COUSIN VIRGINIA HAS A CALLER
“Well, you deserved to lose,” said the Pixie when he had heard the whole
story, “answering right off like that on the spur of the moment. You
have to think these things over a bit. Besides, the Hub has been moving
slowly westward since Holmes’ time. It’s nearer Chicago, now, I believe.
But what did I tell you about old White-Hairs? Isn’t he a back number?
Trying to do business in the twentieth century the way he used to do it
with those princes in slashed doublets! Why doesn’t he wake up and hear
the birdies sing?”
“How’s the frog?” asked Wendell anxiously.
“An awful nuisance,” responded the Pixie frankly. “I think she’s thirsty
but she won’t drink.”
“Oh, they can’t drink, you know,” explained Wendell. “They take it in
through the skin. That mug is too small. Here, I’ll fill the basin and
put her in.”
That seemed to content the frog. It sat and soaked and absorbed and
goggled at Wendell, who regarded it moodily.
“If I can’t do anything more for you,” said the Pixie, “I’ll move on.
Hope you guess the riddle.”
“Thanks, old fellow,” said Wendell soberly. He was very sleepy and
discouraged. But the frog looked a bit cheerier.
Hardly was Wendell in bed when he dropped off to sleep, and five minutes
later, blop! the frog leaped from the basin and landed on the boy’s
face, all wet and soggy and cold. Wendell, half asleep, struck out in
self-defense, and landed a whacking blow on the poor reptile, that sent
it halfway across the room. He realized instantly what he had done, and
much ashamed of himself, he turned on the light, located the panting
frog, and tucked it under the down quilt at the foot of the bed.
Bitterly he regretted that he had not made an appointment with the
Kobold to return the creature the very next morning.
When he left for school, he hid the frog away again in his stocking, in
a chiffonier drawer, but even his preoccupation with the Boston riddle
did not entirely obliterate his uneasy fear that the frog might escape
or be turned out of the house in his absence, and thus plunge him into
some other awful rescuing problem.
He had hoped that the geography or history or literature lesson might
enlighten him on the definition of Boston, and his attention to study
was so strict that his teachers thought best to watch him even more
closely than usual, to forestall whatever mischief must be brewing. But
no ray of light came to him from any of his lessons. He went home
despondently, assured himself that the frog was still safe, and went out
to play with cheerful Sammy Davis and the other fellows. It seemed a
long while since he, too, had been a care-free, whistling boy, with no
greater anxiety than being kept after school for fractions, or being
chased by Sammy’s cross janitor.
He had almost forgotten his troubles when he went in to dinner, but as
soon as he ascended to his room to study they all came back, for there
sat the frog on his table, popping its eyes out at him most
unpleasantly.
“I guess I’ll study downstairs,” he thought. “I’ll have the library to
myself to-night. Mother and Father have gone to the Symphony, and I
guess Cousin Virginia’s out somewhere.”
He settled down comfortably in the library, and was getting on famously
with his lessons when the bell rang and a masculine voice asked for his
Cousin Virginia. She came down presently and a lively conversation began
in the front room just out of sight but not out of sound of Wendell. He
managed, however, to keep his mind on his work, for it was very silly
talk and not at all interesting. The man was a Harvard student from New
York, and they chattered on about strangers to Wendell whom they knew in
common.
“Do you like Boston?” Wendell heard the man say, and Virginia’s clear
and rather high-pitched voice answered,
“Of course I like Boston. I’ll put it more strongly, I thoroughly enjoy
Boston. I never supposed any place could be so--so historical, so
absolutely, thoroughly, naively, unselfconsciously historical. Why, even
little Wendell--”
“She needn’t _little_ me,” thought Wendell savagely.
“--invited me to see a play he was to be in, in school, and what _do_
you suppose? it was Revolutionary. All about hiding away a wounded
soldier, with allusions to the British encamped on Boston Common, and
the tax on tea. I don’t believe Boston knows anything has happened in
history since the Boston Tea Party.”
“You’ve said it,” said the young man, who seemed to admire Virginia very
much.
“And their holidays,” went on the foolish girl. “When I was here last
spring, I went out to shop on the nineteenth of April, and would you
believe it? the shops were closed. Patriots’ Day, if you please, when
the farmers fired the shot heard round the world! I came in and said to
Auntie, ‘Do you by any chance have a holiday in Boston on the fourth of
July, Auntie?’ ‘Why, yes, dear,’ she said, ‘of course.’ I said, ‘But
why? It isn’t Emerson’s birthday, is it?’ and she said, ‘Why, my dear,
you must know it is Independence Day.’ ‘Oh, yes, Auntie,’ I said, ‘but
why celebrate it in Boston? That little event was pulled off in
Philadelphia. Hasn’t Boston enough?’”
“Ha, ha!” laughed the young man. “That was a good one on Boston.”
“But the greatest pleasure I’ve had is the baked beans,” she went on.
“Pleasure!” echoed the young man. “No _pleasure_, surely.”
“Oh, I mean _mental_ pleasure, to find they really _are_, you know, and
not merely a myth. Of course, I believed before I came here that they
existed here, but as an occasional article of diet. Why, they are a
religious rite, an article of faith! Every Saturday night!”
“Yes, and every Sunday morning breakfast at my boarding house,” groaned
the young man.
“Impossible! Inhuman!” said Virginia brightly.
“Inhuman, but true,” moaned the young man.
Wendell thought he had never heard such idiocy in his life. Delicious
baked beans!
“But they not only _eat_ them--they take them seriously,” Virginia’s
silly little voice ran on. “I made a light and unworthy remark to one of
Auntie’s friends about the sacred bean. She looked at me compassionately
and then said gravely, ‘We always bake them with a small onion in the
bottom of the pot.’ Yes, I don’t know who said it first, but it is
absolutely true that Boston _is_ a state of mind.”
Wendell, listening with the utmost scorn to these trivialities, was
suddenly brought up short.
_Boston is a state of mind._
Three rousing cheers for Cousin Virginia!
He went to bed happy that night. Even the presence of the loathsome frog
was endurable. To-morrow he would return the creature to the Kobold, and
at the same time fling the answer to his riddle in his teeth--if he had
any teeth. It would seem probable that a Kobold with so much white beard
would be too old to have teeth.
The Kobold was waiting for him on the slope of Flag Staff Hill next
morning. So cleverly did his velvet suit take on the soft tone of the
elm trunks, that no one of the busy passersby, hurrying on to business
through the Common, discerned him there under the trees, though Wendell
saw him clearly. Or was it that he made himself invisible to other eyes?
“I’ve brought your frog,” said Wendell, drawing a long breath. He handed
the stocking over to the Kobold, and the frog leaped out and vanished
among the fallen leaves.
“What _is_ Boston?” asked the Kobold mockingly.
“Boston,” said Wendell with assurance, “is a state of mind.”
“Wrong! Wrong!” jeered the Kobold--and was no longer there. But a little
breeze rustled in the elm trees and brought a faint hissing message to
Wendell’s ears, just as the rushes whispered the fatal secret of the
barber of King Midas:--
“One more chance! One more chance!”
Wendell went on dejectedly to school.