CHAPTER II.

ASKING FOR “WHIZ.”

NEXT day Mrs. Gray was somewhat better, and when Mary knocked softly at the chamber door, Julia replied, “Come in.” The little girl had not expected to see her mother looking so pale and ill; and the tears sprang to her eyes as she leaned over the bed to give the loving kiss which she meant should fall as gently as a dewdrop on the petal of a rose. It did not seem a fitting time for the question she had come to ask about the spelling-school. Julia was brushing Mrs. Gray’s hair, and Mary kissed the dark, silken locks which strayed over the pillow, murmuring, “Oh, how soft, how beautiful!”

“Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Gray, with an affectionate smile, which lacked a little of its usual brightness, “how did you get on yesterday with Ethel? She is such a quiet little thing that I’m sure you had no trouble.”

“No trouble!” Mary’s look spoke volumes. “I suspect there’s some frightful revelation coming now,” said Julia. “Did you irritate her, Flaxie?” For Ethel’s quietness was not always to be relied upon. She was like the still Lake Camerino of Italy, which so easily becomes muddy that the Italians have a proverb, “Do not disturb Camerino.” Dr. Gray often said to Mary, when he saw her domineering over her little sister, “Be careful! Do not disturb Camerino.”

“No, indeed, Ninny, I was very patient,” replied Mary with pride. “But for all that I had to punish her!”

Mrs. Gray turned her head on her pillow, and looked at Mary in astonishment.

“Did you think I gave you authority to punish your little sister? That would have been strange indeed! I merely said she and Philip were to obey you during the afternoon.”

Mary felt a sudden sense of humiliation, all the more as Julia had suspended the hairbrush, and was looking down on her derisively—or so she fancied.

“Why, mamma, I must have misunderstood you. I thought it was the same as if I was Julia, you know.”

“Julia is eighteen years old, my child. You are twelve. But what had Ethel done that was wrong?”

Then Mary told of the quarrel with Kittyleen, and the notes which had passed between the two little girls. Though naturally given to exaggeration, she had been so carefully trained in this regard that her word could usually be taken now without “a grain of salt.”

Mrs. Gray looked relieved and amused.

“So that was the way you punished your little sister? I was half afraid you had been shutting her up in the closet, or possibly snipping her fingers, either of which things, my child, I should not allow.”

“No, ma’am.” Mary felt like a queen dethroned.

“You were ‘clothed with a little brief authority’ yesterday, to be sure, but you should have waited till to-day and reported any misbehavior to me, or—if I was too ill to hear it—to Julia.”

“Yes, mamma,” said Mary meekly.

“Not that I blame you for this mistake, dear. You have shown judgment and self-control, and no harm has been done as yet, I hope. Only remember, if you are left to take care of the children again, you are not the one to punish them, whatever they may do.”

“Yes, ma’am,” repeated Mary; but her face had brightened at the words “judgment and self-control.”

“I am afraid Ethel’s repentance doesn’t amount to much,” said Julia.

“I thought of that myself. I’m afraid it doesn’t,” admitted Mary.

She watched the brush as it passed slowly and evenly through her mother’s hair. Her color came and went as if she were on the point of saying something which after all she found it hard to say.

“Mamma, Miss Pike is going to have—spelling-school to-night.”

Mrs. Gray’s eyes were closed; she did not appear to be listening.

“It’s in her schoolhouse at Rosewood, and anybody can go that chooses.”

“Ah?”

“Papa isn’t at home this morning.” A pause. “And Fred Allen and I—Now, mamma, I’m afraid you’ll think it isn’t _quite_ best; but there’s a moon every night now; and _did_ you ever go to an old-fashioned spelling-school, where they choose sides?”

“Flaxie, don’t make that noise with the comb,” said Julia. “I suppose you and Fred would like the horse and sleigh, and Fred hasn’t the courage to ask father; is that it?”

“Oh, may we go, mamma? Please may we go?”

“What, to Rosewood in the evening—two miles?”

“Oh, I wish I hadn’t asked you. I wish I hadn’t asked you; I mean I wish you wouldn’t answer now, not till I tell you something more.”

“Well, I will not answer at all; I leave it to your father.”

“Oh, I don’t mean that; I don’t want you to leave it to papa.”

“Flaxie,” remonstrated Julia, “can’t you see that you are tiring mother?”

“I won’t tire her, Ninny. I only want her to think a minute about Whiz, how old he is and lame. He doesn’t frisk as he used to, does he, mamma? And I’m sure Miss Pike will want _me_ at her spelling-school, we’re such friends. And Fanny Townsend is going, and lots and lots of girls of my age.”

“My dear, I leave it entirely to your father,” said Mrs. Gray wearily.

“Yes, mamma; but if you’ll talk to him first, and say Fred’s afraid to ask him, and—and Whiz is so old——”

Julia frowned and pointed to the door. Mary ought to have needed no second warning. She might have seen for herself the conversation was too fatiguing.

“What does make me so selfish and heedless and forgetful and everything that’s bad,” thought she, rushing down-stairs. “I love my mother as well as Ninny does, and am generally careful not to tire her; but if I once forget they think I always forget, and next thing papa will forbid my going into her room.”

Fred stood by the bay window awaiting his cousin’s report.

“O Fred, I don’t know yet; mamma isn’t well enough to be talked to, and we’ll have to wait till papa comes home. _Perhaps_ papa won’t think you are too young to drive Whiz just out to Rosewood. It isn’t like going to Parnassus, ten miles; you know he didn’t allow that.”

“Pretty well too if a fellow fourteen years old can’t be trusted with that old rack-o-bones,” said the youth scornfully, remembering that Preston at his age had driven Whiz; but then Preston and Fred were different boys.

“Well, I’ll be the one to ask him,” said Mary. “Shouldn’t you think the moon would make a great difference? _I_ should.”

It was while Dr. Gray was carving the roast beef at dinner that Mary came out desperately with the spelling-school question. He seemed to be thinking of something else at first, but when brought to understand what she meant, he said Miss Pike was a sensible woman, and he approved of her, and Mary and Fred “might go and spell the whole school down if they could.”

This was beyond all expectation. Fred looked gratified, and Mary, slipping from her chair, sprang to her father and gave him a sudden embrace, which interfered with his carving and almost drove the knife through the platter.

All the afternoon her mind was much agitated. What dress should she wear? Did Ninny think mother would object to the best bonnet? And oh, she ought to be spelling every moment! Wouldn’t grandma please ask her all the hard words she could possibly think of?

Grandma gave out a black list,—_eleemosynary_, _phthisic_, _poniard_, and the like,—and though Mary sometimes tripped, she did admirably well. Logomachy, anagrams, and other spelling games were popular in the Gray family, and all the children were good spellers. Dr. Gray said, “They tell us that silent letters are to be dropped out of our language, and then the words will all look as they sound; but this has not been done yet, and meanwhile it is well to know how to spell words as they are printed _now_.”

Julia was in her mother’s room, and Mary was left again with the care of the children; but in her present distraction she quite forgot Ethel, and the child, left to her own devices, managed to get the lamp-scissors and cut off her hair. The zigzag notches, bristling up in all directions, were a droll sight.

“Oh, you little mischief,” cried Mary, angry, yet unable to help laughing. “This all comes of my reading you the story of the ‘Nine Little Goslings’ yesterday. Tell me, was that what made you think of it?”

Ethel nodded her sheared head silently.

“Oh, you dreadful child. When I was trying so hard to interest you! _I_ didn’t want to read to you! And to think you must go and do this! What do people mean by calling _you_ good? I never cut off _my_ hair, but nobody ever called _me_ good!”

Mary was seized again with laughter, but, recovering, added sternly:—

“It’s very hard that I can’t shut you in the closet, but you’ll get there fast enough! Yes, I shall report you, and into the closet you’ll go, Miss Snippet. Oh, you needn’t cry; you’re the worst-looking creature in town, but the blame always falls on _me_! Just for those ‘Nine Little Goslings.’ And here was I working so hard to get ready for spelling-school and—”

The jingle of sleigh-bells put a sudden stop to this eloquence. Ethel wiped her eyes and stole to the window without speaking. She was usually dumb under reproof, and perhaps it was her very silence which encouraged Mary to deliver “sermonettes,” though I fear these sermonettes hardened instead of softening little Ethel’s heart. The young preacher was smiling enough, however, when she went out to enter the sleigh; and Julia, who tucked her in, looked as if she were trying her best not to be proud of her bright young sister. Mary felt very well pleased with herself in her new cloak and beaver hat, with its jaunty feather; but she was not quite satisfied with cousin Fred.

“He can’t drive half as well as Preston; and, worse than that, he doesn’t know how to spell,” thought she, as they drove on in time to the merry music of the bells. They had gone about half a mile, and Fred had used the whip several times with a lordly flourish, always to the great displeasure of Whiz, when they were suddenly brought to a pause by a loud voice calling out,—

“Stop! Hilloa, boy, stop!”

To say that they were both very much frightened would be no more than the truth. Mary’s first thought was the foolish one, “Oh, can it be a highway robber?” while Fred wondered if anything was amiss with the harness. It might be wrong side upward for aught he knew.

But they were both alarmed without cause. As soon as Fred could rein in his angry steed, it appeared that the owner of the voice was only Mary’s old friend and former teacher, Mr. Harrison Fling, and all he wished to say was,—

“Well, Miss Mary and Master Fred, are you going to spelling-school?”

“Yes, sir,” said Fred, touching his cap; while Mary hoped nothing had happened to the spelling-school to prevent their going.

“And may I ride with you?” asked the young man, with a persuasive bow and smile.

“Yes, sir, if you like,” replied Fred, rather relieved to find it was no worse, though certainly not pleased.

“I’ll drive, of course,” said Mr. Fling serenely, seating himself, and taking Mary in his lap. “Master Fred, your aunt will thank me for happening along just as I did, for you were going at breakneck speed. You would have been spilled out at the next corner.”

Fred’s brows were knitted fiercely under his cap. Was it possible that Mr. Fling was regarded as a gentleman?

“Miss Flaxie,” pursued the interloper, “I hope you’re as glad to see me again as I am to see you. Don’t you feel safer now I’ve taken the reins?”

Mary did not know what reply to make. She was not glad to see him, yet she did feel safer to have him drive. She laughed a little, and the laugh grated unpleasantly on Fred’s ears. This was the first time he had ever taken his young cousin to ride, and he thought it would be the last.

Mr. Fling talked all the way to Miss Pike’s school-house, apparently not minding in the least that nobody answered him. “Now, children,” said he, lifting Mary out, and planting her upon the door-stone before Fred could offer his hand, “now, children, with your permission, I’ll drive a little farther. I’d like to drop in on a few of my old friends in this neighborhood. Give my very best regards to Miss Pike, and tell her I hope to be back in season to hear a little of the spelling.”

“With your permission,” indeed! Fred was incensed. If Mr. Fling had been a person of his own age, he would have said to him, and very properly, too, “I have no right to lend Dr. Gray’s horse, and you have no right to ask me for him.” But as Mr. Fling was at least a dozen years older than himself, such a speech would have been impertinent; and Fred could only look as forbidding as possible, and preserve a total silence, while Mr. Fling caught up the reins again, and was off and away without further ceremony.

“Isn’t he a funny man?” said Mary. “Funny” was not the word Fred would have used.