CHAPTER XXVI._The Other Girls

TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'.

There was trouble in Mrs. Frank Scherman's pretty little household.

The trouble was, it did not stay little. Baby Karen was only six

weeks old, and Marmaduke was only three years; great, splendid

fellow though he was at that, and "galumphing round,"--as his mother

said, who read nonsense to Sinsie out of "Wonderland," and the

"Looking Glass,"--upon a stick.

Of course she read nonsense, and talked nonsense,--the very happiest

and most reckless kind,--in her nursery; this bright Sin Scherman,

who "had lived on nonsense," she declared, "herself, until she was

twenty years old; and it did her good." Therefore, on physiological

principles, she fed it to her little ones. It agreed with the Saxon

constitution. There was nothing like understanding your own family

idiosyncrasies.

Everything quaint and odd came naturally to them; even their names.

Asenath: Marmaduke: Kerenhappuch.

"I didn't go about to seek or invent them," said Mrs. Scherman, with

grave, innocent eyes and lifted brows. "I didn't name myself, in the

first place; did I? Sinsie had to be Sinsie; and then--how _am_ I

accountable for the blessed luck that gave me for best friends dear

old Marmaduke Wharne and Kerenhappuch Craydocke?"

But down in the kitchen, and up in the nursery, there was

disapproval.

"It was bad enough," they said,--these orderers of household

administration,--"when there was two. And no second nurse-girl, and

no laundress!"

"If Mrs. Scherman thinks I'm going to put up with baby-clothes

slopping about all days of the week, whenever a nurse can get time

from tending, and the parlor girl havin' to accommodate and hold the

child when she gets her meals, and nobody to fetch out the dishes

and give me a chance to clear up, I can just tell her it's too

thin!"

"Ye'r a fool to stay," was the expostulation of an outside friend,

calling one day to see and condole with and exasperate the aforesaid

nurse. "When ther's places yer might have three an' a half a week,

an' a nurse for the baby separate, an' not a stitch to wash, not

even yer own things! If they was any account at all, they'd keep a

laundress!"

"I know there's places," said the aggrieved, but wary Agnes. "But

the thing is to be sure an' git 'em. And what would I do, waitin'

round?"

"Ad_ver_tiss," returned the friend. "Yer'd have heaps of 'em after

yer. It's fun to see the carriages rollin' along, one after the

other, in a hurry, and the coachmen lookin' out for the number with

ther noses turned up. An' then yer take it quite calm, yer see, an'

send 'em off agin till yer find out how many more comes; an' yer

_consider_. That's the time yer'll know yer value! I've got an

ad_ver_tiss out now; an' I've had twenty-three of 'em, beggin' and

prayin', down on ther bare knees all but, since yesterday mornin'.

I've been down to Pinyon's to-day, with my croshy-work, for a

change. Norah Moyle's there, with the rest of 'em; doin' ther little

sewin' work, an' hearin' the news, an' aggravatin' the ladies.

Yer'll see 'em come in,--betune ten an' eleven's the time, when the

cars arrives,--hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives

which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate;

an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells

'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit

yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer

toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter.

Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!"

Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and

small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to

be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly,

as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and

forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was

a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to

be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual

preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond

hours, and general defiance,--takes sides in the kitchen against the

family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and

particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty

of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their

breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke,

left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling

down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the

washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen,

picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an

umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him

summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a

syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped

head.

It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish

recollection,--what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the

kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of

it.

"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in

the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick,

carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful

condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead

with arnica water.

"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the

consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated

'ch;' "I dicher tumber. I f'ied."

"You _what_?"

"F'ied. I icher pa'yow. On'y die tare too big!"

"Yes, indeed," said Sin, laughing. "The stairs are a great deal too

big. And little sparrows don't fly--down-stairs. They hop round, and

pick up crumbs."

"Ho I did," said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in

the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness.

"Yes. I see. Sugar. But you didn't manage that much better, either.

The trouble is, you haven't _quite_ turned into a little bird, yet.

You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to

fly with. You'll have to wait till you grow."

"I _ta'h_ wa'he. I icher pa'yow now!"

"What shall I do with this child, Frank?" asked Sin, with her grave,

funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room. "He's

got hypochondriasis. He thinks he's a sparrow, and he's determined

to fly. We shall have him trying it off every possible--I mean

impossible--place in the house."

"Put him in a cage," said Mr. Scherman, with equal gravity.

"Yes, of course. That's where little house-birds belong. Duke, see

here! Little birds that live in houses _never_ fly. And they never

pick up crumbs, either, except what are put for them into their own

little dishes. They live in tiny wire rooms, fixed so that they

can't fly out. Like your nursery, with the bars across the windows,

and the gate at the door. You and Sinsie are two little birds;

mamma's sparrows. And you mustn't try to get out of your cage unless

she takes you."

"Then you're the great sparrow," put in Sinsie, coming up beside

her, laughing. "Whose sparrow are you?"

Asenath looked up at her husband.

"Yes; it's a true story, after all. You can't make up anything. It

has been all told before. We're all sparrows, Sinsie,--God's

sparrows."

"In cages?"

"Yes. Only we can't always see the wires. They are very fine. There!

That's as far as you or I can understand. Now be good little

birdies, and hop round here together till mamma comes back."

She went into her own room, to the tiniest little birdie of all,

that was just waking.

Sinsie and Marmaduke had got a new play, now. They were quite

contented to be sparrows, and chirp at each other, springing and

lighting about, from one green spot to another in the pattern of the

nursery carpet.

"I'll tell you what," said Sinsie, confidentially; "sparrows don't

have girls to interfere, do they? They live in the cages and help

themselves. I like it. I'm glad Agnes is gone."

Sinsie was four and a half; she had "talked plain" ever since she

was one; and the nonsense that her mother had talked to her being

always bright nonsense, such as she would talk to anybody on the

same subject, there was something quaint in the child's fashion of

speech and her unexpected use of words. Asenath Scherman did not

keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of

apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she

sharpened their little wits continually against her own without

straining them.

And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of

graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever.

Her friends who were admitted to nursery intimacies and nursery

talk, said it was ever so much better than any grown-up

dinner-tables and drawing-rooms.

"Well," she would answer, "I'm not much in the way of dinner-tables

and drawing-rooms. I just have to live right along, and what there

is of me comes out here. I rather think we'll save time and comfort

by it in the end,--Sinsie and I. She won't want so much special

taking into society by and by, before she can learn to tell one

thing from another. Frank and I, with such friends as come here in

our own fashion, will make a society for her from the beginning, as

well as we can. She will get more from us in twenty years than she

would from 'society' in two. And if I 'kept up' outside, now, for

the sake of her future, that would be the alternative? I believe