Chapter 16

"Well, we'd had to told them anyhow," said candid Oscar, "and I guess I'll catch it. It's truly my fault. _You_ didn't do nothing. But I ought to have staid and watched and--I declare I'd forgotten it till this very minute--aunt Nellie told me I mustn't run out in the streets, ever, without Celeste; she tells me so many things I can't keep track of all. And there's Lady Margaret too"--

"M-must we tell her?" stammered Edmund.

"Why, it's her snake," said Oscar, opening his honest eyes; "how can we help it?"

"I suppose we _can't_ help it," said Edmund.

"But we might telegraph," said Oscar; "it's a heap easier than writing and you can get lots of words for a shilling."

"No, we'll have to write," said Edmund; "I'll do it."

But Oscar shook his head. "No, Ned, that ain't fair. I'm the most to blame and I ought to do it. Besides _you_ wouldn't say it was my fault."

Then the last barrier of Edmund's pride broke down. "Don't," he cried again. "I tell you it's I'm to blame, not you. And-- and--Oscar, I've been very mean to you all along"--

"No, you haven't," said Oscar promptly; "it was me bullying you in the first place made all the trouble. Aunt Nora told me maybe you wouldn't be friends for a while, and she told me all about the mad dog and I thought you were a pretty nice boy and I wished you would like me, but you wouldn't, so I pretended I didn't care. But I did. It's lonesome travelling around with a feller that's mad with you all the time."

Edmund swallowed a little lump in his throat. "If you'll make up with me, now, I'll never be mad with you again," said he, holding out his hand.

Oscar clasped it across the bed over the mangled remains of the too-adventurous Marcus Aurelius, whose adventures, thus, were not quite in vain.

Edmund kept his word. Indeed, he was surprised to find how easy it was to like Oscar; and Nora's prediction was fulfilled. The two boys were very happy in Europe; but Edmund never forgot Marcus. He told the truth to Nora and she persuaded Mrs. Morris to deal gently with Oscar. He went to the races, after all. Previously Edmund had written the whole story to Lady Margaret in a letter which she read with smiles and tears. The postscript was by Oscar. It ran as follows:

DEER LADY MARGARET:--

Ned wont let me see his letter but I'm sure he took all the blame on himself becaws he always dose but it was me too blame and not him becaws I pined the snake in my coat pocket becaws I was affraid to handel it and ran off too the punch and gudy show and it got out and the head water killed it I didn't give him any tip when he went away I'm very sorry and I'm sorry I kicked the mormossits but they bit my legs No more at pressent from your obedient servent too comand.

OSCAR T. W----.

It only remains to say that Marcus Aurelius is back home, at Lady Margaret's; but she never makes a bracelet of him, now; most ingeniously mended and stuffed, he abides perpetually in a glass case; and she describes his perfections and his lamentable end with tears in her eyes.

ANNA AND THE RATTLER

By Mrs. Cornell

A voice rose wrathfully in the back yard, "Wee-lie! What iss this? You fell in the pig trough? Come here, that I beat you! Come here, I say!"

Willie did not accept the invitation. A shrill whimpering was his sole response. Twelve-year-old Anna stepped to the kitchen door, peering round the sash. "Pa's scolding Willie," she announced to her mother.

The storm continued to rage in the back yard.

"Shust look at your clothes! Go now! To the creek wit' you! Come _not_ in the house until you are cleaned. Ach!"

Ex-Sea-Captain Schulz, now prune-grower in the mountain boundary west of Santa Clara Valley, turned in at the kitchen door.

"I don't know what to do wit' the boy. Go, mine Anna, get the lad a clean shirt, and take it down to the creek."

On Anna's return from the bathing pool she said softly to her mother, "Willie isn't at the creek. Perhaps he has run off."

"O child, don't bother me about Willie! He'll run back again fast enough, he's that scared of the mountains and the trees."

Anna was conscious of an undercurrent of sympathy with the forlorn waif her father had brought from the city some months before. The very love and awe with which the mountains filled her imaginative soul gave her comprehension of the fear with which they imbued the dull-witted offspring of San Francisco gutters.

Willie did not return all that long, August day. The captain and his American wife spread and dipped prunes busily on the hot south slope. The box-laden wagon rolled by at intervals. Household duties went helter-skelter under Anna's management. At six o'clock Mrs. Schulz, hot and tired, wakened her lazy little daughter, outstretched beneath the hollyhocks and poppies in the small front garden.

"For gracious sake, Anna! Hurry! You've not done the dinner dishes!"

"Have the cows come?" Anna asked, resourcefully.

"Land! If I hadn't forgotten about Willie! Come--hurry! You'll have to go for the cows. I'll wash the dishes."

Anna felt quite in the mood to go for the cows. It meant an hour or so of patting barefooted and bare headed along the soft dust of the road, or over the slippery brown grass of the mountain pastures, with tall pines on every hand and a gold-blue sky above.

She mused about the missing Willie. Had he carried out his occasional threat to run away?

"The road is open, go when you like," was her father's one reply to such futile outbursts. But they well knew the road was not open to Willie. The six mountain miles intervening between their ranch and the station formed an impassable barrier to his timorous soul.

"I guess he's afraid of the bigness of things," Anna concluded. "And he's got no call to run away. Papa threatens him, but he's never laid hand on him yet. I s'pose it's on account of the bath he ran away."

There was no Willie at the bathing-pool. The checked gingham shirt fluttered lonesomely where she had that morning placed it.

Some minutes later, shuffling deliciously among the dappled leaves of a hill trail, she sprang aside in quick dismay.

"Goodness!" What had seemed to be a bunch of dry leaves and grass coiled swiftly, with the rattling whir that goes straight to the fear center of the human heart. In a flash Anna's hands were full of rocks. The first article in every California mountain child's education is to destroy every rattlesnake that comes in sight. Anna dodged the first strike of the snake, and before he could get nearer she began a fusillade of such efficiency that the reptile enemy sought retreat.

Then Anna was privileged to witness a strange thing--a very strange thing; so unusual, in fact, that when reported to the head of the zoological department of the State university that conservative gentleman would have given the story little credence had it not been for the unimpeachable authority of a celebrated naturalist, who had reported it as occasionally occurring among the large, much-to-be-dreaded species of the Eastern States--the _Crotalus horrible_, or banded rattler.

To Anna's unutterable surprise, the snake turned for refuge to a near-by oak-tree. Perhaps he came against it unintentionally, as the rattlesnake sees badly by daylight. At any rate, he reared his head against it much as he would have done in ascending the side of a sunny boulder in the early days of his chilled awakening from his winter sleep.

He writhed spirally but slowly up its rough trunk, which seemed from eighteen to twenty inches in circumference. When the rocks ceased flying he would halt, evidently not half-liking his task, to wave his bluntly triangular head in the direction where the moving shadow indicated to his blurred vision the position of his enemy. But on the resumption of active hostilities, he would begin again his painful ascent.

"Ow-w-w-ch!" sounded a howl from above.

Looking up at the cry, Anna discerned among the clustering leaves of the black oak a huddled figure, with raccoon-like eyes, peering down at the mounting snake, to escape from which he had, in fact, climbed the tree.

"Willie," she shouted, "jump! The snake's coming! Jump!"

"Ow-w-w-ch!" he continued to wail.

The snake stopped, confused, craning its head upward at the new complication, then downward at its known adversary. Its hesitation would make Willie's escape practicable, if he could conquer his crazy fear.

"Willie, break off a limb--beat it back! I can run!"

The snake undulated a few inches farther. The reiterated cry was Willie's only response. Anna's quick eye saw another chance.

"There's that big limb on the redwood. You can reach it. Swing across. It's easy. You must!" stamping. "O Willie, do it! Do it!"

Her sailor father had often reproved Anna for her delight in climbing and swinging from tree to tree, by means of her long arms and practised hands.

"It iss not goodt for you to be a monkey, mine Anna," he would say. "Little girls need nefer to go to the masthead. Thou hast no call to be a sailor. Be only a brave _kindchen_, and help our goodt mother wit' the dishes."

His admonition would dissolve in an unrestrained roar of laughter as she wickedly "shinned" up the porch post to a coign of vantage on the vine-covered roof.

But she could not climb the tree where the snake still clung. There was the neighboring redwood, huge-girthed, smooth-boled, with limbs out of reach, yet with the lowest bough almost touching the limb on which Willie crouched, mechanically clutching the body of the tree, but dumb and stupefied with the horror of his situation.

Anna hurriedly piled large rocks under a thick, broken branch-stump of the redwood, which was at least eight feet from the ground. Four times she leaped upward and fell back, wounding her tough little feet. She noticed blood-stains on the rocks as she heaped them with a broader base for her fifth attempt. The snake rested, waving his head downward as if in query. Fortunately, he was full and sluggish.

Once more Anna crouched and shot upward. Her right hand caught the projecting stump, her left easily followed. Clasping the decreasing trunk of the tree with her slim, muscular legs, hanging also by her hands, she dropped her head backward to take observation. The snake hung out, also, toward her, from his tree, then resumed his deliberate climbing. Evidently the task was neither easy nor to his liking.

Anna hitched breathlessly up toward the coveted limb. Reaching it, she took out her jack-knife,--inseparable companion,--scientifically cut a wedge from a short limb above her, and broke off the weakened branch. Recovering her balance, she reached out with this flexible club, but could not touch the snake, now roused to accelerated activity.

Holding her weapon between her teeth, Anna worked her way nearly to the end of her tough support. Throwing out her right hand, she was able to catch the big limb, at the base of which Willie, almost insensible, still huddled. Then she swung, pendulum-like, by her hands, increasing her momentum. At the right moment she released the redwood bough and flung her light body full upon the young oak. Grasping the limb with both hands, she hauled herself up beside the terrified boy.

The snake, shaken by the tumult above, wavered and stopped. As a rule, a rattlesnake, conscious of his defense, makes a good fight; but here the conditions were unusual and confusing. On level ground, where he could have coiled, and where his sensitive under surface could have slid comfortably over smooth earth, he would not have shirked combat when cornered. Now, with his enemy mysteriously above, his one idea seemed to be escape.

Willie jabbered an idiotic welcome.

"He can't strike until he gets clear here," Anna reassured him. "He can't coil."

Her rapid blows still further dismayed her antagonist. He bit viciously at the stick, touching it more than once; for the rattler's strike is deadly swift, despite his languid locomotion.

At last Anna, settling herself firmly on the limb, raised her club with both hands and delivered a slashing blow on the neck of her foe, breaking, as they afterward found, his vertebral column.

The darting head hung limp; a progressive loosening ran through the mottled coils; there was a slight rasping sound, a thud, and then a whitish heap on the ground, which Anna cleared when, swinging down by her hands to a safe distance, she leaped lightly to the ground.

Willie followed, dazed and fearful. He helped round up the cows, casting furtive glances ahead and on each side at every footstep. Before entering the house, he slunk, although still agonized with fear, through the golden twilight to the abhorred bathing-pool and the languidly fluttering cross-bars of the repudiated gingham shirt.

But Anna, too ill for supper, crept into her father's arms, where he sat on the vine-darkened veranda, and fell asleep on his shoulder.

"Ach, mine Anna," the captain said, tenderly, "it iss sometimes goodt for little girls to make themselves to be sailors!"

THE BUTTERFLY'S CHILDREN

By Mrs. Alfred Gatty

"Let me hire you as a nurse for my poor children," said a Butterfly to a quiet Caterpillar, who was strolling along a cabbage-leaf in her odd lumbering way. "See these little eggs," continued the Butterfly; "I don't know how long it will be before they come to life, and I feel very sick and poorly, and if I should die, who will take care of my baby Butterflies when I am gone? Will _you_, kind, mild, green Caterpillar? But you must mind what you give them to eat, Caterpillar!--they cannot, of course, live on _your_ rough food. You must give them early dew, and honey from the flowers, and you must let them fly about only a little way at first; for, of course, one can't expect them to use their wings properly all at once. Dear me! it is a sad pity you cannot fly yourself. But I have no time to look for another nurse now, so you will do your best, I hope. Dear! dear! I cannot think what made me come and lay my eggs on a cabbage-leaf! What a place for young Butterflies to be born upon! Still you will be kind, will you not, to the poor little ones? Here, take this gold-dust from my wings as a reward. Oh, how dizzy I am! Caterpillar! you will remember about the food--"

And with these words the Butterfly drooped her wings and died; and the green Caterpillar, who had not had the opportunity of even saying Yes or No to the request, was left standing alone by the side of the Butterfly's eggs.

"A pretty nurse she has chosen, indeed, poor lady!" exclaimed she, "and a pretty business I have in hand! Why, her senses must have left her or she never would have asked a poor crawling creature like me to bring up her dainty little ones! Much they'll mind me, truly, when they feel the gay wings on their backs, and can fly away out of my sight whenever they choose!"

However, there lay the eggs on the cabbage-leaf; and the green Caterpillar had a kind heart, so she resolved to do her best. But she got no sleep that night, she was so very anxious. She made her back quite ache with walking all night round her young charges, for fear any harm should happen to them; and in the morning says she to herself--

"Two heads are better than one. I will consult some wise animal upon the matter, and get advice. How should a poor crawling creature like me know what to do without asking my betters?"

But still there was a difficulty--whom should the Caterpillar consult? There was the shaggy Dog who sometimes came into the garden. But he was so rough!--he would most likely whisk all the eggs off the cabbage-leaf with one brush of his tail. There was the Tom Cat, to be sure, who would sometimes sit at the foot of the apple-tree, basking himself and warming his fur in the sunshine; but he was so selfish and indifferent! "I wonder which is the wisest of all the animals I know," sighed the Caterpillar, in great distress; and then she thought, and thought, till at last she thought of the Lark; and she fancied that because he went up so high, and nobody knew where he went to, he must be very clever, and know a great deal, for to go up very high (which _she_ could never do), was the Caterpillar's idea of perfect glory.

Now in the neighbouring corn-field their lived a Lark, and the Caterpillar sent a message to him, to beg him to come and talk to her, and when he came she told him all her difficulties, and asked him what she was to do to feed and rear the little creatures so different from herself.

"Perhaps you will be able to inquire and hear something about it next time you go up high," observed the Caterpillar, timidly.

The Lark said, "Perhaps he should;" but he did not satisfy her curiosity any further. Soon afterwards, however, he went singing upwards into the bright, blue sky. By degrees his voice died away in the distance, till the green Caterpillar could not hear a sound. So she resumed her walk round the Butterfly's eggs, nibbling a bit of the cabbage-leaf now and then as she moved along.

"What a time the Lark has been gone!" she cried, at last. "I wonder where he is just now! I would give all my legs to know!" And the green Caterpillar took another turn round the Butterfly's eggs.

At last the Lark's voice began to be heard again. The Caterpillar almost jumped for joy, and it was not long before she saw her friend descend with hushed note to the cabbage bed.

"News, news, glorious news, friend Caterpillar!" sang the Lark; "but the worst of it is, you won't believe me!"

"I believe everything I am told," observed the Caterpillar, hastily.

"Well, then, first of all, I will tell you what these little creatures are to eat. What do you think it is to be? Guess!"

"Dew, and the honey out of flowers, I am afraid," sighed the Caterpillar.

"No such thing, old lady! Something simpler than that. Something that _you_ can get at quite easily."

"I can get at nothing quite easily but cabbage-leaves," murmured the Caterpillar, in distress.

"Excellent! my good friend," cried the Lark, exultingly; "you have found it out. You are to feed them with cabbage-leaves."

_"Never!"_ said the Caterpillar, indignantly. "It was their dying mother's last request that I should do no such thing."

"Their dying mother knew nothing about the matter," persisted the lark; "but why do you ask me, and then disbelieve what I say? You have neither faith nor trust."

"Oh, I believe everything I am told," said the Caterpillar.

"Nay, but you do not," replied the Lark; "you won't believe me even about the food, and yet that is but a beginning of what I have to tell you. Why, Caterpillar, what do you think those little eggs will turn out to be?"

"Butterflies, to be sure," said the Caterpillar.

"_Caterpillars!_" sang the Lark; "and you'll find it out in time;" and the Lark flew away, for he did not want to stay and contest the point with his friend.

"I thought the Lark had been wise and kind," observed the mild green Caterpillar, once more beginning to walk around the eggs, "but I find that he is foolish and saucy instead. Perhaps he went up _too_ high this time. I still wonder whom he sees, and what he does up yonder."

"I would tell you if you would believe me," sang the Lark, descending once more.

"I believe everything I am told," reiterated the Caterpillar, with as grave a face as if it were a fact.

"Then I'll tell you something else," cried the Lark; "for the best of my news remains behind. _You will one day be a Butterfly yourself_."

"Wretched bird!" exclaimed the Caterpillar, "you jest with my inferiority--now you are cruel as well as foolish. Go away! I will ask your advice no more."

"I told you you would not believe me!" cried the Lark, nettled in his turn.

"I believe everything that I am told" persisted the Caterpillar; "that is"--and she hesitated--"everything that it is _reasonable_ to believe. But to tell me that Butterflies' eggs are Caterpillars, and that Caterpillars leave off crawling and get wings, and become Butterflies!--Lark! you are too wise to believe such nonsense yourself, for you know it is impossible."

"I know no such thing," said the Lark, warmly. "Whether I hover over the corn-fields of earth, or go up into the depths of the sky, I see so many wonderful things, I know no reason why there should not be more. Oh, Caterpillar! it is because you crawl, because you never get beyond your cabbage-leaf, that you call _any_ thing _impossible_."

"Nonsense!" shouted the Caterpillar, "I know what's possible, and what's not possible, according to my experience and capacity, as well as you do. Look at my long green body and these endless legs, and then talk to me about having wings and a painted feathery coat! Fool!--"

"And fool you!" cried the indignant Lark. "Fool, to attempt to reason about what you cannot understand! Do you not hear how my song swells with rejoicing as I soar upwards to the mysterious wonder-world above? Oh, Caterpillar; what comes to you from thence, receive, as _I_ do, upon trust."

"That is what you call--"

"_Faith_," interrupted the Lark.

"How am I to learn Faith?" asked the Caterpillar.

At that moment she felt something at her side. She looked round--eight or ten little green Caterpillars were moving about, and had already made a show of a hole in the cabbage-leaf. They had broken from the Butterfly's eggs!

Shame and amazement filled our green friend's heart, but joy soon followed; for, as the first wonder was possible, the second might be so too. "Teach me your lesson, Lark!" she would say; and the Lark sang to her of the wonders of the earth below and of the heaven above. And the Caterpillar talked all the rest of her life to her relations of the time when she should be a Butterfly.

But none of them believed her. She nevertheless had learnt the Lark's lesson of faith, and when she was going into her chrysalis grave, she said--

"I shall be a Butterfly some day!"

But her relations thought her head was wandering, and they said, "Poor thing!"

And when she was a Butterfly, and was going to die again, she said--

"I have known many wonders--I have faith--I can trust even now for what shall come next!"

THE DRAGON-FLY AND THE WATER-LILY

By Carl Ewald

In among the green bushes and trees ran the brook. Tall, straight-growing rushes stood along its banks, and whispered to the wind. Out in the middle of the water floated the Water-Lily, with its white flower and its broad green leaves.

Generally it was quite calm on the brook. But when, now and again, it chanced that the wind took a little turn over it, there was a rustle in the rushes, and the Water-Lily sometimes ducked completely under the waves. Then its leaves were lifted up in the air and stood on their edges, so that the thick green stalks that came up from the very bottom of the stream found that it was all they could do to hold fast.

All day long the Larva of the Dragon-Fly was crawling up and down the Water-Lily's stalk. "Dear me, how stupid it must be to be a Water-Lily!" it said, and peeped up at the flower.

"You chatter as a person of your small mind might be expected to do," answered the Water-Lily. "It is just the very nicest thing there is."

"I don't understand that," said the Larva. "I should like at this moment to tear myself away, and fly about in the air like the big, beautiful Dragon-Flies."

"Pooh!" said the Water-Lily. "That would be a funny kind of pleasure. No; to lie still on the water and dream, to bask in the sun, and now and then to be rocked up and down by the waves--there's some sense in _that_!"

The Larva sat thinking for a minute or two. "I have a longing for something greater," it said at last. "If I had my will, I would be a Dragon-Fly. I would fly on strong, stiff wings along the stream, kiss your white flower, rest a moment on your leaves, and then fly on."