THE KING TO THE RESCUE.
On a yellow, dreamy day of late autumn, while the sergeant was
strolling through the Fens, he came suddenly upon little Virgie Manning
and her nurse.
“Hello, little miss!” said the sergeant. “I haven’t seen you for
a long time; but where did you get those flowers? They look like some of
the park golden-rod.”
“Yes,” said Virgie in her half-lisping voice; “they are your flowers,
Mr. Policeman.”
“But you musn’t pick the park flowers,” said the sergeant.
“And sure I told her that myself,” said Bridget. “Now, missy, you see
what happens to naughty girls. Are you going to take her to prison, Mr.
Officer?”
Virgie laughed gleefully. She was not at all afraid of the sergeant.
“No, not this time,” he said.
“Mr. Policeman,” said Virgie, “one time long ago weren’t you a
weeny boy?”
“Yes, I was.”
“Did you love the pretty flowerses?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And you picked them,” said Virgie, “and naughty big men scolded
you?”
“No, they didn’t; I lived in the country.”
“Then, you mustn’t scold me,” said Virgie gayly. “O Bridget!
there is a big, big fly with blue wingses. You stand still like a
mousie while I catch it, ’cause if you runned you might starkle it;”
and she darted away.
“And is the French boy still making his home with you, sir?” asked
Bridget curiously.
“Yes; he is still with us.”
“And he doesn’t hear from his bad old uncle in France, Virtue Ann tells
me.”
“No; he hasn’t as yet,” said the sergeant.
“And it’s a great comfort to Virtue Ann that you’ve shielded him,”
continued Bridget, “otherwise she’d have cold comfort in the good
place she’s found for herself. ‘Virtue Ann,’ said I, ‘if you
despise your luck this time, you’ll be guilty of the sin of onprudency.
Make seven crosses, and let the boy go, and you’ll find you’re in the
right of it.’”
“The boy is always glad to see her,” said the sergeant absently.
“Hello, Boozy, what’s the matter?”
“And sure that’s a queer cat,” said Bridget, eyeing the
black-and-white animal who was mewing excitedly, and walking up and
down at a little distance from them.
“He wants to show me something, and badly too,” said the sergeant,
“or he wouldn’t come so near a woman. Go on, Boozy, I’ll follow.”
At this moment little Virgie came running up crying, “The naughty fly
flewed away. He wouldn’t play wif me. Oh! there’s the sweet pussy;”
and she precipitated herself toward Boozy.
The king was in great distress. He sprang nimbly from side to side,
waving his tail angrily in the air as he tried to elude the little
girl’s caresses, and at the same time keep the attention of the
sergeant fixed on himself.
“I understand you, Boozy,” said the sergeant. “Walk on, and I’ll
come. Look here, little girl, you stop chasing him, will you, and take
my hand? We’ll see what he’s leading us to.”
“Perhaps he has some little kittens to show us,” suggested Virgie.
“No; the king isn’t fond of kittens. Probably it’s a mole or a mouse
he’s caught, or perhaps his chum is in trouble. One day he was caught
in a wire fence, and Boozy came for me to set him free. Can you trot
along a little faster, he seems to be in a hurry?”
“Yes,” said the child, hopping and skipping along by his side, her blue
eyes wandering to and fro across the broad avenue. “Where’s Eugene?”
she asked suddenly, “Virgie hasn’t seen him for lots and lots of
time.”
“He’s in the park somewhere,” said the sergeant. “He spends a great
deal of time here. He has taken a great fancy to Boozy, and sits for
hours watching him. I guess the cat teaches him a good many lessons.”
“The king is a good pussy,” remarked Virgie sagely.
“He is not perfect, but he is about as good as a cat can be,” said her
companion.
Virgie stopped to pick up some shining pebbles from the ground, but the
sergeant hurried her on. “Make haste, little girl, if you want to come
with me. There’s something queer about the king’s actions. See how he
is running.”
Virgie trotted along beside him again, and her nurse quickened her
footsteps so that she might keep up with the two figures ahead of her.
“Good gracious!” exclaimed the sergeant, suddenly dropping the
child’s hand, and scrambling down a slope beside them; “just look
at that boy.”
“The boy! and sure there’s no boy to be seen,” said Bridget, who had
heard his exclamation, and paused in surprise at the top of the little
hill, and looked about her.
Just below them was a marshy, sedgy pond. A few ducks were dabbling
in the mud at one end of it, and at the other end something brown and
indistinct was moving in a slow and confused way among the rushes.
“I guess it’s Eugene,” cried little Virgie, tearfully clasping her
tiny hands. “I guess he runned and frowed hisself in the water.”
“Hush, lovie,” said her nurse, putting her arm around her. “There
isn’t much water here, it’s mostly mud, nor any boy for that matter.
Watch and see what the quare thing is.”
The indistinct figure kept going to and fro, slightly disturbing the
rushes, while the sergeant rushed back and forth over the encircling
firm ground as if looking for something.
“And sure he’s crazy,” muttered Bridget. Then she tried to hush
Virgie, who was crying apprehensively.
“Do you see a rope anywhere up there?” shouted the sergeant. “I had
one here this morning. Some rascal must have taken it.”
Bridget ran about a little among the underbrush. “No, sir,” she called
back; “there’s not a shadow of a rope nor a bit of a plank here.”
“Then, I’ll have to go in myself,” said the sergeant in a disgusted
voice. “Eugene, can’t you walk out? Come this way. You can see me,
can’t you?”
“Oh, the blessed saints presarve us!” cried Bridget, “that quare
round thing is the head of the boy; and it’s mud he is—and there’s
an arm sticking out—and now he’s almost gone.”
Little Virgie gave a shriek. Eugene was indeed sinking more deeply into
the marsh that would soon close its lips over him if he should fall
down. The sergeant made one brief exclamation, and snatching off his
coat and his helmet threw them on the ground. Then he waded in to the
spot where Eugene had been staggering about, and stretching out an arm
he drew him out toward the dry ground.
[Illustration: EUGENE WAS SINKING MORE DEEPLY INTO THE MARSH.]
“May I be forgiven for laughing,” said Bridget, clutching Virgie by
the hand, and hurrying down the grassy bank, “but I nivver saw such a
soight in my life—and sure the boy is brown from the top of his head
to the sole of his foot. Mr. Officer, he hasn’t fainted, has he?”
“He’s half choked with the mud and the slime,” said the sergeant
dryly. “Lend me your handkerchief, will you?”
He was bending over Eugene, whom he had laid on the ground. Rapidly and
skilfully he wiped the boy’s face, and cleaned his head with leaves
from a shrub near by.
“Take, please take my little hankerskniff,” gasped Virgie, extending a
microscopic bit of cambric.
To please her the sergeant wiped Eugene’s eyes with it; then he said,
“Can you speak now, boy?”
Eugene struggled to a sitting posture, and stared solemnly from under
sticky eyelashes at them.
Bridget tried not to laugh; but she was not used to controlling
herself, and she had also been a little frightened. She began with a
little squeal, then she became hysterical, and laughed and cried in the
same breath.
“If ye’s could only see yourselves,” she said spasmodically; “so
gummed up, like two alligators. I ask yer pardon humbly, but it’s
too ludicrous that ye are—and that boy that’s always like a picture,
so nate and clane, and yerself, Mr. Officer, that wears the fine
uniform—sure, you’re worse than the men in the subway with the clay
trousers.”
The sergeant smiled grimly. “I don’t wonder you’re amused,” he
said. “Tell me, Eugene, how you got into this pickle.”
The boy cleaned two of his fingers on the grass, and took a last
remnant of earth from his mouth. “It was my cap that I was after,” he
said. “The wind blew it among the rushes. I went to get it on what I
thought was a point of green grass. It was soft mud beneath. I went
in to my ankles, and I could with difficulty draw my feet out. Then I
walked the wrong way, and fell into a deep hole. When I rose, I found
myself in to my waist, and bewildered and sinking.”
“Why did you not stand still and call for help?” asked the sergeant.
“There are always people about.”
“I should have felt like a coward,” said Eugene, proudly holding up his
mud-plastered head.
“I don’t think it would have been as cowardly to call for assistance as
to drop down there and smother to death,” said the sergeant.
“I thought of the emperor,” said Eugene. “‘Why do you duck
your head?’ he once asked a soldier who bent to avoid a round shot.
‘If your fate is not there you might as well stand up straight. If it
is there, it will find you though you bury yourself one hundred feet in
the earth.’”
“All very fine,” said the sergeant; “but at the same time, Napoleon
wasn’t the man to stick in a mud-hole while he had a good voice in his
body that would help him out. Come, boy, we had better make our way
home if you feel up to it, and get rid of these clothes before the mud
dries on us.”
“And it’s home we’ll have to be going too,” said Bridget in a
disapproving voice. She had not been able to keep her warm-hearted
little charge from embracing her muddy playmate, and Virgie’s red
cloak was in consequence disfigured by a number of dark streaks.
“I wish to hug the good pussy,” said Virgie, drawing back as she caught
sight of King Boozy, who sat on the bridge above, watching them.
The sergeant laughed. “Boozy hates dirt and disorder. He did his share
of the work, then retired to watch us. Was he with you, boy, when your
cap blew off?”
“Yes,” said Eugene; “he was following me as I walked to and fro on
the path.”
“And when he saw you were stuck, he came for me,” said the sergeant.
“He is the most knowing cat I ever saw. Hello, here’s a cart coming
just in good time to give us a lift. You look fagged out, Eugene. Give
me your hand; now jump in.”
“Good-by, dear Eugene,” called Virgie. “If you don’t play in the
naughty mud any more, Virgie won’t frow stones at your remperor;” and
she threw kisses to him until he was out of sight.
“The missis will be astonished to see us,” said the sergeant, as they
jogged along in the cart, “but she’ll have us cleaned up in no time.
Boy,” and he looked slyly at Eugene, “you didn’t like cats much when
you came to us. Would you mind telling me your private opinion of them
now?”
A smile flitted over Eugene’s weary, dirty face. “A human being could
have done no more for me this morning than the king did,” he said
simply.