meadow, but you ran on, unheeding. She struggled after you. The
daisies brushed her skirt. Creeping vines caught at her little shoes
and she fell. Scratched by briers, she scrambled to her feet again and
stumbled on, blind with tears, crying ever "Harry, Harry!" but so
faintly now in her sobs and breathlessness that you did not hear. At
the top of a weary, weary slope she sank helpless and heartbroken in the
grass, a little huddle of curls and pinafore, so that your conscience
smote you as you stood waiting, half hidden by the hedge.
"Don't be a cry-baby. I was only fooling," you said, and at the sound
of your voice Lizbeth lifted her face from the grasses and put out her
arms to you with a cry. In one hand was the little pear.
"Oh, I don't want the old thing," you cried, throwing yourself beside
her on the turf. Smiling again through her tears, Lizbeth reached out a
little hand scratched by briers, and patted your cheek.
"Harry," she said, "you can have all my animal crackers for your
m'nagerie, if you want to, and my little brown donkey; and I'll play
horse with you any time you want me to, Harry, I will."
So, after all, you did not run away, and you and Lizbeth went home at
last across the meadow, hand in hand. Behind you, hidden and forgotten
in the red clover, lay your quarrel and the little pear.
When Lizbeth loved you, there were stars in her brown eyes; when you
looked more closely, so that you were very near their shining, you saw
in their round, black pupils, smiling back at you, the face of a little
boy; and then in your own eyes, Lizbeth, holding your cheeks between her
hands, found the face of a little girl.
"Why, it's _me_!" she cried.
And when you looked again into Lizbeth's eyes, you saw yourself; and
"Oh, Mother," you said afterwards, for you had thought deeply, "I think
it's the _good_ Harry that's in Lizbeth's eyes, 'cause when I look at
him, he's always smiling." That was as far as you thought about it
then; but once, long afterwards, it came to you that little boys never
find their pictures in a sister's eyes unless they are good, and love
her, and hold her cheeks between their hands.
Lizbeth's cheeks were softer than yours, and when she played horse, or
the day was windy, so that the grass rippled and the trees sang, or when
it was tub-day with soap and towels up-stairs, her cheeks were pink as
the roses in Mother's garden. That is how you came to tell Mother a
great secret, one evening in summer, as you sat with her and Lizbeth on
the front steps watching the sun go down.
"I guess it's tub-day in the sky, Mother."
"Tub-day?"
"Why, yes. All the little clouds have been having their bath, I think,
'cause they're all pink and shiny, like Lizbeth."
But once Lizbeth's cheeks were white, and she stayed in bed every day,
and you played by yourself. Twice a day they took you as far as the
bedroom door to see her.
[Illustration: "THEY TOOK YOU AS FAR AS THE BEDROOM DOOR TO SEE HER"]
"H'lo," you said, as you peeked.
"H'lo," she whispered back, very softly, for she was almost asleep, and
she did not even smile at you, and before you could tell her what the
Pussy-cat did they took you away--but not till you had seen the two
glasses on the table with the silver spoon on top.
There was no noise in the days then. Even the trees stopped singing, and
the wind walked on tiptoe and whispered into people's ears, like you.
"Is it to-day Lizbeth comes down-stairs?" you asked every morning.
"Do you think Lizbeth will play with me to-morrow?" you asked every
night. Night came a long time after morning in the days when Lizbeth
could not play.
"Oh, dear, I don't think I feel very well," you told Mother. Tears
spilled out of your eyes and rolled down your cheeks. Mother felt your
brow and looked at your tongue.
"_I_ know what's the matter with my little boy," she said, and kissed
you; but she did not put you to bed.
One day, when no one was near, you peeked and saw Lizbeth. She was
alone and very little and very white.
"H'lo," you said.
"H'lo," she whispered back, and smiled at you, and when she smiled you
could not wait any longer. You went in very softly and kissed her where
she lay and gave her a little hug. She patted your cheek.
"I'd like my dollies," she whispered. You brought them to her, all
four--the two china ones and the rag brunette and the waxen blonde.
"Dollies are sick," she said. "They 'most died, I guess. Play you're
sick, too."
Mother found you there--Lizbeth and you and the four dolls, side by side
on the bed, all in a little sick row. And from the very moment that you
kissed Lizbeth and gave her the little hug, she grew better, so that
by-and-by the wind blew louder and the trees sang lustily, and all Our
Yard was bright with flowers and sun and voices and play, for you and
Lizbeth and the four dolls were well again.
*Our Yard*
The breadth of Our Yard used to be from the beehives to the red
geraniums. When the beehives were New York, the geraniums were Japan,
so the distance is easy to calculate. The apple-tree Alps overshadowed
New York then, which seems strange now, but geography is not what it
used to be. In the lapse of years the Manhattan hives have crumbled in
the Alpine shade, an earthquake of garden spade has wiped Japan from the
map, and where the scarlet islands lay in the sun there are green
billows now, and other little boys in the grass, at play.
In the old days when you sailed away on the front gate, which swung and
creaked through storms, to the other side of the sea, you could just
descry through a fog of foliage the rocky shores of the back-yard fence,
washed by a surf of golden-rod. If you moored your ship--for an
unlatched gate meant prowling dogs in the garden, and Mother was cross
at that--if you anchored your gate-craft dutifully to become a soldier,
you could march to the back fence, but it was a long journey. Starting,
a drummer-boy, you could never foretell your end, for the future was
vague, even with the fence in view, and your cocked hat on your curls,
and your drumsticks in your hand. Lizbeth and the dolls might halt you
at the front steps and muster you out of service to become a doctor with
Grandmother's spectacles and Grandfather's cane. And if the dolls were
well that day, with normal pulses and unflushed cheeks, and you marched
by with martial melody, there was your stalled hobby-horse on the side
porch, neighing to you for clover hay; and stopping to feed him meant
desertion from the ranks, to become a farmer, tilling the soil and
bartering acorn eggs and clean sand butter on market-day. And even
though you marched untempted by bucolic joys, there lay in wait for you
the kitchen door, breathing a scent of crullers, or gingerbread, or
apple-pies, or leading your feet astray to the unscraped frosting-bowl
or the remnant cookies burned on one side, and so not good for supper,
but fine for weary drummer-boys. So whether you reached the fence that
day was a question for you and the day and the sirens that beckoned to
you along your play.
Across the clover prairie the trellis mountains reared their vine-clad
heights. Through their morning-glories ran a little pass, which led to
the enchanted garden on the other side, but the pass was so narrow and
overhung with vines that when Grandfather was a pack-horse and carried
you through on his back, your outstretched feet would catch on the
trellis sides. Then the pack-horse would pick his way cautiously and
you would dig your heels into his sides and hold fast, and so you got
through. Once inside the garden, oh, wonder of pansies and hollyhocks
and bachelor's-buttons and roses and sweet smells! The sun shone
warmest there, and the fairies lived there, Mother said.
"But when it rains, Mother?"
"Oh, then they hide beneath the trellis, under the honeysuckles."
Mother wore an apron and sun-bonnet, and knelt in the little path,
digging with a trowel in the moist, brown earth. You helped her with
your little spade. Under a lilac-bush Lizbeth made mud-pies, and the
pies of the enchanted garden were the brownest and richest in all Our
Yard. They were the most like Mother's, Lizbeth said. Grandfather sat
on the wheelbarrow-ship and smoked.
"Do fairies smoke, Grandfather?"
"The old grandfather fairies do," he said.
Of all the flowers in the enchanted garden you liked the roses best, and
of all the roses you liked the red. There was a big one that hung on
the wall above your head. You could just reach it when you stood on
tiptoe, and pulling it down to you then, you would bury your face in its
petals and take a long snuff, and say,
"Um-m-m."
And when you let it go, it bobbed and courtesied on its prickly stem.
But one morning, very early, when you pulled it down to you, you were
rough with it, and it sprinkled your face with dew.
"The rose is crying," Lizbeth said.
"You should be very gentle with roses," Mother told you. "Sometimes
when folks are sick or cross, just the sight of a red rose cheers them
and makes them smile again."
That was a beautiful thought, and it came back to you the day you left
Our Yard and ran away. You were gone a long time. It was late in the
afternoon when you trudged guiltily back again, and when you were still
a long way off you could see Mother waiting for you at the gate. The
brown switch, doubtless, was waiting too. So you stole into Our Yard
through the back fence, and hid in the enchanted garden, crying and
afraid. It began to rain, a gentle summer shower, and like the fairies
you hid beneath the honeysuckles. Looking up through your tears, you
saw the red rose--and remembered. The rain stopped. You climbed upon
the wheelbarrow-ship and pulled the rose from the vine. Trembling, you
approached the house. Softly you opened the front door. At the sight
of you Mother gave a little cry. Your lip quivered; the tears rolled
down your cheeks; for you were cold and wet and dreary.
"M-mother," you said, with outstretched hand, "here's a r-rose I brought
you"; and she folded you and the flower in her arms. It was true, then,
what she had told you--that when people are cross there is sometimes
nothing in the world like the sight of a sweet red rose to cheer them
and make them smile again.
Once in Our Yard, you were safe from bad boys and their fists, from bad
dogs and their bites, and all the other perils of the road. Yet Our
Yard had its dangers too. Through the rhubarb thicket in the corner of
the fence stalked a black bear. You had heard him growl. You had seen
the flash of his white teeth. You had tracked him to his lair. Just
behind you, one hand upon your coat, came Lizbeth.
"'Sh! I see him," you whispered, as you raised your wooden gun.
Bang! Bang!
And the bear fell dead.
"Don't hurt Pussy," said Mother, warningly.
"No," you said, and the dead bear purred and rubbed his head against
your legs. Once, after you had killed and eaten him, he mewed and ran
before you to his basket-cave; and there were five little bears, all
blind and crying, and you took them home and tamed them by the kitchen
fire.
But the bear was nothing to the Wild Man who lived next door. In the
barn, close to your fence, he lay in wait for little girls and boys to
eat them and drink their blood and gnaw their bones. Oh, you had seen
him once yourself, as you peered through a knot-hole in the barn-side.
He was sitting on an upturned water-pail, smoking a pipe and muttering.
You and Lizbeth stole out to look at him. Hand in hand you tiptoed
across the clover prairie where the red Indians roved. You scanned the
horizon, but there was not a feather or painted face in sight
to-day--though they always came when you least expected them, popping up
from the tall grass with wild, blood-curdling yells, and scalping you
when you didn't watch out. Across the prairie, then, you went,
silently, hand in hand. The sun fell warm and golden in the open.
Birds were singing in the sky, unmindful of the lurking perils among the
tall grass and beyond the fence. Back of you were home and Mother's
arms, and in the pantry window, cooling, two juicy pies. Before you,
across the clover, a great gray dungeon frowned upon you; within its
walls a creature of blood and mystery waiting with hungry jaws. Hushed
and timorous, you approached.
"Oh, I'm afraid," Lizbeth whimpered. Savagely you caught her arm.
"'Sh! He'll hear you," you hissed through chattering teeth. A cloud
hid the sun, and the ominous shadow fell upon you as you crouched,
trembling, on the edge of the raspberry wood.
"Sh!" you said. Under cover of the forest shade you crept with bated
breath, on all-fours, stealthily. Oh, what was that? That awful sound,
that hideous groan? From the barn it came, with a crunching of teeth
and a rattle of chain. Lizbeth gave a little cry, seized you, and hid
her face against your coat.
"'Sh!" you said. "That's him! Hear him!"
Through wood and prairie rang a piercing cry--
"Mother! I want my mother!"
And Lizbeth fled, wailing, across the plain. You followed--to cheer
her.
"Cowardy Calf!" you said, but you did not say it till you had reached
the kitchen door. And in hunting the Wild Man you never got farther
than his groan.
Mornings in Our Yard the clover prairie sparkled with a million gems.
The fairies had dropped them, dancing in the moonbeams, while you slept.
Strung on a blade of grass you found a necklace of diamonds left by the
queen herself in her flight at dawn, but when you plucked it, the
quivering brilliants melted into water drops and trickled down your
hand. Then the warm sun came and took the diamonds back to the fairies
again--but your shoes were still damp with dew. And by-and-by you would
be sneezing, and Mother would be taking down bottles for you, for the
things that fairies wear are not good for little boys. And if ever you
squash the fairies' diamonds beneath your feet, and don't change your
shoes, the fairies will be angry with you, and you will be catching
cold; and if you take the queen's necklace--oh, then watch out, for they
will be putting a necklace of red flannel on you!
Wide-awake was Our Yard in the morning with its birds and wind and
sunshine and your play, but when noonday dinner was over there was a
yawning in the trees. The birds hushed their songs. Grandfather dozed
in his chair on the porch. The green grass dozed in the sun. And as the
shadows lengthened even the perils slept--Indians on the clover prairie,
bear in the rhubarb thicket, Wild Man in the barn. In the apple-tree
shade you lay wondering, looking up at the sky--wondering why bees
purred like pussy-cats, why the sparrows bowed to you as they eyed you
sidewise, what they twittered in the leaves, where the clouds went when
they sailed to the end of the sky. Three clouds there were, floating
above the apple-tree, and two were big and one was little.
"The big clouds are the Mother and Father clouds," you told yourself,
for no one was there to hear, "and the little one is the Little Boy
cloud, and they are out walking in the sky. And now the Mother cloud is
talking to the Little Boy cloud. 'Hurry up,' she says; 'why do you walk
so slow?' And the Little Boy cloud says, 'I can't go any faster 'cause
my legs are so short.' And then the Father cloud laughs and says,
'Let's have some ice-cream soda.' Then the Little Boy cloud says, 'I'll
take vaniller, and make it sweet,' and they all drink. And by-and-by
they all go home and have supper, and after supper the Mother cloud
undresses the Little Boy cloud, and puts on his nighty, and he kneels
down and says, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.' And then the Mother cloud
kisses the Little Boy cloud on both cheeks and on his eyes and on his
curls and on his mouth twice, and he cuddles down under the moon and
goes to sleep. And that's all."
Far beyond the apple-tree, far beyond your ken, the three clouds
floated--Father and Mother and Little Son--else your story had been
longer; and in the floating of little clouds, in the making of little
stories, in the sleeping of little boys, it was always easiest when Our
Yard slumbered in the afternoon.
When supper was over a bonfire blazed in the western sky, just over the
back fence. The clouds built it, you explained to Lizbeth, to keep
themselves warm at night. It was a beautiful fire, all gold and red,
but as Our Yard darkened, the fire sank lower till only the sparks
remained, and sometimes the clouds came and put the sparks out too.
When the moon shone you could see, through the window by your bed, the
clover prairie and the trellis mountains, silver with fairies, and you
longed to hold one in your hand. But when the night fell moonless and
starless, the fairies in Our Yard groped their way--you could see their
lanterns twinkling in the trees--and there were goblins under every
bush, and, crouching in the black shadows, was the Wild Man, gnawing a
little boy's bone. Oh, Our Yard was awful on a dark night, and when you
were tucked in bed and the lamp was out and Mother away downstairs, you
could hear the Wild Man crunching his bone beneath your window, and you
pulled the covers over your head. But always, when you woke, Our Yard
was bright and green again, for though the moon ran away some nights,
the sun came every day.
With all its greenness and its brightness and its vastness and its
enchanted garden, Our Yard bore a heavy yoke. You were not quite sure
what the burden was, but it was something about tea. Men, painted and
feathered like the red Indians, had gone one night to a ship in the
harbor and poured the tea into the sea. That you knew; and you had
listened and heard of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. Through the
window you saw Our Yard smiling in the morning sun; trees green with
summer; flight of white clouds in the sky; flight of brown birds in the
bush. Wondering, you saw it there, a fair land manacled by a tyrant's
hand, and the blood mounted to your cheeks.
"Mother, I want my sword."
"It is where you left it, my boy."
"And my soldier-hat and drum."
"They are under the stairs."
Over your shoulder you slung your drum. With her own hands Mother
belted your sword around you and set your cocked hat on your curls.
Then twice she kissed you, and you marched away to the music of your
drum. She watched you from the open door.
It was a windy morning, and you were bravest in the wind. From the back
fence to the front gate, from the beehives to the red geraniums, there
was a scent and stir of battle in the air. Rhubarb thicket and
raspberry wood re-echoed with the beat of drums and the tramp of
marching feet. Far away beyond the wood-pile hills, behind the trellis
mountains where the morning-glories clung, tremulous, in the gale, even
the enchanted garden woke from slumber and the flowers shuddered in
their peaceful beds. On you marched, through the wind and the morning,
on through Middlesex, village and farm, till you heard the cannon and
the battle-cries.
"Halt!"
You unslung your drum. Mounting your charger, you galloped down the
line.
"Forward!"
And you rode across the blood-stained clover. Into the battle you led
them, sword in hand--into the thickest of the fight--while all about
you, thundering in the apple-boughs, reverberating in the wood-pile
hills, roared the guns of the west wind. Fair in the face of that
cannonade you flung the flower of your army. Around you lay the wounded,
the dead, the dying. Beneath you your charger fell, blood gushing from
his torn side. A thrust bayonet swept off your cocked hat. You were
down yourself. Tut! 'Twas a mere scratch--and you struggled on.
Repulsed, you rallied and charged again ... again ... again, across the
clover, to the mouths of the smoking guns. Afoot, covered with blood,
your shattered sword gleaming in the morning sun, you stood at last on
the scorched heights. Before your flashing eyes, a rout of redcoats in
retreat; behind your tossing curls, the buff and blue.
A cry of triumph came down the beaten wind:
"Mother! Mother! We licked 'em!"
"Whom?"
"The Briddish!"
And Our Yard was free.
*The Toy Grenadier*
It was a misnomer. He was not a captain at all, nor was he of the Horse
Marines. He was a mere private in the Grenadier Guards, with his musket
at a carry and his heels together, and his little fingers touching the
seams of his pantaloons. Still, Captain Jinks was the name he went by
when he first came to Our House, years ago, and Captain Jinks he will be
always in your memory--the only original Captain Jinks, the ballad to
the contrary notwithstanding.
It was Christmas Eve when you first saw him. He was stationed on sentry
duty beneath a fir-tree, guarding a pile of commissary stores. He
looked neither to the left nor to the right, but straight before him,
and not a tremor or blink or sigh disturbed his military bearing. His
bearskin was glossy as a pussy-cat's fur; his scarlet coat, with the
cross of honor on his heart, fitted him like a glove, and every gilt
button of it shone in the candlelight; and oh, the loveliness, the
spotless loveliness, of his sky-blue pantaloons!
"My boy," said Father, "allow me to present Captain Jinks. Captain
Jinks, my son."
"Oh!" you cried, the moment you clapped eyes on him. "Oh, Father! What
a beautiful soldier!"
And at your praise the Captain's checks were scarlet. He would have
saluted, no doubt, had you been a military man, but you were only a
civilian then.
"Take him," said Father, "and give him some rations. He's about
starved, I guess, guarding those chocolates."
So you relieved the Captain of his stern vigil--or, rather, the Captain
and his gun, for he refused to lay down his arms even for mess call,
without orders from the officer of the guard, though he did desert his
post, which was inconsistent from a military point of view, and deserved
court-martial. And while he was gone the commissary stores were
plundered by ruthless, sticky hands.
Lizbeth brought a new wax doll to mess with the Captain. A beautiful
blonde she was, and the Captain was gallantry itself, but she was a
little stiff with him, in her silks and laces, preferring, no doubt, a
messmate with epaulets and sword. So the chat lagged till the Rag Doll
came--an unassuming brunette creature--and the Captain got on very well
with her. Indeed, when the Wax Doll flounced away, the Captain leaned
and whispered in the Rag Doll's ear. What he said you did not hear, but
the Rag Doll drew away, shyly--
"Very sudden," she seemed to say. But the Captain leaned nearer, at an
angle perilous to both, and--kissed her! The Rag Doll fainted to the
floor. The Captain was at his wits' end. Without orders he could not
lay aside his gun, for he was a sentry, albeit off his post. Yet here
was a lady in distress. The gun or the lady? The lady or the gun? The
Captain struggled betwixt his honor and his love. In the very stress of
his contending emotions he tottered, and would have fallen to the Rag
Doll's side, but you caught him just in time. Lizbeth applied the
smelling-bottle to the Rag Doll's nose, and she revived. Pale, but
every inch a rag lady, she rose, leaning on Lizbeth. She gave the
Captain a withering glance, and swept towards the open door. The
Captain did not flinch. Proudly he drew himself to his full height; his
heels clicked together; his gun fell smartly to his side; and as the
lady passed he looked her squarely in her scornful eyes, and bore their
_conge_ like a soldier.
Next morning--Christmas morning--in the trenches before the Coal
Scuttle, the Captain fought with reckless bravery. The earthworks of
building-blocks reached barely to his cartridge-belt, yet he stood erect
in a hail of marble balls.
"Jinks, you're clean daft," cried Grandfather. "Lie down, man!"
But the Captain would not budge. Commies and glassies crashed around
him. They ploughed up the earthworks before him; they did great
execution on the legs of chairs and tables and other non-combatants
behind. Yet there he stood, unmoved in the midst of the carnage, his
heels together, his little fingers just touching the seams of his
pantaloons. It was for all the world as though he were on dress parade.
Perhaps he was--for while he stood there, valorous in that Christmas
fight, his eyes were on the heights of Rocking Chair beyond, where, safe
from the marble hail, sat the Rag Doll with Lizbeth and the waxen
blonde.