Happy Days for Boys and Girls Part 47

"Marcy on us," she said, as soon as she could find words, "what a dreadful creature! You may go to your seats, children; I guess you can be excused for laughing."

The poor lady proceeded to pick up her papers, and set matters to rights. It was quite a task. The ink had run over all her papers and into her desk. For years after, that ink spot was pointed out by the children to the new comers, and the story of the monkey had to be related.

Before noon the organ grinder had wakened from his after-dinner sleep, and finding out that his monkey had been into mischief, concluded that it was best to be off. He was not seen in the village any more.

Aunt Thankful kept school afterwards for several years, and then age compelled her to give up her office. About that time, and just when she wanted it most, one of the inhabitants of our village left her three thousand dollars in his will, as a "mark of his esteem." Surely never was charity more properly bestowed, or more gratefully received.

I don't think there was a person in the world who envied her the gift, or thought it undeserved.

M. H.

[Decoration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {The children at the bottom of the bas.e.m.e.nt steps}]

HOW A GOOD DINNER WAS LOST.

Ting a ling ling! a ling ling! ling ling! ling! So went the dinner bells--first mamma's, then Mrs. Green's, Mrs. Brown's, Mrs. White's, and all the other neighbors' with colored names. It was everybody's dinner hour; and by the way, is it not funny how everybody gets hungry together?

Dinner was to be eaten at the healthy, good old-fas.h.i.+oned hour of noon, between the two sessions of school. The children were just fresh from slates, with long, crooked rows of hard figures, and heavy atlases, with unp.r.o.nounceable towns and rivers that would not be found out. There were chickens and dough-b.a.l.l.s for dinner. The smell of them made the children ravenous; and they very nearly tripped up Maria and her platter in their haste to reach the table.

Mamma looked around to see if they were all there, and counted on her fingers,--

"Baby, Jelly, Tiny--Tiny, where's Bunch?"

"Why, I thought she was in the kitchen," said Tiny, looking wistfully at the tempting drumsticks. "Papa, won't you please help us little folks first--just to-day? 'cause we're so awful hungry."

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A bunch of poppy heads}]

"Tiny, I do believe that Bunch has gone down to the Midgetts'. You must go and find her before you eat your dinner; and hurry, now."

"O, dear! can't she hear the dinner bell just as well as I can?" and off flew Tiny, with the streamers of her jockey standing straight out behind her, and her new b.u.t.toned shoes spattering water from every mud-puddle in her way.

We were not invited; so we can't stay to dinner; but perhaps we will have time to learn something about the little ones while Tiny is hunting her tardy sister Bunch.

Her name was not really Bunch; that is, she was not christened so. At school she answered "Present" at roll-call to the prettier name of Florence; but uncle Tim--he's such a jolly fellow!--said, when he first held her in her delicately-embroidered blankets, that she was such a bouncer, so red and so dumpy, that she would never be anything but a bunch; and so dubbed, she carries the name to this day. But did not she disappoint him, though! for, in some unaccountable way, she daily stretched long, and flattened out, and became thin and bony. Her collar-bone grew to be a perfect shelf, and her stockings got a very awkward fas.h.i.+on of wrinkling about her ankles.

Soon after, when Tiny's little red face began to screw and squint at uncle Tim, she was such a mite that he was sure to be right this time if he nicknamed her Tiny; and she was so little, that an ordinary pillow made her a bed of a comfortable size; and all the old cronies in the village whispered that the new baby would either die off pretty quick, or live to be a second Mrs. Tom Thumb. But Tiny lived, and spited them, and waxed fat and bunchy, while Bunch astonished them all by waning lean and tiny.

Jelly's name came no one knew how. Some mischievous sprite probably whispered it to her; for she persisted that it was her name; and so she was indulged in it.

Near their home was a vacant lot--vacant, excepting for a one-story shanty, with a cellar, piles of broken crockery, old shoes, dislocated hoop skirts, and bushes of rank stramoniums, with their big, poisonous blossoms. Cows strayed in the lot, munching the ugly snarls of gra.s.s, and the neighbors' pigs and fowls made a daily promenade through the wilderness of refuse.

Although it seemed a very unattractive place for a neat little girl to visit, now especially, since a pipe of the great sewer had overflowed, and had deluged parts of the ground. But to that miserable shanty mamma believed her little Bunch to have strayed; and there Tiny found her, seated on a log of wood in the corner of the largest room, with her ap.r.o.n thrown over her face and the Midgett girls--there were two of them--first staring at her, and then winking at each other.

"Bunch," said Tiny, "Bunch, mamma says to hurry right straight home; and guess what there is for dinner. Chicken pot-pie, and it's my turn to have the wish-bone! Why, Bunch, what's the matter with you? What a baby! You're always forever a-crying about something or other. Come on now. I'm going right home; and you'll get an awful punis.h.i.+ng for coming here!"

The eyes of the Midgett girls glared at her and the insult.

"O, dear! O, dear!" sobbed Bunch, just peeping from one corner of her ap.r.o.n at the outer door.

"O, dear, what?" snapped Tiny, in such a hurry for a drumstick.

"Tiny, did you see anything on the front stoop when you came in?"

asked Bunch, her eye still peeping at the outer door.

"Any what?"

"O, any--any cats--any wildcats?"

"Wildcats--what are they?"

"O!" said the Midgetts, shouting together; "wildcats! dreffle ones!

my! yes! green eyes! awful cats, that spit fire out o' their mouths, and claws that'll scratch yer to death;" imitating the clawing with their long dirty fingers quite in the face of poor Bunch, who immediately retired to the seclusion of her ap.r.o.n, and continued her frightened sobs.

"O, where? where?" asked Tiny, excitedly, opening wide her big blue eyes, and glancing uneasily in every corner.

"Why, jist out o' there, hid under the stoop; an' when yer go out, they'll pounce onto yer."

"O," said Tiny, bravely, "'tain't so! I don't believe it. There wasn't any there when I came in."

"That's because they was asleep, then," said Ann Matilda. She had red, fiery red hair, was freckled, and had tusks for teeth. "They've just got woke up now; and they're hungry, too."

"So am I," said Tiny. "Come, Bunch, let's hurry past, and they can't touch us; besides, you know no wild animals live about here nowadays."

"O, but these ones are what comes up out of the sewer," instructed the Midgetts.

Tiny's courage began quickly to ooze away, and every bit of it deserted her when she and Bunch just put their noses outside of the door, and heard a most ferocious ya-o-o-ing from--well, they could not tell where.

Of the Midgett tribe, there was no one at home but the two girls.

There was no Mr. Midgett, but there was a Mrs. Midgett, who was out was.h.i.+ng. The children had seen her plunging her hard, red arms into the soap suds, over their mother's wash-tub. She probably had a hard time managing a living. They were very poor. Sometimes the girls got employment as nurse girls or as extra help in the neighbors' kitchens; but no one cared particularly to employ them, they were so vulgar, indolent, and slovenly. So they subsisted on the odd bits of broken victuals which they begged from door to door in baskets. Some people said they always gathered so much, that they must keep a boarding-house to get rid of the stuff; but I always regarded this as a fine bit of sarcasm. The Midgett mansion was a forbidden haunt of the children; but on this day Bunch had gone, for the last time, on special business of her own.

On Christmas last, Santa Claus had visited their home, and left for each a pretty doll of the regulation pattern, with blue eyes, and golden crimpy hair, dressed in billowy tarleton, and the height of fas.h.i.+on, the beauty of which dolls quite bewildered the unaccustomed eyes of the Midgetts when the children took their young ladys.h.i.+ps for an airing. And so one day the Midgetts borrowed them for a minute, while the children neglected their responsibilities, leaving them on a door stone, while they crowded for a closer peep at the mysterious dancers in a hand-organ. From that day to this the whereabouts of the dolls.h.i.+ps has remained a solemn secret from the knowledge of all but the Midgetts. And it was to them Bunch had gone for a clew to her treasure.

"O," said Keziah Jane, "while we was a-standin' a-waitin' for yous two to git away from the music, and give us a chance to peek in at the dancin', the black feller what lives down the sewer come, and s.n.a.t.c.hes 'em away; and we chases him like fury, and he run; and we never seed those ere dolls agin--nor him nor the dolls."

"s.h.!.+ s.h.!.+" cautioned Ann Matilda. "Who's that a-knockin' at the door?

Run quick in the bed-room, and hide under the bed. Maybe it's that ere black feller, or those wildcats."

Scramble under the dirty bed went the two little girls while the door was opened. Only Jelly; no black man, nor wildcats, either. Jelly, and unharmed; Jelly sent from mamma to escort her naughty sisters home, but who was readily frightened into remaining with them; and so there were three little entertainers for the Midgett ogresses that afternoon.

In the course of a half hour came another rapping at the door. What a reception the Midgetts were having! Keziah Jane pushed the children under the bed, while Ann Matilda opened the door. This time it was the grown-up sister Rosa.

O, how the children's hearts throbbed when they heard Rosa's pleasant voice! but they dared to speak never a word; for Keziah Jane crawled down on the floor close beside the bed, and looked hard at them with her wicked black eyes, and said,--