Read Ebook: Little Helpers by Vandegrift Margaret

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Ebook has 1112 lines and 62003 words, and 23 pages

Mrs. Leslie was running to the barn before Tiny had finished.

"Johnny!" she called wildly. "My darling! What has happened?"

A pale face, a rough-looking head, with hay sticking out of its hair, appeared at the top of the ladder, and Johnny staggered weakly down.

"Oh, mamma!" he groaned, "I think I must be going to die! I never felt this way before!"

His mother caught him in her arms, and as she did so, the smell of the rank cigar which Johnny, with wasted heroism, had smoked to the end, struck her indignant nose.

"Johnny!" she exclaimed, reproachfully, "you've been smoking, and you told me what was just as bad as a lie about it!"

And the warm-hearted, offended little mother burst out crying, and sobbed with her head on Johnny's dusty shoulder.

Nothing she could have said would have gone to Johnny's heart of hearts as those sobs did. He forgot his alarming illness as he caught her in his arms, and said, imploringly,--

"Oh, mammy, my darling mammy, please don't cry like that; I'll die before I'll ever tell you a lie, or act you one, again. Oh, please say you forgive me!"

Of course Tiny felt obliged to help with the crying, and when Mr. Leslie, coming home to a deserted house, traced his family to the barn, he came upon a place of wailing.

At first, he was inclined to laugh, but when he heard of the deceit which had followed Johnny's first effort at smoking, he looked very grave. No one, however, could doubt Johnny's penitence, and as he lay on the lounge in his mother's room, while the heavy thunder and sharp lightning seemed to fill the air, and waves of deathly sickness rolled over him, he made some very good resolutions, which were not forgotten, as such resolutions sometimes are, after his recovery.

The orator of the day was somewhat paler than he usually was when he took his place upon the barrel which he had previously assisted to the grove, the next morning.

He read the Declaration of Independence in a voice which reached the ears of his most distant listener with perfect distinctness, and when he had finished, and the applause had subsided, he added, "out of his head," as Tiny proudly announced.

"I've got a declaration of my own to make, now--it's not at all long, so you needn't worry--it's just this: Folks sometimes think they're being independent, when they're only being most uncommonly foolish, and you never need think that anything you're afraid to have anybody know is independence--it's pretty sure to be sneaking meanness! And I've heard somebody that knows more than all of us put together, say that if we want to be presidents and things, and govern other folks, we'd better begin on ourselves!"

And Johnny stepped, in a dignified manner, from the barrel to a box, and thence to the ground, amid a storm of applause, while Mr. Leslie rose and bowed gracefully, from his place among the audience, in acknowledgment of the tribute paid him by the orator.

A prisoner in a dungeon may be one of those "freemen whom the Truth makes free," and an absolute monarch may be "the servant of sin." Each one of us must frame for himself his own especial Declaration of Independence.

THINKING AND THINKEPHONES.

It is a great pity that little boys' legs are so short; they have to hurry so much, and a pair of good long legs, like those of the stately giraffe, for instance, would be such a convenience to a small boy, who wished to run home from school--half a mile--ask his mother something, and be back again, inside of five minutes.

It is difficult to think and run both at once, but something like this was passing through Johnny's mind, as he tore home to ask if he might spend his shiny new half dollar in going to the circus with "the other boys."

Flaming posters on all the available fences and walls, had been announcing for some days that Barnum was coming, and that there would be two afternoon and two evening performances, "presenting in every respect the same attractions." Mr. Leslie had an engagement for the first afternoon, but he had promised to take Tiny and Johnny, and as many neighbor children as chose to join the party--with mothers' and fathers' consent, of course--on the second afternoon, and with this promise Johnny had been well content.

But when he went to school, on the morning of the first day, he found that several of his schoolmates had arranged to go that afternoon, and they soon succeeded in talking him into a belief that life would not be worth living unless he could join them.

"You see, Johnny," said Ned Grafton, solemnly, "some of the 'feats of strength and agility' are about as hard to do as it would be for you or me to turn ourselves inside out and back again, and it stands to reason that they'll not do them so well the second day as they will the first, when they've just had a rest; and the beasts and things always roar and fight more the first day, because they're mad at having been shut up in their boxes and jolted about so; and then, forty things may happen to hinder your father from taking you to-morrow, and just think how you'd feel, if you were the only fellow at school who hadn't been! You couldn't stand it at all! So just cut home, and explain it to your mother, and ask her to let you come with us to-day, and we'll wait for you here."

"I'll tell you what I can do," said Johnny, eagerly, "I've half a dollar, all my own, left from my apple money, so I'll take that, and then I can go with papa to-morrow, too,--I wouldn't like to hurt his feelings, nor Tiny's either."

"Well, I should think your mother'd have to say yes to that," said Ned, "and you'll be luckier than the rest of us, if you go twice; but hurry up--you know it begins at three, and it's after two, now."

So Johnny hurried up, and was so perfectly breathless when he reached home, that he gasped for several minutes before he could begin to shout through the house for his mother.

His very first shout was enough; it was given at the foot of the front stairs, and, as his mother was in the dining-room, it reached her instantly, and without losing anything by the way. She came out at once, and boxed his ears lightly with the feather-duster, saying,--

"I didn't know you were so near, mammy dear," panted Johnny, "and I'm in the worst kind--I mean, a dreadful hurry, I don't see why there couldn't be a thinkephone, so that we could just think things at each other, it would save so much time. The boys are all waiting for me, and they want me to go to the circus with them this afternoon, because Ned Grafton says the first performance is always the best, before the beasts get the roar out of them, and before the people are tired, so mayn't I take my own half dollar, and go with them, and then I can go with papa and Tiny to-morrow, too--it isn't that I don't want to go with him, but I want to have the best of it!"

"Is any grown person going with the 'boys'?" asked Mrs. Leslie.

"N-o, mamma," replied Johnny, hesitatingly, "at least, they didn't say there was, and I don't believe there is, but some of the boys are quite old, you know--Charley Graham is 'most fifteen--and there isn't any danger; all the things are in cages, except the Tattooed Man."

"I'm ever so sorry, dear," said his mother, putting her arm around him, "but indeed I don't feel willing to have you go without some grown person. There will be a very great crowd, and I don't know all the boys with whom you want to go, and you might be led into all sorts of dangers. And it is all nonsense about the beasts getting the roar out of them by to-morrow; poor things! they'll keep on roaring as long as they are caged. So you must be patient. I really think you'll enjoy it more with papa to explain things, and Tiny to help you."

Johnny's mother looked nearly as sorry as he did.

Johnny turned away without a word; he did not quite shake off his mother's arm, but he drew away from under it, and ran, not to keep the boys waiting, back to the schoolhouse. But it was not the light-footed running which had brought him home, and although, before he reached the playground, he had conquered his tears, because he was ashamed for the boys to see them, his voice trembled as he said,--

"Mother says I can't go to-day,--that I must wait till to-morrow, and go with papa."

The boys all knew Johnny's mother, more or less; those who knew her more adored her, and those who knew her less admired her profoundly, so there were no jeers or tauntings upon this announcement, but they all looked sorry, and Ned Grafton said,--

"We're awfully sorry, old fellow, but we can't wait--it wants only five minutes of three now; good by."

There was a general rush, and the boys were gone. Johnny walked home very slowly, thinking bitter thoughts.

"I just believe it is because mamma never was a boy!" he thought. "If papa had been at home, and I'd asked him first, he'd have let me go! Ladies don't know about boys--they can't. Mamma knows more than most ladies, but even she doesn't know everything."

The circus tent was in plain sight all the way home; it stood on a vacant lot about half way between the school and Mr. Leslie's house, and, just as Johnny entered the gate, a burst of gay music came to his ears. His mother stood on the porch with a little basket in her hands. It was very full, and covered with a pretty red doily. Tiny and little Pep Warren, from next door, were jumping up and down on the porch, and the baby was tottering from one to the other, chuckling, and talking in what they called "Polly-talk."

"Johnny," said his mother, eagerly, as he came heavily up the walk, "Tiny says there are lots of blackberries in our field, and I want you and Pep to go with her and get some for tea. You'll have to eat up what is in the basket first, and then you can fill it with blackberries. And I'm going to lend you Polly!"

Johnny's dull face brightened a little; he and Pep were great friends; he liked picking blackberries when he did not have to pick many, and to have Polly lent to them for even so short and safe an expedition as this was an honor which he appreciated.

"Oh, thank you, mamma!" he said, almost heartily, as he took the basket, and they started down the lane together, he and Pep holding Polly between them, with one of her chubby hands in a hand of each, and Tiny marching on in front. Pep sympathized deeply upon hearing of Johnny's woe, but added, at the same time:--

"I can't help being sort of glad, Johnny, that you'll not see it before I do. You know mamma is going to let me go with all of you to-morrow."

Johnny thought this was a little selfish in Pep, but he did not say so, and the party reached the blackberry bushes in harmony. Polly was even funnier than usual. She was just at that interesting age when babies begin trying to say all the words they hear, and the children were never tired of hearing her repeat their words in "Polly-talk."

It was necessary to empty the basket first, of course, so they chose a nice grassy spot at the edge of the field, where the woods kept off the afternoon sun, spread the little red shawl which Tiny had brought, seated Polly on it, and themselves around it, and opened the basket. There were two or three "lady-fingers," labelled "For Polly," three dainty sandwiches, three generous slices of loaf cake, and three oranges.

The lunch was soon finished, and then they began, not very vigorously, to fill the basket with blackberries, laughing at Polly as she tangled herself in a stray branch, and then scolded it.

Johnny put his hand in his pocket for his knife to cut the branch, and drew it out again, as if something had stung it--there was his half dollar! Then he remembered that he had taken it when he went to school in the morning, because he had half made up his mind to buy a monster kite. At that moment the music struck up once more in the distant tent. Johnny stopped his ears desperately.

"If I keep on hearing that, I shall go!" he said to himself.

He could not pick blackberries and stop his ears at the same time. The music swelled louder and louder. Then came a cheer from the audience. Johnny looked round for the other children. They were all standing together; Pep was holding down a branch for Polly, and he and Tiny were laughing as the little lady stained her pretty fingers and lips with the ripe berries.

"She's all safe with them; they'll take her home," he whispered to himself, as he slipped into the wood, unseen by the other children.

"Papa would have let me go--mamma's never been a boy, and she don't know anything about it!" said Johnny, stubbornly, and speaking quite aloud. He ran fast as soon as he was through the wood, and, never stopping, handed his half dollar to the doorkeeper, and went in. The vast crowd bewildered him; he could not see a vacant seat anywhere, nor a single boy that he knew, but a good-natured countryman pushed him forward, saying:--

"Here, little fellow, there's a seat on the front bench for a boy of your size."

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