The more I see of this world the hollower I find everybody. I don't mean
that people haven't got their insides in them, but they are so
dreadfully ungrateful. No matter how kind and thoughtful any one may be,
they never give him any credit for it. They will pretend to love you and
call you "Dear Jimmy what a fine manly boy come here and kiss me," and
then half an hour afterwards they'll say "Where's that little wretch let
me just get hold of him O! I'll let him know." Deceit and ingratitude
are the monster vices of the age and they are rolling over our beloved
land like the flood. (I got part of that elegant language from the
temperance lecturer last week, but I improved it a good deal.)
There is Aunt Eliza. The uncle that belonged to her died two years ago,
and she's awfully rich. She comes to see us sometimes with Harry--that's
her boy, a little fellow six years old--and you ought to see how mother
and Sue wait on her and how pleasant father is when she's in the room.
Now she always said that she loved me like her own son. She'd say to
father, "How I envy you that noble boy what a comfort he must be to
you," and father would say "Yes he has some charming qualities" and look
as if he hadn't laid onto me with his cane that very morning and told me
that my conduct was such. You'll hardly believe that just because I did
the very best I could and saved her precious Harry from an apple grave,
Aunt Eliza says I'm a young Cain and knows I'll come to the gallows.
She came to see us last Friday, and on Saturday I was going bee-hunting.
I read all about it in a book. You take an axe and go out-doors and
follow a bee, and after a while the bee takes you to a hollow tree full
of honey and you cut the tree down and carry the honey home in thirty
pails and sell it for ever so much. I and Tom McGinnis were going and
Aunt Eliza says "O take Harry with you the dear child would enjoy it so
much." Of course no fellow that's twelve years old wants a little chap
like that tagging after him but mother spoke up and said that I'd be
delighted to take Harry, and so I couldn't help myself.
We stopped in the wood-shed and borrowed father's axe and then we found
a bee. The bee wouldn't fly on before us in a straight line but kept
lighting on everything, and once he lit on Tom's hand and stung him
good. However we chased the bee lively and by-and-by he started for his
tree and we ran after him. We had just got to the old dead apple-tree
in the pasture when we lost the bee and we all agreed that his nest must
be in the tree. It's an awfully big old tree, and it's all rotted away
on one side so that it stands as if it was ready to fall over any
minute.
Nothing would satisfy Harry but to climb that tree. We told him he'd
better let a bigger fellow do it but he wouldn't listen to reason. So we
gave him a boost and he climbed up to where the tree forked and then he
stood up and began to say something when he disappeared. We thought he
had fallen out of the tree and we ran round to the other side to pick
him up but he wasn't there. Tom said it was witches but I knew he must
be somewhere so I climbed up the tree and looked.
He had slipped down into the hollow of the tree and was wedged in tight.
I could just reach his hair but it was so short that I couldn't get a
good hold so as to pull him out. Wasn't he scared though! He howled and
said "O take me out I shall die," and Tom wanted to run for the doctor.
I told Harry to be patient and I'd get him out. So I slid down the tree
and told Tom that the only thing to do was to cut the tree down and then
open it and take Harry out. It was such a rotten tree I knew it would
come down easy. So we took turns chopping, and the fellow who wasn't
chopping kept encouraging Harry by telling him that the tree was 'most
ready to fall. After working an hour the tree began to stagger and
presently down she came with an awful crush and burst into a million
pieces.
Tom and I said Hurray! and then we poked round in the dust till we found
Harry. He was all over red dust and was almost choked, but he was
awfully mad. Just because some of his ribs were broke--so the doctor
said--he forget all Tom and I had done for him. I shouldn't have minded
that much, because you don't expect much from little boys, but I did
think his mother would have been grateful when we brought him home and
told her what we had done. Then I found what all her professions were
worth. She called father and told him that I and the other miscurrent
had murdered her boy. Tom was so frightened at the awful name she called
him that he ran home, and father told me I could come right up-stairs
with him.
They couldn't have treated me worse if I'd let Harry stay in the tree
and starve to death. I almost wish I had done it. It does seem as if the
more good a boy does the more the grown folks pitch into him. The moment
Sue is married to Mr. Travers I mean to go and live with him. He never
scolds, and always says that Susan's brother is as dear to him as his
own, though he hasn't got any.