TIP’S INTRODUCTION TO MRS. SIMPSON.
On the following morning Tim and Sam were awakened very suddenly by
a confused noise, which appeared to come from the kitchen below, and
which could not have been greater had a party of boys been engaged in a
game of leap-frog there.
A woman’s screams were heard amid the crashing of furniture as it was
overturned, the breaking of crockery, and the sounds of scurryings to
and fro, while high above all came, at irregular intervals, the yelp of
a dog.
This last sound caused Tim the greatest fear. A hasty glance around the
room had shown him that Tip, who had been peacefully curled up on the
outside of the bed when he last remembered anything, was no longer to
be seen, and, without knowing how it could have happened, he was sure
it was none other than his pet who was uttering those cries of distress.
In a few moments more he learned that he was not mistaken, for Tip
rushed into the room, his tongue hanging out, his stub of a tail
sticking straight up, and looking generally as though he had been
having a hard time of it.
Before Tim, who had at once leaped out of bed, could comfort his pet,
a voice, sounding as if its owner was sadly out of breath, was heard
crying, “Sam! Sam! Sammy!”
“What, marm?” replied Sam, who lay quaking with fear, and repenting the
fact that his desire for candy had led him into what looked very much
like a bad scrape.
“Did a dog just come into your room?”
“Yes, marm.”
“Throw something at him and drive him out.”
For an instant Sam clutched the pillow as if he would obey the command;
but Tim had his arms around Tip’s neck, ready to save him from any
injury, even if he was obliged to suffer himself.
“Why don’t you drive him out?” cried Mrs. Simpson, after she had vainly
waited to hear the sound of her son’s battle with the animal.
“Why――why――why――” stammered Sam, at a loss to know what to say, and
trembling with fear.
“Are you afraid of him?”
“No, marm,” was the faltering reply.
“Then why don’t you do as I tell you?”
“Why――why, Tim won’t let me,” cried Sam, now so frightened that he
hardly knew what he did say.
“Why, what’s the matter with the boy?” Tim heard the good woman say;
and then the sound of rapid footsteps on the stairs told that she was
coming to make a personal investigation.
Sam, in a tremor of fear, rolled over on his face and buried his head
in the pillow, as if by such a course he could shelter himself from the
storm he expected was about to break upon him.
Tim was crouching in the middle of the floor, his face close down to
Tip’s nose, and his arms clasped so tightly around the dog’s neck that
it seemed as if he would choke him.
That was the scene Mrs. Simpson looked in upon after she had been
nearly frightened out of her senses by a strange dog while she was
cooking breakfast. She had tried to turn the intruder out-of-doors; but
he, thinking she wanted to play with him, had acted in such a strange
and at the same time familiar manner, that she had become afraid, and
the confusion which had awakened the boys had been caused by both, when
neither knew exactly what to do.
Mrs. Simpson stood at the room door looking in fully half a minute
before she could speak, and then she asked, “What is the meaning of
this, Samuel?”
Sam made no reply, but buried his face deeper in the pillows, while the
ominous shaking of his fat body told that he was getting ready to cry
in advance of the whipping he expected to receive.
“Who is this boy?” asked the lady, finding that her first question was
likely to receive no reply.
Sam made no sign of life, and Tim, knowing that something must be said
at once, replied piteously, “Please, ma’am, it’s only me an’ Tip.”
Sam’s face was still buried in the pillows; but the trembling had
ceased, as if he was anxious to learn whether his companion could
extricate himself from the position into which he had been led.
“Who are you, and how did you come here?” asked Mrs. Simpson,
wonderingly.
Tim turned toward the bed, as if he expected Sam would answer that
question; but that young man made no sign that he had even heard it,
and Tim was obliged to tell the story.
“I’m only Tim Babbige, an’ this is Tip. We was tryin’ to find a place
to sleep last night, when we met Sam, an’ after we’d found the cow we
went down to the store an’ bought some candy, an’ when we come back Sam
was goin’ to ask you to let me sleep in the barn, but you was in bed;
so he said it was all right for me to come up here an’ sleep with him.
I’m awful sorry I did it, an’ sorry Tip acted so bad; but if you won’t
scold we’ll go right straight away.”
Mrs. Simpson was by no means a hard-hearted woman, and the boy’s
explanation, as well as his piteous way of making it, caused her to
feel kindly disposed toward him. She asked him about himself; and by
the time he had finished telling of the death of his parents, the cruel
treatment he had received from Captain and Mrs. Babbige, and of his
desperate attempt at bettering his condition, her womanly heart had a
great deal of sympathy in it for him.
Then Tim added, as if it was the last of his pitiful story, “Me an’
Tip ain’t got anybody who cares for us but each other, an’ if we don’t
get a chance to work, so’s we can get some place to live, I don’t know
what we will do.” Then he laid his head on the dog’s nose, and cried
as though his little heart were breaking, while Tip set up a series of
most doleful howls.
“You poor child,” said the good woman, kindly, “you’re not large enough
to work for your living, and I don’t know what Mr. Simpson will say
to your being here very long; but you shall stay till we see what can
be done for you, whatever he says. Now, don’t cry any more, but dress
yourself, and come down-stairs and help me clean up the litter the
dog and I made. Sam, you lazy boy,” she added, as she turned toward
her half-concealed son, “get up and dress yourself. You ought to be
ashamed for not telling me last night what you were about.”
Then, patting Tim on the head, the good woman went down-stairs to
attend to her household duties.
As soon as the sound of the closing door told that his mother had left
the room Sam rolled out of bed, much as a duck gets out of her nest,
and said triumphantly to Tim, who was busy dressing, “Well, we got out
of that scrape all right, didn’t we?”
Tim looked up at him reproachfully, remembering Sam’s silence when the
affair looked so dark; but he contented himself with simply saying,
“Yes, it’s all right till we see what your father will say about it.”
“Oh, he won’t say anything so long as mother don’t,” was the confident
reply; and the conversation was ended by Tim going down-stairs to help
Mrs. Simpson in repairing the damage done by Tip.
Before he had been helping her very long he showed himself so apt at
such work that she asked, “How does it happen that you are so handy at
such things?”
“I don’t know,” replied Tim, bashfully, “’cept that Aunt Betsey always
made me help her in the kitchen, an’ I s’pose it comes handy for a
feller to do what he must do.”
By the time Sam came down-stairs the kitchen presented its usual neat
appearance, and he was disposed to make light of his mother’s fright;
but she soon changed his joy to grief by telling him to go to the
spring for a pail of water.
Now, if there was one thing more than another which Sam disliked to
do, it was to bring water from the spring. The distance was long, and
he believed it was unhealthy for him to lift as much weight as that
contained in a ten-quart pail of water. As usual, he began to make
a variety of excuses, chief among which was the one that the water
brought the night before was as cool and fresh as any that could be
found in the spring.
Tim, anxious to make himself useful in any way, offered to go, and then
Sam was perfectly willing to point out the spring, and to generally
superintend the job.
“Tim may go to help you,” said Mrs. Simpson, “but you are not to let
him do all the work.”
Sam muttered something which his mother understood to mean that he
would obey her, and the boys left the house, going through the grove of
pine-trees that bordered a little pond, at one side of which, sunk deep
in the earth, was a hogshead, into which the water bubbled and flowed
from its bed under the ground.
But Sam was far more interested in pointing out objects of interest to
himself than in leading the way to the spring. He showed Tim the very
hole where he had captured a woodchuck alive, called his attention to a
tree in which he was morally certain a family of squirrels had their
home, and enlarged upon the merits of certain kinds of traps best
calculated to deceive the bushy-tailed beauties.
Tim did not fancy this idea of idling when there was work to be done;
and as soon as he saw the spring he hurried off, in the middle of a
story Sam was telling about a rabbit he caught the previous winter.
“What’s the use of bein’ in such a rush?” asked Sam, as, obliged to
end his story, he ran after Tim. “Mother don’t want the water till
breakfast’s ready, an’ that won’t be for a good while yet. Jest come
over on this side the pond, an’ I’ll show you the biggest frog you ever
saw in your life; that is, if he’s got out of bed yet.”
“Let’s get the water first, an’ then we can come back an’ see
everything,” said Tim, as he hurried on.
“But jest come down here a minute while I see if I can poke him out
of his hole,” urged Sam, as he picked up a stick and started for the
frog’s home.
Tim paid no attention to him; he had been sent for water, and he did
not intend to waste any time until that work had been done. He leaned
over the side of the hogshead to lower the pail in, when Sam shouted,
“Come here; I’ve found him!”
But Tim went on with his work; and just as he had filled the pail, and
was drawing it up, he heard a cry of fear, accompanied by a furious
splashing, which he knew could not come from a frog, however large he
might be.
Dropping his pail, at the risk of having it sink beyond his reach, he
looked up just in time to see a pair of very fat legs sticking above
the water at that point where the frog was supposed to reside, and to
hear a gurgling sound, as if the owner of the legs was strangling.
For a single moment Tim was at a loss to account for the disappearance
of Sam, and the sudden appearance of those legs; but by seeing Tip run
toward the spot, barking furiously, and by seeing the stick which was
to have disturbed the frog in his morning nap floating on the water, he
understood that Sam had fallen into the pond, without having had half
so much fun with the frog as he expected.
Tim, now thoroughly frightened, ran quickly toward his unfortunate
companion, calling loudly for help.
When he reached the bank from which Sam had slipped the legs were
still sticking straight up in the air, showing that their owner’s head
had stuck fast in the mud. By holding on to the bushes with one hand,
and stretching out the other, he succeeded in getting hold of Sam’s
trousers, at which he struggled and pulled with all his strength.
Although it could hardly be expected that so slight a boy as Tim could
do very much toward handling so heavy a body as Sam’s, he did succeed
in freeing him from the mud, and in pulling him to the surface of the
water.
After nearly five minutes of hard work, during which Tip did all he
could to help, Tim succeeded in pulling the fat boy into more shallow
water, where he managed to get on to his feet again.
A mournful-looking picture he made as he stood on the bank, with the
water running from every point of his clothing, while the black mud in
which he had been stuck formed a cap for his head, and portions of it
ran down over his face, striping him as decidedly as ever fancy painted
an Indian.
He was a perfect picture of fat, woe, and dirt, and if he had not been
in such peril a few moments before Tim would have laughed outright.
He was evidently trying to say something, for he kept gasping for
breath, and each time he opened his mouth it was filled with the mud
and water that ran from his hair.
“What is the matter?” asked Tim, anxiously. “Art you hurt much?”
“No――no,” gasped Sam; “but――but I saw the frog.”
This time Tim did not try to restrain his mirth; and when Mrs. Simpson,
who had been startled by Tim’s cries for help, arrived on the spot, she
found nothing very alarming. Master Sam received a severe shaking, and
was led away to be cleaned while Tim and Tip were left to attend to the
work of bringing the water.
At breakfast――where Sam ate so heartily that it was evident he had not
been injured by his bath――the question of what should be done about
allowing Tim to remain was discussed by Mr. and Mrs. Simpson.
The farmer said that a boy as small as he could not earn his salt, and
it would be better for him to try to find a family who had no boys of
their own, or go back to Captain Babbige, where he belonged. He argued,
while Tim listened in fear, that it was wrong to encourage boys to run
away from their lawful protectors, and was inclined to make light of
the suffering Tim had told about.
Fortunately for the runaway, Mrs. Simpson believed his story entirely,
and would not listen to any proposition to send him back to Selman. The
result of the matter was that Mr. Simpson agreed to allow him to remain
there a few days, but with the distinct understanding that his stay
must be short.
This was even more than the homeless boy had expected, and he appeared
so thankful and delighted at the unwilling consent that the farmer
began to think perhaps there was more in him than appeared on the
surface, although he still remained firm in his decision that he must
leave the farm as soon as possible.