Part 12

That was all; he was perfectly willing for Willamilla to be put back in the wagon, and the father, the mother and the visiting lady were alike mistaken—especially the father, whose best judgment was simply that Hossifer was of a disordered mind and had developed a monomania for a very special persecution. Hossifer was sane, and his motives were rational. Dogs who are over two years of age never do anything without a motive; Hossifer was nearing seven.

Daisy and Elsie, mistaken though they were, insisted strongly upon their own point-of-view in regard to him. “She _wants_ you to keep her! She _wants_ you to keep her!” they cried, and they chanted it as a sort of refrain; they clapped their hands and capered, adding their noise to Willamilla’s, and showing little appreciation of the desperate state of mind into which events had plunged their old friend Laurence.

“She _wants_ you to keep her!” they chanted. “She _wants_ you to keep her. She _wants_ you to keep her, Laurence!”

Laurence piteously entreated them to call Hossifer away; but the latter was cold to their rather sketchy attempts to gain his attention. However, they succeeded in making him more excited, and he began to bark furiously, in a bass voice. Having begun, he barked without intermission, so that with Hossifer’s barking, Willamilla’s relentless wailing, and the joyous shouting of Daisy and Elsie, Laurence might well despair of making himself heard. He seemed to rave in a pantomime of oral gestures, his arms and hands being occupied.

A man wearing soiled overalls, with a trowel in his hand, came from behind a house near by and walking crossly over the lawn, arrived at the picket fence beside which stood the abandoned wagon.

“Gosh, I never _did_!” he said, bellowing to be audible. “Git away from here! Don’t you s’pose nobody’s got no _ears_? There’s a sick lady in this house right here, and she don’t propose to have you kill her! Go on git away from here now! Go on! I never _did_!”

Annoyed by this labourer’s coarseness, Elsie and Daisy paused to stare at him in as aristocratic a manner as they could, but he was little impressed.

“_Gosh_, I never did!” he repeated. “Git on out the neighbourhood and go where you b’long; you don’t b’long around here!”

“I should think _not_,” Daisy agreed crushingly. “Where _we_ live, if there’s any sick ladies, they take ’em out an’ bury ’em!” Just what she meant by this, if indeed she meant anything, it is difficult to imagine, but she felt no doubt that she had put the man in his ignoble and proper place. Tossing her head, she picked up the handle of the wagon and moved haughtily away, her remarkably small nose in the air. Elsie went with her in a similar attitude.

“Go on! You hear me?” The man motioned fiercely with his trowel at Laurence. “Did you hear me tell you to take that noise away from here? How many more times I got to——”

“My gracious!” Laurence interrupted thickly. “_I_ doe’ want to stay here!”

He feared to move; he was apprehensive that Hossifer might not like it, but upon the man’s threatening to vault over the fence and hurry him with the trowel, he ventured some steps; whereupon Hossifer stopped barking and followed closely, but did nothing worse. Laurence therefore went on, and presently made another attempt to place Willamilla upon the pavement—and again Hossifer supported the ladies’ theory that he wanted Laurence to keep Willamilla.

“_Listen!_” Laurence said passionately to Hossifer. “_I_ never did anything to you! What’s got the matter of you, anyway? How long I got to keep all this _up_?”

Then he called to Elsie and Daisy, who were hurrying ahead and increasing the distance between him and them, for Willamilla’s weight made his progress slow and sometimes uncertain. “Wait!” he called. “Can’ chu _wait_? What’s the _matter_ of you? Can’ chu even _wait_ for me?”

But they hurried on, chattering busily together, and his troubles were deepened by his isolation with the uproarious Willamilla and Hossifer. Passers-by observed him with hearty amusement; and several boys, total strangers to him, gave up a game of marbles and accompanied him for a hundred yards or so, speculating loudly upon his relationship to Willamilla, but finally deciding that Laurence was in love with her and carrying her off to a minister’s to marry her.

He felt that his detachment from the rest of his party was largely responsible for exposing him to these insults, and when he had shaken off the marble-players, whose remarks filled him with horror, he made a great effort to overtake the two irresponsible little girls.

“_Hay!_ Can’ chu _wait_?” he bawled. “Oh, my good-_nuss_! For heavenses’ sakes! Dog-_gone_ it. Can’ chu _wait_! _I_ can’t carry this baby _all_ the way!”

But he did. Panting, staggering, perspiring, with Willamilla never abating her complaint for an instant, and Hossifer warning him fiercely at every one of his many attempts to set her down, Laurence struggled on, far behind the cheery vanguard. Five blocks of anguish he covered before he finally arrived at Elsie Threamer’s gate, whence this unfortunate expedition had set out.

Elsie and Daisy were standing near the gate, looking thoughtfully at Willamilla’s grandmother, who was seated informally on the curbstone, and whistling to herself.

Laurence staggered to her. “_Oh_, my! Oh, _my_!” he quavered, and would have placed Willamilla in her grandmother’s arms, but once more Hossifer interfered—for his was a mind bent solely upon one idea at a time—and Laurence had to straighten himself quickly.

“Make him _quit_ that!” he remonstrated. “He’s done it to me more than five hunderd times, an’ I’m mighty tired of all this around here!”

But the coloured woman seemed to have no idea that he was saying anything important, or even that he was addressing himself to her. She rolled her eyes, indeed, but not in his direction, and continued her whistling.

“Listen! _Look!_” Laurence urged her. “It’s Willie Miller! I wish he was dead; _then_ I wouldn’t hold him any longer, I bet you! I’d just throw him away like I ought to!” And as she went on whistling, not even looking at him, he inquired despairingly: “My goodness, what’s the _matter_ around here, anyways?”

“_Elsie!_” a voice called from a window of the house.

“Yes, mamma.”

“Come in, dear. Come in quickly.”

“Yes’m.”

She had no more than departed when another voice called from a window of the house next door, “Daisy! Come in right away! Do you hear, Daisy?”

“Yes, mamma.” And Daisy went hurriedly upon the summons.

Laurence was left alone in a world of nightmare. The hated Willamilla howled within his ear and weighed upon him like a house; his arms ached, his head rang; his heart was shaken with the fear of Hossifer; and Willamilla’s grandmother sat upon the curbstone, whistling musically, with no apparent consciousness that there was a busy world about her, or that she had ever a grandchild or a dog. His terrible and mystifying condition began to appear to Laurence as permanent, and the accursed Willamilla an Old-Man-of-the-Sea to be his burden forever. A weariness of life—a sense of the futility of it all—came upon him, and yet he could not even sink down under it.

Then, when there was no hope beneath the sky, out of the alley across the street came a delivering angel—a middle-aged, hilarious coloured man seated in an enfeebled open wagon, and driving a thin gray antique shaped like a horse. Upon the side of the wagon was painted, “P. SkoNe MoVeiNG & DeLiVRys,” and the cheerful driver was probably P. Skone himself.

He brought his wagon to the curb, descended giggling to Willamilla’s grandmother, and by the exertion of a muscular power beyond his appearance, got her upon her feet. She became conscious of his presence, called him her lovin’ Peter, blessed and embraced him, and then, consenting to test the tensile strength of the wagon, reclined upon him while he assisted her into it. After performing this feat, he extended his arms for Willamilla.

“He won’t let me,” Laurence said, swallowing piteously. “He wants me to keep him, an’ he’ll bite me if I——”

“Who go’ bite you, white boy?” the cheerful coloured man inquired. “Hossifer?” Laughing, he turned to the faithful animal, and swept the horizon with a gesture. “Hossifer, you git in nat wagon!”

With the manner of a hunted fugitive, Hossifer instantly obeyed; the man lifted Willamilla’s little vehicle into the wagon, took Willamilla in his arms, and climbed chuckling to the driver’s seat. “Percy,” he said to the antique, “you git up!”

Then this heavenly coloured man drove slowly off with Willamilla, her grandmother, Hossifer and the baby-wagon, while Laurence sank down upon the curbstone, wiped his face upon his polka-dotted sleeve and watched them disappear into the dusty alley. Willamilla was still crying; and to one listener it seemed that she had been crying throughout long, indefinite seasons, and would probably continue to cry forever, or at least until a calamity should arrive to her, in regard to the nature of which he had a certain hope.

He sat, his breast a vacancy where lately so much emotion had been, and presently two gay little voices chirped in the yard behind him. They called his name; and he turned to behold his fair friends. They were looking brightly at him over the hedge.

“Mamma called me to come in,” Daisy said.

“So’d mine,” said Elsie.

“Mamma told me I better stay in the house while that ole coloured woman was out here,” Daisy continued. “Mamma said she wasn’t very nice.”

“So’d mine,” Elsie added.

“What did you do, Laurence?” Daisy asked.

“Well——” said Laurence. “They’re gone down that alley.”

“Come on in,” Daisy said eagerly. “We’re goin’ to play I-Spy. It’s lots more fun with three. Come on!”

“Come on!” Elsie echoed. “Hurry, Laurence.”

He went in, and a moment later, unconcernedly and without a care in the world, or the recollection of any, began to play I-Spy with the lady of his heart and her next neighbour.

THE ONLY CHILD

THE little boy was afraid to go into the dark room on the other side of the hall, and the little boy’s father was disgusted with him. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Ludlum Thomas?” the father called from his seat by the library lamp. “Eight years old and scared! Scared to step into a room and turn the light on! Why, when I was your age I used to go out to the barn after dark in the winter-time, and up into the loft, all by myself, and pitch hay down to the horse through the chute. You walk straight into that dining-room, turn on the light, and get what you want; and don’t let’s have any more fuss about it. You hear me?”

Ludlum disregarded this speech. “Mamma,” he called, plaintively, “I want you to come and turn the light on for me. _Please_, mamma!”

Mrs. Thomas, across the library table from her husband, looked troubled, and would have replied, but the head of the house checked her.

“Now let me,” he said. Then he called again: “You going in there and do what I say, or not?”

“Please come on, mamma,” Ludlum begged. “Mamma, I lef’ my bow-an’-arry in the dining-room, an’ I want to get it out o’ there so’s I can take it up to bed with me. Mamma, won’t you please come turn the light on for me?”

“No, she will not!” Mr. Thomas shouted. “What on earth are you afraid of?”

“Mamma——”

“Stop calling your mother! She’s not coming. You were sitting in the dining-room yourself, not more than an hour ago, at dinner, and you weren’t afraid then, were you?”

Ludlum appeared between the brown curtains of the library doorway—the sketch of a rather pale child-prince in black velvet. “No, but——” he said.

“But what?”

“It was all light in there then. Mamma an’ you were in there, too.”

“Now look here!” Mr. Thomas paused, rested his book upon his knee, and spoke slowly. “You know there’s nothing in that dining-room except the table and the chairs and the sideboard, don’t you?”

Ludlum’s eyes were not upon his father but upon the graceful figure at the other side of the table. “Mamma,” he said, “won’t you _please_ come get my bow-an’-arry for me?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied, with eyes still pleadingly upon his mother.

“Well, then, what is there to be afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid,” said Ludlum. “It’s dark in there.”

“It won’t be dark if you turn on the light, will it?”

“Mamma——”

“Now, that’s enough!” the father interrupted testily. “It’s after eight. You go on up to bed.”

Ludlum’s tone began to indicate a mental strain. “I don’t _want_ to go to bed without my bow-an’-arry!”

“What do you want your bow and arrow when you’re in bed for?”

“I got to have it!”

“See here!” said Mr. Thomas. “You march up to bed and quit talking about your bow and arrow. You can take them with you if you go in there right quick and get them; but whether you do that or not you’ll march to bed inside of one minute from now!”

“I _got_ to have my bow-an’-arry. I got to, to go upstairs _with_.”

“You don’t want your bow and arrow in bed with you, do you?”

“Mamma!” Thus Ludlum persisted in his urgent appeal to that court in whose clemency he trusted. “Mamma, will you _please_ come get my bow-an’——”

“No, she won’t.”

“Then will you come upstairs with me, mamma?”

“No, she won’t! You’ll go by yourself, like a man.”

“Mamma——”

Mrs. Thomas intervened cheerily. “Don’t be afraid, dearie,” she said. “Your papa thinks you ought to begin to learn how to be manly; but the lights are lit all the way, and I told Annie to turn on the one in your room. You just go ahead like a good boy, and when you’re all undressed and ready to jump in bed, then you just whistle for me——”

“I don’t want to whistle,” said Ludlum irritably. “I want my bow-an’-arry!”

“Look here!” cried his father. “You start for——”

“I got to have my bow-an’——”

“You mean to disobey me?”

“I _got_ to have my——”

Mr. Thomas rose; his look became ominous. “We’ll see about that!” he said; and he approached his son, whose apprehensions were expressed in a loud cry.

“_Mamma!_”

“Don’t hurt his feel——” Mrs. Thomas began.

“Something’s got to be done,” her husband said grimly, and his hand fell upon Ludlum’s shoulder. “You march!”

Ludlum muttered vaguely.

“You march!”

“I got to have my bow-an’-arry! I _can’t_ go to bed ’less mamma comes with me! She’s _got_ to come with me!”

Suddenly he made a scene. Having started it, he went in for all he was worth and made it a big one. He shrieked, writhed away from his father’s hand, darted to his mother, and clung to her with spasmodic violence throughout the protracted efforts of the sterner parent to detach him.

When these efforts were finally successful, Ludlum plunged upon the floor, and fastened himself to the leg of a heavy table. Here, for a considerable time, he proved the superiority of an earnest boy’s wind and agility over those of a man: as soon as one part of him was separated from the leg of the table another part of him became attached to it; and all the while he was vehemently eloquent, though unrhetorical.

The pain he thus so powerfully expressed was undeniable; and nowadays few adults are capable of resisting such determined agony. The end of it was, that when Ludlum retired he was accompanied by both parents, his father carrying him, and Mrs. Thomas following close behind with the bow-an’-arry.

They were thoughtful when they returned to the library.

“I _would_ like to know what got him into such a state,” said the father, groaning, as he picked up his book from the floor. “He used to march upstairs like a little man, and he wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of anything else; but he’s beginning to be afraid of his own shadow. What’s the matter with him?”

Mrs. Thomas shook her head. “I think it’s his constitution,” she said. “I don’t believe he’s as strong as we thought he was.”

“‘Strong!’” her husband repeated incredulously. “Have I been dreaming, or _were_ you looking on when I was trying to pry him loose from that table-leg?”

“I mean nervously,” she said. “I don’t think his nerves are what they ought to be at all.”

“His nerve isn’t!” he returned. “That’s what I’m talking about! Why was he afraid to step into our dining-room—not thirty feet from where we were sitting?”

“Because it was dark in there. Poor child, he _did_ want his bow and arrow!”

“Well, he got ’em! What did he want ’em for?”

“To protect himself on the way to bed.”

“To keep off burglars on our lighted stairway?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Thomas. “Burglars or something.”

“Well, where’d he get such ideas _from_?”

“I don’t know. Nearly all children do get them.”

“I know one thing,” Mr. Thomas asserted, “_I_ certainly never was afraid like that, and none of my brothers was, either. Do you suppose the children Ludlum plays with tell him things that make him afraid of the dark?”

“I don’t think so, because he plays with the same children now that he played with before he got so much this way. Of course he’s always been a _little_ timid.”

“Well, I’d like to know what’s at the root of it. Something’s got into his head. That’s certain, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Thomas said musingly. “I believe fear of the dark is a sort of instinct, don’t you?”

“Then why does he keep having it more and more? Instinct? No, sir! I don’t know where he gets this silly scaredness from, nor what makes it, but I know that it won’t do to humour him in it. We’ve got to be firmer with him after this than we were to-night. I’m not going to have a son of mine grow up to be afraid!”

“Yes; I suppose we ought to be a _little_ firmer with him,” she said dreamily.

However, for several days and nights there was no occasion to exercise this new policy of firmness with Ludlum, one reason being that he was careful not to leave his trusty bow and arrow in an unlighted room after dark. Three successive evenings, weapon in hand, he “marched” sturdily to bed; but on the fourth he was reluctant, even though equipped as usual.

“Is Annie upstairs?” he inquired querulously, when informed that his hour had struck.

“I’m not sure, dearie,” said his mother. “I think so. It’s her evening out, but I don’t think she’s gone.”

Standing in the library doorway, Ludlum sent upward a series of piercing cries: “Annie! Ann_ee_! Ann-_ee_! Oh, _Ann-nee-ee_!”

“Stop it!” Mr. Thomas commanded fiercely. “You want to break your mother’s ear-drums?”

“Ann-nee-_eeee_!”

“Stop that noise!”

“Ann——”

“Stop it!” Mr. Thomas made the gesture of rising, and Ludlum, interrupting himself abruptly, was silent until he perceived that his father’s threat to rise was only a gesture, whereupon he decided that his vocalizations might safely be renewed.

“Ann-_nee-ee_!”

“What _is_ the matter with him?”

“Ludlum, dear,” said Mrs. Thomas, “what is it you want Annie for?”

“I want to know if she’s upstairs.”

“But what for?”

Ludlum’s expression became one of determination. “Well, I want to know,” he replied. “I got to know if Annie’s upstairs.”

“By George!” Mr. Thomas exclaimed suddenly. “I believe _now_ he’s afraid to go upstairs unless he knows the housemaid’s up there!”

“Martha’s probably upstairs if Annie isn’t,” Mrs. Thomas hurriedly intervened. “You needn’t worry about whether Annie’s up there, Luddie, if Martha is. Martha wouldn’t let anything hurt you any more than Annie would, dear.”

“Great heavens!” her husband cried. “There’s nothing up there that’s going to hurt him whether a hundred cooks and housemaids are upstairs or downstairs, or in the house or out of it! _That’s_ no way to talk to him, Jennie! Ludlum, you march straight——”

“Ann-_nee-ee_!”

“But, dearie,” said Mrs. Thomas, “I told you that Martha wouldn’t let anything hurt——”

“She isn’t there,” Ludlum declared. “I can hear her chinkin’ tin and dishes around in the kitchen.” And, again exerting all his vocal powers of penetration, “_Oh, Ann-ee-ee!_” he bawled.

“By George!” Mr. Thomas exclaimed. “This is awful! It’s just awful!”

“Don’t call any more, darling,” the mother gently urged. “It disturbs your papa.”

“But, Jennie, that isn’t the reason he oughtn’t to call. It does disturb me, but the real reason he oughtn’t to do it is because he oughtn’t to be afraid to——”

“_Ann-ee-EE!_”

Mr. Thomas uttered a loud cry of his own, and, dismissing gestures, rose from his chair prepared to act. But his son briskly disappeared from the doorway; he had been reassured from the top of the stairs. Annie had responded, and Ludlum sped upward cheerfully. The episode was closed—except in meditation.

There was another one during the night, however. At least, Mr. Thomas thought so, for at the breakfast table he inquired: “Was any one out of bed about half-past two? Something half woke me, and I thought it sounded like somebody knocking on a door, and then whispering.”

Mrs. Thomas laughed. “It was only Luddie,” she explained. “He had bad dreams, and came to my door, so I took him in with me for the rest of the night. He’s all right, now, aren’t you, Luddie? Mamma didn’t let the bad dream hurt her little boy, did she?”

“It wasn’t dreams,” said Ludlum. “I was awake. I thought there was somep’m in my room. I bet there _was_ somep’m in there, las’ night!”

“Oh, murder!” his father lamented. “Boy nine years old got to go and wake up his _mamma_ in the middle of the night, because he’s scared to sleep in his own bed with a hall-light shining through the transom! What on earth were you afraid of?”

Ludlum’s eyes clung to the consoling face of his mother. “I never said I _was_ afraid. I woke up, an’ I thought I saw somep’m in there.”

“What kind of a ‘something’?”

Ludlum looked resentful. “Well, I guess I know what I’m talkin’ about,” he said importantly. “I bet there _was_ somep’m, too!”

“I declare I’m ashamed,” Mr. Thomas groaned. “Here’s the boy’s godfather coming to visit us, and how’s he going to help find out we’re raising a coward?”

“John!” his wife exclaimed. “The idea of speaking like that just because Luddie can’t help being a little imaginative!”

“Well, it’s true,” he said. “I’m ashamed for Lucius to find it out.”

Mrs. Thomas laughed, and then, finding the large eyes of Ludlum fixed upon her hopefully, she shook her head. “Don’t you worry, darling,” she reassured him. “You needn’t be afraid of what Uncle Lucius will think of his dear little Luddie.”

“I’m not,” Ludlum returned complacently. “He gave me a dollar las’ time he was here.”

“Well, he won’t this time,” his father declared crossly. “Not after the way you’ve been behaving lately. I’ll see to that!”

Ludlum’s lower lip moved pathetically and his eyes became softly brilliant—manifestations that increased the remarkable beauty he inherited from his mother.

“John!” cried Mrs. Thomas indignantly.

Ludlum wept at once, and between his gulpings implored his mother to prevent his father from influencing Uncle Lucius against the giving of dollars. “Don’t _let_ him, mamma!” he quavered. “An’ ’fif Uncle Lucius wuw-wants to give me a dollar, he’s got a right to, hasn’t he, mamma? _Hasn’t_ he got a right to, mamma?”

“There, dearie! Of course!” she comforted him. “Papa won’t tell Uncle Lucius. Papa is sorry, and only wants you to be happy and not cry any more.”

Papa’s manner indicated somewhat less sympathy than she implied; nevertheless, he presently left the house in a condition vaguely remorseful, which still prevailed, to the extent of a slight preoccupation, when he met Uncle Lucius at the train at noon.

Uncle Lucius—Lucius Brutus Allen, attorney-at-law of Marlow, Illinois, population more than three thousand, if you believed him—this Uncle Lucius was a reassuring sight, even to the eyes of a remorseful father who had been persecuting the beautiful child of a lovely mother.