Part 4

Mother turned. For a moment I thought she was going to jump off the roof. But instead she sped, Geof and I at her heels,—it wasn’t running, it wasn’t flying,—down the ladder through the workshop, down two flights of stairs to the second story, where, throwing up a window, she reached out in a vain attempt to grasp the short length of dangling anchor-line. But already it was too late. The car and the crowd had passed by.

“This is terrible!” we gasped, and fled for the street.

Here high comedy reigned rampant, if any one had been in a mood to appreciate the fact. Two policemen, one stout and red-faced, the other tall and thin, beat down the block, their eyes aloft, bawling impossible directions. A butcher’s boy, followed by a gang of enthusiastic street urchins, had clambered to the roof of his cart, and moving slowly along directly beneath the labouring machine, rose ever and again in a series of ungainly but agile leaps, clutching hopefully at the surrounding atmosphere. In the area-ways, and gathered on the neighbouring stoops, were groups of excited people. Rose, escaped from the kitchen, had climbed the hydrant in front of our house, where, supported by Mrs. Hancock, she maintained a perilous equilibrium, the while she waved a red cotton lunch cloth and bellowed,—

“_Whar yer boun’ fer, Miss Ernie? Fer de Law’s sake tell us whar yer boun’ fer?_”

While Miss Brown, her head wrapped in her pink knitted shawl, ran back and forth, clucking like a distraught hen.

“Is she any relation to you, mum?” the red-faced policeman demanded of mother, jerking his thumb severely skyward as he spoke.

“My daughter,” came the distracted response.

“Then call her down,” commanded the minion of the law. “Oi can’t have such goin’s-on on my beat!”

“She doesn’t know how to manage the machine,” mother said. “At any moment it may fall with her. What is to be done?”

“Hi, Bill! ring in an al-lar-rum,—fer the hook-an’-ladder comp’ny, and an amberlance!” shouted the policeman to his mate at the corner.

At the same moment the airship, as if instinct with demoniacal life, ceased for an appreciable instant its laboured progress, began to nose the air uncertainly, and then in a short series of jerky swoops rose, again and again, to an altitude of some hundred feet or so. There it poised, came about in its sweep, rose once more, and finally began to settle with steadily increasing velocity.

We stood spellbound. One could literally hear the breathing of the crowd. The suspense was too horrible. Ernie—our darling Ernie! Could nothing be done to save her?

“’Ware below there!” shouted the taller of the two policemen.

And just then the bow of the ship grazed the roof of the corner house past which it was dropping. There sounded a familiar _tick-tock_. The machine started off in a new direction, bumping along the house-fronts, till finally with a shock of tearing wood and a crash of splintered glass it succeeded in bunting its way half through a second-story window, midway of the block. Where it lodged!

A distinct gasp of relief escaped from the crowd,—followed by a feebly started cheer, which rose and swelled in volume as with clang of bell and clatter of flying hoofs the hook-and-ladder company swung round the corner of the street and bore down upon us.

The next few moments passed for me in a confused sort of dream. When I finally came to myself I found that I was sitting on the lowest step leading up to the house in the window of which the airship was lodged. Miss Brown sat beside me, firmly clasping her own hand, the while she murmured,—

“We mustn’t faint, my love. We mustn’t! If your dear mother can stand the strain, everybody else should _gladly_!”

The firemen and policemen were gathered in an official group in the gutter, and around them sported and pranced a delighted bunch of street-boys. Mother had disappeared.

In another moment the house door opened, and a whitecapped maid came down the stairs to say to me,—

“Your mamma wishes you to go home to your little brother now, miss. The young lady is quite safe inside. They will follow when the crowd has gone. My! what a fright we’ve had. That there flying-airship-machine not only broke the window, but tore out the sash! I thought it was Judgment Day.”

Well, somehow I managed to get home, where I clasped trembling little Robin in my arms.

“What has happened, Ellie?” he sobbed.

“Ernie went flying, honey,” I answered, and looked at the clock. The whole incident had passed in exactly thirteen minutes! If I had not the evidence of my own eyes I should never believe it.

Finally the excitement subsided. The crowd gradually dispersed. Ernie, in a quelled and chastened frame of mind, her hand clasped tight in mother’s, returned.

They brought sad news of the flying-machine. It seems that while the policemen and hook-and-ladder crew still stood discussing the best method of bringing it down,—perhaps some three minutes after my departure from the scene,—the motor again started up, the car took a last fatal leap backward, and fell two stories to the street,—where it was shattered into so much kindling wood. Which goes to show just how much we have to be thankful for!

“Oh dear!” grieved Ernie, plaintively. “Who could have suspected our surprise would turn out so! Where’s Geoffrey? Has anybody seen him?”

It appeared upon investigation that Geof had been to the basement-door to inquire “if all were well within.” He was very white and wild-looking, Rose said, and seemed ashamed to come in.

I should have liked it better if he had come and faced mother on the spot; but instead he sneaked off home,—Geof is certainly a queer fellow in some ways,—and that evening confessed the whole affair to Uncle George, asking for money to pay whatever damages we are responsible for, and legal protection for himself and Ernie. For he imagined that they were in some way publicly liable, and might be arrested at any moment.

Uncle George was very angry, the more so since any display of inventive activity on Geoffrey’s part is extremely distasteful to him. He called upon mother this morning to acquire further details, and remarked with a flourish of his cane that he had “thrashed Geof soundly.”

Uncle George is always primitive, and generally mother disapproves of his methods; but this time she returned, with a flash of her maternal eye, that “it was just what Geoffrey needed.” Nevertheless, she herself believes in what might be called “reformatory” punishments. So Ernie took her dinner in bed last night, where she would have plenty of time to think, while _we_ answered the questions of the boarders, and Haze interviewed quite a string of enterprising reporters on her behalf! He really managed rather well, I fancy, and finally convinced them that there was not much of a “story.”

The matter, however, did not end there for Ernie; for this afternoon when she came home from school mother called her into the nursery, and pointing to the pretty plaid dress on which she had been working when the excitement began, remarked,—

“My dear, since you are so anxious to be helpful I shall let you finish your dress yourself. The material is cut, and the lining basted. I will give whatever directions you may need, but dressmaking is not nearly so difficult an art as the construction of flying-machines. Besides, if you are busy with your needle, I shall not worry about you.”

Poor Ernie! her face was a study. She simply hates sewing. “It makes her toes prick,” she says. Also, it will mean giving up all her playtime for weeks to come, and she must be careful and not botch, since she will have to wear the result of her labours.

On the whole, I think her punishment was even more severe than Geoffrey’s. But neither of the culprits complains. Rather they _glide_ about the house in such a beatific state of Christian humility that one knows it cannot last.

“I don’t believe in hitting a fellow when he’s down,” remarked Haze to me this evening. “But I’m glad they realise what they’ve done. Apart from the frightful publicity of the thing, I _miss the flying-machine_. There is nothing to keep the draughts off my head at night, and the workshop is not what it was!”

Thursday, December 11.

This afternoon mother called on Mrs. Burroughs. She is the lady whose house Ernie broke into with the flying-machine, and I forgot to say how lovely she was about it. “Surprised, of course,” as Ernie admitted, “but _so_ pleasant.”

Mother intended calling yesterday, to arrange about the broken glass, etc.,—for which, fortunately, Uncle George said he would pay,—but she was flat, poor dear, with a nervous headache, and so had to put it off. Ernie was rather shaken, too, and Robin quite excited and feverish.

As he continued to have a little “temperature” this morning, I did not give him his reading lesson till afternoon. He is really getting on very nicely, when one considers the disadvantages against which he has to fight;—not only his ill health, but he has had so many stories read to him, and is so far advanced for his age in other ways, that it is hard for him to read:—“I see a Cat. Does the Cat see me?” If he did not wish to crush Georgie’s rising conceit, I think we would have a struggle teaching him.

He said to me to-day when the lesson was over,—“Oh, Ellie, I do hate cats,—all but Rosebud!” and sighed prodigiously. It is amusing to hear Robin sigh. He is such a little boy, and the sigh is so very big. I told him he would make an invaluable passenger aboard a sailing vessel, for, if the wind died down, it would only be necessary for him to sigh once or twice to blow the ship right into port.

This idea tickled him mightily, and he sighed again even louder than before, and then he said he would tell me a story. I love Bobsie’s stories,—they are so original. Here is the one he told this afternoon:

“Once there was a Crusader, and his name was Max, and he lived up a tree in the Holy Land.”

“What sort of a tree, Robin?” I asked.

“It was a nut-tree,” Bobs replied, “and there were chestnuts on it, and hickory-nuts, and peanuts, too. The Crusader and the squirrels what lived with him used to eat them all day long. But one time the squirrels had gone out on a visit, and the Crusader was sitting on a branch alone, and he saw a Griffin go by. And the Griffin was muttering and murmuring to his self, ‘Oh, you wait, my fine lady, till I get home, and then won’t I have you for my tea! Oh! ho! my fine madam, just you wait, and then we’ll see!’ So Max, he knew right away that that meant a Princess; and he slid down the trunk of the tree, an’ he ran right up to him, an’ he shouted in his ear,—

“‘_Where’s_ that Princess you have hid?’

“And the Griffin jumped, but then he pertended it was only a burr what he had in his foot, and he said,—

“‘Princess? Princess? I haven’t any Princess, my dear fellow. What are you talkin’ about?’

“And just then Max he heard a sobbing sound, which was the Princess weeping, and he shouted,—

“‘Oh my! not much you haven’t! I hear her crying this very instant, an’ if you don’t tell me where she is, I shall cut your head slam bang off!’

“But the Griffin he was v-e-r-y clever, and he said, ‘What do you mean, old nosey? Why, that’s only my sick grandmother that you hear. She has an influenza, and so she’s _got_ to sniff!’

“But the Crusader was not so easily fooled as all that, and he took up his sword, an’ he cut off the Griffin’s head! bang!! And then he looked around for the Princess, an’ after a while he found her in a pit what the Griffin had dug. And then the Crusader, and the Princess, and the squirrels all went and lived in the Griffin’s castle, ’cause the Princess didn’t know how to climb trees, and anyhow Max was tired of nuts.”

* * * * *

Just as Bobsie finished his story mother came in from her call, and as we wanted to hear all about it, she took him in her lap in the big rocker, while I seated myself on the hassock at her feet. Mrs. Burroughs, she said, was charming,—so cordial and friendly, and would not listen to anything about “damages.” She seemed endlessly amused at Ernie’s escapade, and laughed and laughed over it. Then she would break off to apologise, and say she fully realised how great the shock must have been to us;—till some freshly funny aspect of the adventure would strike her, she would laugh again, and mother would laugh, too.

Finally they began to talk of other things. It seems that Mrs. Burroughs had had a little boy who was an invalid. His name was Francis. He was ill for five years with some spinal trouble, and died when he was seven. Mother told me the sadder details later, for Robin takes his illness so much as a matter of course that we never like to say anything before him that would be apt to make him realise, or arouse apprehensions. Mrs. Burroughs’ husband had died some years previous, and so she was left quite alone, except for an aunt, an old lady of nearly seventy, who fortunately was out making calls Tuesday afternoon, and so escaped the excitement of Ernie’s invasion.

Mrs. Burroughs then asked mother a number of questions about Robin. She said she had often noticed his little pale face at the nursery window as she passed our house, and she wondered if he ever got out. Mother answered that we could not let him go very often this winter, for he took cold so easily, and his crutches seemed to tire him.

Then Mrs. Burroughs flushed a beautiful rose colour, hesitated, and said, in a breathless little way, that her boy, Francis, had had a wheel-chair for the last couple of years of his illness from which he had gotten a great deal of comfort and pleasure. She had often wondered, seeing Robin at the window, if it would not be nice for him, too. Half a dozen times, she said, she had been on the point of sending it over.

“And it shall come to him this evening. I don’t know what has held me back so long! You will let your dear little son accept it as a gift from my Francis, will you not, Mrs. Graham?” she pleaded. “Children have no feeling about taking presents from one another,—and I should be so very, very glad. For Francis always loved to give!”

Of course, mother could make but one answer,—and how splendid the chair will be for Robin! Now he can get out on the mild, sunny days, which was impossible for him when he was dependent only on Ernie’s sled. Dear little fellow!—he is delighted with the prospect, and we have great hopes of the good it will do him.

And how kind of Mrs. Burroughs to think of it, and offer it the way she did,—without any hint of patronage or condescension. She also asked with what mother called “a hungry look” if she might not run in sometime and make Bobsie’s acquaintance, and she invited Ernie and me to call upon her, too. I shall love to go, and even Ernie admits that perhaps it won’t be so bad, since Mrs. Burroughs seems to be “a delicate sort of person” who understands how “others feel.”

Really it is rather pathetic the way Ernie has brightened up since we have had the offer of the chair. I think in her secret heart she considers herself responsible;—a sort of unappreciated _dea ex machina_, as it were. And certainly it is an unlooked for and lovely end to what might have proven a very terrible adventure.

Saturday, December 13.

The sun shone bright and beautiful this morning, there was no wind, and the streets were clear of snow, so Bobsie went for a ride in his new wheel-chair. What do you think he wore? The dearest little fur-lined overcoat, and a fur cap with a military cockade, almost the exact duplicate of those belonging to Georgie which I was mean enough to envy the last time he came to see us!

This is the way it happened. The wheel-chair did not come from Mrs. Burroughs Thursday evening as we had hoped. Robin kept watching for it, and listening for the bell. I waited, too, but all in vain. I don’t know which of us went to bed the more disappointed. The next day, Friday, it rained. Robin could not have gone out under any circumstances,—but it was not until late in the afternoon, after hours of waiting, that the chair finally arrived.

It was left at the basement door by Mrs. Burroughs’ maid with a big bundle and a little note. Mother read the note, while I undid the bundle, cutting all the strings, you may be sure, and wondering what it might contain. Inside the wrapping paper there was a dear little steamer rug;—such a pretty, serviceable plaid, and warm as warm can be. Then came the overcoat, the fur cap with close ear-laps, just such as they are wearing this winter, and a charming pair of fur-lined gloves! But,—could we accept so much?

“Listen, Bobs,” said mother, and read the note aloud:

“My Dear Robin:—

“The wheel-chair which I am sending, and the coat and cap, belonged to a little boy whom I wish you might have known and loved. His name was Francis. If you had known him, you could not have helped loving him, I am sure. He was sick a great deal of the time, like you, and always so patient and good. Your mother tells me that you are good, too, and that is why I want you to have his things. I had to alter the coat and cap a little, or you would have had them before this, for my Francis always liked his clothes just so,—in the very latest style. Perhaps you feel that way, too! Please wear them,—and I hope you will enjoy the chair very much. It will make me happier to know that another little boy is making use of my boy’s things.

“With love to your mother and yourself, believe me,

“Your friend, Clara Cecilia Burroughs.”

Now was not that a lovely note?

“Will you take the things, Bobsie dear?” said mother.

“’Course I will,” answered Bobs with a sympathetic sniff. He had felt the sadness underlying the gentle words, and stood quite grave and serious as we tried on the coat and gloves. They fitted as if they had been made for him, and how charming our Robin looked!

“I’ll have to be very good when I wear these,” he remarked, quaintly:—but, alas, for resolutions!

As I said, we took our first walk this morning, and Robin was so comfortable in his new chair with the steamer rug tucked close about his little thin legs! The street was full of his “friends,” and Bobs beamed on them with gracious condescension. A pretty glow of excitement burned in his cheeks; his eyes were bright as stars; he did not look like a little invalid boy.

“People will think I am riding just because I am so Rich,” he remarked, looking down at his fur-lined gloves;—and that moment turning the corner of Washington Square, whom should we meet but Georgie and his nurse, out for a morning stroll, too.

“Hello!” says Georgie, his eyes nearly popping out of his head with amazement,—“Where’d you get those things?” For, naturally, he had never seen Bobs attired so gorgeously before.

“Boy gave ’em to me,” answered Robin, loftily.

“What boy?” questioned Georgie. And then before Robin had time to reply,—“Pooh! I wouldn’t take coats an’ things from anybody, ’cept just my papa. I’d be ashamed to wear other people’s clothes!”

“No, you wouldn’t! Not the way I do!” shouted Robin, with flashing eyes. “This coat belongs to an Angel, I’d like to have you know! And nobody’d let you wear it,—you’re too bad!”

“Robin! Robin!” I cried. “What would Francis think if he could hear you now?”

Robin instantly subsided; and, indeed, it was not necessary for him to say more. Georgie was quite quelled and done for. The idea of the Angel coat was more than he could grapple with. He walked along beside the chair in a state of wondering, but subdued, solemnity.

After a while he began timidly to stroke the fur on Robin’s cuff.

“Is it warm?” he asked.

“Yes, it is,” answered Robin, still a trifle defiant.

“Suppose you tell Georgie about the things,” I said,—for Robin was clever enough to appreciate that the impression he had created, though delightful to his vanity, was not strictly in accordance with fact.

“Well,” he muttered, unwillingly, “Francis is an angel now, and this was his coat. And I’m sick like he was, and good, too, and that’s why I needn’t be ashamed to wear it.”

“So long as you _stay_ good,” I answered.

And Robin blushed and hung his head, while Georgie sighed. He did not entirely understand, even yet, but somehow the tension of his prosaic little mind was relieved.

Nevertheless, he was very respectful and polite to Robin all the rest of the walk, and the explanation must have set him thinking, I suppose, for this afternoon while Bobs was upstairs taking a nap, who should appear at our door but Georgie, this time under the care of William, the coloured butler.

“Here,” he said, handing me a square package, prettily done up with tissue paper and red ribbon. “This is for Bobbie, because he is sick. Tell him it’s the one with the picture of the tiger. He likes that best, but I like the Brownie Books.”

“Oh, thank you, Georgie dear,” I said, kissing his little ruddy face. “What made you think to bring it over?”

“I wanted him to have something to ’muse himself with,” said Georgie, “and mamma said I might, if only I would stop teasing.”

“It was very kind of you, honey,” I answered, and Georgie beamed.

Sometimes I am ready to admit that I am unjust to Georgie. It isn’t his fault that he has all the things I want for Robin, to be sure.

And now I must write something that I dread to put down in black and white;—but there is no use shirking. We have to face it. The Hancocks are going! The news came quite unexpectedly to us all, and it is nobody’s fault.

Mrs. Hancock saw mother this evening, and explained that Mr. Hancock’s married sister had come to the city and taken a furnished house, and it had always been understood between them that when this happened she and Mr. Hancock would rent a floor. She said she was really sorry to leave us, that she had no complaints to make; but they were anxious to be settled before Christmas, and felt obliged to give up their rooms next Saturday. That would give us a whole week in which to rent them, and she hoped we would have no trouble.

But, oh dear! we haven’t even had any applications for Mrs. Hudson’s room yet. It seems to be an unlucky season, or something, and when the Hancocks go, I don’t see how we are going to get on at all!

We will have only Miss Brown left, and she pays less than anybody else because her room is so small. Can a family of seven people live on ten dollars a week? That sounds like a problem in a Lady’s Magazine; but I fancy the answer will prove very different from those printed, if we are unlucky enough to have to try it.

“I have such a queer feeling whenever I look at Miss Brown,” confessed Ernie, as we put away the dinner dishes,—Rose having begged for an unexpected afternoon out. “Sort of as if we were a Cannibal family, and she was the last captive we had left. Just think, she means muttonchops, and beefsteak, and milk for Robin, and butter, and eggs, and everything except rent! We must guard her carefully, Elizabeth, and see to it that she does not escape!”

Poor Miss Brown! I had had somewhat the same feeling myself, though I would not have thought of expressing it in exactly Ernie’s words.

I think mother must have guessed from our faces how worried we were, for, as soon as the dishes were finished, she sat down at the piano and began to play the jolliest lot of college airs. And soon we were all singing and laughing; to hear us you wouldn’t have thought we had a care in the world. Certainly, for a time we forgot we had! Even Haze shut up his Cæsar, and joined in the frolic.

Now wasn’t that exactly like mother,—and no one but her?

“We’ll think it out together, Elizabeth,” she whispered, as I bade her good-night. “Don’t worry, dear.”

Monday, December 15.