That evening, as I bade the family good-night, after with some
difficulty escaping from Mrs. Carter’s urgent invitation to dine with
them again next day, I agreed to call immediately after dinner, so as to
be on hand should the Stranger, as we thought likely, return in search
of Laura. Nor were we disappointed; and this time, warned by the failure
of the preceding day, we had kept Laura well in hand; so that she was
ready on the front steps as he was passing.
The two friends smiled as their eyes met.
“Where is it?” asked she, a sudden cloud of anxiety veiling her young
face,—for, with those of her age, not seeing is not believing.
“Never mind!” said he, tapping his breast-pocket with a knowing air; and
she hurried down the steps as best she could.
He unbuttoned his coat and slowly inserted his hand into his
breast-pocket.
“Pull it out!” cried she.
“I feel something!” said he, with mystery in his tones.
“Yes!” answered she, skipping about with clasped hands.
“What is it?” And there was a rattling, as of stiff paper, down in the
depths of his pocket.
“Candy!” cried she, with a shout, capering higher than ever.
He withdrew the package from his pocket with a slowness which made her
dance with impatience; opened one end, peeped into it cautiously, and
gave her a beaming look of delighted surprise.
“Let me look, too!” cried she; and he held it down. She, peeping in,
returned his look of surprised delight.
What would life be without its fictions!
“It’s candy!” cried she; and seizing the package, and putting a piece
into her mouth, she made for the steps.
“Why, where are you going?”
“I am going to show my candy to sister Lucy,” replied she, munching.
“Won’t you give me a piece?”
“Yes,” replied she, toddling back with alacrity. “Don’t take a big
piece,” cautioned she, when she saw him examining the contents of the
precious package. “Take a little piece.”
The stranger smiled. “Laura,” said he, “there is a good deal of human
nature in man; don’t you think so?”
“Yeth, ma’am,” replied she, abstractedly; with one hand thrusting into
her mouth a second piece, while with the other she reached down into the
bag for a third. “You seem to like candy?”
“Yeth, I doeth,” without looking up.
“Come,” said he, taking the package and closing it; “if you eat it all,
you won’t have any to show your sister Lucy; besides, it will make you
sick.”
“Candy don’t never make me sick. I can show sister Lucy the booful bag
what the candy came in. Where is the speckled candy?”
“Oh, the man didn’t have any.”
“If he has any, another to-morrow, will you make him send me some?”
“Oh, yes; but let’s talk a little.”
“May I have another little piece?”
“There! So you are the little girl who doesn’t know what her mother’s
name is?”
“Yes, I does; my mother’s name is named Laura. My mother is named the
same as me. My name is Laura, too.”
Our coaching had told.
“So your mother’s name is Laura, is it?” And the stranger nodded his
head slowly up and down. “And where is your mother now?”
“She is at our house.”
“And where is your house?”
“Our house is where my mother is. There is a river where our house is.
Don’t you like to sail in a boat on a river? I’m going to take another
piece.” And with a roguish, though hesitating smile, she began to insert
her dimpled hand into the bag.
The stranger was looking upon the ground, and heeded neither the smile
nor the movement against the bag.
“Where do you go in your boat?”
She mentioned the name of a neighbor of my grandfather’s, across the
river from her home.
“And where else?”
Another of our neighbors. The stranger repeated the two names with
satisfaction.
“And where else?”
He never once lifted his eyes from the pavement; and there was a sort of
suppressed eagerness in his voice that thrilled us all with a strange
excitement, we knew not why.
“We sail in our boat to see Uncle Tom.” [Many of the young people in our
neighborhood called my grandfather by this name.]
“Oh, you mean your Uncle Tom—let me see,”—and a faint smile illumined
his face,—“you mean your Uncle Tom—Mulligins?”
“No-o-o-o! Minty-pepper ain’t dood. It stings my mouf.”
“Ah, yes, I know,—you sail in your boat to—see—your—Uncle
Tom—Higginbotham.”
Perhaps she dimly perceived that he was drolling; at any rate, she
doubled herself up with an affected little laugh.
“No, I will tell you,” said he, raising his eyes to her face,—“it is
your Uncle Tom Whacker.”
The audience half rose from their seats. “Why, who can he be?” exclaimed
Mrs. Carter.
“Yes, that’s his right name,—Uncle Mr. Whacker. I calls him Uncle Tom.
He is a hundred years old, I reckon. My sister loves Mr. Uncle Whacker
some, but she loves Mr.—Mr.—Mr. Fat Whacker the most.” [Sensation!]
As this is the second remark of this character on Laura’s part that I
have recorded, it is high time that I explained that the idea had
naturally enough arisen in her mind from hearing Mary and Alice rally
her sister upon the increased frequency of my visits to the Carters’
since her arrival in town.
“Do you love me some?”
“Yes, I loves you a heap!”
“And I loves you a heap, too,” said he; and stooping, he kissed her
several times. “And now I suppose you had better run in and show your
candy to your sister Lucy.”
“All wight!” said she; and she toddled off.