CHARLIE’S WEEK IN BOSTON.
BY CHARLES E. HURD.
CHARLIE was going to Boston.
The ceaseless clatter of his little copper-toed boots over all the bare places in the house, and the pertinacious hammering he kept up upon everything capable of emitting sound, rendered it impossible for his mamma or the new baby to get any rest, and so it was that the decision came about. Aunt Mary, who had lent her presence to the household for the preceding fortnight, was to return home the following day, and with her, after infinite discussion, it was decided that he was to go for a week.
The momentous news was withheld from Charlie until the next morning, for fear of the result upon his night’s sleep, but it was injudiciously let out by Aunt Mary before breakfast, the effect being to at once plunge the young gentleman into the highest state of excitement. He had played “go to Boston” a thousand times with his little cart and wheelbarrow, but to take such a journey in reality was something he could hardly imagine possible.
“Am I going to Boston, real ’live?” he wildly inquired. “Where’s my rubber boots, and my little chair, and my cart, and I want my piece of gum mamma tooked away, and where’s my sled?”
“But, Charlie,” said Aunt Mary, persuasively, “you are not going now, and you don’t want to take all those things. There isn’t any snow in Boston, and good little boys don’t chew gum. You must have some breakfast.”
“I don’t want any breakfast. I want to go to Boston. I got to go, now you said so.”
“Yes, but you must have something to eat first. It would make you sick to ride so far without eating. And then you must have a nice bath, and put on your new suit that papa bought last week. You’ve plenty of time.”
But Charlie, generally good to mind, was thoroughly demoralized by the new turn in affairs, and had to be brought to the table by main force.
“It’s like taking a horse to water,” said Aunt Mary. “You can get him to the trough, but you can’t make him drink without he likes. Charlie, have a nice large griddle-cake?”
Griddle-cakes were Charlie’s weak point, but in a time like this he rose superior to the temptation.
“Don’t want griddle-cakes; don’t want bread; don’t want toast; don’t want anything. I want to get right down out of my little chair, and go to Boston, awful quick!”
“The child will be down sick if he goes away on an empty stomach,” said grandma from her bedroom, where she could see all that transpired at the table. “Can’t you make him eat?”
“It’s all very well to say ‘Make him eat,’ but he won’t,” said Aunt Mary. “You might just as well make a squirrel sit down and eat in a respectable manner.”
“Let him go till he gets hungry, then,” said his father. “He’ll come to it soon enough. There’s no danger of his starving.”
If Charlie had been a grown man, with whiskers, and going to some European Court as Minister Extraordinary, he couldn’t have felt the importance of his prospective journey more, or been more weighed down by the preparations for it. The train which was to carry him did not start until two o’clock, and in the six hours which intervened his little tongue was in constant motion, and his little feet tramping up and down stairs, “getting ready.”
“But you’re only going to stay for a week, you know, Charlie,” said Aunt Mary, dismayed at the heap of toys he had industriously gathered in a corner of the sitting-room for transportation, “and you’ll see so many pretty things that you won’t care for any of these.”
“I want to carry my wheelbarrow. I will be cross if I don’t carry my wheelbarrow. And my cunnin’ little cunnin’ watlin’ pot, and my high chair, and some more.”
But Aunt Mary couldn’t get them into her trunk, and the railroad man wouldn’t let Charlie take them into the cars. “Put them all away nicely, and then Charlie will have them when he comes home.”
It required a great deal of judicious argument, intermingled with promises, to gain the point, and final success was only achieved by a formal agreement, to which grandma was made a witness, by virtue of which Charlie was to become the possessor of “a speckled rocking-horse, just like Johnny Baker’s, with real hair ears, and a tight tail, that boys couldn’t pull out.” This compact having been made, Charlie submitted to the washing and dressing process with comparative good grace.
An exceedingly light dinner preceded the start, varied by excursions to the front door to see if the depot stage was coming. It came at last, and, after the leave-taking, Charlie and Aunt Mary were packed in among half a dozen others. The whip cracked, the coach gave a sudden lurch, and then dashed down the street at the heels of the horses, who seemed anxious to get to the station at the earliest possible moment. There was just time to get tickets and seats before the train started.
If Charlie was unmanageable before, he was doubly so now. At every stopping-place he made desperate efforts to get out of the car, and once or twice, in spite of Aunt Mary’s efforts, very nearly succeeded. He dropped his hat out of the window; he dirtied his face beyond redemption with dust and cinders; he put cake crumbs down the neck of an old lady who had fallen asleep on the seat just in front, and horrified the more staid portion of the passengers in the car by a series of acts highly inconsistent with the rules of good breeding, and the character of a nice boy.
Boston was reached at last, and the perils of procuring a hack and getting safely home in it were surmounted. So thankful was Aunt Mary that she could have dropped upon her knees on the sidewalk in front of the door; but she managed to control her feelings, paid the hackman his dollar, still keeping a tight grip upon Charlie, and, despite his struggles to join the distant audience of a hand-organ, managed to get him safely into the house, where he was at once delivered over to the other members of the household.
“I never, never, never will go out of the house with that child again!” she declared, half crying, and sinking into a chair without taking her bonnet off. “He’s enough to kill anyone outright. No wonder they wanted to get rid of him at home! It’ll be a mercy if he don’t drive us all crazy before the week is out. One thing is certain, they’ll have to send for him. I’ll never take him home again.”
“Why didn’t you drug him, Aunt Mary,” asked Tom, with a great show of sympathy. “I would.”
“I declare I would have done anything, if I had only known how he was going to act! You may laugh and think it’s all very funny, but I just wish you’d some of you try it yourselves. Where is he now? If he’s out of sight a single minute he’ll be in some mischief. There he goes now!”
The last declaration of Aunt Mary was preceded by a series of violent bumps, followed by a loud scream from the bottom of the basement stairs. A grand rush to the spot revealed Charlie lying at the foot, beating the air with his legs, with a vigor that at once dispelled all fears as to his serious injury. He was picked up and borne into the kitchen by the cook, where the gift of a doughnut soon dried his tears, and he was returned to the sitting-room to await the ringing of the bell for tea.
“Has he had a nap to-day?” asked grandmother.
“Nap! I should think the child would be dead for want of sleep. I don’t believe he’s winked to-day!”
“He looks like it now, anyway,” said Tom, who was holding him in his arms.
Sure enough, his eyelids were beginning to droop, and a moment after the half-eaten doughnut dropped from his loosened fingers upon the carpet.
“Carry him up to my room, Tom, and lay him upon my bed. Don’t for mercy’s sake hit his head against anything. We shan’t have any peace if he gets awake again.”
Slowly and carefully Tom staggered under his little burden up-stairs, and laid it upon the clean white coverlet of Aunt Mary’s bed.
“That will do,” said Aunt Mary, who had followed close behind. “He’s thoroughly tired out, and no wonder. You may go down now and I will take care of him, dear little fellow.”
With careful fingers she untied the laces of his little boots, and pulled them off. The stockings came next, and the hot little feet were released from confinement. The tiny jacket was then removed, the tangled hair put back, and then, with a sponge wet in cool water, the dirty, sweaty little face was softly bathed until it became quite presentable again.
“There!” she said at last, surveying him with a feeling of satisfaction, “he will sleep at least a couple of hours. By that time I shall get rested, and can manage him better. I suppose it’s because he’s so tired, and everything is new.”
With this apology for Charlie in her heart, and a half remorseful feeling for her lately displayed impatience, she descended the stairs to the dining-room, where the rest of the family were already seated at the table.
A few minutes later, and while she was deep in an account of matters and things at Charlie’s home, the cook came up-stairs in something of a fluster.
“Plaze, ma’am, there’s something on the house.”
“Something on the house?”
“Yes. McKillop’s boarders across the way are all at the windows, an’ the men is laughin’ and the women frightened.”
With one accord a sudden and informal adjournment to the parlor window was made, the result being a verification of the cook’s statement.
“What on earth can be the matter?” said grandmother.
At this moment Mrs. McKillop, after a series of incomprehensible gestures, which nobody could translate with any clearness, dispatched her girl across the street.
“There’s a child, ma’am,” she exclaimed, in breathless excitement, “a baby, walking about on the outside of your house like a fly! he’s— Howly Father!”
This sudden exclamation was caused by the descent of a flower pot, which, coming with the swiftness of a meteor, missed the head of the speaker by less than a hand’s-breadth, and crashed into a thousand pieces on the front steps.
The situation was taken in at once. With a succession of screams Aunt Mary flew up the stairs two at a time. By this a crowd was rapidly gathering.
“Bring out something to catch him in if he falls,” shouted a fat old gentleman, pushing his way to the front.
Grandmother caught a tidy from the arm of the sofa, and, snatching a volume of Tennyson from the centre-table, rushed frantically into the street, closely followed by Tom with a feather duster.
A single glance told the whole story. There sat Charlie, utterly innocent of clothing save a shirt of exceeding scantness, on the very edge of the broad projection below the third-story window, his legs dangling in space, watching with delighted interest the proceedings of the excited crowd in the street below. No one knows what might have happened, for, at that moment, while a hot discussion was being carried on among the gathered spectators, as to the propriety of sounding a fire alarm for a hook and ladder company, the arms of Aunt Mary came through the window, and closed upon him like a pair of animated pincers. There was a brief struggle, productive of a perfect shower of flower-pots, and then, amid a hurricane of shouts and cheers, the little white body and kicking legs disappeared within the room. When, two minutes later, the entire household, with a fair sprinkling of the McKillop boarders, had reached the scene, they found Charlie shut up in the wardrobe, and Aunt Mary in hysterics, with her back against the door.
“If he stays here a week we shall have to board up the windows, and keep a policeman,” said grandmother, that night, after Charlie had been guarded to sleep on the sitting-room lounge, with the door locked. “We shall have to have watchers for him, for I would no more dare to go to sleep without some one awake with him than I would trust him with a card of matches and a keg of gunpowder. And that makes me think: we musn’t leave matches where he can get them; and, father, you’ll have to go down town the first thing in the morning, and see about an insurance.”
Notwithstanding the universally expressed fears, Charlie slept like a top all night, and really behaved so well the next morning that it was deemed safe to give him an airing, and introduce him to the sights of Boston. Right after dinner he was taken in hand, and dressed and curled and frilled as he never had been before, creating serious doubts in his own mind as to whether he was really himself, or another boy of about the same size and general make.
At half-past two o’clock the party set out, Aunt Mary on one side, tightly grasping Charlie’s hand, and on the other a female friend, especially engaged for the occasion. Tom followed on behind as a sort of rear guard, ready to be called upon in case of emergency.
First the Public Garden was visited. Hardly had half the circuit of the lake been made, when Charlie, attracted by one of the gayly painted boats which was moored a few feet from the shore, broke loose and made a sudden dash to reach it, to the utter ruin of his stockings and gaiters. In vain Aunt Mary coaxed and remonstrated and threatened; in vain she attempted to hook him out with the handle of her parasol; he was just out of reach and he kept there. He was brought out by one of the gardeners at last, who seemed to look upon it as an excellent joke. Tom, who had lagged behind, was sent back after dry stockings and Charlie’s second-best shoes, which, when brought, were changed in the vestibule of the Public Library, and the line of march again taken up. The deer on the Common were fed, Punch and Judy viewed and criticized, and the thousand and one various objects in the vicinity visited. Charlie was delighted with everything, but through and above all one grand desire and determination rode rampant—the desire and determination to enter into possession of the promised, but as yet unrealized, “wocking-horse.”
“Mounted upon the back of the largest and realest looking horse.”
Down Winter Street to Washington, in the great, sweeping crowd of men, women and children; past the gorgeous dry goods stores; past candy and apple stands; past all sorts of strange and funny and bewildering things, Charlie was slowly dragged, a helpless and unwilling prisoner. He only broke silence once. Passing a window filled with braids and chignons, and doubtless taking them for scalps, he inquired with considerable interest if “Indians kept store there.”
“Oh! what a lovely silk!” ejaculated Aunt Mary’s friend, coming to a sudden stop before one of the great dry goods emporiums on Washington Street.
Aunt Mary stopped, too. The pattern was too gorgeous to be lightly passed. She raised her hand to remove her vail, forgot her charge for a moment, and when she looked again Charlie had disappeared.
“Charlie! Charlie! Why, where is he?” she exclaimed, pale with fright. “I thought you had hold of him!”
“I dropped his hand not a minute ago, to be sure my pocket hadn’t been picked. I thought you would look out for him.”
In vain they searched; in vain they questioned clerks and policemen and apple-women. Nobody had seen such a boy, and yet everybody seemed to think that they certainly should remember if they had. It was now half past four. And Tom, who might have helped them so much, was gone!
“Perhaps,” suggested a pitying apothecary’s clerk, with a very small moustache and very smooth hair, “perhaps the young man Tom has taken him home.”
There was a small spark of comfort in this suggestion and, though unbelieving, the two hurried homewards, only to find Tom sitting on the doorstep, lazily fanning himself, and hear his surprised ejaculation:
“Why! what have you done with Charlie?”
“He’s lost!” said Aunt Mary, bursting into tears. “He’ll get run over, or carried away, or something terrible will happen to him. I shall never have another minute’s peace while I live!”
Tom listened impatiently to the details of the story, told by both together, and, tossing his fan into the hall, started down the steps.
“Don’t fret till I come back. He’s all right somewhere, and I’ll bring him home with me.”
“I’m going back. I can’t stay here. I can help search,” said Aunt Mary, still in tears, and her loyal companion avowed her determination to stand by her.
Tom had hurried away without stopping to listen, and was now out of sight; but the two wretched women, heated, footsore and wearied, followed resolutely after. The scene of the mysterious disappearance was at last reached, and again the oft repeated inquiries were made, but with the same result.
“Here is where I was intending to bring him,” said Aunt Mary, pausing mournfully before the window of a toy-bazar crowded with drums, guns, trumpets and wooden monkeys. “He had talked so much about his rocking-horse, the poor lost lamb! And now—”
The sentence was never finished, for, with a half hysterical shriek, she dropped her parasol upon the sidewalk and rushed into the store, where the apparition of a curly head of flaxen hair, slowly oscillating back and forth, had that instant caught her eye. It was Charlie, sure enough, in the highest feather, mounted upon the back of the largest and realest-looking horse in the entire stock of the establishment, whose speed he was endeavoring to accelerate by the aid of divers kicks and cluckings, while the proprietor and unemployed clerks looked admiringly on.
Aunt Mary, despite her regard for appearances, hugged him and cried over him without stint, and finally made a brave attempt to scold him, but her heart failed her, at the very outset.
“He’s been here nigh upon two hours,” said the proprietor, as he made change for the coveted horse. “He came in alone and went right to that horse, and there he’s stuck ever since. I don’t let boys handle ’em much without I know they’re going to buy, but he made me think so much of a little fellow I lost a year ago that I let him do just as he liked.”
No mishap occurred in getting Charlie home this time. The toyman’s boy was sent for a hack, and, with the rocking-horse perched up by the side of the driver, and the doors tightly closed, nothing happened beyond what happens to ordinary boys who are carried about in hacks. Some little difficulty was experienced in getting him out on arrival home, for it appeared that he had formed the plan on the way of taking his horse into the coach and making a tour of the city by himself. He could not in any manner be satisfied of the impossibility of such an arrangement, and was at last taken out in a high state of indignation by the driver, who expressed a vehement wish to himself that “he had such a young one!” Nothing took place worthy of mention before bed-time, with the exception, perhaps, of the breaking of the carving-knife, and the ruin of Aunt Mary’s gold pen in an attempt to vaccinate his new acquisition.
For three days peace—comparative peace—reigned in the household. From morning till night, in season and out of season, Charlie was busy with his horse, astride of it, or feeding it, or leading it to water, or punishing it for imaginary kicks and bites, and so keeping out of mischief; but with the dawn of the fourth he awoke, apparently for the first time, to a realization of the fact that he was not lying in his own little bed, and a sudden flood of homesickness rolled over his soul, drowning out rocking-horse, hand-organs, Tom’s music-box, and each and every Bostonian delight which, until that moment, had led him captive.
From that moment his mourning was as incessant and obstinate as that of Rachael. He sat on the top stair, and filled the house with wailings. Cakes, candy and coaxings were alike in vain, and even a desperate promise of Tom’s—to show him a whole drove of elephants, had no more effect upon him, to use the cook’s simile, “than the wind that blows.”
“No human being can endure it any longer,” declared grandma, and in that statement every member of the household cordially agreed.
That fact having been established without discussion, but one thing remained to do; to get him home in as good condition as when he left there.
“One can hardly do that,” said Tom. “He’s got a rag on every finger but one, and I don’t know how much court-plaster about him.”
Notwithstanding, the afternoon train saw Charlie on board, under the double guardianship of Aunt Mary and Tom, and at five o’clock he was in his mother’s arms.
“The silence in the house was a thousand times worse than the sound of his little feet,” she said, with her eyes full of tears, “and made me think of that possible time when I should never hear them any more.”
Johnny’s a drummer and drums for thᵉ King.
MDC*VII