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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 43862
   :PG.Title: In the Morning Glow
   :PG.Released: 2013-10-01
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Roy Rolfe Gilson
   :DC.Title: In the Morning Glow
              Short Stories
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1902
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

===================
IN THE MORNING GLOW
===================

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      Cover art

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   .. _`"'WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DREAM!'"`:

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      "'WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DREAM!'" (See page `187`_)

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      IN THE
      MORNING GLOW

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      SHORT STORIES

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      By

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      ROY ROLFE GILSON

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      AUTHOR OF
      "Miss Primrose" "The Flower of Youth"
      Etc. Etc.

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      ILLUSTRATED

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      NEW YORK
      GROSSET & DUNLAP
      PUBLISHERS

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      Published by arrangement with Harper & Brothers  

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      Copyright, 1902, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

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      *All rights reserved.*

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      Published October, 1902.

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      TO
      MY WIFE

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   Contents

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`GRANDFATHER`_

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`GRANDMOTHER`_

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`WHILE AUNT JANE PLAYED`_

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`LITTLE SISTER`_

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`OUR YARD`_

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`THE TOY GRENADIER`_

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`FATHER`_

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`MOTHER`_

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   Illustrations

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`"'WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DREAM!'"`_ . . . . . . *Frontispiece*

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`"WHEN GRANDFATHER WORE HIS
WHITE VEST YOU WALKED LIKE OTHER FOLKS"`_

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`"YOU STOLE SOFTLY TO HIS SIDE"`_

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`"WATCHED HIM MAKE THE BLUE
FRAGMENTS INTO THE BLUE PITCHER AGAIN"`_

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`"THE SAIL-BOATS HE WHITTLED FOR YOU ON RAINY DAYS"`_

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`"YOU CLUNG TO HER APRON FOR
SUPPORT IN YOUR MUTE AGONY"`_

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`"YOU WATCHED THEM AS THEY
WENT DOWN THE WALK TOGETHER"`_

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`"TO AND FRO GRANDMOTHER ROCKED YOU"`_

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`"YOU SAID 'NOW I LAY ME' IN UNISON"`_

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`"MOTHER TUCKED YOU BOTH INTO
BED AND KISSED YOU"`_

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`"THEY TOOK YOU AS FAR AS THE
BEDROOM DOOR TO SEE HER"`_

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`"'BAD DREAM, WAS IT, LITTLE CHAP?'"`_

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`"'FATHER, WHAT DO YOU THINK
WHEN YOU DON'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT JUST LOOK?'"`_

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`"'MOTHER,' YOU SAID, SOFTLY"`_

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`"THE PICTURE-BOOK"`_

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`"BEFORE YOU WENT TO BED"`_





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.. _`Grandfather`:

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   Grandfather

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When you gave Grandfather
both your hands and put one
foot against his knee and the
other against his vest, you
could walk right up to his white beard
like a fly—but you had to hold tight.
Sometimes your foot slipped on the knee,
but the vest was wider and not so hard,
so that when you were that far you were
safe.  And when you had both feet in the
soft middle of the vest, and your body
was stiff, and your face was looking right
up at the ceiling, Grandfather groaned
down deep inside, and that was the sign
that your walk was ended.  Then Grandfather
crumpled you up in his arms.  But
on Sunday, when Grandfather wore his
white vest, you walked like other folks.

.. _`"WHEN GRANDFATHER WORE HIS WHITE VEST YOU WALKED LIKE OTHER FOLKS"`:

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   :alt: "WHEN GRANDFATHER WORE HIS WHITE VEST YOU WALKED LIKE OTHER FOLKS"

   "WHEN GRANDFATHER WORE HIS WHITE VEST YOU WALKED LIKE OTHER FOLKS"

In the morning Grandfather sat in the
sun by the wall—the stone wall at the
back of the garden, where the golden-rod
grew.  Grandfather read the paper and
smoked.  When it was afternoon and
Mother was taking her nap, Grandfather was
around the corner of the house, on the
porch, in the sun—always in the sun, for
the sun followed Grandfather wherever he
went, till he passed into the house at
supper-time.  Then the sun went down and it
was night.

Grandfather walked with a cane; but
even then, with all the three legs he
boasted of, you could run the meadow to the
big rock before Grandfather had gone
half-way.  Grandfather's pipe was corn-cob,
and every week he had a new one, for the
little brown juice that cuddled down in
the bottom of the bowl, and wouldn't come
out without a straw, wasn't good for folks,
Grandfather said.  Old Man Stubbs, who
came across the road to see Grandfather,
chewed his tobacco, yet the little brown
juice did not hurt him at all, he said.  Still
it was not pleasant to kiss Old Man Stubbs,
and Mother said that chewing tobacco
was a filthy habit, and that only very
old men ever did it nowadays, because
lots of people used to do it when
Grandfather and Old Man Stubbs were little
boys.  Probably, you thought, people did
not kiss other folks so often then.

One morning Grandfather was reading
by the wall, in the sun.  You were on
the ground, flat, peeping under the grass,
and you were so still that a cricket came
and teetered on a grass-stalk near at hand.
Two red ants climbed your hat as it lay
beside you, and a white worm swung
itself from one grass-blade to another,
like a monkey.  The ground under the
apple-trees was broken out with sun-spots.
Bees were humming in the red clover.
Butterflies lazily flapped their wings and
sailed like little boats in a sea of
goldenrod and Queen Anne's lace.

"Dee, dee-dee, dee-dee," you sang, and
Mr. Cricket sneaked under a plantain
leaf.  You tracked him to his lair with
your finger, and he scuttled away.

"Grandfather."

No reply.

"*Grand*\father."

Not a word.  Then you looked.  Grandfather's
paper had slipped to the ground,
and his glasses to his lap.  He was fast
asleep in the sunshine with his head upon
his breast.  You stole softly to his side
With a long grass you tickled his ear.
With a jump he awoke, and you tumbled,
laughing, on the grass.

.. _`"YOU STOLE SOFTLY TO HIS SIDE"`:

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   :alt: "YOU STOLE SOFTLY TO HIS SIDE"

   "YOU STOLE SOFTLY TO HIS SIDE"

"Ain't you 'shamed?" cried
Lizzie-in-the-kitchen, who was hanging out the
clothes.

"Huh!  Grandfather don't care."

Grandfather never cared.  That is one
of the things which made him Grandfather.
If he had scolded he might have
been Father, or even Uncle Ned—but he
would not have been Grandfather.  So
when you spoiled his nap he only said,
"H'm," deep in his beard, put on his
glasses, and read his paper again.

When it was afternoon, and the sun
followed Grandfather to the porch, and
you were tired of playing House, or
Hop-Toad, or Indian, or the Three Bears, it
was only a step from Grandfather's foot
to Grandfather's lap.  When you sat back
and curled your legs, your head lay in
the hollow of Grandfather's shoulder, in
the shadow of his white beard.  Then
Grandfather would say,

"Once upon a time there was a bear..."

Or, better still,

"Once, when I was a little boy..."

Or, best of all,

"When Grandfather went to the war..."

That was the story where Grandfather
lay all day in the tall grass watching
for Johnny Reb, and Johnny Reb was
watching for Grandfather.  When it came
to the exciting part, you sat straight up
to see Grandfather squint one eye and
look along his outstretched arm, as though
it were his gun, and say, "Bang!"

But Johnny Reb saw the tip of Grandfather's
blue cap just peeping over the
tops of the tall grass, and so he, too, went
"Bang!"

And ever afterwards Grandfather walked
with a cane.

"Did Johnny Reb have to walk with a
cane, too, Grandfather?"

"Johnny Reb, he just lay in the tall
grass, all doubled up, and says he, 'Gimme
a chaw o' terbaccer afore I die.'"

"Did you give it to him, Grandfather?"

"He died 'fore I could get the plug out
o' my pocket."

Then Mother would say:

"I wouldn't, Father—such stories to a child!"

Then Grandfather would smoke grimly,
and would not tell you any more, and you
would play Grandfather and Johnny Reb
in the tall grass.  Lizzie-in-the-kitchen
would give you a piece of brown-bread
for the chaw of tobacco, and when Johnny
Reb died too soon you ate it yourself,
to save it.  You wondered what would
have happened if Johnny Reb had not
died too soon.  Standing over Johnny
Reb's prostrate but still animate form in
the tall grass, with the brown-bread
tobacco in your hand, you even
contemplated playing that your adversary lived
to tell the tale, but the awful thought
that in that case you would have to give
up the chaw (the brown-bread was fresh
that day) kept you to the letter of
Grandfather's story.  Once only did you play
that Johnny Reb lived—but the brown-bread
was hard that day, and you were
not hungry.

Grandfather wore the blue, and on his
breast were the star and flag of the Grand
Army.  Every May he straightened his
bent shoulders and marched to the music
of fife and drum to the cemetery on the
hill.  So once a year there were tears in
Grandfather's eyes.  All the rest of that
solemn May day he marched in the garden
with his hands behind him, and a
far-away look in his eyes, and once in a
while his steps quickened as he hummed
to himself,

   |  "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching."

And if it so happened that he told you
the story of Johnny Reb that day, he
would always have a new ending:

"Then we went into battle.  The Rebs
were on a tarnal big hill, and as we charged
up the side, 'Boys,' says the Colonel—'boys,
give 'em hell!' says he.  And, sir,
we just did, I tell you."

"Oh Father, Father—*don't!*—such
language before the child!" Mother would
cry, and that would be the end of the new
end of Grandfather's story.

On a soap-box in Abe Jones's corner
grocery, Grandfather argued politics with
Old Man Stubbs and the rest of the boys.

"I've voted the straight Republican
ticket all my life," he would say, proudly,
when the fray was at its height, "and, by
George!  I'll not make a darned old fool o'
myself by turning coat now.  Pesky few
Democrats ever I see who—"

Here Old Man Stubbs would rise from
the cracker-barrel.

"If I understand you correctly, sir, you
have called me a darned old fool."

"Not at all, Stubbs," Grandfather would
reply, soothingly.  "Not by a jugful.  Now
you're a Democrat—"

"And proud of it, sir," Old Man Stubbs
would break in.

"You're a Democrat, Stubbs, and as
such you are not responsible; but if I was
to turn Democrat, Stubbs, I'd be a darned
old fool."

And in the roar that followed, Old Man
Stubbs would subside to the cracker-barrel
and smoke furiously.  Then Grandfather
would say:

"Stubbs, do you remember old Mose
Gray?"  That was to clear the battle-field
of the political carnage, so to speak—so
that Old Man Stubbs would forget his
grievance and walk home with Grandfather
peaceably when the grocery closed
for the night.

If it was winter-time, and the snowdrifts
were too deep for grandfathers and
little boys, you sat before the fireplace,
Grandfather in his arm-chair, you flat
on the rug, your face between your hands,
gazing into the flames.

"Who was the greatest man that ever
lived, Grandfather?"

"Jesus of Nazareth, boy."

"And who was the greatest soldier?"

"Ulysses S. Grant."

"And the next greatest?"

"George Washington."

"But Old Man Stubbs says Napoleon
was the greatest soldier."

"Old Man Stubbs?  Old Man Stubbs?
What does he know about it, I'd like to
know?  He wasn't in the war.  He's
afraid of his own shadder.  U. S. Grant
was the greatest general that ever lived.
I guess I know.  I was there, wasn't I?
Napoleon!  Old Man Stubbs!  Fiddlesticks!"

And Grandfather would sink back into
his chair, smoking wrath and weed in
his trembling corn-cob, and scowling at
the blazing fagots and the curling
hickory smoke.  By-and-by—

"Who was the greatest woman that
ever lived, Grandfather?"

"Your mother, boy."

"Oh, Father"—it was Mother's voice—"you forget."

"Forget nothing," cried Grandfather,
fiercely.  "Boy, your mother is the best
woman that ever lived, and mind you
remember it, too.  Every boy's mother is
the best woman that ever lived."

And when Grandfather leaned forward
in his chair and waved his pipe, there
was no denying Grandfather.

At night, after supper, when your clothes
were in a little heap on the chair, and
you had your nighty on, and you had
said your prayers, Mother tucked you
in bed and kissed you and called
Grandfather.  Then Grandfather came
stumping up the stairs with his cane.  Sitting
on the edge of your bed, he sang to you,

   |  "The wild gazelle with the silvery feet
   |  I'll give thee for a playmate sweet."
   |

And after Grandfather went away the
wild gazelle came and stood beside you,
and put his cold little nose against your
cheek, and licked your face with his tongue.
It was rough at first, but by-and-by it got
softer and softer, till you woke up and
wanted a drink, and found beside you,
in place of the wild gazelle, a white mother
with a brimming cup in her hand.  She
covered you up when you were through,
and kissed you, and then you went
looking for the wild gazelle, and sometimes
you found him; but sometimes, when
you had just caught up to him and
his silvery feet were shining like stars,
he turned into Grandfather with his cane.

"Hi, sleepy-head!  The dicky-birds are
waitin' for you."

And then Grandfather would tickle you
in the ribs, and help you on with your
stockings, till it was time for him to sit by
the wall in the sun.

When you were naughty, and Mother
used the little brown switch that hung
over the wood-shed door, Grandfather
tramped up and down in the garden, and
the harder you hollered, the harder
Grandfather tramped.  Once when you played
the empty flower-pots were not flower-pots
at all, but just cannon-balls, and
you killed a million Indians with them,
Mother showed you the pieces, and the
switch descended, and the tears fell, and
Grandfather tramped and tramped, and
lost the garden-path completely, and
stepped on the pansies.  Then they shut
you up in your own room up-stairs, and
you cried till the hiccups came.  You
heard the dishes rattling on the
dining-room table below.  They would be eating
supper soon, and at one end of the table
in a silver dish there would be a
chocolate cake, for Lizzie-in-the-kitchen had
baked one that afternoon.  You had seen
it in the pantry window with your own
eyes, while you fired the flower-pots.  Now
chocolate cake was your favorite, so you
hated your bread-and-milk, and tasted
and wailed defiantly.  Now and then you
listened to hear if they pitied and came
to you, but they came not, and you moaned
and sobbed in the twilight, and hoped
you would die, to make them sorry.
By-and-by, between the hiccups, you heard
the door open softly.  Then Grandfather's
hand came through the crack with a piece
of chocolate cake in it.  You knew it was
Grandfather's hand, because it was all
knuckly.  So you cried no more, and
while the chocolate cake was stopping
the hiccups, you heard Grandfather steal
down the stairs, softly—but it did not
sound like Grandfather at all, for you
did not hear the stumping of his cane.
Next morning, when you asked him about
it, his vest shook, and just the tip of his
tongue showed between his teeth, for that
was the way it did when anything pleased
him.  And Grandfather said:

"You won't ever tell?"

"No, Grandfather."

"Sure as shootin'?"

"Yes."

"Well, then—" but Grandfather kept
shaking so he could not tell.

"Oh, Grandfather!  *Why* didn't the cane
sound on the stairs?"

"Whisht, boy!  I just wrapped my old
bandanna handkerchief around the end."

But worse than that time was the awful
morning when you broke the blue pitcher
that came over in the *Mayflower*.  An old
family law said you should never even
touch it, where it sat on the shelf by the
clock, but the Old Nick said it wouldn't
hurt if you looked inside—just once.
You had been munching bread-and-butter,
and your fingers were slippery, and
that is how the pitcher came to fall.
Grandfather found you sobbing over the pieces,
and his face was white.

"Sonny, Sonny, what have you done?"

"I—I d-didn't mean to, Grandfather."

In trembling fingers Grandfather
gathered up the blue fragments—all that was
left of the family heirloom, emblem of
Mother's ancestral pride.

"'Sh!  Don't cry, Sonny.  We'll make
it all right again."

"M-Moth—Mother 'll whip me."

"'Sh, boy.  No, she won't.  We'll take
it to the tinker.  He'll make it all right
again.  Come."

And you and Grandfather slunk guiltily
to the tinker and watched him make the
blue fragments into the blue pitcher again,
and then you carried it home, and as
Grandfather set it back on the shelf you
whispered:

.. _`"WATCHED HIM MAKE THE BLUE FRAGMENTS INTO THE BLUE PITCHER AGAIN"`:

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   :alt: "WATCHED HIM MAKE THE BLUE FRAGMENTS INTO THE BLUE PITCHER AGAIN"

   "WATCHED HIM MAKE THE BLUE FRAGMENTS INTO THE BLUE PITCHER AGAIN"

"Grandfather!"

Grandfather bent his ear to you.  Very
softly you said it:

"Grandfather, the cracks don't show
at all from here."

Grandfather nodded his head.  Then
he tramped up and down in the garden.
He forgot to smoke.  Crime weighed upon
his soul.

"Boy," said he, sternly, stopping in
his walk.  "You must never be naughty
again.  Do you hear me?"

"I won't, Grandfather."

Grandfather resumed his tramping; then
paused and turned to where you sat on
the wheelbarrow.

"But if you ever *are* naughty again,
you must go at once and tell Mother.  Do
you understand?"

"Yes, Grandfather."

Up and down Grandfather tramped
moodily, his head bent, his hands clasped
behind him—up and down between the
verbenas and hollyhocks.  He paused
irresolutely—turned—turned again—and came
back to you.

"Boy, Grandfather's just as bad and
wicked as you are.  He ought to have
made you tell Mother about the pitcher
first, and take it to the tinker afterwards.
You must never keep anything from your
mother again—never.  Do you hear?"

"Yes, Grandfather," you whimpered,
hanging your head.

"Come, boy."

You gave him your hand.  Mother listened,
wondering, while Grandfather spoke
out bravely to the very end.  You had
been bad, but he had been worse, he
confessed; and he asked to be punished for
himself and you.

Mother did not even look at the cracked
blue pitcher on the clock-shelf, but her
eyes filled, and at the sight of her tears
you flung yourself, sobbing, into her arms.

"Oh, Mother, don't whip Grandfather.
Just whip me."

"It isn't the blue pitcher I care about,"
she said.  "It's only to think that
Grandfather and my little boy were afraid to
tell me."

And at this she broke out crying with
your wet cheek against her wet cheek,
and her warm arms crushing you to her
breast.  And you cried, and Grandfather
blew his nose, and Carlo barked and leaped
to lick your face, until by-and-by, when
Mother's white handkerchief and
Grandfather's red one were quite damp, you
and Mother smiled through your tears,
and she said it did not matter, and
Grandfather patted one of her hands while you
kissed the other.  And you and Grandfather
said you would never be bad again.
When you were good, or sick—dear
Grandfather!  It was not what he said,
for only Mother could say the love-words.
It was the things he did without saying
much at all—the circus he took you to see,
the lessons in A B C while he held the
book for you in his hand, the sail-boats
he whittled for you on rainy days—for
Grandfather was a ship-carpenter before
he was a grandfather—and the willow
whistles he made for you, and the soldier
swords.  It was Grandfather who fished
you from the brook.  Grandfather saved
you from Farmer Tompkins's cow—the
black one which gave no milk.  Grandfather
snatched you from prowling dogs,
and stinging bees, and bad boys and their
wiles.  That is what grandfathers are for,
and so we love them and climb into their
laps and beg for sail-boats and tales—and
*that* is their reward.

.. _`"THE SAIL-BOATS HE WHITTLED FOR YOU ON RAINY DAYS"`:

.. figure:: images/img-024.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "THE SAIL-BOATS HE WHITTLED FOR YOU ON RAINY DAYS"

   "THE SAIL-BOATS HE WHITTLED FOR YOU ON RAINY DAYS"

One day—your birthday had just gone
by and it was time to think of
Thanksgiving—you walked with Grandfather in
the fields.  Between the stacked corn the
yellow pumpkins lay, and they made you
think of Thanksgiving pies.  The leaves,
red and gold, dropped of old age in the
autumn stillness, and you gathered an
armful for Mother.

"Why don't all the people die every
year, Grandfather, like the leaves?"

"Everybody dies when his work's done,
little boy.  The leaf's work is done in
the fall when the frost comes.  It takes
longer for a man to do his work, 'cause
a man has more to do."

"When will your work be done, Grandfather?"

"It's almost done now, little boy."

"Oh no, Grandfather.  There's lots for
you to do.  You said you'd make me
a bob-sled, and a truly engine what goes,
when I'm bigger; and when I get to be
a grown-up man like Father, you are to
come and make willow whistles for my
little boys."

And you were right, for while the frost
came again and again for the little leaves,
Grandfather stayed on in the sun, and
when he had made you the bob-sled he
still lingered, for did he not have the truly
engine to make for you, and the willow
whistles for your own little boys?

Waking from a nap, you could not
remember when you fell asleep.  You
wondered what hour it was.  Was it morning?
Was it afternoon?  Dreamily you came
down-stairs.  Golden sunlight crossed the
ivied porch and smiled at you through the
open door.  The dining-room table was
set with blue china, and at every place
was a dish of red, red strawberries.  Then
you knew it was almost supper-time.
You were rested with sleep, gentle with
dreams of play, happy at the thought
of red berries in blue dishes with sugar
and cream.  You found Grandfather in
the garden sitting in the sun.  He was
not reading or smoking; he was just waiting.

"Are you tired waiting for me, Grandfather?"

"No, little boy."

"I came as soon as I could, Grandfather."

The leaves did not move.  The flowers
were motionless.  Grandfather sat quite
still, his soft, white beard against your
cheek, flushed with sleep.  You nestled
in his lap.  And so you sat together, with
the sun going down about you, till Mother
came and called you to supper.  Even
now when you are grown, you remember,
as though it were yesterday, the long nap
and the golden light in the doorway, and
the red berries on the table, and
Grandfather waiting in the sun.

One day—it was not long afterwards—they
took you to see Aunt Mary, on the
train.  When you came home again,
Grandfather was not waiting for you.

"Where is Grandfather?"

"Grandfather isn't here any more, dearie.
He has gone 'way up in the sky to see
God and the angels."

"And won't he ever come back to our
house?"

"No, dear; but if you are a good boy,
you will go to see him some day."

"But, oh, Mother, what will Grandfather
do when he goes to walk with the
little boy angels?  See—he's gone and
forgot his cane!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Grandmother`:

.. class:: center large bold

   Grandmother

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i033.jpg
   :lines: 5

In the days when you went
into the country to visit her,
Grandmother was a gay, spry
little lady with velvety cheeks
and gold-rimmed spectacles, knitting reins
for your hobby-horse, and spreading
bread-and-butter and brown sugar for you in
the hungry middle of the afternoon.  For
a bumped head there was nothing in the
bottles to compare with the magic of her lips.

"And what did the floor do to my poor
little lamb?  See!  Grandmother will make
the place well again."  And when she
had kissed it three times, lo! you knew
that you were hungry, and on the
door-sill of Grandmother's pantry you shed
a final tear.

When you arrived for a visit, and
Grandmother had taken off your cap and coat as
you sat in her lap, you would say, softly,
"Grandmother."  Then she would know
that you wanted to whisper, and she would
lower her ear till it was even with your
lips.  Through the hollow of your two
hands you said it:

"I think I would like some sugar pie
now, Grandmother."

And then she would laugh till the tears
came, and wipe her spectacles, for that
was just what she had been waiting for
you to say all the time, and if you had
not said it—but, of course, that was
impossible.  Always, on the day before you
came, she made two little sugar pies in
two little round tins with crinkled edges.
One was for you, and the other was for
Lizbeth.

After you had eaten your pies you chased
the rooster till he dropped you a white
tail-feather in token of surrender, and
just tucking the feather into your cap
made you an Indian.  Grandmother stood
at the window and watched you while you
scalped the sunflowers.  The Indians and
tigers at Grandmother's were wilder than
those in Our Yard at home.

Being an Indian made you think of
tents, and then you remembered Grandmother's
old plaid shawl.  She never wore
it now, for she had a new one, but she
kept it for you in the closet beneath the
stairs.  While you were gone, it hung in
the dark alone, dejected, waiting for you
to come back and play.  When you came,
at last, and dragged it forth, it clung to
you warmly, and did everything you said:
stretched its frayed length from chair to
chair and became a tent for you; swelled
proudly in the summer gale till your boat
scudded through the surf of waving grass,
and you anchored safely, to fish with string
and pin, by the Isles of the Red Geraniums.

"The pirates are coming," you cried
to Lizbeth, scanning the horizon of picket
fence.

"The pirates are coming," she repeated,
dutifully.

"And now we must haul up the anchor,"
you commanded, dragging in the stone.
Lizbeth was in terror.  "Oh, my poor
dolly!" she cried, hushing it in her arms.
Gallantly the old plaid shawl caught the
breeze; and as it filled, your boat leaped
forward through—

"Harry!  Lizbeth!  Come and be washed for dinner!"

Grandmother's voice came out to you
across the waters.  You hesitated.  The
pirate ship was close behind.  You could
see the cutlasses flashing in the sun.

"More sugar pies," sang the Grandmother
siren on the rocks of the front
porch, and at those melting words the
pirate ship was a mere speck on the
horizon.  Seizing Lizbeth by the hand, you
ran boldly across the sea.

By the white bowl Grandmother took
your chin in one hand and lifted your face.

"My, what a dirty boy!"

With the rough wet rag she mopped the
dirt away—grime of your long
sea-voyage—while you squinted your eyes and
pursed up your lips to keep out the soap.
You clung to her apron for support in your
mute agony.

.. _`"YOU CLUNG TO HER APRON FOR SUPPORT IN YOUR MUTE AGONY"`:

.. figure:: images/img-036.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "YOU CLUNG TO HER APRON FOR SUPPORT IN YOUR MUTE AGONY"

   "YOU CLUNG TO HER APRON FOR SUPPORT IN YOUR MUTE AGONY"

"Grand—" you managed to sputter
ere the wet rag smothered you.  Warily
you waited till the cloth went higher,
to your puckered eyes.  Then, "Grand-m-m—"  But
that was all, for with a trail
of suds the rag swept down again, and
as the half-word slipped out, the soap
slipped in.  So Grandmother dug and
dug till she came to the pink stratum of
your cheeks, and then it was wipe, wipe,
wipe, till the stratum shone.  Then it
was your hands' turn, while Grandmother
listened to your belated tale, and last
of all she kissed you above and gave you
a little spank below, and you were done.

All through dinner your mind was on
the table—not on the middle of it, where
the meat was, but on the end of it.

"Harry, why don't you eat your bread?"

"Why, I don't feel for bread, Grandmother,"
you explained, looking at the
end of the table.  "I just feel for pie."

It was hard when you were back home
again, for there it was mostly bread, and
no sugar pies at all, and very little cake.

"Grandmother lets me have *two* pieces,"
you would urge to Mother, but the
argument was of no avail.  Two pieces, she
said, were not good for little boys.

"Then why does Grandmother let me
have them?" you would demand, sullenly,
kicking the table leg; but Mother could
not hear you unless you kicked hard,
and then it was naughty boys, not
Grandmothers, that she talked about.  And if
that happened which sometimes does to
naughty little boys—

"Grandmother don't hurt at all when
*she* spanks," you said.

So there were wrathful moments when
you wished you might live always with
Grandmother.  It was so easy to be good
at her house—so easy, that is, to get two
pieces of cake.  And when God made little
boys, you thought, He must have made
Grandmothers to bake sugar pies for them.

"Suppose you were a little boy like me,
Grandmother?" you once said to her.

"That would be fine," she admitted;
"but suppose you were a little
grandmother like me?"

"Well," you replied, with candor, "I
think I would rather be like Grandfather,
'cause he was a soldier, and fought Johnny Reb."

"And if you were a grandfather," Grandmother
asked, "what would you do?"

"Why, if I were a grandfather," you
said—"why—"

"Well, what would you do?"

"Why, if I were a grandfather," you
said, "I should want you to come and be
a grandmother with me."  And Grandmother
kissed you for that.

"But I like you best as a little boy,"
she said.  "Once Grandmother had a little
boy just like you, and he used to climb
into her lap and put his arms around her.
Oh, he was a beautiful little boy, and
sometimes Grandmother gets very lonesome
without him—till you come, and
then it's like having him back again.
For you've got his blue eyes and his brown
hair and his sweet little ways, and
Grandmother loves you—once for yourself and
once for him."

"But where is the little boy now, Grandmother?"

"He's a man now, darling.  He's your
own father."

Every Sunday, Grandmother went to
church.  After breakfast there was a flurry
of dressing, with an opening and shutting
of doors up-stairs, and Grandfather would
be down-stairs in the kitchen, blacking
his Sunday boots.  On Sunday his beard
looked whiter than on other days, but
that was because he seemed so much
blacker everywhere else.  He creaked out
to the stable and hitched Peggy to the
buggy and led them around to the front
gate.  Then he would snap his big gold
watch and go to the bottom of the stairs
and say:

"Maria!  Come!  It's ten o'clock."

Grandmother's door would open a
slender crack—"Yes, John"—and Grandfather
would creak up and down in his
Sunday boots, up and down, waiting, till
there was a rustling on the stairs and
Grandmother came down to him in a glory
of black silk.  There was a little frill of
white about her neck, fastened with her
gold brooch, and above that her gentle
Sabbath face.  Her face took on a new
light when Sunday came, and she never
seemed so near, somehow, as on other
days.  There was a look in her eyes that
did not speak of sugar pies or play.  There
was a little pressure of the thin lips and
a silence, as though she had no time for
fairy-tales or lullabies.  When she set
her little black bonnet on her gray hair
and lifted up her chin to tie the ribbon
strings beneath, you stopped your game
to watch, wondering at her awesomeness;
and when in her black-gloved fingers she
clasped her worn Bible and stooped and
kissed you good-bye, you never thought
of putting your arms around her.  She
was too wonderful—this little Sabbath
Grandmother—for that.

Through the window you watched them
as they went down the walk together to
the front gate, Grandmother and Grandfather,
the tips of her gloved fingers laid
in the hollow of his arm.  Solemn was
the steady stumping of his cane.  Solemn
was the day.  Even the roosters knew
it was Sunday, somehow, and crowed
dismally; and the bells—the church-bells
tolling through the quiet air—made you
lonesome and cross with Lizbeth.  Your
collar was very stiff, and your Sunday
trousers were very tight, and there was
nothing to do, and you were dreary.

.. _`"YOU WATCHED THEM AS THEY WENT DOWN THE WALK TOGETHER"`:

.. figure:: images/img-042.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "YOU WATCHED THEM AS THEY WENT DOWN THE WALK TOGETHER"

   "YOU WATCHED THEM AS THEY WENT DOWN THE WALK TOGETHER"

After dinner Grandfather went to sleep
on the sofa, with a newspaper over his
face.  Then Grandmother took you up into
her black silk lap and read you Bible
stories and taught you the Twenty-third
Psalm and the golden text.  And every
one of the golden texts meant the same
thing—that little boys should be very
good and do as they are told.

Grandmother's Sunday lap was not so
fine as her other ones to lie in.  Her
Monday lap, for instance, was soft and gray,
and there were no texts to disturb your
reverie.  Then Grandmother would stop
her knitting to pinch your cheek and say,
"You don't love Grandmother."

"Yes, I do."

"How much?"

"More'n tonguecantell.  What is a
tonguecantell, Grandmother?"

And while she was telling you she would
be poking the tip of her finger into the
soft of your jacket, so that you doubled
up suddenly with your knees to your
chin; and while you guarded your ribs a
funny spider would crawl down the back
of your neck; and when you chased the
spider out of your collar it would
suddenly creep under your chin, or there
would be a panic in the ribs again.  By
that time you were nothing but wriggles
and giggles and little cries.

"Don't, Grandmother; you tickle."  And
Grandmother would pause, breathless as
yourself, and say, "*Oh*, my!"

"Now you must do it some more, Grandmother,"
you would urge, but she would
shake her head at you and go back to her
knitting again.

"Grandmother's tired," she would say.

You were tired, too, so you lay with
your head on her shoulder, sucking your
thumb.  To and fro Grandmother rocked
you, to and fro, while the kitten played
with the ball of yarn on the floor.  The
afternoon sunshine fell warmly through
the open window.  Bees and butterflies
hovered in the honeysuckles.  Birds were
singing.  Your mind went a-wandering—out
through the yard and the front gate and
across the road.  On it went past the
Taylors' big dog and up by Aunty Green's,
where the crullers lived, all brown and
crusty, in the high stone crock.  It
scrambled down by the brook where the
little green frogs were hopping into the
water, leaving behind them trembling rings
that grew wider and wider and wider, till
pretty soon they were the ocean.  That was
a big thought, and you roused yourself.

.. _`"TO AND FRO GRANDMOTHER ROCKED YOU"`:

.. figure:: images/img-046.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "TO AND FRO GRANDMOTHER ROCKED YOU"

   "TO AND FRO GRANDMOTHER ROCKED YOU"

"How big is the ocean, Grandmother?"

"As big—oh, as big as all out-doors."

Your mind waded out into the ocean
till the water was up to its knees.  Then
it scrambled back again and lay in the
warm sand and looked up at the sky.
And the sand rocked to and fro, to and
fro, as your mind lay there, all curled up
and warm, by the ocean, watching the
butterflies in the honeysuckles and the
crullers in the crock.  And all the people
were singing ... all the people in the
world, almost ... and the little green
frogs....  "Bye—bye, bye—bye," they
were singing, in time to the rocking of
the sand ... "Bye—bye" ... "Bye"
... "Bye" ...

And when you awoke you were on the
sofa, all covered up with Grandmother's
shawl.

So you liked the gay week-day Grandmother
best, with her soft lap and her
lullabies.  Grandfather must have liked
her best too, you thought, for when he
went away forever and forgot his cane, it
was the Sunday Grandmother he left
behind—a little, gray Grandmother sitting
by the window and gazing silently through
the panes.

What she saw there you never knew—but
it was not the trees, or the distant
hills, or the people passing in the road.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`While Aunt Jane Played`:

.. class:: center large bold

   While Aunt Jane Played

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a051.jpg
   :lines: 5

Aunt Jane played the piano
in the parlor.  You could
play, too—"Peter, Peter,
Punkin-eater," with your forefinger,
Aunt Jane holding it in her hand
so that you would strike the right notes.
But when Aunt Jane played she used
both hands.  Sometimes the music was so
fast and stirring that it made you dance,
or romp, or sing, or play that you were
not a little boy at all, but a soldier like
Grandfather or George Washington; and
sometimes the music was so soft and
beautiful that you wanted to be a prince in a
fairy tale; and then again it was so slow
and grim that you wished it were not
Sunday, for the Sunday tunes, like your tight,
black, Sunday shoes, had all their buttons
on, and so were not comfy or made for
fun.  You could not march to them, or
fight to them, or be a grown-up man to
them.  Somehow they always reminded
you that you were only a pouting, naughty
little boy.

The sound of the piano came out to
you as you lingered by the table where
Lizzie-in-the-kitchen was making pies.  You
ran into the parlor and sat on a hassock
by Aunt Jane, watching her as she played.
It was not a fast piece that day, nor yet
a slow one, but just in-between, so that
as you sat by the piano you wondered if
the snow and sloppy little puddles would
ever go and leave Our Yard green again.
Even with rubber boots now Mother made
you keep the paths, and mostly you had
to stay in the house.  Through the window
you could see the maple boughs still bare,
but between them the sky was warm and
blue.  Pretty soon the leaves would be
coming, hiding the sky.

"Auntie."

"Yes," though she did not stop playing.

"Where do the leaves come from?"

"From the little buds on the twigs, dearie."

"But how do they know when it's time
to come, Auntie Jane?  'Cause if they
came too soon, they might catch cold and die."

"Well, the sun tells them when."

"How does the sun tell them, Auntie?"

"Why, he makes the trees all warm,
and when the buds feel it, out they come."

"Oh."

Your eyes were very wide.  They were
always wide when you wondered; and
sometimes when you were not wondering
at all, just hearing Aunt Jane play would
make you, and then your eyes would grow
bigger and bigger as you sat on the
hassock by the piano, looking at the maple
boughs and hearing the music and being
a little boy.

It was a beautiful piece that Aunt Jane
was playing that March morning.  The
sun came and shone on the maple boughs.

"And now the sun is telling the little
buds," you said to yourself in time to
Aunt Jane's music, but so softly that she
did not hear.

"And now the little buds are saying
'All right,'" you whispered, more softly
still, for the bigger your eyes got, the
smaller, always, was your voice.

A little song-sparrow came and teetered
on a twig.

"Oh, Auntie, see!  The birdie's come,
too, to tell the buds, I guess."

Aunt Jane turned her head and smiled
at the sparrow, but she did not stop
playing.  Your heart was beating in time to
the music, as you sat on the hassock by
the piano, watching the bird and the sun.
The sparrow danced like Aunt Jane's
fingers, and put up his little open bill.  He
was singing, though you could not hear.

"But, Auntie."

"Yes."

"Who told the little bird?"

"God told the little bird, dearie—away
down South where the oranges and roses
grow in the winter, and there isn't any
snow.  And the little bird flew up here
to Ourtown to build his nest and sing in
our maple-tree."

Your eyes were so wide now that you
had no voice at all.  You just sat there
on the hassock while Aunt Jane played.

Away down South ... away down
South, singing in an orange-tree, you saw
the little bird ... but now he stopped to
listen with his head on one side, and his
bright eye shining, while the warm wind
rustled in the leaves ... God was telling
him ... So the little bird spread his
wings and flew ... away up in the blue
sky, above the trees, above the steeples,
over the hills and running brooks
... miles and miles and miles ... till he
came to Our Yard, in the sun.

"And here he is now," you ended aloud
your little story, for you had found your
voice again.

"Who is here, dearie?" asked Aunt
Jane, still playing.

"Why, the little bird," you said.

The sparrow flew away.  The sun came
through the window to where you sat on
the hassock, by the piano.  It warmed
your knees and told you—what it told the
buds, what God told the little bird in the
orange-tree.  Like the little bird you could
stay no longer.  You ran out-of-doors
into the soft, sweet wind and the morning.

Aunt Jane gave the keys a last caress.
Grandmother turned in her chair by the
sitting-room window.

"What were you playing, Janey?"

"Mendelssohn's 'Spring Song,' Mother."

The little gray Grandmother looked
out-of-doors again to where you played,
singing, in the sun.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she murmured.

You waved your hand to her and laughed,
and she nodded back at you, smiling
at your fun.

"Bless his heart, *he's* playing the music,
too," she said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Little Sister`:

.. class:: center large bold

   Little Sister

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i061.jpg
   :lines: 5

In the daytime she played
with you, and believed all
you said, and was always
ready to cry.  At night she
slept with you and the four dolls.  She
was your little sister, Lizbeth.

"Whose little girl are you?" they would
ask her.  If she were sitting in Father's
lap, she would doubtless reply—

"Father's little girl."

But—

"Oh, *Lizbeth*!" Mother would cry.

"—and Mother's," Lizbeth would add,
to keep peace in the family.  Though she
never mentioned you at such times, she
told you privately that she would marry
you when you grew to be a man, and
publicly she remembered you in her
prayers.  Kneeling down at Mother's knee, you
and Lizbeth, in your little white nighties,
before you went to bed, you said "Now
I lay me" in unison, and ended with
blessing every one, only at the very end *you*
said:

.. _`"YOU SAID 'NOW I LAY ME' IN UNISON"`:

.. figure:: images/img-062.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "YOU SAID 'NOW I LAY ME' IN UNISON"

   "YOU SAID 'NOW I LAY ME' IN UNISON"

"—and God bless Captain Jinks," for
even a wooden soldier needed God in those
long, dark nights of childhood, while
Lizbeth said:

"—and God bless all my dollies, and
send my Sally doll a new leg."

But though God sent three new legs in
turn, Sally was always losing them, so
that finally Lizbeth confided in Mother:

"Pretty soon God 'll be tired of sending
Sally new legs, I guess.  *You* speak
to Him next time, Mother, 'cause I'm
'shamed to any more."

And when Mother asked Him, He sent
a new Sally instead of a new leg.  It would
be cheaper, Mother told Father, in the
long-run.

In the diplomatic precedence of
Lizbeth's prayers, Father and Mother were
blessed first, and you came between
"Grandfather and Grandmother" and
"God bless my dollies."  Thus was your
family rank established for all time by
a little girl in a white night-gown.  You
were a little lower than your elders, it is
true, but you were higher than the
legless Sally or the waxen blonde.

When Lizbeth and you were good, you
loved each other, and when you were bad,
both of you at the same time, you loved
each other too, *very* dearly.  But sometimes
it happened that Lizbeth was good
and you were bad, and then she only loved
Mother, and ran and told tales on you.
And you—well, you did not love anybody
at all.

When your insides said it would be a
long time before dinner, and your mouth
watered, and you stood on a chair by the
pantry shelf with your hand in a brown
jar, and when Lizbeth found you there,
you could tell by just looking at her face
that she was very good that day, and that
she loved Mother better than she did you.
So you knew without even thinking about
it that you were very bad, and you did not
love anybody at all, and your heart quaked
within you at Lizbeth's sanctity.  But
there was always a last resort.

"Lizbeth, if you tell"—you mumbled
awfully, pointing at her an uncanny forefinger
dripping preserves—"if you tell, a
great big black Gummy-gum 'll get you
when it's dark, and he'll pick out your eyes
and gnaw your ears off, and he'll keep
one paw over your mouth, so you can't
holler, and when the blood comes—"

Lizbeth quailed before you.  She began
to cry.

"You won't tell, *will* you?" you demanded,
fiercely, making eyes like a
Gummy-gum and showing your white teeth.

"No—o—o," wailed Lizbeth.

"Well, stop crying, then," you
commanded, sucking your syrupy fingers.
"If you cry, the Gummy-gum 'll come
and get you *now*."

Lizbeth looked fearfully over her shoulder
and stopped.  By that time your fingers
were all sucked, and the cover was back
on the jar, and you were saved.  But that
night, when Mother and Father came home,
you watched Lizbeth, and lest she should
forget, you made the eyes of a Gummy-gum,
when no one but Lizbeth saw.  Mother
tucked you both into bed and kissed
you and put out the light.  Then Lizbeth
whimpered.

.. _`"MOTHER TUCKED YOU BOTH INTO BED AND KISSED YOU"`:

.. figure:: images/img-068.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "MOTHER TUCKED YOU BOTH INTO BED AND KISSED YOU"

   "MOTHER TUCKED YOU BOTH INTO BED AND KISSED YOU"

"Why, Lizbeth," said Mother from the dark.

Quick as a flash you snuggled up to
Lizbeth's side.  "The Gummy-gum 'll get
you if you don't stop," you whispered,
warningly—but with one dismal wail
Lizbeth was out of bed and in Mother's arms.
Then you knew all was over.  Desperately
you awaited retribution, humming a little
song, and so it was to the tune of "I want
to be an angel" that you heard Lizbeth
sob out her awful tale:

"Harry ... he ... he said the Gummy-gum
'd get me ... if I told about the
p'serves."

And it was *you* the Gummy-gum got
that time, and your blood, you thought,
almost came.

But other nights when you went to
bed—nights after days when you had
both been good and loved each other—it
was fine to lie there in the dark with
Lizbeth, playing Make-Believe before you fell
asleep.

"I tell you," you said, putting up your
foot so that the covers rose upon it, making
a little tent—"I tell you; let's be Indians."

"Let's," said Lizbeth.

"And this is our little tent, and there's
bears outside what 'll eat you up if you
don't look out."

Lizbeth shivered and drew her knees
up to her chin, so that she was nothing
but a little warm roll under the wigwam.

"And now the bears are coming—wow! wow! wow!"

And as the great hungry beasts
pushed their snouts under the canvas and
growled and gnashed their teeth, Lizbeth,
little squaw, squealed with terror, and
seized you as you lay there helpless in
your triple rôle of tent and bears and
Indian brave; seized you in the ticklish ribs
so that the wigwam came tumbling about
your ears, and the Indian brave rolled
and shrieked with laughter, and the brute
bears fled to their mountain caves.

"Children!"

"W-what?"

"Stop that noise and go right to sleep.
Do you hear me?"

Was it not the voice of the mamma bear?
Stealthily you crept under the fallen
canvas, which had grown smaller, somehow,
in the *mêlée*, so that when you pulled it
up to your chin and tucked it in around
you, Lizbeth was out in the cold; and
when Lizbeth tucked herself in, then you
were shivering.  But by-and-by you
huddled close in the twisted sheets and talked
low beneath the edge of the coverlet, so that
no one heard you—not even the Gummy-gum,
who spent his nights on the back stairs.

"Does the Gummy-gum eat little folks
while they're asleep?" asked Lizbeth, with
a precautionary snuggle-up.

"No; 'cause the Gummy-gum is afraid
of the little black gnomes what live in
the pillows."

"Well, if the little black gnomes live
in the pillows, why can't you feel them then?"

"'Cause, now, they're so teenty-weenty
and so soft."

"And can't you ever see them at all?"

"No; 'cause they don't come out till
you're asleep."

"Oh ... Well, Harry—now—if a
Gummy-gum had a head like a horse,
and a tail like a cow, and a bill like a
duck, what?"

"Why—why, he *wouldn't*, 'cause he *isn't*."

"Oh ... Well, is the Gummy-gum just
afraid of the little gnomes, and that's all?"

"Um-hm; 'cause the little gnomes have
little knives, all sharp and shiny, what
they got on the Christmas-tree."

"*Our* Christmas-tree?"

"No; the little gnomes's Christmas-tree."

"The little gnomes's Christmas-tree?"

"Um-hm."

"Why?"

"'Cause ... why, there ain't any why
... just Christmas-tree."

"Just ... just Christmas-tree?"

"Um."

"Why ... I thought ... I ..."

And you and Lizbeth never felt Mother
smooth out the covers at all, though she
lifted you up to straighten them; and so
you slept, spoon-fashion, warm as toast,
with the little black gnomes watching in
the pillows, and the Gummy-gum, hungry
but afraid, in the dark of the back stairs.

The pear-tree on the edge of the
enchanted garden, green with summer and
tremulous with breeze, sheltered a little
girl and her dolls.  On the cool turf she
sat alone, preoccupied, her dress starched
and white like the frill of a valentine, her
fat little legs straight out before her, her
bright little curls straight down behind,
her lips parted, her eyes gentle with a
dream of motherhood—Mamma Lizbeth
crooning lullabies to her four children
cradled in the soft grass.

"I'll tell you just one more story," she
was saying, "just one, and that's all, and
then you children must go to sleep.  Sally,
lie still!  Ain't you 'shamed, kicking all
the covers off and catching cold?  Naughty
girl.  Now you must listen.  Well ...
Once upon a time there was a fairy what
lived in a rose, and she had beautiful
wings—oh, all colors—and she could go wherever
she wanted to without anybody ever seeing
her, 'cause she was iwisible, which is when
you can't see anybody at all.  Well, one
day the fairy saw a little girl carrying
her father's dinner, and she turned
herself into an old witch and said to the little
girl, 'Come to me, pretty one, and I will
give thee a stick of peppermint candy.'  Now
the little girl, she just loved candy,
and peppermint was her favorite, but she
was a good little girl and minded her
mother most dut'fly, and never told any lies or
anything; so she courtesied to the old witch
and said, 'Thank you kindly, but I must
hurry with my father's dinner, or he will
be hungry waiting.'  *And what do you
think*?  Just then the old witch turned into
the beautiful fairy again, and she kissed
the little girl, and gave her a whole bag of
peppermint candy, and a doll what talked,
and a velocipede for her little brother.
And what does this story teach us, children?
... Yes.  That's right.  It teaches us to
be good little boys and girls and mind our
parents.  And that's all."

The dolls fell asleep.  Lizbeth whispered
lest they should awake, and tiptoed through
the grass.  A blue-jay called harshly from
a neighboring tree.  Lizbeth frowned and
glanced anxiously at the grassy trundle-bed.
"'Sh!" she said, warningly, her
finger on her lip, whenever you came near.

Suddenly there was a rustle in the leaves
above, and out of their greenness a little
pear dropped to the grass at Lizbeth's feet.

"It's mine," you cried, reaching out
your hand.

"No—o," screamed Lizbeth.  "It's for
my dollies' breakfast," and she hugged
the stunted, speckled fruit to her bosom
so tightly that its brown, soft side was
crushed in her hands.  You tried to snatch
it from her, but she struck you with her
little clinched fist.

"No—o," she cried again.  "It's my
dollies' pear."  Her lip quivered.  Tears
sprang into her eyes.  You straightened
yourself.

"All right," you muttered, fiercely.  "All
right for you.  I'll run away, I will, and
I'll never come back—*never*!"

You climbed the stone wall.

"No," cried Lizbeth.

"I'll never come back," you called,
defiantly, as you stood on the top.

"No," Lizbeth screamed, scrambling to
her feet and turning to you a face wet
with tears and white with terror.

"Never, *never*!" was your farewell to
her as you jumped.  Deaf to the pitiful
wail behind you, you ran out across the
meadow, muttering to yourself your
fateful, parting cry.

Lizbeth looked for a moment at the wall
where you had stood.  Then she ran
sobbing after you, around through the gate,
for the wall was too high for her, and out
into the field, where to her blurred vision
you were only a distant figure now, never,
never to return.

"Harry!" she screamed, and the wind
blew her cry to you across the 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.

.. _`"THEY TOOK YOU AS FAR AS THE BEDROOM DOOR TO SEE HER"`:

.. figure:: images/img-078.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "THEY TOOK YOU AS FAR AS THE BEDROOM DOOR TO SEE HER"

   "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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Our Yard`:

.. class:: center large bold

   Our Yard

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: T
   :image: images/img-cap-t.jpg
   :lines: 5

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`The Toy Grenadier`:

.. class:: center large bold

   The Toy Grenadier

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: I
   :image: images/img-cap-i107.jpg
   :lines: 5

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 *congé* 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.

There was a rumble—a crash through
the torn earthworks—a shock—a scream
from the distant heights—and the
Captain fell.  A monstrous glassy had struck
him fairly in the legs, and owing to his
military habit of standing with them
close together—well, it was all too sad,
too harrowing, to relate.  An ambulance
corps of Grandfather and Uncle Ned carried
the crippled soldier to the Tool Chest
Hospital.  He was just conscious, that was
all.  The operation he bore with great
fortitude, refusing to take chloroform,
and insisting on dying with his musket
beside him, if die he must.  What seemed
to give him greatest anguish was his
heels, for, separated at last, they would
not click together now; and his little
fingers groped nervously for the misplaced
seams of his pantaloons.

Long afterwards, when the Captain had
left his cot for active duty again, it was
recalled that the very moment when he
fell so gallantly in the trenches that day
a lady was found unconscious, flat on
her face, at the foot of Rocking Chair Hill.

Captain Jinks was never the same after
that.  Still holding his gun as smartly
as before, there was, on the other hand,
a certain carelessness of attire, a certain
dulness of gilt buttons, a smudginess
of scarlet coat, as though it were
thumb-marked; and dark clouds were beginning
to lower in the clear azure of his pantaloons.
There was, withal, a certain rakishness
of bearing not provided for in the
regulations; a little uncertainty as to legs; a
tilt and limp, as it were, in sharp contrast
to the trim soldier who had guarded the
commissary chocolates under the Christmas
fir.  Moreover—though his comrades at
arms forbore to mention it, loving him for
his gallant service—he was found one
night, flat on his face, under the
dinner-table.  Now the Captain had always been
abstemious before.  Liquor of any kind he
had shunned as poison, holding that it
spotted his uniform; and once when forced
to drink from Lizbeth's silver cup, at the
end of a dusty march, his lips paled at
the contaminating touch, his red cheeks
blanched, and his black mustache, in a
single drink, turned gray.  But here he
lay beneath the festive board, bedraggled,
his nose buried in the soft rug, hopelessly
inarticulate—though the last symptom was
least to be wondered at, since he had
always been a silent man.

You shook him where he lay.  There
was no response.  You dragged him forth
in his shame and set him on his feet again,
but he staggered and fell.  Yet as he lay
there in his cups—oh, mystery of
discipline!—his heels were close together, his
toes turned out, his musket was at a carry,
and his little fingers were just touching
the seams of his pantaloons.

For the good of the service Mother
offered to retire the Captain on half pay,
and give him free lodging on the garret
stair, but he scorned the proposal, and
you backed him in his stand.  All his life
he had been a soldier.  Now, with war
and rumors of war rife in the land, should
he, Captain Jinks, a private in the
Grenadier Guards, lay down his arms for the
piping peace of a garret stair?  No, by
gad, sir!  No!  And he stayed; and,
strangest thing of all, he was yet to fight
and stand guard and suffer as he had
never done before.

But while the Captain thus sadly went
down hill, the Rag Doll retired to a modest
villa in the closet country up-stairs.  It
was quiet there, and she could rest her
shattered nerves.  Whether she blamed
herself for her rejected lover's downfall,
or whether it was mere petulance at the
social triumphs of the waxen blonde is a
question open to debate.  Sentimentalists
will find the former theory more to their
fancy, but, the blonde and her friends told
a different tale.  Be that as it may, the
Rag Doll went away.

January passed in barracks; then February
and March, with only an occasional
scouting after cattle-thieves and brigand
bands.  The Captain chafed at such inactivity.

"War!  You call this war!" his very
bristling manner seemed to say.  "By
gad! sir, when I was in the trenches before..."

It was fine then to see the Captain and
Grandfather—both grizzled veterans with
tales to tell—side by side before the
library fire.  When Grandfather told the
story of Johnny Reb in the tall grass, the
Captain was visibly moved.

"Jinks," Grandfather would say—"Jinks,
you know how it is
yourself—when the bacon's wormy and the coffee's
thin, and there's a man with a gun before
you and a girl with a tear behind."

And at the mention of the girl and the
tear the Captain would turn away.

Spring came, and with it the marching
orders for which you and the Captain
had yearned so long.  There was a stir in
the barracks that morning.  The Captain
was drunk again, it is true, but drunk
this time with joy.  He could not march
in the ranks—he was too far gone for
that—so you stationed him on a wagon
to guard the commissary stores.

A blast from the bugle—Assembly—and
you fell into line.

"Forward—*March!*"

And you marched away, your drum
beating a double-quick, the Captain
swaying ignominiously on the wagon and
hugging his old brown gun.  As the
Guards swung by the reviewing-stand,
their arms flashing in the sun, the
Captain did not raise his eyes.  So he never
knew that looking down upon his shame
that April day sat his rag lady, with
Lizbeth and the waxen blonde.  Her cheeks
were pale, but her eyes were tearless.
She did not utter a sound as her tottering
lover passed.  She just leaned far out
over the flag-hung balcony and watched
him as he rode away.

It was a hard campaign.  Clover Plain,
Wood-pile Mountain, and the Raspberry
Wilderness are names to conjure with.
From the back fence to the front gate, from
the beehives to the red geraniums, the
whole land ran with blood.  Brevetted
for personal gallantry on the Wood-pile
Heights, you laid aside your drum for
epaulets and sword.  The Guards and the
Captain drifted from your ken.  When
you last saw him he was valiantly
defending a tulip pass, and defying a
regiment of the Black Ant Brigade to come
and take him—by gad! sirs—if they dared.

The war went on.  Days grew into
weeks, weeks into months, and the
summer passed.  Search in camps and
battlefields revealed no trace of Captain Jinks.
Sitting by the camp-fire on blustering
nights, your thoughts went back to the
old comrade of the winter days.

"Poor Captain Jinks!" you sighed.

"Jinks?" asked Grandfather, laying
down his book.

"Yes.  He's lost.  Didn't you know?"

"Jinks among the missing!" Grandfather
cried.  Then he gazed silently into
the fire.

"Poor old Jinks!" he mused.  "He
was a brave soldier, Jinks was—a brave
soldier, sir."  He puffed reflectively on his
corn-cob pipe.  Presently he spoke again,
more sadly than before:

"But he had one fault, Jinks had—just
one, sir.  He was a leetle too fond o'
his bottle on blowy nights."

November came.  The year and the
war were drawing to a close.  Before
Grape Vine Ridge the enemy lay intrenched
for a final desperate stand.  To your
council of war in the fallen leaves came
Grandfather, a scarf around his throat,
its loose ends flapping in the gale.  He
leaned on his cane; you, on your sword.

"Bring up your guns, boy," he cried.
"Bring up your heavy guns.  Fling your
cavalry to the left, your infantry to the
right.  'Up, Guards, and at 'em!'  Cold
steel, my boy—as Jinks used to say."

Grandfathers for counsel; little boys
for war.  At five that night the enemy
surrendered—horse, foot, and a hundred
guns.  Declining the General's proffered
sword, you rode back across the battle
field to your camp in the fallen leaves.
The afternoon was waning.  In the
gathering twilight your horse stumbled on a
prostrate form.  You dismounted, knelt,
brushed back the leaves, peered into the
dimmed eyes and ashen face.

"Captain!" you cried.  "Captain Jinks!"  And
at your call came Lizbeth, running,
dragging the Rag Doll by her hand.
Breathless they knelt beside him where
he lay.

"Oh, it's Captain Jinks," said Lizbeth,
but softly, when she saw.  Prone on the
battle-field lay the wounded Grenadier,
his uniform gray with service in the wind
and rain.

"Captain!" you cried again, but he did
not hear you.  Then the Rag Doll bent
her face to his, in the twilight, though she
could not speak.  A glimmer of recognition
blazed for a moment, but faded in
the Captain's eyes.

"He's tired marching, I guess," said Lizbeth.

"'Sh!" you said.  "He's dying."

You bent lower to feel his fluttering
pulse.  You placed your ear to the cross
of honor, rusted, on his breast.  His heart
was silent.  And so he died—on the
battlefield, his musket at his side, his heels
together, his little fingers just touching
the seams of his pantaloons.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Father`:

.. class:: center large bold

   Father

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: E
   :image: images/img-cap-e.jpg
   :lines: 5

Every evening at half-past
six there was a sound of
footsteps on the front porch.
You ran, you and Lizbeth,
and by the time you had reached the door
it opened suddenly from without, and you
each had a leg of Father.  Mother was
just behind you in the race, and though
she did not shout or dance, or pull his coat
or seize his bundles, she won his first kiss,
so that you and Lizbeth came in second
after all.

"Hello, Buster!" he would sing out to
you, so that you cried, "My name ain't
Buster—it's Harry," at which he would
be mightily surprised.  But he always
called Lizbeth by her right name.

"Well, Lizbeth," he would say, kneeling,
for you had pulled him down to you,
bundles and all, and Lizbeth would cuddle
down into his arms and say:

"*Fa*-ther."

"What?"

"Why, Father, now what do you think?
My Sally doll has got the measles awful."

"No!  You don't say?"

And "Father!" you would yell into
his other ear, for while Lizbeth used one,
you always used the other—using one by
two persons at the same time being
strictly forbidden.

"Father."

"Yes, my son.

"The Jones boy was here to-day
and—and—and he said—why, now, he said—"

"*Fa*-ther" (it was Lizbeth talking into
*her* ear now), "do you think my Sally
doll—"

It was Mother who rescued Father and
his bundles at last and carried you off
to supper, and when your mouth was not
too full you finished telling him what the
Jones boy said, and he listened gravely,
and prescribed for the Sally doll.  Though
he came home like that every night except
Sunday in all the year, you always had
something new to tell him in both ears,
and it was always, to all appearances, the
most wonderful thing he had ever heard.

But now and then there were times
when you did not yearn for the sound
of Father's footsteps on the porch.

"Wait till Father comes home and
Mother tells him what a bad, bad boy you
have been!"

"I don't care," you whispered, defiantly,
all to yourself, scowling out of the window,
but "Tick-tock, tick-tock" went the clock
on the mantel-shelf—"Tick-tock, tick-tock"—more
loudly, more swiftly than
you had ever heard it tick before.  Still
you were brave in the broad light of day,
and if sun and breeze and bird-songs but
held out long enough, Mother might
forget.  You flattened your nose against the
pane.  There was a dicky-bird hopping on
the apple-boughs outside.  You heard him
twittering.  If you were only a bird, now,
instead of a little boy.  Birds were so
happy and free.  Nobody ever made them
stay in-doors on an afternoon made for
play.  If only a fairy godmother would
come in a gold coach and turn you into a
bird.  Then you would fly away, miles
and miles, and when they looked for you,
at half-past six, you would be chirping
in some cherry-tree.

"Tick-tock, tick-tock—whir-r-r!  One!
Two!  Three!  Four!  Five!" struck the
clock on the mantel-shelf.  The bright
day was running away from you, leaving
you far behind to be caught, at half-past
six—caught and ...

But Father might not come home to
supper to-night!  Once he did not.  At
the thought the sun lay warm upon your
cheek, and you rapped on the pane bravely
at the dicky-bird outside.  The bird flew
away.

"Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock."

Swiftly the day passed.  Terribly fell
the black night, fastening its shadows on
you and all the world.  Grimly Mother
passed you, without a look or word.  She
pulled down the window shades.  One
by one she lighted the lamps—the tall
piano-lamp with the red globe, the little
green lamp on the library-table, the
hanging lamp in the dining-room.  Already
the supper-table was set.

The clock struck six!

You watched Mother out of the corners
of your eyes.  Had she forgotten?

"Mother," you said, engagingly.  "See
me stand on one leg."

"Mother does not care to look at naughty
little boys."

"Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock."

You were very little to punish.  Besides,
you were not feeling very well.  It
was not your tummy, nor your head, nor
yet the pussy-scratch on your finger.  It
was a deeper pain.

"Tick-tock, tick-tock."

If you should die like the Jones boy's
little brother and be put in the cemetery
on the hill, they would be sorry.

"Tick-tock, tick-tock."

Mother went to the window and peered out.

"TICK-TOCK!"

"Whir-r-r-"

And the clock struck half-past six!

Steps sounded upon the porch—Mother
was going to the door—it opened!

"Where's Buster?"

And Mother told!

... And somehow when Father spanked
it always seemed as if he were meddling.
He was an outsider all day.  Why,
then, did he concern himself so mightily
at night?

After supper Father would sit before
the fire with you on one knee and Lizbeth
on the other, while Mother sewed, till
by-and-by, just when you were most comfy
and the talk most charming, he would say:

"Well, Father must go now."

"Oh no, Father.  Don't go yet."

"But Father must.  He must go to
Council-meeting."

"What's a Council-meeting, Father?"
you asked, and while he was telling you
he would be putting on his coat.

"Don't sit up for me," he would tell
Mother, and the door would shut at
half-past seven just as it had opened at
half-past six, with the same sound of footsteps
on the porch.

"Oh, dear," you would say.  "Father's
always going somewhere.  I guess he
doesn't like to stay home, Mother."

Then Mother would take you and Lizbeth
on her lap.

"Dearies, Father would love to stay
at home and play with you and Mother,
but he can't.  All day long he has to
work to take care of us and buy us
bread-and-butter—"

"And chocolate cake, Mother?"

"Yes, and chocolate cake.  And he
goes to the Council to help the other men
take care of Ourtown so that the burglars
won't get in or the street-lamps go out
and leave us in the dark."

Your eyes were very round.  That night
after you and Lizbeth were in bed and the
lights were out, you thought of the Council
and the burglars so that you could not
sleep, and while you lay there thinking,
the wolf-wind began to howl outside.
Then suddenly you heard the patter, patter,
patter of its feet upon the roof.  You
shuddered and drew the bedclothes over your
head.  What if It got inside?  Could It
bite through the coverlet with its sharp
teeth?  Would the Council come and save
you just in time? ... Which would be
worse, a wolf or a burglar?  A wolf, of
course, for a burglar might have a little
boy of his own somewhere, in bed, curled
up and shivering, with the covers over his
head....  But what if the burglar had
no little boy?  Did burglars ever have
little boys? ... How could a man ever
be brave enough to be a burglar, in the
dead of night, crawling through windows
into pitch-dark rooms, ... into little boys'
rooms, ... crawling in stealthily with
pistols and false-faces and l-lanterns? ...

But That One was crawling in!  Right
into your room, ... right in over the
window-sill, ... like a cat, ... with a
false-face on, and pistols, loaded and pointed
right at you....  You tried to call;
... your voice was dried up in your throat,
... and all the time He was coming
nearer, ... nearer, ... nearer...

"Bad dream, was it, little chap?" asked
the Council, holding you close to his coat,
all smoky of cigars, and patting your cheek.

.. _`"'BAD DREAM, WAS IT, LITTLE CHAP?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-136.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "BAD DREAM, WAS IT, LITTLE CHAP?"

   "BAD DREAM, WAS IT, LITTLE CHAP?"

"F-father, where did he go?"

"Who go, my boy?"

"Why, the burglar, Father."

"There wasn't any burglar, child."

"Why, yes, Father.  I saw him.  Right
there.  Coming through the window."

And it took Father and Mother and
two oatmeal crackers and a drink of water
to convince you that it was all a dream.
So whether it was in frightening burglars
away, or keeping the street-lamps burning,
or smoking cigars, or soothing a little boy
with a nightmare and a fevered head, the
Council was a useful body, and always
came just in time.

On week-day mornings Father had gone
to work when you came down-stairs, but
on Sunday mornings, when you awoke, a
trifle earlier if anything—

"Father!"

Silence.

"Father!" a little louder.

Then a sleepy "Yes."

"We want to get up."

"It isn't time yet.  You children go to sleep."

You waited.  Then—

"Father, is it time yet?"

"No.  You children lie still."

So you and Lizbeth, wide-awake,
whispered together; and then, to while away
the time while Father slept, you played
Indian, which required two little yells
from you to begin with (when the Indian
You arrived in your war-paint) and two
big yells from Lizbeth to end with (when
the Paleface She was being scalped).

Then Father said it was "no use," and
Mother took a hand.  You were quiet after
that, but it was yawny lying there with
the sun so high.  You listened.  Not a
sound came from Father and Mother's
room.  You rose cautiously, you and
Lizbeth, in your little bare feet.  You stole
softly across the floor.  The door was a
crack open, so you peeked in, your face
even with the knob and Lizbeth's just
below.  And then, at one and the same
instant, you both said "Boo!" and grinned;
and the harder you grinned the harder
Father tried not to laugh, which was a
sign that you could scramble into bed with
him, you on one side and Lizbeth on the
other, cuddling down close while Mother
went to see about breakfast.

It was very strange, but while it had
been so hard to drowse in your own bed,
the moment you were in Father's you
did not want to get up at all.  Indeed, it
was Father who wanted to get up first,
and it was you who cried that it was not time.

Week-days were always best for most
things, but for two reasons Sunday was the
best day of all.  One reason was Sunday
dinner.  The other was Father.  On
Sunday the dinner-table was always whitest
with clean linen and brightest with silver
and blue china and fullest of good things
to eat, and sometimes Company came and
brought their children with them.  On
Sunday, too, there was no store to keep, and
Father could stay at home all day.

He came down to breakfast in slippers
and a beautiful, wide jacket, which was
brown to match the coffee he always took
three cups of, and the cigar which he smoked
afterwards in a big chair with his feet
thrust out on a little one.  While he smoked
he would read the paper, and sometimes he
would laugh and read it out loud to Mother;
and sometimes he would say, "That's so,"
and lay down his paper and talk to
Mother like the minister's sermon.  And once
he talked so loudly that he said "Damn."  Mother
looked at you, for you were listening,
and sent you for her work-basket up-stairs.
After that, when you talked loudest to
Lizbeth or the Jones boy, you said "Damn,"
too, like Father, till Mother overheard you
and explained that only fathers and
grandfathers and bad little boys ever said such
things.  It wasn't a pretty word, she said,
for nice little boys like you.

"But, Mother, if the bad little boys say
it, why do the good fathers say it—hm?"

Mother explained that, too.  Little boys
should mind their mothers, she said.

It was easy enough not to say the word
when you talked softly, but when you
talked loudest it was hard to remember
what Mother said.  For when you talked
softly, somehow, you always remembered
Mother, and when you talked loudly it
was Father you remembered best.

The sun rose high and warm.  It was a
long time after breakfast.  Fragrance came
from the kitchen to where you sat in the
library, all dressed-up, looking at
picture-books and waiting for dinner, and
wondering if there would be pie.  Father was all
dressed-up, too, and while he read silently,
you and Lizbeth felt his cheeks softly with
your finger-tips.  Where the prickers had
been at breakfast-time it was as smooth
as velvet now.  Father's collar was as
white as snow.  In place of his jacket he
wore his long, black Sunday coat, and in
his shoes you could almost see your face.

"Father's beautifulest on Sunday," Lizbeth said.

"So am I," you said, proudly, looking
down your blouse and trousers to the shine
of your Sunday shoes.

"So are you, too," you added kindly to
Lizbeth, who was all in white and curls.

Then you drew a little chair beside
Father's and sat, quiet and very straight,
with your legs crossed carelessly like his
and an open book like his in your lap.
And when Father changed his legs, you
changed your legs, too.  Lizbeth looked
at you two awhile awesomely.  Then she
brought her little red chair and sat beside
you with the Aladdin book on her lap,
but she did not cross her legs.  And so
you sat there, all three, clean and dressed-up
and beautiful, by the bay-window, while
the sun lay warm and golden on the library
rug, and sweeter and sweeter grew the
kitchen smells.

Then dinner came, and the last of it was
best because it was sweetest, and if
Company were not there you cried:

"It's going to be pie to-day, isn't it,
Mother?"

But Mother would only smile
mysteriously while the roast was carried away.  Then
Lizbeth guessed.

"It's pudding," she said.

"No, pie," you cried again, "'cause
yesterday was pudding."

"Now, Father, you guess," said Lizbeth.

"I guess?"

"Yes, Father."

And at that Father would knit his brows
and put one finger to one side of his nose,
so that he could think the harder, and
by-and-by he would say:

"I know.  I'll bet it's custard."

"Oh *no*, Father," you broke in, for you
liked pie best, and even to admit the
possibility of custard, aloud, might make
it come true.

"Then it's lemon jelly with cream,"
said Father, trying another finger to his
nose and pondering deeply.

"Oh, you only have one guess," cried
you and Lizbeth together, and Father,
cornered, stuck to the jelly and cream.

"Oh, dear," Lizbeth said, "I don't see
what good it does to brush off the crumbs
in the middle of dinner."

Silence fell upon the table, you and
Lizbeth holding Father's outstretched hands.
Your eyes were wide, the better to see.
Your lips were parted, the better, doubtless,
to hear.  Only Mother was serene, for
only Mother knew.  And then through the
stillness came the sound of rattling plates.

"Pie," you whispered.

"Pudding," whispered Lizbeth.

"Jelly," whispered Father, hoarsely.

The door swung open.  You rose in
your seats, you and Lizbeth and Father,
craning your necks to see, and, seeing—

"*Pie!*" you cried, triumphantly.

"Ah!" said Father, lifting his pie-crust
gayly with the tip of his fork.

"Apples," you said, peeping under your crust.

"Apples, my son?  Apples?  Why, no.
Bless my soul!  As I live, this is a robber's
cave filled with sacks of gold."

"Oh, *Father*!" you cried, incredulous,
not knowing how to take him yet; but
you peeped again, and under your
pie-crust it was like a cave, and the little slices
of juicy apple lay there like sacks of gold.

"And see!" said Father, pointing with
his fork, "there is the entrance to the
cave, and when the policemen chased the
robbers—pop! they went, right into their
hole, like rabbits."

And sure enough, in the upper crusts
were the little cuts through which the
robbers popped.  Your eyes widened.

"And oh, Father," you said, "the smoke
can come out through the little holes when
the robbers build their fire."

"Aha!" cried Father, fiercely.  "I'm the
policeman breaking into the cave while
the robbers are away," and he took a bite.

"And I'm another policeman," you cried,
catching the spirit of the thing and taking
a bigger bite than Father's.

"And I'm a policeman's wife coming
along, too," said Lizbeth, helping herself,
so that Mother said:

"John, John, how am I ever going to
teach these children table manners when—"

"But see, Mother, see!" Father explained,
taking another bite, and ignoring Mother's
eyes.  "If we don't get the gold away
the robbers will come back and—"

"Kill us!" you broke in.

"Yes, kill us, Mother!" shouted Father,
balancing another sack of gold on the end
of his fork.  "Yes, yes, Mother, don't you see?"

"I see," said Mother, just between laugh
and frown, and when the robbers came
back around the coffee-pot hill, lo! there
was no gold or cave awaiting them—only
three plates scraped clean, and two jubilant
policemen and a policeman's wife, full of gold.

And when Father was Father again,
leaning on the back of Mother's chair,
she said to him, "You're nothing but a
great big boy," so that Father chuckled,
his cheek against hers and his eyes
shining.  That was the way with Father.  Six
days he found quite long enough to be a
man; so on Sunday he became a boy.

The gate clicked behind you, Father in
the middle and you and Lizbeth holding
each a hand, and keeping step with him
when you could, running a little now and
then to catch up again.  Your steps were
always longest on Sunday when you
walked with Father, and even Lizbeth
knew you then for a little man, and peeked
around Father's legs to see you as you
strode along.  Father was proud of you,
too, though he did not tell you.  He just
told other people when he thought you
could not hear.

"Little pitchers have big ears," Mother
would warn him then, but you heard quite
plainly out of one ear, and it was small
at that.

Everybody looked as you three went
down the shady street together, and the
nice young ladies gave you smiles and
the nice old ladies gave you flowers, handing
them out to you over their garden walls.

"Thank you.  My name is Harry," you said.

"And I'm Lizbeth," said little sister.
And as you passed on your stride grew
longer and your voice sank bigger and
deeper in your throat, like Father's.

But it wasn't the town you liked best
to walk in with Father in the long, warm
Sunday afternoons.  It was the river-side,
where the willows drooped over the running
waters, and the grass was deepest and
greenest and waved in the sun.  On the
meadow-bank at the water's silver edge
you sat down together.

"Who can hear the most?" asked Father.

You listened.

"I hear the river running over the log,"
you said, softly.

"And the birds," whispered Lizbeth.

"And the wind in the willows," said Father.

"And the cow-bells tinkling way, way
off," you added, breathlessly.

"Oh, and I hear the grass whispering,"
said Lizbeth.

"And oh, a bee," you cried.

"And something else," said Father.

You held your breath and listened.
From the distant village the wind blew
you faintly the sound of—

"Church-bells," cried you and Lizbeth
together.

You fell to playing in the long grass.
Lizbeth gathered daisies for Mother.  You
lay with your face just over the river-bank,
humming a little song and gazing down
into the mirror of the waters.  You
wondered how it would feel to be a little
boy-fish, darting in and out among the river
grasses.

By-and-by you went back to Father and
sat beside him with your cheek against his arm.

"Father."

"Yes."

"What do you think when you don't
say anything, but just look?"

.. _`"'FATHER, WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU DON'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT JUST LOOK?'"`:

.. figure:: images/img-150.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'FATHER, WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU DON'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT JUST LOOK?'"

   "'FATHER, WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU DON'T SAY ANYTHING, BUT JUST LOOK?'"

"When I just look?"

"Yes.  Do you think what I do?"

"Well, what do you think?"

"Why, I think I'd like to be a big man
like you and wear a long coat, and take
my little boy and girl out walking.  Did
you think that, Father?"

"No.  I was thinking how nice it would
be just to be a little boy again like you
and go out walking by the river with my
father."

"Oh, Father, how funny!  I wanted
to be you and you wanted to be me.  I
guess people always want to be somebody
else when they just look and don't
say anything."

"What makes you think that, my boy?"

"Well, there's Grandmother.  *She* sits
by the window all day long and just looks
and looks, and wishes she was an angel
with Grandfather up in the sky."

"And Lizbeth?"

"Oh, Lizbeth wishes she was Mother."

"And how about Mother?  Does she
wish she were somebody else, do you think?"

"Oh no, Father, *she* doesn't, 'cause
then she wouldn't have me and Lizbeth.
Besides, she don't have time to just sit
and look, Mother don't."

Your eyes were big and shining.  Father
just looked and looked a long time.

"And what do you think *now*, Father?"

"I was thinking of Mother waiting for
you and Lizbeth and Father, and
wondering why we don't come home."

And almost always after that, when
you went out walking with Father,
Sundays, Mother went with you.  It seemed
strange at first, but fine, to have her sit
with you on the river-bank and just look
and look and look, smiling but never
saying a word; and though you asked her
many times what she thought about as
she sat there dreaming, she was never
once caught wishing that she were anybody
but her own self.  She was happy, she
told you; but while it was you she told,
she would be looking at Father.

Oh, it was golden in the morning glow,
when you were a little boy.  But clouds
skurried across the sky—black clouds,
storm clouds—casting their chill and
shadow for a while over all Our Yard,
darkening Our House, so that a little boy
playing on the hearth-rug left his toy
soldier prostrate there to wander, wondering,
from room to room.

"Mother, why doesn't Father play with
us like he used to?"

"Mother, why do you sew and sew and
sew all the time?  Hm, Mother?"

All through the long evenings till
bed-time came, and long afterwards, Father
and Mother talked low together before the
fire.  The murmur of their voices downstairs
was the last thing you heard before
you fell asleep.  It sounded like the brook
in the meadow where the little green frogs
lived, hopping through water-rings.

Of those secret conferences by the fire
you could make nothing at all.  Mother
stopped you whenever you drew near.

"Run away, dear, and play."

You frowned and sidled off as far as
the door, lingering wistfully.

"Father, the Jones boy made fun of
me to-day.  He called me Patchy-pants."

"Never mind what the Jones boy says,"
Mother broke in; but Father said, "He
ought to have a new pair, Mother."  You
brightened at that.

"The Jones boy's got awful nice pants,"
you said; "all striped like a zebra."

Father smiled a little at that.  Mother
looked down at her sewing, saying never
a word.  That night you dreamed you
had new pants, all spotted like a leopard,
and you were proud, for every one knows
that a leopard could whip a zebra, once
he jumped upon his back.

Leaning on the garden fence, the Jones
boy watched you as you sprinkled the
geraniums with your little green watering-can.

"Where'd you get it?" he asked.

"Down at my father's store," you
replied, loftily, for the Jones boy had no
watering-can.

"Your father hasn't got a store any more."

"He has, too," you replied.

"He hasn't, either, 'cause my pa says
he hasn't."

"I don't care what your pa says.  My
father has, too, got a store."

"He hasn't."

"He has."

"He hasn't, either."

"He has, teether."

"I say he hasn't."

"And I say he has," you screamed, and
threw the watering-can straight at the
Jones boy.  It struck the fence and the
water splashed all over him so that he
retreated to the road.  There in a rage he
hurled stones at you.

"Your—father—hasn't—got—any—
store—any—more—old—Patchy-pants—
old—Patchy-pants—old—"

And then suddenly the Jones boy fled,
and when you looked around there was
Father standing behind you by the geraniums.

"Never mind what the Jones boy says,"
he told you, and he was not angry with
you for throwing the watering-can.  The
little green spout of it was broken when
you picked it up, but Father said he would
buy you a new one.

"To-morrow, Father?"

"No, not to-morrow—some day."

You and Lizbeth, tumbling down-stairs
to breakfast, found Father sitting before
the fire.

"Father!" you cried, astonished, for it
was not Sunday, and though you ran to
him he did not hear you till you pounced
upon him in his chair.

"Oh, Father," you said, joyfully, "are
you going to stay home and play with us
all day?"

"*Fa*-ther!" cried Lizbeth.  "Will you
play house with us?"

"Oh no, Father.  Play *store* with us,"
you cried.

"Don't bother Father," Mother said,
but Father just held you both in his arms
and would not let you go.

"No—let them stay," he said, and
Mother slipped away.

"Mother's got an awful cold," said
Lizbeth.  "Her eyes—"

"So has Father; only Father's cold is
in his voice," you said.

You scarcely waited to eat your breakfast
before you were back again to Father
by the fire, telling him of the beautiful
games just three could play.  But while
you were telling him the door-bell rang,
and there were two men with books
under their arms, come to see Father.  They
stayed with him all day long—you could
hear them muttering in the library—and
all day you looked wistfully at the
closed door, lingering there lest Father
should come out to play and find you gone.

He did not come out till dinner-time.
After dinner he walked in the garden alone.
He held a cigar in his clinched teeth.

"Why don't you smoke the cigar, Father?"

He did not hear you.  He just walked
up and down, up and down, with his eyes
on the ground and his hands thrust hard
into the pockets of his coat.

Mother watched him for a moment
through the window.  Then with her own
hands she built a fire in the grate, for
the night was chill.  Before it she drew
an easy-chair, and put Father's smoking-jacket
on the back of it and set his slippers
to warm against the fender.  On a
reading-table near by she laid the little
blue china ash-tray you had given Father
for Christmas, and beside it a box of
matches ready for his hand.  Then she
called him in.

He came and sat there before the fire,
saying nothing, but looking into the
flames—looking, looking, till your mind ran back
to a Sunday afternoon in summer by the
river-side.

"I know what you are thinking, Father."

Slowly he turned his head to you, so
that you knew he was listening though
he did not speak.

"You're thinking how nice it would be,
Father, if you were a little boy like me."

He made no answer.  Mother came and
sat on one of the arms of his chair, her
cheek against his hair.  Lizbeth undressed
her dolls for the night, crooning a lullaby.
One by one you dropped your marbles
into their little box.  Then you rose and
sat like Mother on an arm of Father's
chair.  For a while you dreamed there,
drowsy, in the glow.

"Mother," you said, softly.

.. _`"'MOTHER,' YOU SAID, SOFTLY"`:

.. figure:: images/img-162.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "'MOTHER, YOU SAID, SOFTLY'"

   "'MOTHER, YOU SAID, SOFTLY'"

"Yes," she whispered back to you.

"Mother, isn't it *fine*?" you said.

"Fine, dearie?"

"Yes, Mother, everything ... 'specially—"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

"—'specially just having Father."

Father gave a little jump; seized you;
crushed you in his arms, stars shining
in his brimming eyes.

"Little chap—little chap," he cried, but
could get no further, till by-and-by—

"Mother," he said—and his voice was
clear and strong—"Mother, with a little
chap like that and two girls like you and
Lizbeth—"

His voice caught, but he shook it free
again.

"—*any* man could begin—all over
again—and *win*," he said.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`Mother`:

.. class:: center large bold

   Mother

.. vspace:: 2

.. dropcap:: A
   :image: images/img-cap-a165.jpg
   :lines: 5

A," you said.

"And what's that?"

"B."

"And that?"

You sat on Mother's lap.  The wolf-wind
howled at the door, and you shuddered,
cuddling down in Mother's arms
and the glow.  The wilder the wolf-wind
howled, the softer was the lamp-light,
the redder were the apples on the table,
the warmer was the fire.

On your knees lay the picture-book
with its sad, sad little tale.  Mother read
it to you—she had read it fifty times
before—her face grave, her voice low and tragic,
while you listened with bated breath:

   |  "Who killed Cock Robin?
   |  'I,' said the Sparrow,
   |  'With my bow and arrow—
   |  I killed Cock Robin.'"
   |

.. _`"THE PICTURE-BOOK"`:

.. figure:: images/img-166.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "THE PICTURE-BOOK"

   "THE PICTURE-BOOK"

It was the first murder you had ever
heard about.  You saw it all, the hideous
spectacle—a beautiful, warm, red breast
pierced by that fatal dart—a poor, soft
little birdie, dead, by an assassin's hand.
A lump rose in your throat.  A tear rose
in your eye—two tears, three tears.  They
rolled down your cheek.  They dropped,
hot and sad, on the fish with his little
dish, on the owl with his spade and trowel,
on the rook with his little book.

"P-poor Cock R-robin!"

"There, there, dear.  Don't cry."

"But, M-mother—the Sparrow—he k-killed him."

Alas, yes!  The Sparrow had killed him,
for the book said so, but had you heard?

"N-no, w-what?"

The book, it seems, like other books,
had told but half the story.  Mother knew
the other half.  Cock Robin was murdered,
murdered in cold blood, it was true,
but—O merciful, death-winged arrow!—he
had gone where the good birds go.  And
there—O joy!—he had met his robin
wife and his little robin boy, who had
gone before.

"And I expect they are all there now,
dear," she told you, kissing your
tear-stained cheek, "the happiest robins that
ever were."

Dry and wide were your eyes.  In the
place where the good birds go, you saw
Cock Robin.  His eyes and his fat, red
breast were bright again.  He chirped.
He sang.  He hopped from bough to bough,
with his robin wife and his little robin
boy.  For in the mending of little stories
or the mending of little hearts, like the
mending of little stockings, Mother was
wonderful.

In those times there were knees to your
stockings, knees with holes in them at
the end of the day, with the soiled skin
showing through.

"Just look!" Mother would cry.  "Just
look there!  And I'd only just mended them."

"Well, you see, Mother, when you play
Black Bear—"

"I see," she said, and before you went
to bed you would be sitting on the edge
of a tub, paddling your feet in the water.

.. _`"BEFORE YOU WENT TO BED"`:

.. figure:: images/img-168.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "BEFORE YOU WENT TO BED"

   "BEFORE YOU WENT TO BED"

"You dirty boy," she would be saying,
scrubbing at the scratched, black knees;
but when you were shining again she
would be saying—

"You darling!"

And though your stockings were whole
in the clean of morning when you scampered
out into the sun, in the dirt of night
when you scampered back again—O skein,
where is thy yarn?  O darning-needle,
where is thy victory?

Summer mornings, in the arbor-seat
of the garden, Mother would be sewing,
her lap brimming, her work-basket at
her feet, the sun falling golden through
the trellised green.  In the nap of the
afternoon, when even the birds drowsed
and the winds slept, she would be sewing,
ever sewing.  And when night fell and
the dishes were put away, she would be
sewing still, in the lamp-light's yellow glow.

"Mother, why do you sew and sew?"

"To make my little boy blue sailor
suits and my little girl white frocks, and
to stop the holes."

"Do you like to sew, Mother?"

"I don't mind it."

"But doesn't it make you tired, Mother?"

"Oh, now and then."

"But I should think you'd rest sometimes, Mother."

"Should you, dear?"

"Yes, I would.  Oh, I'd sew a *little*—just
enough—and then I'd play."

"But Mother does sew *just enough*, and
it takes all day, my dear.  What do you
say to that?"

You pondered.

"Well," you said, and stopped.

"Well?" she said, and laughed.  Then
you laughed, too.

"A mother," you told them afterwards,
"is a person what takes care of you, and
loves you, and sews and sews—just enough—all day."

Since mothers take care of little boys,
they told you, little boys should take care
of their mothers, too.  So right in front
of her you stood, bravely, your fists
clinched, your lips trembling, your eyes flashing
with rage and tears.

"You sha'n't touch my mother!"

But Mother's arms stole swiftly around
you, pinning your own to your side.

"Father was only fooling, dear," she
said, kneeling behind you and folding
you to her breast.  "See, he's laughing at us."

"Why, little chap," he said, "Father
was only playing."

Mother wiped away your tears, smiling
at them, but proudly.  You looked doubtfully
at Father, who held out his arms to
you; then slowly you went to him, urged
by Mother's hand.

"You must always take care of Mother
like that," he said, "and never let any one
hurt her, or bother her, when Father's away."

"Mother's little knight," she said, kissing
your brow.  And ever afterwards she
was safe when you were near.

"Oh, that Mrs. Waddles.  I wish she
wouldn't bother me."

Under her breath Mother said it, but
you heard, and you hated Mrs. Waddles
with all your soul, and her day of
reckoning came.  Mother was in the garden and
did not hear.  You answered the knock
yourself.

"Little darling, how—"

"You can't see my mother to-day,"
you said, stiffly.

"That's very strange," said Mrs. Waddles,
with a forward step.

"No," you said, a little louder, throwing
yourself into the breach and holding
the door-knob with all your might.  "No!
You mustn't come in!"

"You impertinent little child!" cried
Mrs. Waddles, threateningly, but you
faced her down, raising your voice
again:

"You can't see my mother any more,"
you repeated, firmly.

"And why not, I'd like to know?"
demanded the old lady, swelling visibly.
"Why not, I'd like to know?"

"'Cause I'm to take care of my mother
when my father's away, and he said not
to let anybody bother her that she don't
want to see."

It was a long explanation and took all
your breath.

"Oh, is *that* it?" cackled Mrs. Waddles,
with withering scorn.  "And how do you
*know* that your mother doesn't want to
see me—*hey*?"

"'Cause—she—said—so!"

You separated your words like the ABC
book, that Mrs. Waddles might understand.
It was a master-stroke.  Gasping, her face
on fire, gathering her skirts together with
hands that trembled in their black silk
mitts, Mrs. Waddles turned and swept away.

"I never!" she managed to utter as she
slammed the gate.

You shut the door softly, the battle won,
and went back to the garden.

"Well, *that's* over," you said, with a
sigh, as Mother herself would have said it.

"What's over, dear?"

"Mrs. Waddles," you replied.

So you took care of Mother so well that
she loved you more and more as the days
of your knighthood passed; and she took
care of you so well that your cheeks grew
rosier and your eyes brighter and your
legs stronger, and you loved her more and
more with the days of her motherhood.

Even being sick was fine in those days,
for she brought you little things in bowls
with big spoons in them, and you ate till
you wanted more—a sign that you would
not die.  And so you lay in the soft of
the pillows, with the patchwork coverlet
that Mother made with her own hands.
There was the white silk triangle from
her wedding-gown, and a blue one from a
sash that was her Sunday best, long ago,
when she was a little girl.  There was
a soft-gray piece from a dress of
Grandmother's, and a bright-pink one that was
once Lizbeth's, and a striped one, blue
and yellow, that was once Father's necktie
in the gay plumage of his youth.

As you lay there, sick and drowsy, the
bridal triangle turned to snow, cold and
white and pure, and you heard sleighbells
and saw the Christmas cards with
the little church in the corner, its steeple
icy, but its windows warm and red with
the Christmas glow.  That was the white
triangle.  But the blue one, next, was
sky, and when you saw it you thought
of birds and stars and May; and if it so
happened that your eyes turned to the
gray piece that was Grandmother's, and
the sky that was blue darkened and the
rain fell, you had only to look at the pink
piece that was Lizbeth's, or the blue and
yellow that was Father's, to find the
flowers and the sun again.  Then the colors
blended.  Dandelions jingled, sleigh-bells
and violets blossomed in the snow, and you
slept—the sleep that makes little boys well.


The bees and the wind were humming
in the cherry-trees, for it was May.  You
were all alone, you and Mother, in the
garden, where the white petals were
falling, silently, like snow-flakes, and the
birds were singing in the morning glow.

Your feet scampered down the paths.
Your curls bobbed among the budding
shrubs and vines.  You leaped.  You
laughed.  You sang.  In your wide eyes
blue of the great sky, green of the grasses.
On your flushed cheeks sunshine and
breeze.  In your beating heart childhood
and spring—a childhood too big, a spring
too wonderful, for the smallness of one
little, brimming boy.

"Look, Mother!  See me jump."

"My!" she said.

"And see me almost stand on my head."

"Wonderful!"

"I know what I'll be when I grow to
be a man, Mother."

"What will you be?"

"A circus-rider."

"Gracious!" said she.

"On a big, white horse, Mother."

"Dear me!"

"And we'll jump 'way over the moon, Mother."

"The moon?"

"Yes, the moon.  See!"

Then you jumped over the rake-handle.
You were practising for the moon, you said.

"But maybe I *won't* be a circus-rider,
Mother, after all."

"Maybe not," said she.

"Maybe I'll be President, like George
Washington.  Father said I could.  Could
I, Mother?"

"Yes—you might—some day."

"But the Jones boy couldn't, Mother."

"Why couldn't the Jones boy?"

"Because he swears and tells lies.  *I*
don't.  And George Washington didn't,
Mother.  I guess I won't be a circus-rider,
after all."

"Oh, I'm glad of that, dear."

"No, I guess I'll keep right on, Mother—as
long as I've started—and just be
President."

"Oh, that will be fine," said she.  She
was sewing in the arbor, her lap filled with
linen, her work-basket at her feet.

"Mother."

"Yes."

"I think I'd like to sing a song now."

Straight and proper you stood in the
little path, your heels together, your hands
at your side, and so you sang to her the
song of the little duck:

   |  "'Quack, quack,' said the Duck,
   |  'Quack, quack.'
   |  'Quack, quack,' said—"
   |

You stopped.

"Try it a little lower, dear."

   |  "'Quack, quack,' said—"
   |

"No, that's *too* low," you said.  You
tried again and started right that time
and sang it through, the song of the little
duck who

   |  "'... wouldn't be a girl,
   |  With only a curl,
   |  I wouldn't be a girl, would you?'"
   |

"Oh, it's beautiful," Mother said.

"Now it's your turn, Mother, to tell a story."

"A story?"

"Yes.  About the violets."

"The violets?" she said, poising her
needle, musingly.  "The blue, blue violets—"

"As blue as the sky, Mother," you said,
softly, for it is always in the hush of the
garden that the stories grow.

"As blue as the sky," she said.  "Ah,
yes.  Well, once there wasn't a violet in
the whole world."

"Nor a single star," you said, awesomely,
helping her.  And as you sat there
listening the world grew wider and wider—for
when you are a little boy the world is
always just as wide as your eyes.

"Not a violet or a single star in the
whole world," Mother went on.  "And
what do you think?  They just took little
bits of the blue sky and sprinkled them
all over the green world, and they were
the first violets."

"And the stars, Mother?"

"Why, don't you see?  The stars are
the little holes they left in the blue sky,
with the light of heaven shining through."

"Oh!" you said, softly.  "Oh, Mother!"

And then, in the hush of the garden, you
looked at her, and lo! her eyes were blue
like the violets, and bright like the stars,
for the light of heaven was shining through.

She was the most wonderful person in
the whole world—who never did anything
wrong, who knew everything, even who
God was, watching, night and day, over
little boys.  Even the hairs of your head
were numbered, she told you, and not a
little bird died but He knew.

"And did He know when Cock Robin
died, Mother?"

"Yes.  He knew."

"And when I hurt my finger, Mother?
Did He know then?"

"Yes, He knows everything."

"And was He sorry, Mother, when I
hurt my finger?"

"Very sorry, dear."

"Then why did He *let* me hurt my finger—why?"

For a moment she did not speak.

"Dearie," she said at last, "I don't
know.  There are many things that
nobody knows but God."

Hushed and wondering you sat in
Mother's lap, for His eye was upon you.
Somewhere up in the sky, above the
clouds, you knew He was sitting, on a
great, bright throne, with a gold crown
upon His head and a sceptre in His
hand—King of Kings and Lord of All.  Down
below Him on the green earth little birds
were falling, little boys were hurting their
fingers and crying in their Mothers' arms,
and He saw them all, every one, little
birds and little boys, but did not help them.
You crept closer to Mother's bosom,
flinging your arms about her neck.

"Don't let Him get me, Mother!"

"Why, darling, He loves you."

"Oh no, Mother—not like you do; not
like you."

The bees and the wind were in the apple
trees, for it was May.  You were all alone,
you and Mother, in the garden, where
the white petals were falling, like
snowflakes, silently.  In the swing Grandfather
built for you, you sat swaying, to and fro,
in the shadows; and the shadows swayed,
to and fro, in the gale; and to and fro your
thoughts swayed in your dreaming.

The wind sang in the apple-boughs,
the flowering branches filled and bent,
and all about you were the tossing,
shimmering grasses, and all above you birds
singing and flitting in the sky.  And so
you swayed, to and fro, till you were a
sailor, in a blue suit, sailing the blue sea.

The wind sang in the rigging.  The
white sails filled and bent.  Your ship
scudded through the tossing, shimmering
foam.  Gulls screamed and circled in the
sky, ... and so you sailed and sailed
with the sea-breeze in your curls...

The ship anchored.

The swing stopped.

You were only a little boy.

"Mother," you said, softly, for your
voice was drowsy with your dream.

She did not hear you.  She sat there
in the arbor-seat, smiling at you, her hands
idle, her sewing slipping from her knees.
You did not know it then, but you do
now—that to see the most beautiful woman in
the whole world you must be her little boy.

There in her garden, in her lap, with
her arms around you and her cheeks
between your hands, you gazed, wondering,
into the blue fondness of her eyes.  You
saw her lips, forever smiling at you, forever
seeking your own.  You heard her voice,
sweet with love-words—

"My dearest."

"Yes."

"My darling."

"Yes."

"My own dear little boy."

And then her arms crushing you to
her breast; and then her lips; and then
her voice again—

"Once in this very garden, in this very
seat, Mother sat dreaming of you."

"Of me, Mother?"

"Of you.  Here in the garden, with
that very bush there red with blossoms,
and the birds singing in these very trees.
She dreamed that you were a little baby—a
little baby, warm and soft in her arms—and
while the wind sang to the flowers
Mother sang you a lullaby, and you stretched
out your hands to her and smiled; and
then—ah, darling!"

"But it was a *dream*, Mother."

"It was only a dream—yes—but it came
true.  It came true on a night in
June—the First of June, it was—"

"*My* birthday, Mother!"

"Your birthday, dear."

.. _`187`:

"Oh, Mother," you said, breathlessly—"what
a beautiful dream!"

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   THE END

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   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

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   A FEW OF
   GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
   Great Books at Little Prices

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   NEW, CLEVER, ENTERTAINING.

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GRET: The Story of a Pagan.  By Beatrice Mantle.  Illustrated
by C. M. Relyea.

The wild free life of an Oregon lumber camp furnishes the setting for this
strong original story.  Gret is the daughter of the camp and is utterly
content with the wild life—until love comes.  A fine book, unmarred by
convention.


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OLD CHESTER TALES.  By Margaret Deland.  Illustrated
by Howard Pyle.

A vivid yet delicate portrayal of characters in an old New England town.

Dr. Lavendar's fine, kindly wisdom is brought to bear upon the lives of
all, permeating the whole volume like the pungent odor of pine, healthful
and life giving.  "Old Chester Tales" will surely be among the books that
abide.


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THE MEMOIRS OF A BABY.  By Josephine Daskam.  Illustrated
by F. Y. Cory.

The dawning intelligence of the baby was grappled with by its great aunt,
an elderly maiden, whose book knowledge of babies was something at which
even the infant himself winked.  A delicious bit of humor.


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REBECCA MARY.  By Annie Hamilton Donnell.  Illustrated
by Elizabeth Shippen Green.

The heart tragedies of this little girl with no one near to share them, are
told with a delicate art, a keen appreciation of the needs of the childish
heart and a humorous knowledge of the workings of the childish mind.


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THE FLY ON THE WHEEL.  By Katherine Cecil Thurston.
Frontispiece by Harrison Fisher.

An Irish story of real power, perfect in development and showing a true
conception of the spirited Hibernian character as displayed in the tragic as
well as the tender phases of life.


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THE MAN FROM BRODNEY'S.  By George Barr McCutcheon.
Illustrated by Harrison Fisher.

An island in the South Sea is the setting for this entertaining tale, and
an all-conquering hero and a beautiful princess figure in a most complicated
plot.  One of Mr. McCutcheon's best books.


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TOLD BY UNCLE REMUS.  By Joel Chandler Harris.
Illustrated by A. B. Frost, J. M. Conde and Frank Verbeck.

Again Uncle Remus enters the fields of childhood, and leads another
little boy to that non-locatable land called "Brer Rabbit's Laughing
Place," and again the quaint animals spring into active life and play their
parts, for the edification of a small but appreciative audience.


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THE CLIMBER.  By E. F. Benson.  With frontispiece.

An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman's soul—a woman who
believed that in social supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds
instead the utter despair of one who has chosen the things that pass away.


.. vspace:: 2

LYNCH'S DAUGHTER.  By Leonard Merrick.  Illustrated by
Geo. Brehm.

A story of to-day, telling how a rich girl acquires ideals of beautiful and
simple living, and of men and love, quite apart from the teachings of her
father, "Old Man Lynch" of Wall St.  True to life, clever in treatment.


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   GROSSET & DUNLAP'S
   DRAMATIZED NOVELS

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   A Few that are Making Theatrical History

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MARY JANE'S PA.  By Norman Way.  Illustrated with scenes
from the play.

Delightful, irresponsible "Mary Jane's Pa" awakes one morning to find
himself famous, and, genius being ill adapted to domestic joys, he wanders
from home to work out his own unique destiny.  One of the most humorous
bits of recent fiction.


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CHERUB DEVINE.  By Sewell Ford.

"Cherub," a good hearted but not over refined young man is brought in
touch with the aristocracy.  Of sprightly wit, he is sometimes a merciless
analyst, but he proves in the end that manhood counts for more than
ancient lineage by winning the love of the fairest girl in the flock.


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A WOMAN'S WAY.  By Charles Somerville.  Illustrated with
scenes from the play.

A story in which a woman's wit and self-sacrificing love save her husband
from the toils of an adventuress, and change an apparently tragic situation
into one of delicious comedy.


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THE CLIMAX.  By George C. Jenks.

With ambition luring her on, a young choir soprano leaves the little village
where she was born and the limited audience of St. Jude's to train for the
opera in New York.  She leaves love behind her and meets love more ardent
but not more sincere in her new environment.  How she works, how she
studies, how she suffers, are vividly portrayed.


.. vspace:: 2

A FOOL THERE WAS.  By Porter Emerson Browne.  Illustrated
by Edmund Magrath and W. W. Fawcett.

A relentless portrayal of the career of a man who comes under the influence
of a beautiful but evil woman; how she lures him on and on, how he
struggles, falls and rises, only to fall again into her net, make a story of
unflinching realism.


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THE SQUAW MAN.  By Julie Opp Faversham and Edwin
Milton Royle.  Illustrated with scenes from the play.

A glowing story, rapid in action, bright in dialogue with a fine courageous
hero and a beautiful English heroine.


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THE GIRL IN WAITING.  By Archibald Eyre.  Illustrated
with scenes from the play.

A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a
venturesome spirit and an eye for human oddities.


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THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL.  By Baroness Orczy.  Illustrated
with scenes from the play.

A realistic story of the days of the French Revolution, abounding in
dramatic incident, with a young English soldier of fortune, daring,
mysterious as the hero.


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   TITLES SELECTED FROM
   GROSSET & DUNLAP'S LIST

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   REALISTIC, ENGAGING PICTURES OF LIFE


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THE GARDEN OF FATE.  By Roy Norton.  Illustrated
by Joseph Clement Coll.

The colorful romance of an American girl in Morocco, and
of a beautiful garden, whose beauty and traditions of strange
subtle happenings were closed to the world by a Sultan's seal.


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THE MAN HIGHER UP.  By Henry Russell Miller.
Full page vignette illustrations by M. Leone Bracker.

The story of a tenement waif who rose by his own ingenuity
to the office of mayor of his native city.  His experiences
while "climbing," make a most interesting example of the
possibilities of human nature to rise above circumstances.


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THE KEY TO YESTERDAY.  By Charles Neville
Buck.  Illustrated by R. Schabelitz.

Robert Saxon, a prominent artist, has an accident, while in
Paris, which obliterates his memory, and the only clue he has
to his former life is a rusty key.  What door in Paris will it
unlock?  He must know that before he woos the girl he loves.


.. vspace:: 2

THE DANGER TRAIL.  By James Oliver Curwood.
Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull.

The danger trail is over the snow-smothered North.  A
young Chicago engineer, who is building a road through the
Hudson Bay region, is involved in mystery, and is led into
ambush by a young woman.


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THE GAY LORD WARING.  By Houghton Townley.
Illustrated by Will Grefe.

A story of the smart hunting set in England.  A gay young
lord wins in love against his selfish and cowardly brother and
apparently against fate itself.


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BY INHERITANCE.  By Octave Thanet.  Illustrated
by Thomas Fogarty.  Elaborate wrapper in colors.

A wealthy New England spinster with the most elaborate
plans for the education of the negro goes to visit her nephew
in Arkansas, where she learns the needs of the colored race
first hand and begins to lose her theories.


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   KATE DOUGLAS WIGGINS
   STORIES OF PURE DELIGHT

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   Full of originality and humor, kindliness and cheer


.. vspace:: 2

THE OLD PEABODY PEW.  Large Octavo.  Decorative
text pages, printed in two colors.  Illustrations by Alice
Barber Stephens.

One of the prettiest romances that has ever come from this
author's pen is made to bloom on Christmas Eve in the sweet
freshness of an old New England meeting house.


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PENELOPE'S PROGRESS.  Attractive cover design in
colors.

Scotland is the background for the merry doings of three very
clever and original American girls.  Their adventures in adjusting
themselves to the Scot and his land are full of humor.


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PENELOPE'S IRISH EXPERIENCES.  Uniform in style
with "Penelope's Progress."

The trio of clever girls who rambled over Scotland cross the
border to the Emerald Isle, and again they sharpen their wits against
new conditions, and revel in the land of laughter and wit.


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REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM.

One of the most beautiful studies of childhood—Rebecca's artistic,
unusual and quaintly charming qualities stand cut midst a circle
of austere New Englanders.  The stage version is making a
phenomenal dramatic record.


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NEW CHRONICLES OF REBECCA.  With illustrations by F. C. Yohn.

Some more quaintly amusing chronicles that carry Rebecca
through various stages to her eighteenth birthday.


.. vspace:: 2

ROSE O' THE RIVER.  With illustrations by George Wright.

The simple story of Rose, a country girl and Stephen a sturdy
young farmer.  The girl's fancy for a city man interrupts their love
and merges the story into an emotional strain where the reader
follows the events with rapt attention.

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GROSSET & DUNLAP, 526 WEST 26th ST., NEW YORK

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.. pgfooter::