[Illustration: THE LITTLE FACE DROPPED UPON THE OPEN PAGE.]
THE
MISLAID
UNCLE
_by_ EVELYN RAYMOND
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THOMAS Y· CROWELL & CO·
PUBLISHERS
Copyright, 1903,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & COMPANY.
_Published September, 1903._
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. DIVERSE WAYS 1
II. A HUMAN EXPRESS PARCEL 14
III. ARRIVAL 34
IV. A MULTITUDE OF JOSEPHS 46
V. A WILD MARCH MORNING 63
VI. MEMORIES AND MELODIES 80
VII. THE BOY FROM NEXT DOOR 95
VIII. AFTER THE FROLIC 111
IX. NEIGHBORLY AMENITIES 123
X. TOM, DICK, HARRY, AND THE BABY 138
XI. THE DISPOSAL OF THE PARCEL 150
THE MISLAID UNCLE.
CHAPTER I.
DIVERSE WAYS.
Three people were together in a very pleasant little parlor, in a land
where the sun shines nearly all the time. They were Doctor Mack, whose
long, full name was Alexander MacDonald; mamma, who was Mrs. John
Smith; and Josephine, who was Mrs. Smith’s little girl with a pretty
big name of her own.
Doctor Mack called Mrs. Smith “Cousin Helen,” and was very good to her.
Indeed, ever since papa John Smith had had to go away and leave his
wife and child to house-keep by themselves the busy doctor-cousin had
done many things for them, and mamma was accustomed to go to him for
advice about all little business matters. It was because she needed
his advice once more that she had summoned him to the cottage now; even
though he was busier than ever, since he was making ready to leave San
Diego that very day for the long voyage to the Philippine Islands.
Evidently the advice that had so promptly been given was not agreeable;
for when Josephine looked up from the floor where she was dressing
Rudanthy, mamma was crying softly, and Doctor Mack was saying in his
gravest take-your-medicine-right-away kind of a voice that there was
“nothing else to do.”
“Oh, my poor darling! She is so young, so innocent. I cannot, I
cannot!” wailed the mother.
“She is the most self-reliant, independent young lady of her age that I
ever knew,” returned the doctor.
Josephine realized that they were talking about her, but didn’t see why
that should make her mother sad. It must be all the cousin-doctor’s
fault. She had never liked him since he had come a few weeks before,
and scratched her arm and made it sore. “Vaccinated” it, mamma had
said, to keep her from being ill sometime. Which had been very puzzling
to the little girl, because “sometime” might never come, while the
arm-scratching had made her miserable for the present. She now asked,
in fresh perplexity:
“Am I ‘poor,’ mamma?”
“At this moment I feel that you are very poor indeed, my baby,”
answered the lady.
Josephine glanced about the familiar room, in which nothing seemed
changed except her mother’s face. That had suddenly grown pale and sad,
and even wrinkled, for there was a deep, deep crease between its brows.
“That’s funny. Where are my rags?” asked the child.
Mamma smiled; but the doctor laughed outright, and said:
“There is more than one way of being poor, little missy. Come and show
me your arm.”
Josephine shivered as she obeyed. However, there was nothing to
fear now, for the arm was well healed, and the gentleman patted it
approvingly, adding:
“You are a good little girl, Josephine.”
“Yes, Doctor Mack, I try to be.”
“Yet you don’t love me, do you?”
“Not--not so--so very much,” answered the truthful child, painfully
conscious of her own rudeness.
“Not so well as Rudanthy,” he persisted.
“Oh, nothing like!”
“Josephine,” reproved mamma; then caught her daughter in her arms, and
began to lament over her. “My darling! my darling! How can I part from
you?”
Before any reply could be made to this strange question, the door-bell
rang, and there came in another of those blue-coated messenger boys,
who had been coming at intervals all that day and yesterday. He brought
a telegram which mamma opened with trembling fingers. When she had read
it, she passed it to Doctor Mack, who also read it; after which he
folded and returned it to the lady, saying:
“Well, Cousin Helen, you must make your decision at once. The steamer
starts this afternoon. If you sail by her there’s no time to be lost.
If you go, I will delay my own preparations to help you off.”
For one moment more Mrs. Smith stood silent, pressing her hands to her
throbbing temples, and gazing at Josephine as if she could not take her
eyes from the sweet, childish face. Then she turned toward the kind
doctor and said, quite calmly:
“Yes, Cousin Aleck, I will go.”
He went away quickly, and mamma rang the bell for big Bridget, who came
reluctantly, wiping her eyes on her apron. But her mistress was not
crying now, and announced:
“Bridget, I am starting for Chili by this afternoon’s steamer.
Josephine is going to Baltimore by the six o’clock overland. There
isn’t a moment to waste. Please bring the empty trunks from the
storeroom and pack them while I attend to other matters, though I will
help you as I can. Put my clothes into the large trunk and Josephine’s
into the small one. There, there, good soul, don’t begin to cry again.
I need all my own will to get through this awful day; and please make
haste.”
During the busy hours which followed both mamma and Bridget seemed
to have forgotten the little girl, save, now and then, to answer her
questions; and one of these was:
“What’s Chili, Bridget?”
“Sure, it’s a kind of pickle-sauce, darlin’.”
“Haven’t we got some of it in the cupboard?”
“Slathers, my colleen.”
“Chili is a country, my daughter,” corrected mamma, looking up from the
letter she was writing so hurriedly that her pen went scratch, scratch.
“Is it red, mamma?”
“Hush, little one. Don’t be botherin’ the mistress the now. Here’s
Rudanthy’s best clothes. Put ’em on, and have her ready for the start.”
“Is Rudanthy going a journey, too, Bridget?”
“‘Over the seas and far away’--or over the land; what differ?”
When the doll had been arrayed in its finery mamma had finished her
writing, and, rising from her desk, called the child to her. Then she
took her on her lap and said, very earnestly:
“Josephine, you are eight years old.”
“Yes, mamma. This very last birthday that ever was.”
“That is old enough to be brave and helpful.”
“Oh, quite, mamma. I didn’t cry when Doctor Mack vaccinated me, and I
sewed a button on my apron all myself.”
“For a time I am obliged to go away from you, my--my precious!”
Josephine put up her hand and stroked her mother’s cheek, begging:
“Don’t cry, mamma, and please, please don’t go away.”
The lady’s answer was a question:
“Do you love papa, darling?”
“Why, mamma! How funny to ask! Course I do, dearly, dearly.”
“Poor papa is ill. Very ill, I fear. He is alone in a far, strange
country. He needs me to take care of him. He has sent for me, and I am
going to him. But I cannot take you. For many reasons--the climate,
the uncertainty--I am going to send you East to your Uncle Joe’s; the
uncle for whom you were named, your father’s twin brother. Do you
understand me, dear?”
“Yes, mamma. You are going to papa, and I am going to Uncle Joe. Who is
going with me there?”
“Nobody, darling. There is nobody who can go. We have no relatives
here, except our doctor-cousin, and he is too busy. So we are going to
send you by express. It is a safe way, though a lonely one, and-- Oh,
my darling, my darling; how can I! how can I!”
Ever since papa had gone, so long ago, Josephine had had to comfort
mamma. She did so now, smoothing the tear-wet cheek with her fat little
hand, and chattering away about the things Bridget had put in her trunk.
“But she mustn’t pack Rudanthy. I can’t have her all smothered up. I
will take Rudanthy in my arms. She is so little and so sweet.”
“So little and so sweet!” echoed the mother’s heart, sadly; and it
was well for all that Doctor Mack returned just then. For he was so
brisk and business-like, he had so many directions to give, he was so
cheerful and even gay, that, despite her own forebodings, Mrs. Smith
caught something of his spirit, and completed her preparations for
departure calmly and promptly.
Toward nightfall it was all over: the parting that had been so bitter
to the mother and so little understood by the child. Mamma was standing
on the deck of the outward moving steamer, straining her eyes backward
over the blue Pacific toward the pretty harbor of San Diego, almost
believing she could still see a little scarlet-clad figure waving
a cheerful farewell from the vanishing wharf. But Josephine, duly
ticketed and labelled, was already curled up on the cushions of her
section in the sleeper, and staring out of window at the sights which
sped by.
“The same old ocean, but so big, so big! Mamma says it is peacock-blue,
like the wadded kimono she bought at the Japanese store. Isn’t it queer
that the world should fly past us like this! That’s what it means in
the jogaphy about the earth turning round, I suppose. If it doesn’t
stop pretty soon I shall get dreadful dizzy and, maybe, go to sleep.
But how could I? I’m an express parcel now. Cousin-Doctor Mack said so,
and dear mamma. Parcels don’t go to sleep ever, do they, Rudanthy?”
But Rudanthy herself, lying flat in her mistress’ lap, had closed her
own waxen lids and made no answer. The only one she could have made,
indeed, would have been “Papa,” or “Mamma,” and that wouldn’t have been
a “truly” answer, anyway.
Besides, just then a big man, shining with brass buttons and a
brass-banded cap, came along and demanded:
“Tickets, please.”
Josephine clutched Rudanthy and woke that indolent creature rather
suddenly.
“Dolly, dolly, sit up! The shiny-blue man is hollering at the people
dreadful loud. Maybe it’s wrong for dolls to go to sleep in these
railway things.”
[Illustration: “WHERE’S YOUR FOLKS?”]
The shiny-blue man stopped right at Josephine’s seat, and demanded
fiercely, or it sounded fierce to the little girl:
“Sissy, where’s your folks?”
“Please, I haven’t got any,” she answered politely.
“Who do you belong to, then?” asked he.
“I’m Mrs. John Smith’s little girl, Josephine,” she explained.
“Hmm. Well, where’s Mrs. John Smith?” he persisted.
“She’s gone away,” said she, wishing he, too, would go away.
“Indeed. Tell me where to find her. You’re small enough, but there
should be somebody else in this section.”
“I guess you can’t find her. She’s sailing and sailing on a steamer to
my papa, who’s sick and needs her more ’n I do.”
“Hello! this is odd!” said the conductor, and passed on. But not before
he added the caution:
“You stay right exactly where you are, sissy, till I come back. I’ll
find out your party and have you looked after.”
Josephine tried to obey to the very letter. She did not even lay aside
the doll she had clasped to her breast, nor turn her head to look out
of the window. The enchanting, fairy-like landscape might fly by and by
her in its bewildering way; she dared gaze upon it no more.
After a while there were lights in the coach, and these made
Josephine’s eyes blink faster and faster. They blinked so fast, in
fact, that she never knew when they ceased doing so, or anything that
went on about her, till she felt herself lifted in somebody’s arms, and
raised her heavy lids, to see the shiny-blue man’s face close above her
own, and to hear his voice saying:
“Poor little kid! Make her berth up with double blankets, Bob, and keep
an eye on it through the night. My! Think of a baby like this making a
three-thousand-mile journey alone. My own little ones--Pshaw! What made
me remember them just now?”
Then Josephine felt a scratchy mustache upon her check, and a hard
thing which might have been a brass button jam itself into her temple.
Next she was put down into the softest little bed in the world, the
wheels went to singing “Chug-chug-chug,” in the drowsiest sort of
lullaby, and that was all she knew for a long time.
But something roused her, suddenly, and she stretched out her hand to
clasp, yet failed to find, her own familiar bed-fellow. Missing this
she sat up in her berth and shrieked aloud:
“Rudanthy! Ru-dan-thy! RUDANTHY!”