We've had a most awful time in our house. There have been ever so many
robberies in town, and everybody has been almost afraid to go to bed.
The robbers broke into old Dr. Smith's house one night. Dr. Smith is one
of those doctors that don't give any medicine except cold water, and he
heard the robbers, and came down-stairs in his nigown, with a big
umbrella in his hand, and said, "If you don't leave this minute, I'll
shoot you." And the robbers they said, "Oh no! that umbrella isn't
loaded" and they took him and tied his hands and feet, and put a
mustard-plaster over his mouth, so that he couldn't yell, and then they
filled the wash-tub with water, and made him sit down in it, and told
him that now he'd know how it was himself, and went away and left him,
and he nearly froze to death before morning.
Father wasn't a bit afraid of the robbers, but he said he'd fix
something so that he would wake up if they got in the house. So he put a
coal-scuttle full of coal about half-way up the stairs, and tied a
string across the upper hall just at the head of the stairs. He said
that if a robber tried to come up-stairs he would upset the
coal-scuttle, and make a tremendous noise, and that if he did happen not
to upset it, he would certainly fall over the string at the top of the
stairs. He told us that if we heard the coal-scuttle go off in the
night, Sue and mother and I were to open the windows and scream, while
he got up and shot the robber.
The first night, after father had fixed everything nicely for the
robbers, he went to bed, and then mother told him that she had forgotten
to lock the back door. So father he said, "Why can't women sometimes
remember something," and he got up and started to go down-stairs in the
dark. He forgot all about the string, and fell over it with an awful
crash, and then began to fall down-stairs. When he got half-way down he
met the coal-scuttle, and that went down the rest of the way with him,
and you never in your life heard anything like the noise the two of them
made. We opened our windows, and cried murder and fire and thieves, and
some men that were going by rushed in and picked father up, and would
have taken him off to jail, he was that dreadfully black, if I hadn't
told them who he was.
But this was not the awful time that I mentioned when I began to write,
and if I don't begin to tell you about it, I sha'n't have any room left
on my paper. Mother gave a dinner-party last Thursday. There were ten
ladies and twelve gentlemen, and one of them was that dreadful Mr.
Martin with the cork leg, and other improvements, as Mr. Travers calls
them. Mother told me not to let her see me in the dining-room, or she'd
let me know; and I meant to mind, only I forgot, and went into the
dining-room, just to look at the table, a few minutes before dinner.
I was looking at the raw oysters, when Jane--that's the girl that waits
on the table--said, "Run, Master Jimmy; here's your mother coming." Now
I hadn't time enough to run, so I just dived under the table, and
thought I'd stay there for a minute or two, until mother went out of the
room again.
It wasn't only mother that came in, but the whole company, and they sat
down to dinner without giving me any chance to get out. I tell you, it
was a dreadful situation. I had only room enough to sit still, and
nearly every time I moved I hit somebody's foot. Once I tried to turn
around, and while I was doing it I hit my head against the table so hard
that I thought I had upset something, and was sure that people would
know I was there. But fortunately everybody thought that somebody else
had joggled, so I escaped for that time.
It was awfully tiresome waiting for those people to get through dinner.
It seemed as if they could never eat enough, and when they were not
eating, they were all talking at once. It taught me a lesson against
gluttony, and nobody will ever find me sitting for hours and hours at
the dinner-table. Finally I made up my mind that I must have some
amusement, and as Mr. Martin's cork-leg was close by me, I thought I
would have some fun with that.
There was a big darning-needle in my pocket, that I kept there in case I
should want to use it for anything. I happened to think that Mr. Martin
couldn't feel anything that was done to his cork-leg, and that it would
be great fun to drive the darning-needle into it, and leave the end
sticking out, so that people who didn't know that his leg was cork would
see it, and think that he was suffering dreadfully, only he didn't know
it. So I got out the needle, and jammed it into his leg with both hands,
so that it would go in good and deep.
[Illustration: WASN'T THERE A CIRCUS IN THAT DINING-ROOM!]
Mr. Martin gave a yell that made my hair run cold, and sprang up, and
nearly upset the table, and fell over his chair backward, and wasn't
there a circus in that dining-room! I had made a mistake about the leg,
and run the needle into his real one.
I was dragged out from under the table, and-- But I needn't say what
happened to me after that. It was "the old, old story," as Sue says when
she sings a foolish song about getting up at five o'clock in the
morning--as if she'd ever been awake at that time in her whole life!