he had
asked her pardon. That Phil vowed he would not do so long as he lived.
He had made up his mind to run away in the morning. Nobody treated him
right, and he didn't intend to stand it any longer.
"But, Phil," said Stuart, "you know yourself, that it wasn't very nice
of Dago to go walking around the table through the butter and
applesauce, and all the things to eat. I don't wonder that Aunt
Patricia was provoked, 'specially when he has done so many other
things to tease her. She didn't hurt him much for all her whacking
around. I saw nearly as much of the fight as you did. She didn't hit
him more than one lime out of ten. I was perfectly willing that my
half of Dago should get what it deserved."
At that, Phil cried still harder. "Well, if you say that," he sobbed,
giving his pillow an angry thump, "then you don't love Dago as much as
I do. You're against him, too. Nobody cares anything for either of us,
and I'll take him and go off with him in the morning. I'm going as
soon as it is light."
But when the daylight came, Phil was not in such a hurry to go. He
still refused to ask his Aunt Patricia's pardon, so his breakfast was
sent up-stairs to him, and he ate in sulky silence. He waited until he
saw his father drive away down the street, and then he went in search
of Elsie. She is always wanting to do everything that he does, so he
had no trouble in persuading her to help him carry out his plans.
"Put on the oldest, raggedest clothes you can find," he said to her,
"and tie an old handkerchief over your head so't you'll look as
beggary as possible. I'll tear some more holes in the old overalls
that I played in last summer, and pull part of the brim off my straw
hat. We'll take the music-box out of the hall, and put it in my little
red wheelbarrow, and you and me and Dago will start off through the
streets like the grind-organ man did yesterday, I planned it all last
night while everybody in the house was sound asleep. We'll sing when
the music-box plays songs, and you and Dago can dance when it plays
waltzes. I'll give you part of the money that we get to buy you the
prettiest doll in town. I'll take the rest and go off to the place
that I'm thinking about."
He wouldn't tell her where the place was, although she begged him with
tears in her eyes. "Some place where they're not cruel to little boys
and monkeys," was all he would tell her. "Where they don't ever whip
them, and where they don't mind 'em getting into mischief once in
awhile."
An hour later everything was ready for the start. Except for the
daintily embroidered ruffles of her white linen underskirt, that would
show below her old gingham dress, little Elsie might have been taken
for the sorriest beggar in town. The dress was faded and outgrown. The
little shawl she had pinned over her shoulders had one corner burned
out of it, and the edges of the hole were scorched and jagged. A
faded silk muffler that she had used in her doll-cradle was drawn
tightly over her tousled curls, and tied under her chin.
Phil's outfit might have come from the ragbag, too, it was so tattered
and patched. But he had forgotten to take off his silver cuff-buttons,
and the shoes he wore looked sadly out of place below the grimy jeans
overalls. He was obliged to wear a pair of bright tan-coloured shoes,
so new that they squeaked. They were the only ones he had, for his old
ones had been thrown away the day before. At first he was tempted to
go barefoot, but the November wind was chilly, although the sun shone,
and he dared not risk it.
It was ten o'clock by the court-house dial, and the bell was on the
last stroke, when little Elsie held open the alley-gate and Phil
trundled the red wheelbarrow through. I was perched on the music-box.
Rather an uncertain seat, I found it, as it slid back and forth at
every step. I had to hold on so tight that my arms were sore for two
days afterward.
"Which way shall we go?" asked little Elsie, as she fastened the gate
behind us. Phil looked up and down the alley in an uncertain way, and
then said, "When the princes in the fairy tales start out into the
wide world to make their fortunes, they blow a leather up into the air
and follow that."
"Here's one," cried Elsie, running forward to pick up a bit of fluffy
white down that had blown over from a pigeon-house on the roof of a
neighbouring stable. "I'll blow, and you say the charm." She puckered
up her rosy little mouth and gave a quick puff.
"Feather, feather, when we blow,
Point the way that we should go,"
sang Phil. "West!" he exclaimed, as it sailed lazily across the alley
and over a high board fence. "That means that we are to go down toward
the cotton-mills. I don't know much about that part of town. Mostly
poor people live there, who look as if they hadn't much money to give
away. But we'll try it, anyhow."
Picking up the barrow-handles, he trundled down the alley toward Pine
Street, with little Elsie holding fast to the tail of his tattered
jacket. We were off at last, to seek our fortunes in the wide, wide
world, and our hearts were light as we followed the feather.