MISCHIEF
“Good-night, Sweetheart. Good-night, Pokey, dear,” said Mrs. Lombard,
as she kissed the children just before departing a few evenings later
to attend a card-party given by one of their neighbors. The children
were not to accompany them, and a few moments later Mr. and Mrs.
Lombard, with grandma, sweet and delightful to look upon, arrayed all
in soft gray china silk, with a dainty little white lace cap upon her
snowy hair, and dainty lace at her throat, took their seats in the
carriage and were whirled out of the grounds and down the road, waving
farewells as long as they were in sight.
“Now what shall we do this evening?” demanded Denise, as they ran back
to the piazza.
“Let’s take a walk down the road,” answered Pokey.
“No, we can’t do that, because mamma does not like me to leave the
grounds when she goes out in the evening.”
“Then let’s go into the library and get a nice book and read aloud. I
saw one that looked wonderfully interesting when I was looking in there
the other day. It was called ‘Ernest Hart on Mesmerism,’ and I want to
see what it is about.”
“My goodness! Why don’t you try to read Greek and have done with it?
Why, papa would think we were crazy if we tried to read those books.
Besides, I don’t think he would like to have us take them. Whenever I
want to know anything about such things I ask him and he tells me all
about them in just plain every-day language that I can understand. I
don’t believe that we could make head or tail of that book if we took
it. What is mesmerism, anyway?”
“Why,--it’s--it’s--a man who can put people to sleep and make them do
things they don’t know a thing about. When they wake up again they
can’t remember a single thing they have done, and--why, what are you
laughing about? I don’t see anything so very funny in that,” for
Denise’s eyes had begun to sparkle, and a mischievous smile appeared
upon her lips.
“Maybe our mesmerizings aren’t the same, but I know of one kind that
is the funniest thing that you ever saw if we only had some one to
mesmerize.”
“Who told you about it?”
“We did it one time at a Hallowe’en party, and we nearly died laughing.
Some of the girls got angry, but most of them took it just as fun. It
really was fun, for it did not do them the least harm, and it all came
off.”
“_What_ came off?” persisted Pokey, for Denise’s explanation certainly
left room for speculation.
“The smudge. I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll mesmerize Eliza. She’s
such a good-natured old thing that she’ll not mind it a bit, and Mary
will nearly have a fit when she sees her.”
Pokey’s faith in Denise was boundless, so a few moments later the
conspiracy was hatched, and the two scapegraces were on their way to
victimize Eliza.
Running down to the little porch just outside the laundry-door, where
Eliza took her evening airing after the labors of the day were ended,
the children pounced upon her, crying:
“Oh, Eliza, we have come to show you and Mary something wonderful that
we have learned. Do you want to see it?”
“Somethin’ wondherful, is it, Miss Denise? Shure, yoursilf and Miss
Pokey is wondhers all riddy.”
“No, but really, Eliza, this _is_ something wonderful! Have you ever
heard of a man named Mesmer?”
“Mismer? What was he loike at all? Was it him thot came out to tach ye
all to dance last winter?”
“Oh, no! That was Monsieur Mezereau. The man Pokey and I mean was a
great magician, and could do almost anything.”
“A mugician? What did he play on, thin? A horn? Thim Frinch min does be
playin’ horns mostly.”
“Oh, Eliza, she doesn’t mean a musician,” explained Pokey. “She means a
man that does all sorts of tricks, and magic things like they do in the
theatres. Have you ever seen one?”
“Sure! Didn’t me niphew take me to see that feller called Heller
whin I was down in New York this very sphring past. Faith, he was a
marvil thin, an’ no mistake. Is it him ye mane, an’ can ye do some
av thim things yersels?” and Eliza clasped and unclasped her hands
in excitement, for her trip to town to pass a week with her married
sister early in the spring, the first Mrs. Lombard had been able to
persuade her to take in more than two years, had been one of the
events of her life, and the happenings of that week, among which had
been an evening at the theatre watching Professor Heller’s marvelous
performances, had been gone over again and again for the benefit of the
none too credulous Mary.
“Well, we can’t do _all_ the things he did, of course,” said Denise,
“but we can do one of them. We can put you to sleep and make you do
just the things we tell you if you will let us. Will you?”
“Thot Heller man put a girl to slape, and then tuck away the thing she
was slapin’ on and left her lyin’ there on the air! Could ye do thot
same wid _me_?” demanded Eliza in amazement.
“We can put you to sleep, but we don’t know how to make you lie on the
air,” answered Denise, a twinkle coming into her eyes as she surveyed
Eliza’s ample proportions.
“Well thin, thry it now, an’ I’ll bet ye all me old shoes that niver
a wink will ye be afther gittin’ out av me. So there now!” and
Eliza settled herself comfortably back in the rocking-chair she was
occupying, and looked defiance at her amateur magicians.
“Will you do just exactly as we tell you to do?” demanded Pokey.
“Sure!” with a confirming nod.
Meantime Mary, who had been having a neighborly chat across the fence
with Mr. Murray’s gardener, came upon the scene, and at once became
interested in the proceedings.
“There now, ye wouldn’t belave me whin I towld ye all I’d seen down
yonder, would ye now?” cried Eliza, “but here the very childer know
about it an’ will be afther showin’ ye. They think that they’ll be able
to put _me_ to slape! Faith, it do be wake-moinded cratures that can
be sint off to the land o’ nod by thim thricks. I’m not such a fool as
not to know _that_ much. But let thim thry if they want to. It’ll do
_me_ no harm, and it’ll show ye a thing or two ye’ve been doubtin’,”
and Eliza, whom Mary had driven nearly to the point of distraction by
teasing unmercifully when she had related some of her experiences while
in town, nodded her head in the way that meant, maybe you will believe
me when you have seen it tried yourself.
Pokey and Denise now came running back armed and equipped for magical
deeds. They carried three plates, each one partially filled with water.
When they saw Mary, Pokey cried:
“Oh, Mary, you must let me mesmerize _you_, while Denise mesmerizes
Eliza. Will you? Please do.”
“If she kin stand it I guess I kin,” was Mary’s laughing reply, and,
taking a seat beside Eliza, she waited developments. Pokey rushed back
into the house and presently returned with a fourth plate.
“Now you must both do just exactly as you see us do, and you must look
right straight at us _every_ minute,” commanded Denise.
“Sure, that’s dead aisy,” answered Eliza, reaching two chubby hands for
her plate.
Denise undertook to direct Eliza, while Pokey gave her attention to
Mary.
“Now hold it just this way, and _no_ other,” said Denise, adjusting the
plate in Eliza’s hands in such a manner that her thumbs rested upon the
rim, and her four fingers just touched the under side. “Don’t take your
eyes from my face, and don’t _laugh_ whatever you do. Mary, you do just
exactly the same as you see Pokey do.”
Two chairs were then placed opposite their victims, and the children
took their seats, their own plates held in precisely the same manner
the maids were holding theirs.
“One, two, three,” counted Denise, and “one, two, three,” counted Pokey.
“Wan, twoo, thrae-e,” echoed Eliza, and “one, two, three,” repeated
Mary, looking intently at the children.
“With this magic sign I charm thee,” droned Denise, dipping her finger
into her plate and making a snake-like streak across her forehead.
“’Tis the sign av the divvil himsilf, I doubt,” muttered Eliza.
“Hush! You must say exactly what I say,” commanded Denise.
“The god of sleep descend upon you,” muttered Pokey, frowning
prodigiously at Mary, and making moist, wavy signs upon her own
forehead, which Mary imitated with a half-laughing, half-scared look.
“Hickory, dickory, dockory, o,--Four little imps on the bottom, I
know,” continued Denise, doing her best to keep a straight face, while
Eliza repeated with more or less accuracy the nonsense which had
sprung into Denise’s fertile brain and out of her lips, as she rubbed
her fingers around and around upon the bottom of her plate, and then
drew it carefully down the bridge of her tip-tilted nose; Eliza doing
precisely the same so far as motion was concerned, but with a far more
startling result.
“‘_De gustibus non est disputandum_,’”[1] quoted Pokey, airing some of
the Latin which she had learned the previous winter, and which she now
used with telling effect upon Mary.
“Lord have mercy upon us! She’s sayin’ the very words the praist said
on Sunday last!” said Eliza, glancing hastily toward Pokey.
“Oh, you mustn’t! You mustn’t!” cried Denise. “Now pay strict attention
to me. By all the powers of the little god of sleep,” and a finger
was rubbed beneath the plate, and then a cross made upon her cheek:
“By all the charms that he can work upon us,” another cross upon the
other cheek: “By every dream that haunts us,” more vigorous rubbing
upon the bottom of her plate, and cabalistic signs drawn upon her face,
which were closely imitated by Eliza’s fat finger, upon her fatter
face, until it would have been doubtful if her own sister, so recently
visited, would have recognized her. “By--, By--, oh dear! _Don’t_ you
feel the least _little bit_ sleepy?”
“Sorry a wink! Didn’t I tell ye it would take a wake-moinded person,
Mary?” turning a most triumphant, soot-marked face toward Mary, who,
giving a howl of derision, let her own plate go rolling across the
porch floor, to bound off the steps and land in the grass, where it lay
peacefully right side up and told no tales.
“What are ye howling at me loike that for, I’d loike to know?” demanded
Eliza, for Mary had come to the house when a mere slip of a girl, and
Eliza had trained her in the way she should go, and laughing at her
superior was not one of the duties inculcated.
“Oh, Eliza, will ye be lookin’ at yer face! ’Tis a sight for sinners ye
are!”
“Well, thin,” cried Eliza, bridling, and adding red as well as black to
her decorations, “maybe it would be jist as well were ye afther takin’
a look at yer own pheeziognomy in the mirror there in the dinin’-room
beyant, for beloik ye’d think that ye had not missed all the beauty av
the whorld entoirly,” and up rose Eliza to sail majestically into the
house, from whence a moment later arose a howl of wrath which caused
Denise and Pokey to flee to the seclusion of the Birds’ Nest, there to
confide to Ned Toodles the prank they had played upon the autocrats
of the kitchen and dining-room, while said autocrats resorted to a
vigorous application of pumice-stone soap and hot water, meanwhile
comparing notes and vowing vengeance upon their would-be mesmerizers.
“Ah, ’tis sthrong-minded ye are, Eliza,” cried Mary, scouring
vigorously, and then bursting into hearty laughter.
“Faith I do be thinkin’ it’s a _nayguer_ I am, an’ no mistake. Did
iver ye know the loikes av them childer, to take in an old woman loike
me wid their palaverin’? Faith, it’s makin’ their marks in the whorld
the’ll be afther doin’!”
“Glory be, but they’ve already begun on oursels, an’ no mistake,” and
Mary sat down upon a near-by chair to laugh as only a light-hearted
Irish girl can, even though the joke be at her own expense.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] There is no use disputing about tastes.