TRYING TO BE CHEERY.
“Oh, dear, dear!” King struggled manfully with his sobs, and then
wailed outright; and running into Polly’s room he crouched behind the
door.
Grace Tupper came after him. “King, you mustn’t,” she whispered,
leaning over to pull him out.
“Let me be!” cried King, wriggling away from her; and he roared on.
“Your sister Polly will hear you,” cried Grace desperately.
“She can’t; she’s got comp’ny,” sobbed King in a fresh burst. “I
wa--want Phronsie, I do!”
“So we all want her,” said Grace with set teeth; “but, O King! don’t
cry, dear. There, there, I’m sorry for you.” She smoothed his stubby
head with a kind hand, wishing she could say something to comfort.
“Who’ll he--hear my lessons?” blubbered King, who never had been known
to worry over them before; “and if I don’t say ’em, Mamsie won’t tell
me I’ve been a good boy. Oh, dear!”
“Now, there is something I can do,” cried Grace joyfully, “I can hear
those lessons, King; and just as soon as Mrs. King’s company has gone,
I mean to ask her if I mayn’t.”
“I don’t want you,” said King, with one eye on her, the other obscured
by his arm, and feeling dreadfully sorry that he had mentioned lessons
anyway.
“But I can help Mrs. King,” cried Grace in a transport, flying around
the room; “for of course she will have to hear them now. And, O King!
I’ll make you pictures of the countries you study about, and the
natives, and”--
“What’s natifs?” asked King, bringing the other eye out.
“Why, the people who live there, and”--
“And make bears, will you, Miss Grace?” cried King, dreadfully excited,
and springing out in front of her. “Oh, say, _please_ do--and have ’em
catch some of the natifs, and chew ’em, and ’most eat ’em up. Will you,
Miss Grace?”
“Yes, I’ll make bears,” said Grace, glad now of her power to sketch,
“and ever so many other things, King; that is, if you are good,” she
said hastily.
“Oh! I’ll be just as good as everything,” said King, clasping his
hands. “Begin now, do, Miss Grace;” and he began to pull her along to
the little room where the lessons were always said.
“No, King,” said Grace, “I can’t begin those lessons until I ask your
sister Polly first. But I’ll draw you a picture of anything you choose.”
“Oh, goody!” exclaimed King, jumping up and down, and making so much
noise that Elyot came running in, and after him Barby, trailing her
doll by one leg.
“Stop, you mustn’t come in here!” shouted King, with a very red face,
and trying to slam the door against them; “Miss Grace and I are going
to do something.”
“What you going to do?” demanded Elyot, crowding in.
“What going to do?” asked Barby, wriggling and pushing.
“Go right straight out!” demanded King, pushing the door with all his
might.
“O King, King!” cried Grace, pulling at his sailor collar.
“This is my mamma’s room,” said Elyot stoutly; “and I am not going
out--so there!”
“My mummy’s room,” declared Barby, shaking her curls at him; “an’ I’m
coming in, I am.”
“You sha’n’t. We’re going to draw the most beautiful pictures of
bears--and eating men up, and everything,” howled King quite beside
himself, and beginning to use his teeth and fingernails.
“Oh, dear me!” cried Grace Tupper, unable to do a thing to stop them.
And she sat right down in the middle of the floor, and began to cry.
Polly’s company just departing, Polly ran lightly over the stairs.
“Why--children!” she exclaimed, pausing at the landing.
“He’s going to draw be-yewtiful bears, mummy,” cried Barby, dreadfully
excited; and being the nearest to the hall, she ran out, and threw
herself into her mother’s arms.
“O boys--boys!” cried Polly sorrowfully, coming in, Barby hanging to
her gown.
Both boys, now engaged in a lively tussle, stopped pulling each
other’s hair, and sat up. Grace Tupper sat still and cried on.
“He wouldn’t let me come in and see it all,” cried Elyot with flashing
eyes.
“No, he wouldn’t, mummy,” said Barby, shaking her head.
“And Miss Grace was going to draw ’em for me,” screamed King; “and they
pushed and scrouged dreadfully.”
“What?” said Polly. “Where did you learn that word, King?”
“Oh, dear, dear!” wailed Grace. “I’m afraid I’m to blame, dear Mrs.
King; but I said I’d draw him some bears--I wanted to help; and now
I’ve only made you trouble.”
“Oh, no, Grace dear!” said Polly gently, “you haven’t made any trouble.
It was very nice and kind of you to offer to do that.”
She had such a sorrowful look in her face as she sat down, that the
boys crept near, and hung their heads.
“I--I--didn’t mean to,” said King, trying not to whimper, “sister
Polly, I really didn’t.” And he was quite near now; but Polly didn’t
look at him nor stir.
“Please don’t look like that, mamma,” begged Elyot, feeling cold creeps
down his back, “I never’ll do so again.”
“Never’ll do so again,” hummed Barby, playing with her mother’s rings.
“To think that when Mamsie is away, and she trusts us all,” said Polly,
when she could find her voice, “that we should do such dreadful things.”
The boys wriggled and twisted, and hid their faces.
“And then, when Phronsie has had to go off with Grandpapa--oh, it quite
breaks me down,” said Polly, and there was a tremble in her voice.
At this, both boys precipitated themselves into her lap, where they
burrowed in speechless misery, Barby yielding herself to it all with a
happy little crow as if part of the play.
“No, no, Barby,” said Polly gently, and shaking her head at her; “mamma
is not playing now. We have been very naughty. Go and get your little
chairs, boys, and sit down quietly.”
So the two boys went out and dragged in their two little cane-seat
chairs, and planted themselves down in them, Barby being put on a
corner of the lounge. And Polly took Grace out into another room and
heard all about it.
“Sister Polly!” called King presently, “oh, do come here!” There was
such a cry in his voice that Polly hurried in, and found him sobbing as
if his heart would break. “I can’t sit here any longer--don’t make me,”
and he hid his face on her neck. “I think of everything bad I ever did.
O sister Polly! I’m so sorry.”
“Then that is as long as I want you to sit here,” said Polly, helping
him out.
“I’ve got to sit longer,” said Elyot gloomily, “because I’m not sorry,”
as King rushed to kiss him. “I wanted to hear about the bears too.”
“And I want bears too,” declared Barby from her sofa; “bad, naughty
King.”
“You shall have the bears,” cried King radiantly, running up to her;
“yes, you shall, Barby; the very first picture Miss Grace draws you
shall have it--and Elyot shall have the next,” he said, after a
minute’s hard thinking.
Polly sent him a happy little smile that warmed every corner of his
small heart.
“Mayn’t Elyot get out now, sister Polly?” he asked pleadingly.
“I’m not sorry,” said Elyot stoutly. “No; I’ve got to stay.”
“You may go out, King, and you too, Barby,” said Polly slowly, “and
shut the door.”
“No; I’m going to stay,” said Barby perversely.
“Barbara.”
Barby slipped to the ground and edged out, and King closed the door,
feeling that it wasn’t so easy to undo being naughty after all.
In a minute the door was opened slowly, and King’s head appeared.
“Sister Polly,” he said, “it truly wasn’t Elyot’s fault, because if I’d
let them in, he would have been good.”
“Go out, dear,” said Polly gently, “and close the door.”
When the door was opened again, Elyot walked into the little room where
they were all waiting for him. No one had done anything, and Grace’s
hands were idle in her lap. Elyot walked up to her. “I’m sorry I made
you feel badly, Miss Grace,” he said; and then he ran and threw his
arms around King. “I don’t want the bears; I’d rather you had them,” he
cried.
[Illustration: “Barby hurried over to Grace. ‘I’m sorry too,’ she said;
‘and I’ll take the bears.’”]
Barby hurried over to Grace. “I’m sorry too,” she said; “and I’ll
take the bears if nobody wants ’em.” So a space being cleared in
the middle of the room, Polly had her little sewing-table brought
in; and presently there was a delightful hum, and everybody talking
and laughing at once. And it was found that Grace Tupper could draw
everything in the most delightful fashion. And bears pursuing men and
women and children in the most impossible places, were executed, and
all sorts of hair-breadth escapes were indulged. And then the children
wanted to color the pictures with their crayons, and then to cut them
out; until the first thing they knew, the “little publishing bag” was
swung over their heads.
“O papa!” screamed the two, and “O brother Jasper!” howled King, “is
it so late?” And then they all swarmed around him to show their work;
and Grace Tupper’s face flushed rosier yet at the praise, for Polly had
come in, and was hanging on her husband’s arm.
And in the midst of the noise and bustle the children made,--for they
seized their papa, and made him play “bear-garden” in earnest,--Grace
made bold to proffer her request to Polly that she might try to hear
King’s lessons.
“I’m afraid I don’t know enough,” she said humbly; “but oh! won’t you
let me try, dear Mrs. King?”
And Polly, looking into the blue eyes, said, “Yes;” and Grace ran off
on happy feet, resolved to do her very best, and to put in practice all
that she had ever learned at school. How she wished now that there were
no idle hours to think of! “But Mrs. King would say that it was of no
use to spend time to think of that now,” she said to herself, “but to
take hold of the books at once.”
“What a comfort Grace is!” said Polly to Jasper, as they were beginning
to try a new duet, and just as he was setting it in place on the
music-rest, “isn’t she, Jasper?”
“Yes indeed,” he said heartily.
But in spite of all their efforts to be cheerful and gay, time dragged
heavily enough. And the first few days after Grandpapa and Phronsie
went, Jasper had hard work to leave Polly when he ran off to business
in the early train.
“I’ll stay home with you, dear,” he said on the third morning, as he
saw the pale face, and the sorrowful look in the usually laughing eyes,
“and we will go and drive, Polly;” cut to the heart to see her so.
“Oh, no, Jasper!” she said quickly, the color flooding her face, “oh,
how could I be so selfish! I didn’t think it would worry you so, and
I’ll make myself look cheerful. Oh! it would just kill me to have you
leave your work. Indeed, Jasper, it would.”
“Then I won’t, Polly,” said Jasper reluctantly; “and don’t worry about
Roslyn May. I do believe they’ll find things better than they fear,
when they get there.”
“But supposing they shouldn’t,” breathed Polly fearfully.
“They will, I verily believe,” said Jasper in ringing tones. “And just
think, Polly, if all goes well, and the boat makes her usual time,
they’ll be there on Monday.”
Polly counted the days and hours, and “even minutes” Alexia said, and
was surprised herself to see how swiftly they flew by.
“It’s such a comfort to think that Joey could go with them,” she said
one day, when Alexia ran over and up into her pretty room to bewail
her woes over a new gown the dressmaker had sent home. Alexia had worn
it over to show it to Polly; and she now turned this way and that,
declaring each side was just so much worse than the other.
“Did you ever see such a fright, Polly Pepper?” she cried, quite
overcome, and sinking into the first chair she could find--“and to
think it was to be my very best gown.”
“Take care,” warned Polly, “you will spoil all that ruching.”
“I don’t care,” said Alexia recklessly, with a vicious pull at a
refractory bow. “Now, look at that; everything sticks up that should
lie down, and flops where it ought to stand out. Oh, dear me! I just
had to wear it over to show you before Pickering sees it, and to let
off steam, because I don’t want to worry him, poor boy. It’s quite
bad enough to pay the bills. Oh, that horrible old Miss Flint! Polly
Pepper, what _shall_ I do?”
Polly dropped the brush with which she was brushing out her bright
brown hair, and ran over. “I’ll tell you what, Alexia,” she said
cheerily, “I think it’s these dreadful bows that are not put on
rightly, that make half the trouble,” picking out one of them; “and
then she has the shoulder-puffs too big.”
“They’re enormous!” exclaimed Alexia, rolling her eyes to compass them
both. “I look just like a toad, Polly.”
“Now, if those were down in the right place,” said Polly, taking little
puckers in them, and then standing back to view the effect, “it would
make ever so much difference in that gown; you can’t think, Alexia.”
“Well, I begin to see hope for it,” said Alexia, sitting up straight
with her usual air; “but when I came in, actually, Polly, I was all
gone to pieces, I was so blue. Oh! what were you saying as I came in? I
remember now; it was about Joel.”
“I was saying it was such a comfort to think that Joey could go with
Grandpapa and Phronsie,” said Polly, flying over to the toilet-table to
her hair again.
“I should think so,” cried Alexia, between whom and Joel there had
always been a great friendship, though nothing could be farther from
their thoughts than to show it to each other. “My goodness me! Joel
Pepper is just the most splendid man that ever lived, except Pickering
and Jasper.”