CHAPTER V

REMORSEFUL ROMANS

“I DID it,” groaned King; “it was all my fault. Kitty was so careful with that sharp dagger, and then I tickled her feet, and it made her wiggle, and she upset right on the baby. Oh, I’ve killed dear little Kitty!”

“Maybe you haven’t,” said Marjorie, hopefully. “Maybe she’ll wake up in a minute. And it wasn’t your fault anyway, King. You didn’t mean to upset her, and anybody’s got a right to tickle people’s feet.”

“No; I ought to have remembered that she had that sharp paper-cutter, and that she might tumble over. It’s all my fault.”

“It isn’t your fault,” repeated Marjorie, stoutly. “If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s old Brutus’s, for insisting on taking off his boots before he stabbed Cæsar.”

Marjorie was sobbing all the while she was talking, and as she stammered out these remarks between her choking sobs, Miss Larkin was not a little perplexed to understand her.

“Brutus? Cæsar? what do you mean?” she asked.

“Oh, we were playing Shakespeare,” began Marjorie, “and now I come to think of it, it was all _my_ fault for getting up the game.”

Just then, Doctor Mendel arrived, and came briskly into the living-room.

“Well, well!” he exclaimed, in his hearty way; “what’s the matter now? Have you young barbarians been breaking each other’s bones?”

Then, as he saw Kitty, white and still, upon the floor, he stooped down silently, and bent over the little girl.

“Don’t be alarmed,” he said, as, after a moment, he looked up and saw the scared and anxious faces watching him; “she’ll be all right, soon; have you any smelling salts?”

Marjorie’s thoughts flew uncertainly toward the saltcellars in the dining-room, but Miss Larkin answered, “Yes, I have,” and running up to her own room, she returned with a vial of Crown Salts.

“That’s the ticket!” said the doctor, and carefully holding the dark-green bottle beneath Kitty’s nose, he watched her face closely, for he was more afraid of the after-consequences than of her present state.

And, sure enough, as the closed lids fluttered open, and the color came slowly back to the white cheeks, Kitty gave a convulsive shudder, caught sight of Rosy Posy’s bandaged arm, and fell into a hysterical crying-fit.

“Take the baby out of the room,” commanded the doctor; “and now, Kitty, girl, listen to me. Your little sister is not seriously hurt, but I want to go to her and properly bandage her arm. I can’t leave you until you stop this crying—or, at least, partly stop it. So, as long as you keep it up, you are keeping me away from little Rosamond who needs me more than you do.”

This was severe talk, but it had the effect, as the doctor intended, of bracing Kitty up to the emergency.

Doctor Mendel knew the little Maynards pretty well. He had attended them through all their childish illnesses, and he knew Kitty’s practical, common-sense nature. Had it been Marjorie he was dealing with, he would have chosen another line of argument.

“All right, Doctor,” said Kitty, still shaking nervously, but trying hard to stop. “And, anyway, you go to Rosy; there are enough people here to take care of me.”

And indeed there seemed to be. Nannie and Sarah had gone off with the baby, but King, Marjorie, and Miss Larkin surrounded the sobbing Kitty, while Ellen and Thomas looked in from the hall doorway, and even James, the coachman, hovered in the background. Kitty’s wan smile as she spoke, brought cheer to the watchers, and Doctor Mendel said quietly: “All right, Kitty. I’ll take you at your word. I’ll go and attend to Rosamond, if you’ll promise to try your best not to cry any more. If I hear you screaming again, I shall come right back to you, and that would be the worst harm you could do to Rosy Posy.”

“I promise, Doctor,” said Kitty, so solemnly that the good old man felt a suspicion of moisture in his own eyes, and Miss Larkin sat bolt up-right, with big tears falling into her brown silk lap.

Doctor Mendel went to the nursery, and unwrapping the little arm that Nurse Nannie had bandaged, carefully examined the wound, which, though only a jagged cut, was a deep one, and had narrowly escaped being a serious affair.

It was necessary to cleanse it thoroughly, and this process was accompanied by piercing shrieks from the suffering child.

These, of course, were unavoidable, for five-year-old Rosy Posy could not be reasoned with like ten-year-old Kitty. So the doctor had to let the child scream, while Nannie held the tiny arm firm for his ministrations. Sarah tried to divert the baby with picture-books and dolls, but all in vain; the heart-rending cries could be heard all over the house.

And here is where Kitty’s fine, sensible nature showed itself strongly.

As she heard Rosy Posy’s shrieks of pain, it very nearly made her scream in sympathy. But she bravely put her fingers in her ears, and said, with a most pathetic look:

“Don’t let me hear her, Mopsy. If I do, I’ll cry, and then the doctor will leave her and come down here, and then she’ll die—oh, Marjorie!”

Kitty buried her head in her sister’s lap, and Marjorie, silently crying herself, held her hands helpfully over Kitty’s ears.

Miss Larkin fluttered around like a bewildered hen. She knew she was at the Maynard house for the purpose of taking care of the children in their parents’ absence, and here was an emergency—the very first one—and she hadn’t the slightest idea of how she could possibly make herself helpful in any way. The doctor and the servants were doing all that could be done for the baby, and Marjorie was comforting Kitty, which was all that could be done for that little girl. Then Miss Larkin’s eye fell on Kingdon, who, with hands in his pockets, stood looking out of the window. He was evidently trying hard not to cry, and apparently he, like Miss Larkin, could think of no way to be of any help. Rising, she made her way softly to the boy, and, putting her hand on his shoulder, said:

“Doctor Mendel’s fine, isn’t he? He’ll soon have the baby all right, I’m sure. Suppose you and I pick up those sheets, and put the room to rights a little; Sarah is busy in the nursery.”

How often occupation is a help in time of trouble!

Giving Miss Larkin a grateful glance, King turned to look at the room.

The sheets which had waved so gaily as Roman togas, now lay in dejected-looking heaps, the little one, alas! stained by the accident to the baby Cæsar.

Miss Larkin hastily picked up that one, and soon she and King had all the Roman toggery picked up and carried away. They put the furniture back in place, restored “Pompey’s Pillar” to its accustomed use as an umbrella-holder, and put all the daggers away in a desk drawer, that they might not unnerve anybody by their sad reminders.

Marjorie, with her loving little ways, had succeeded in quieting Kitty, and as the baby’s cries could no longer be heard, things began to look brighter all round.

“Well, well, this is something like!” declared Doctor Mendel, as he returned from the nursery. “You’re a trump, Kitty. I know how hard it was for you to brace up to the occasion, but you did it, and you deserve great credit. Now, listen to me, my girl. In the first place, Rosamond is all right. I shall come to see her every day for awhile, to make sure that she keeps all right, but the hurt to her arm is simply a flesh wound, and will heal with only a very slight scar, if any.”

“Oh, Doctor!” cried Kitty, shuddering, “will her arm be scarred?”

“Probably not. She is so young, it will doubtless heal without a trace. But even should there be a tiny white mark it will amount to nothing. And, children, listen to this. I attach no blame either to King or Kitty. For children always have tickled each other’s toes, and probably always will. The whole affair was an accident, of course. But—I blame all three of you, individually and collectively, for playing with that sharp dagger.”

“But Kit is always so careful,” broke in Marjorie.

“I know it, and what good did it do? Carefulness cannot always guard against accidents. So promise me that you will never again play any game that includes the use of any dangerous instrument: dagger, knife, scissors, chisel, anything, in fact, that might do physical harm in case of accident.”

“Of course we promise,” said Marjorie, tearfully. “And we don’t have to _promise_. For we _couldn’t_ play with such things after to-day. But, Doctor Mendel, it was all my fault, ’cause I got up the whole game.”

“Don’t say another word about whose fault it was,” interrupted the blunt doctor. “You all agree, I suppose, that it wasn’t Rosamond’s fault?”

Three astonished and indignant glances answered this question.

“Well, then, I hold that you three older children are equally to blame for playing with what is really a dangerous weapon. Each of you is old enough to know that you ought not to have done so—therefore you are all blameworthy to exactly the same degree. Am I clear?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Kitty, sighing. “It _seems_ as if I was the worst. But if you put it that way, I s’pose we all ought to have known better.”

“Of course we ought,” said King. “And I’ll never tickle the soles of Kit’s feet again, dagger or no dagger.”

“I’m glad of that!” said Kitty, fervently, “for, oh, King, I _do_ hate it!”

“All right, old girl. You can play bootless Brutus whenever you like, and I won’t tickle you a speck. But your black feet looked so funny coming out from under your white togga.”

“White what?” said Doctor Mendel, curiously.

“Her togga. We were all being Romans, you know.”

“Oh, I see. Well, you must pronounce that with a long o, my boy; it’s toga.”

“All right, sir; toga, then. But I don’t believe we’ll ever play ‘Julius Cæsar’ again.”

“Not with Rosy Posy, anyhow,” said Kitty, decidedly.

“But she made a lovely Cæsar,” said Midget, reminiscently.

“She must have!” said the doctor, chuckling. “A five-year-old baby girl seems just right for the part!”

Even Kitty laughed at this.

“Well,” she said, “she may not have looked just as Cæsar really did, but she looked awful cunning and sweet.”

“Here she is!” cried King, and Nurse Nannie came in with the smiling baby in her arms.

In a clean frock, and her lovely hair freshly tied up with a blue ribbon, the little one was quite her usual self. Only the pathetic-looking bandage around the tiny bare arm gave any evidence of the late disaster.

Doctor Mendel carefully watched Kitty as her eyes fell on the bandage. She turned a fiery red, and then went perfectly pale. She choked a little, but by a determined effort of will, she held on to herself, and controlled her agitation.

“Brave little girl!” said Doctor Mendel, patting her shoulder. “You’re doing nobly, Kitty, and I have no fears for you now. Remember, if you want to help the baby bear her misfortune, you must do it by unselfishly being bright and cheery, and helping to amuse her, and not by sorrowful regrets that can do no one any good.”

“Yes, sir,” said Kitty, meekly, but with a note of strong determination in her voice. “But I wish Mother was home. Shall I write her about it all, Doctor?”

Doctor Mendel was such an old and tried friend of the Maynard family, that the children consulted him on any subject, with full confidence in his sympathy and wisdom.

“Well, I don’t know, Kitty. I hate to have you go all over the matter in a letter, when really it is now a thing of the past. And yet I suppose you wouldn’t sleep quietly in your little bed, if you didn’t tell Mother about it at once. Well—how’s this plan? Suppose I write and tell her about it, and then she’ll write to you, and then you can keep it up as long as you choose after that.”

“Oh, that will be fine, Doctor!” cried Kitty, her heart full of thankfulness for his kindness. She had dreaded to write the awful story, and yet she wanted her mother to know about it, and this plan was a relief to her burdened little heart.

And Doctor Mendel’s fine insight told him all this. He knew that emotional, sensitive little Kitty would live over the scene as she wrote about it, and her remorse and self-censure would work cruelly upon her already overwrought nerves. So he determined to write himself, and tell the story in its true light, knowing that Mr. and Mrs. Maynard pretty thoroughly understood their own children, and would at once appreciate the situation. Then the doctor went away, and without his cheery presence, the children’s spirits lagged again.

Then it was that Miss Larkin came to the rescue.

“Now, children,” she said, and though her bright gaiety of manner always seemed a little forced and unreal, they listened politely to what she was about to say.

“Now, dear children,” she repeated, “after a dreadful scene, such as we’ve just passed through, I don’t think there’s anything so cheering and comforting as an extra good dinner.”

“Hooray!” cried King, who had expected a lecture or, at best, a talk of a consolatory nature; “I say, Larky, you’re a brick!”

He stopped, suddenly overcome with discomfiture at having all unintentionally used the nickname that he had promised never to say again.

But, to his great surprise, Miss Larkin laughed gaily. “Good for you, King!” she said; “I used to have a chum who called me ‘Larky,’ but I haven’t heard the name for years. I’d like it if you’d use it often.”

“But—but,” stammered King, “I promised Mother I wouldn’t. She said it was disrespectful.”

Miss Larkin laughed again. “So it would be if you meant it disrespectfully. But if you and I can be chums, and I ask you to use it, then I know Mother would have no objections.”

“I know it, too,” said Marjorie; “can’t we all be chums—Larky?”

She said the name so sweetly, and after a momentary hesitation, that Miss Larkin promptly kissed her.

“Yes,” she declared. “We’ll all be chums together, and you shall all call me Larky, and I’ll call you by your nicknames. Now, for this cheering dinner of ours. It is belated anyway, but I think by a judicious use of the telephone we can add enough to it to make it a special feast. Kitty, what would you like better than anything else?”

“Ice cream,” said Kitty, so promptly, that one would almost think she had been expecting the question.

“You’ll get it,” said Miss Larkin, with a decided wag of her head. “Now, Mopsy, what will you choose?”

“Little iced cakes,” said Marjorie; “green ones, and yellow ones, and pink and white and choclit ones.”

“King next,” went on the questioner. “Of course, you must choose something that can be bought, not made.”

“Nuts and raisins,” said King, after a moment’s thought.

Then Rosy Posy announced her desire for “fig-crackers,” and the menu was made up.

Miss Larkin bustled away to the telephone, and after a colloquy with the caterer, arranged to have the order sent up at once.

As the dainties desired were all of the nature of dessert, there was no need to delay dinner, and when Sarah announced it, the children realized that they were decidedly hungrier than usual—which was saying a great deal!

By virtue of her position as heroine of the day, Rosy Posy was allowed to sit up to dinner, and though she fell asleep at the table, with a “fig-cracker” in her hand, she was carried away to bed without interrupting the festivities.

And festivities they were. For a sort of reaction from the late tragic events, and the fact that ice cream always made a “party,” so enlivened their drooping spirits that the little Maynards were their own gay selves once more, and “Larky” proved that upon occasion she could be as merry as her nickname sounded.