Part 2

“Glad he isn’t,” returned Lucy, patting baby’s cheek. “I want him for a little brother. What do I want of a little sister? _I’m_ a little sister _myse’f_!”

It was time now for dinner. There were two guests in the parlor, Mrs. Alvord and Mrs. Lewis. As Mrs. Alvord took Jimmy-boy’s hand, she said,—

“May I kiss you on your cheek, Master James? You don’t know how I wanted to kiss you this morning!”

Jimmy offered both cheeks with a blush and a smile. He was proud and happy to be admired by this sweet lady; and he was sure, too, that she had told, or was going to tell, his mamma all about his call at “the yellow house by the corner” with Gilly Irwin.

“I am glad to know you too, Master Jimmy-boy,” said Mrs. Lewis, a tall lady with tiny white curls about her face. “Mrs. Alvord and I love little children; but we have none at our house, and your mamma has five. I’m going to ask her if she can’t spare _us_ one,—you or Lucy or the baby. Which do you think she would give away?”

Jimmy knew very well by the twinkle in the lady’s eye that this was only said in sport. He reflected a moment, then replied,—

“It’s polite to give away the largest pieces and things; so I think mamma ought to give _me_!”

Both the ladies laughed, and thought this a bright answer. Jimmy felt rather proud of it himself, and looked around to see if mamma had heard it. But Mrs. Dunlee was not in the parlor.

She had stolen into her husband’s study just for a moment, to tell him Mrs. Alvord’s story of Jimmy-boy.

“A small thing, to be sure,” said she; “he only gave up seven peppermints!”

“_Not_ a small thing, my love,” returned Mr. Dunlee. “It shows that the boy has _character_. I am as happy about it as you.”

Jimmy thought it a remarkably pleasant dinner-party. There was maccaroni soup, which reminded Lucy at once of the singular sort of feather which “that Yankee Doodle boy” had stuck in his cap.

“This is Yankee Doodle soup!” said she in a loud whisper to her brother, who nearly choked from trying not to laugh.

Sister Kyzie scowled darkly. When would Lucy learn not to whisper at table? How often must she be told to move her spoon away from, and not towards, herself in taking soup?

When the dessert came on, strange to say, it was that same “Fourth-of-July-Washington-pie,” no longer brown and ragged, but shining as white as the far-off mountains at Christmastide. What had Vendla done to it? And why did mamma smile every moment? Was she thinking how much fairer the great cake looked now in this creamy covering? Jimmy knew she was not thinking of the cake!

After dinner he entertained Aunt Vi and Mr. Sanford on the veranda by firing off a round of crackers.

“Jimmy, Jimmy!” pleaded his aunt at last. “If you’ll only be quiet a moment, I’d like to show you something.”

She opened an old book, and he and Lucy drew near to look at the picture of a man in a military coat and cocked hat.

“I know who that is!” exclaimed Jimmy; “that’s George Washington!”

“Right,” said Mr. Sanford; “the very man you said Vendla made the pie for. And who was he? What did he do?”

“What did he do?” repeated Jimmy. “Why, I know that just as easy!”

Then, after a long pause,—

“Well, anyway he had a hatchet. No, no,” seeing an amused look on Mr. Sanford’s face; “’twas when he was little that he had the hatchet! But afterwards he was—was he the president?”

“Yes; our first president.”

Then Mr. Sanford told as simply as possible what the good man did for us more than a hundred years ago to make us a free nation.

Jimmy listened carefully, and understood a little of it. He was glad to learn that we are free.

“I like to be free,” said he, swinging his arms and throwing out his chest. “I like to have a president ruling over me! Not a queen, you know, away off in England! That would be awful! Why, we should have to sail to England in a ship every time we wanted to ask the queen a question!”

“But here is little Lucy,” said Mr. Sanford, “who looks as if she cares very little about kings and queens. Perhaps she would like to hear the story of the hatchet.”

Then he took her on his knee, and told her how the little George Washington long, long ago had the present of a hatchet, and enjoyed swinging it so well that he cut down a small cherry-tree before he stopped to think.

Lucy was very indignant. She loved trees, and often stood and gazed up at them with awe and delight. She was always angry when she saw a man cut off the tops of eucalyptus trees, even though she knew it was done to make the trees grow broader and handsomer.

“Georgie was a naughty boy,” she said. “I don’t like Georgie!”

“But,” said Mr. Sanford, “I told you how sorry he was. Don’t you think children should be forgiven when they are sorry?”

“I do,” returned Jimmy; “’specially when they ‘_can’t tell a lie_!’”

Still Lucy was pitiless.

“They won’t have any more cherries at that boy’s house—_ever_!”

And slipping down from Mr. Sanford’s knee she strode into the house without looking back.

Mr. Sanford was sorry he had told her the story.

“She doesn’t care much if George Washington _couldn’t_ tell a lie,” said Jimmy. “All she cares about is the cherries.”

“Perhaps she thinks,” remarked Aunt Vi,—

“‘If all the trees were cherry-trees, And every little boy Should have, like young George Washington, A hatchet for his toy, And use it in a way unwise, What should we do for cherry-pies?’”

After tea the whole family, with the guests, Mrs. Alvord and Mrs. Lewis, met on the veranda to watch the glorious sunset.

“In a few minutes we shall see the fireworks shooting up from the city,” said Mr. Sanford; “and then we’ll light up our own fireworks, Jimmy-boy, in honor of this free country.”

So saying, he made a deep bow to the American flags that hung in clusters all about the veranda.

Jimmy’s eyes shone. He had lived in this free country for five years and a half, and had never known till to-day that it was free! He thought of a bird let out of a cage, of a poor wild gopher let out of a trap. What a splendid thing it is to fly or run, just as one chooses!

He looked at his treasures of fireworks lying beside him on the floor, and smiled. Ever so many boys were coming to see him send up these beautiful flaming pictures into the air. He should tell the boys,—maybe they didn’t know,—he should tell them he did it because this country is free!

Wee Lucy sat on a stool with a book in her hand. She cared very little about freedom or fireworks or “Fourthy July.” She was scowling at a picture in the twilight.

“That’s Georgie; that’s the hatchet-man!” said she wrathfully, and would have picked out both his eyes with a pin if Aunt Vi had not stopped her.

“Well, he’s awful! Bad man! Bad man! Is he alive, Auntie?”

“No, dear; the good Washington died long, long ago.”

Lucy clapped her hands in glee.

“Oh, I’m so glad, so glad!”

“What! Glad the good Washington is dead?”

“Yes; ’cause now he can’t come here. I was afraid he’d come to my house with his hatchet, and cut down some o’ my trees!”

She seemed so relieved that they all laughed; how could they help it? But no one undertook to correct her opinion of the “father of his country.”

“No use talking to her, she’s such a little goose,” thought Jimmy-boy. “Wait till she’s as old as I am, and she’ll know all about it.”

But now the sun had fairly dropped behind the wrinkled mountains; the city fireworks had begun to play, and Jimmy’s fingers were tingling to be at work on his rockets.

What a grand affair! How the neighbors, large and small, were flocking to that veranda, and with them half the dogs in town! Which rose higher and jollier, the human or the canine voices, it would have been hard to tell.

But there were silent guests too. Three horned toads sat near by, fastened by strings to three stakes. Jimmy had tied them before tea, to make sure they would have a good time “seeing the sights.” They did see the sights, and their beady eyes blinked in the light; but if they had a good time they kept it all to themselves.

Whiz! Fizz! Up soared Jimmy’s fireworks, the finest ever had in town. First pin-wheels. But that was nothing; after that began the real business, the grand display.

Each firework was a picture all by itself; and such shouting and clapping you never heard. But last and best of all was a picture, in gold and silver fire, of a large, grand man in a soldier’s uniform and cocked hat.

“’Rah! ’Rah! George Washington!” shouted Jimmy. “Take off your hats! He’s the father of his country.”

Then every hat came off, and every handkerchief was waved, till the noble figure of Washington faded into a shower of gold-dust, and made a path of glory along the evening sky.

IV

WAS IT JUDY?

FOR a week or two after Polly White had begun to sit on the ducks’ eggs, Lucy asked every day,—

“Where’s my little duckies?”

And then she forgot all about them.

But Polly White was still sitting. It takes only three weeks to hatch chickens; but it takes four weeks to hatch ducklings, and poor Polly did not understand it, and was growing very tired. To keep up her spirits John and Vendla gave her all sorts of nice things to eat.

At last one day the ducklings began to peck out of the shell. And when they fairly came out how funny they looked! Very large and yellow, with round bills and yellow, flat feet; and when they tried to walk they waddled.

Polly looked surprised. Were they all lame? Had they all sprained their ankles? She had never seen any ducklings before; but she clucked just as proudly for all that.

“See my children! Aren’t they beauties? That’s a new style of walking. Isn’t it sweet?”

Kyzie and Edith and Jimmy and Lucy came out to see the funny brood. Vendla set a pan of corn-meal dough near the back door. Polly was very hungry; but she would not touch one mouthful till she had called her little ones to breakfast. There were nine of them, and they dipped in their round bills like spoons.

“That’s a new style of eating,” clucked Polly. “Don’t you admire it?”

“Do you suppose Polly White thinks those creatures are chickens?” asked Edith.

“Yes,” said John, who was looking on; “of course she does, and very cute chickens too. You see, they belong to her.”

After their breakfast they rolled up their eyes, and John said,—

“Now guess what they’re thinking about.”

No one could guess, and John had to answer his own question.

“They’re thinking they want to swim.”

“Do you believe it?” said Kyzie. “What do they know about swimming? They never saw any water.”

There was a monstrous clay jar on the back veranda in which water was always kept cooling; it was called an _olla_ (pronounced _oya_.) But the ducklings could not have peeped into that. Kyzie was right when she said “they never saw any water.”

Still these yellow fuzz-balls had made up their minds that there was water somewhere in the world, and they meant to waddle, waddle, till they found it. Nobody had ever told them there was a pond in the garden; but they ran that way as fast as their web-feet could carry them. Their stepmother, Mrs. White, ran after, anxious to stop them; but the moment they saw the water they tried to go in. They could not climb up the wall. John took them in his hands, one by one, and dropped them into the pond.

Then they were happy. This was the very thing they had been dreaming about as they lay asleep in their egg-shell cribs!

But poor Polly! How frightened she was! How she flapped her wings and squawked! She thought her children had gone crazy; she was sure they would drown.

No, not they! They struck out their little feet like paddles, held up their heads, and rowed that pond as if they were giving lessons in swimming. The children all clapped their hands at the gay sight, and Jimmy cried,—

“Cheer, boys, cheer!”

After a little, Mrs. Polly grew calmer, and began to chuck again,—

“Those are my chickens; they’re all in the swim! See their new style of feet!”

Still she did not feel quite easy.

Just then Quon Wo, the Chinaman, drove along, calling out, “_Sleet_ corn, cabbagee, spinney-gee.”

When he found what was going on, he shook his head till his long black cue danced over his shoulders.

“No so!” he cried. “No _so_! Lil duckee no slim-ee!” (Little ducks mustn’t swim.)

“Why not?” said John. “See how easy they go.”

But Quon Wo still shook his cue. He thought they ought not to swim yet without a mother-duck who would know how to oil their feathers for them. The stepmother hen could not do this. “Wait till they are a month old before they swim,” was the advice of Quon Wo.

“Well, if you’re going to be so fussy about it, Quon Wo, I’ll take ’em out,” said John.

And he did. So the fun was all spoiled; at least for this time.

John, Vendla, and the children went into the house. Vendla put on her sweeping-cap, and began to sweep the chambers, while Jimmy and Lucy strayed off to the kitchen.

On the long table against the kitchen wall stood an elegant china fruit-dish which Vendla had brought out from the parlor to wash.

“Pretty dish,” said Lucy, fingering the edges lovingly.

“Let that alone, or you’ll break it,” said Jimmy, in the tone of command he often used when speaking to his little sister.

Lucy did not obey at once.

“You’re the naughtiest child, Lucy Lyman Dunlee! You’ll go and break that, and then they’ll go and blame _me_! I _always_ get punished for _you_!”

Jimmy pitied himself as he heard his own words.

“Yes, Lucy Lyman Dunlee, you’re the awfulest acting-est child!

“If you don’t stop picking cake, and spoiling things, and breaking things, I’ll—I’ll—why, they’ll think it’s _me_! and I’ll grow up to be despised!”

Lucy sprang away from the table in alarm. What it was to “grow up to be despised” she had no idea. Something bad, if it made Jimmy look like this!

“There comes Judy! What has she got in her mouth?” cried Jimmy, forgetting his fear of being “despised.” “It can’t be one of Polly’s chickens?”

With that, he and Lucy began to chase the cat about the room. Judy thought it hardly fair to have two children after her at once, and jumped into a chair, and from the chair to the table.

“She’s smelling the china dish with her nose. Come down; come down!” said Lucy.

Judy did not come, but continued to sniff at the dish.

“Stop that!” said Jimmy. “Come down, or I’ll pull you down!”

In a frolicsome mood he caught her by the tail, not roughly or unkindly. He had been taught gentleness to animals; but somehow in dragging her backward the fruit-dish got in the way. Perhaps Judy’s paw touched it, perhaps Jimmy’s elbow. Yes, it was probably Jimmy’s elbow. At any rate, the dish was overturned; and as it fell to the floor it broke in half a dozen pieces.

“Who did that?” cried Jimmy in dismay. He had not been aware of touching the dish. It was certainly an accident; still he was old enough to know that he was to blame for the accident. He should not have played with the cat while her nose was in the fruit-dish.

Yet he was the good boy who had just been scolding his little sister for nothing at all! The good boy who never did wrong!

“Oh, that beau’-ful dish!” sighed Lucy. “Poor mamma’ll feel _so_ bad!”

“Well, ’twas the cat did it,” said Jimmy quickly.

His forehead was full of wrinkles; his eyes were full of tears. Lucy always made ready to cry when he cried, and now she turned up the corner of her apron; and for half a minute the room was so still that you could almost have heard a fly walking on the roller-towel.

Jimmy stood on one foot and thought: “I’ll go tell mamma I didn’t mean to. No; I’ll tell her Judy did it. Judy did, I _think_.”

The fly on the towel gazed at Jimmy; Jimmy gazed at the fly.

“Mamma’s pretty dish,” said Lucy, breaking the silence. Jimmy was not crying, so she dropped the corner of her apron.

“Judy broke it,” declared Jimmy again.

“Yes,” assented the little sister; “Judy broked it.”

“Well—go tell mamma so. I hear her in the parlor.”

Lucy turned to go.

“No, don’t; I don’t want you to. Needn’t tell mamma anything.”

“No; needn’t tell her anyfing,” said Lucy, whirling about, and looking at her brother.

She and the little fly both looked at him. Lucy did not know any more than the fly what was going on in Jimmy’s mind. Neither of them dreamed it was a battle between right and wrong.

“If I run out to the garden, won’t that be the best way? Then Vendla’ll come in, and she’ll think the cat broke it. I’ll shut the cat in here all alone,” thought this little soldier, who was fighting a battle between right and wrong. “It will not be same as a lie,—I _think_ not.”

Jimmy moved towards the back door, and there he stood quite still.

Why did Lucy stare at him so, as if she were watching to see him make up his mind?

“Lucy Lyman Dunlee, what makes you look so awful sober? Just as if papa was dead, and mamma had been hooked by a cow? Why don’t you go out-doors and see—see where Polly White is?”

Lucy was gone in a twinkling, glad to get away from Jimmy, who was scowling now “as fierce as ten furies.”

He looked at the door, then at the cat. “Wish I was little like Lucy; _then_ it wouldn’t be wrong. No matter what you do when you’re little like Lucy.”

Jimmy sighed.

“Babies like her! _They_ don’t have to be gentlemen. But when you’re a boy, and getting so big—

“Did George Washington ever shut up a cat? George Washington wouldn’t do it. ‘_I can’t tell a lie_,’ says George Washington. No, _sir_!”

This seemed to settle the question for Jimmy. The ‘_No, sir!_’ sounded as loud as a cannon-ball, though even the cat did not hear. The words were spoken only in Jimmy’s heart.

“No, sir,” said he again, and ran for the parlor as if a mountain-lion were chasing him. He dared not walk, lest he might not go at all.

How he hated to go! That fruit-dish was a new one only last Christmas. Mamma would almost cry to know it was broken.

He ran every step of the way. Mamma almost cried, it is true; but it was just for joy!

“My blessed, blessed Jimmy-boy! I can forgive you for carelessness; but, oh, if you _had_ shut Judy into the kitchen, and deceived your mother!”

“But I didn’t do it, mamma!”

“No, no, no; God kept you from that meanness, the good God.”

“Mamma, your beautiful fruit-dish is broken!” exclaimed Edy, bursting into the parlor. “Isn’t it too bad?”

“Never mind, daughter; I’m too happy to care for such trifles,” returned Mrs. Dunlee, with a sunny glance at Jimmy that warmed him to the very depths of his heart.

V

MRS. BIDDY CHICK

WHEN Quon Wo decided that the ducklings were old enough, they were allowed to swim. But Polly never let them go to the pond alone. She went with them, and stood on dry land, watching their graceful motions. She seemed to feel ashamed not to swim herself; but she knew there was something the matter with her feet, so she never tried to learn.

“I don’t want Judy to catch any of those ducklings,” said Jimmy; “Judy’s horrid sometimes.”

“Will Punch catch any, do you think?” asked Mr. Sanford.

“Punch!” cried Jimmy indignantly. “Punch isn’t horrid; he’s good.”

“He’s a nice shepherd dog,” said Mr. Sanford, patting the animal’s head. “But he’s young yet. Let me see, how long have you had Punch?”

“Don’t you remember, Mr. Sanford? I should think you’d remember. ’Twas that time I had the toothache, and Aunt Vi made some walnut creams. It ached and ached. Mamma said I must go to the dentist. I didn’t like to; I was afraid. But Aunt Vi said, ‘Now you go with me, Jimmy, and I’ll write and tell Mr. Sanford.’ ’Twas when you were gone. Where were you gone, Mr. Sanford?”

“I was at Los Angeles.”

“Well, so I went to the dentist with Auntie. She said I was brave. Boys don’t cry, you know; not much. The thing the dentist pulled with was as sharp as the head of a pin,—no, the _point_ of a pin. But when the tooth came out it never ached any more after that.

“And then Aunt Vi wrote to you; don’t you know? And you said you’d send me a present in a bag, and it would come that day to the post-office, and we must go right off and get it. I never guessed what it was; nobody could guess.

“How I laughed! how papa laughed! It was a great, strong bag. There, turn your head round, Punch! He had a blue ribbon round his neck then. Who would have thought he came in that bag? But he did. Didn’t you, Punch?

“He wasn’t half as big then as he is now. He never died at all. No, Punch, you breathed all the time just the same. And when we took you out of the bag you were as alive as could be, and wanted some bread and milk.”

Punch wagged his tail at this story as if he remembered it all.

“That was last March, if I’m not mistaken,” said Mr. Sanford. “And Punch was then six months old. That would make him a year old now.

“Well, he’s not very handsome, but he is a knowing dog. I think you did a good thing when you had that tooth out, Jimmy.”

Jimmy’s head rose a little higher.

“Well, and I told mamma I was willing to go to the dentist again, for it didn’t hurt much. But mamma said I needn’t go again; ’twas no use to pull out my teeth when they didn’t ache. And, besides, I don’t want any more dogs, you know. What do I want of more dogs when I have Punch?

“Punch, come here! When you lick my hand so, and tickle me, I have to laugh. But he doesn’t look as if he came in a bag, does he, Mr. Sanford?”

Punch pricked up his ears, and began to bark. His big friend Toby across the way, Mrs. Porter’s dog, was barking, and little Punch never let Toby make more noise than he did if he could help it. Toby had espied a wagon coming up the hill. Very soon Punch saw it too through the trees, and then he knew what he had been barking about.

Dear, merry Mrs. Chick was in the wagon. She had come to town to buy her a dress, she said. And where was her little Lucy?

Lucy soon appeared on her tricycle, to the great delight of Mrs. Chick.

“I like to see the ducklings swim,” she said; “but it isn’t half so pretty a sight as my little girl dancing along on that fizzy-me-jig wheel with all sails flying.”

Mrs. Chick wanted to take two of the children home with her to stay all night, and Edith and Jimmy were only too glad to be allowed to go.

“This time I may churn butter, mayn’t I, Mrs. Chick?” said Jimmy. “You always said I might churn butter some time in that pretty green churn.”

“So you shall, if you get up early enough, my boy; so you shall,” said the good-natured woman cheerily. “The cream will be all ready in the morning by five o’clock. Do you like to get up at five o’clock?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I do, if you’ll call me, Mrs. Chick.”

Mrs. Chick lived several miles away, on a ranch or farm. If her ranch had been all paid for she would have been a rich woman. She had lemon-trees, and a little lemon-house to dry the lemons in; she had orange and fig and olive trees, and so many different kinds of roses that she couldn’t remember all their names to save her life. The palm-trees had trunks that looked like enormous pine-apples. One queer tree with rough bark was called a “monkey-tree.” Mrs. Chick said she didn’t know why, unless it was because a monkey couldn’t climb it!

“No,” said Edy; “the needles and thorns on it would prick and scratch him awfully. I’d like to see the captain’s monkey try to climb it. How he would cry!”

The young Dunlees never failed to have a good time at Mrs. Chick’s. She lived alone, and had a funny way of talking to herself, and asking,—

“Do you hear what I say, Biddy Chick?”

Her first name was Bridget.

Then, too, she kept numerous pet animals, which she caressed and talked to almost like children. Somebody had just given her three bits of motherless tortoise-shell kittens; and it was interesting to see her feed them. She had a bottle of milk with a quill in it; and, taking one kitty on her lap at a time, she said, “Now, my pretty baby,” and put the quill in its mouth. When the “pretty baby” had sucked all the milk that it ought to have, she put it down and took up another baby.