CHAPTER VIII

COUSIN VIRGINIA HAS A CALLER

“Well, you deserved to lose,” said the Pixie when he had heard the whole story, “answering right off like that on the spur of the moment. You have to think these things over a bit. Besides, the Hub has been moving slowly westward since Holmes’ time. It’s nearer Chicago, now, I believe. But what did I tell you about old White-Hairs? Isn’t he a back number? Trying to do business in the twentieth century the way he used to do it with those princes in slashed doublets! Why doesn’t he wake up and hear the birdies sing?”

“How’s the frog?” asked Wendell anxiously.

“An awful nuisance,” responded the Pixie frankly. “I think she’s thirsty but she won’t drink.”

“Oh, they can’t drink, you know,” explained Wendell. “They take it in through the skin. That mug is too small. Here, I’ll fill the basin and put her in.”

That seemed to content the frog. It sat and soaked and absorbed and goggled at Wendell, who regarded it moodily.

“If I can’t do anything more for you,” said the Pixie, “I’ll move on. Hope you guess the riddle.”

“Thanks, old fellow,” said Wendell soberly. He was very sleepy and discouraged. But the frog looked a bit cheerier.

Hardly was Wendell in bed when he dropped off to sleep, and five minutes later, blop! the frog leaped from the basin and landed on the boy’s face, all wet and soggy and cold. Wendell, half asleep, struck out in self-defense, and landed a whacking blow on the poor reptile, that sent it halfway across the room. He realized instantly what he had done, and much ashamed of himself, he turned on the light, located the panting frog, and tucked it under the down quilt at the foot of the bed. Bitterly he regretted that he had not made an appointment with the Kobold to return the creature the very next morning.

When he left for school, he hid the frog away again in his stocking, in a chiffonier drawer, but even his preoccupation with the Boston riddle did not entirely obliterate his uneasy fear that the frog might escape or be turned out of the house in his absence, and thus plunge him into some other awful rescuing problem.

He had hoped that the geography or history or literature lesson might enlighten him on the definition of Boston, and his attention to study was so strict that his teachers thought best to watch him even more closely than usual, to forestall whatever mischief must be brewing. But no ray of light came to him from any of his lessons. He went home despondently, assured himself that the frog was still safe, and went out to play with cheerful Sammy Davis and the other fellows. It seemed a long while since he, too, had been a care-free, whistling boy, with no greater anxiety than being kept after school for fractions, or being chased by Sammy’s cross janitor.

He had almost forgotten his troubles when he went in to dinner, but as soon as he ascended to his room to study they all came back, for there sat the frog on his table, popping its eyes out at him most unpleasantly.

“I guess I’ll study downstairs,” he thought. “I’ll have the library to myself to-night. Mother and Father have gone to the Symphony, and I guess Cousin Virginia’s out somewhere.”

He settled down comfortably in the library, and was getting on famously with his lessons when the bell rang and a masculine voice asked for his Cousin Virginia. She came down presently and a lively conversation began in the front room just out of sight but not out of sound of Wendell. He managed, however, to keep his mind on his work, for it was very silly talk and not at all interesting. The man was a Harvard student from New York, and they chattered on about strangers to Wendell whom they knew in common.

“Do you like Boston?” Wendell heard the man say, and Virginia’s clear and rather high-pitched voice answered,

“Of course I like Boston. I’ll put it more strongly, I thoroughly enjoy Boston. I never supposed any place could be so--so historical, so absolutely, thoroughly, naively, unselfconsciously historical. Why, even little Wendell--”

“She needn’t _little_ me,” thought Wendell savagely.

“--invited me to see a play he was to be in, in school, and what _do_ you suppose? it was Revolutionary. All about hiding away a wounded soldier, with allusions to the British encamped on Boston Common, and the tax on tea. I don’t believe Boston knows anything has happened in history since the Boston Tea Party.”

“You’ve said it,” said the young man, who seemed to admire Virginia very much.

“And their holidays,” went on the foolish girl. “When I was here last spring, I went out to shop on the nineteenth of April, and would you believe it? the shops were closed. Patriots’ Day, if you please, when the farmers fired the shot heard round the world! I came in and said to Auntie, ‘Do you by any chance have a holiday in Boston on the fourth of July, Auntie?’ ‘Why, yes, dear,’ she said, ‘of course.’ I said, ‘But why? It isn’t Emerson’s birthday, is it?’ and she said, ‘Why, my dear, you must know it is Independence Day.’ ‘Oh, yes, Auntie,’ I said, ‘but why celebrate it in Boston? That little event was pulled off in Philadelphia. Hasn’t Boston enough?’”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the young man. “That was a good one on Boston.”

“But the greatest pleasure I’ve had is the baked beans,” she went on.

“Pleasure!” echoed the young man. “No _pleasure_, surely.”

“Oh, I mean _mental_ pleasure, to find they really _are_, you know, and not merely a myth. Of course, I believed before I came here that they existed here, but as an occasional article of diet. Why, they are a religious rite, an article of faith! Every Saturday night!”

“Yes, and every Sunday morning breakfast at my boarding house,” groaned the young man.

“Impossible! Inhuman!” said Virginia brightly.

“Inhuman, but true,” moaned the young man.

Wendell thought he had never heard such idiocy in his life. Delicious baked beans!

“But they not only _eat_ them--they take them seriously,” Virginia’s silly little voice ran on. “I made a light and unworthy remark to one of Auntie’s friends about the sacred bean. She looked at me compassionately and then said gravely, ‘We always bake them with a small onion in the bottom of the pot.’ Yes, I don’t know who said it first, but it is absolutely true that Boston _is_ a state of mind.”

Wendell, listening with the utmost scorn to these trivialities, was suddenly brought up short.

_Boston is a state of mind._

Three rousing cheers for Cousin Virginia!

He went to bed happy that night. Even the presence of the loathsome frog was endurable. To-morrow he would return the creature to the Kobold, and at the same time fling the answer to his riddle in his teeth--if he had any teeth. It would seem probable that a Kobold with so much white beard would be too old to have teeth.

The Kobold was waiting for him on the slope of Flag Staff Hill next morning. So cleverly did his velvet suit take on the soft tone of the elm trunks, that no one of the busy passersby, hurrying on to business through the Common, discerned him there under the trees, though Wendell saw him clearly. Or was it that he made himself invisible to other eyes?

“I’ve brought your frog,” said Wendell, drawing a long breath. He handed the stocking over to the Kobold, and the frog leaped out and vanished among the fallen leaves.

“What _is_ Boston?” asked the Kobold mockingly.

“Boston,” said Wendell with assurance, “is a state of mind.”

“Wrong! Wrong!” jeered the Kobold--and was no longer there. But a little breeze rustled in the elm trees and brought a faint hissing message to Wendell’s ears, just as the rushes whispered the fatal secret of the barber of King Midas:--

“One more chance! One more chance!”

Wendell went on dejectedly to school.