HOW PHILIP SULLIVAN DID AN ERRAND.
By Mary Densel.
BANG, bang, bang! went Philip Sullivan’s hammer, as he pounded on his sled “Chain Lightning.” “Chain Lightning” had needed mending ever since last winter, but Phil had concluded not to touch it till “just before the snow came.”
“Never do to-day what you can put off until to-morrow.”
The consequence was that the north wind suddenly puffed up a midnight storm, and Master Phil was awakened one morning by the shouts of the six Dyke boys, who were coasting merrily down “Sullivan Hill.”
Phil was out of bed in a twinkling. Ten o’clock found him still working fiercely on “Chain Lightning,” his glue-pot simmering before the fire in company with his father’s best chisel and his mother’s machine oil-can.
The shouts of the Dyke boys still resounded; and not only their jubilation but that of forty more coasters drove Phil nearly frantic.
With all his might Phil worked on, and “Chain Lightning” was beginning to look as if it might hold its own even among newer sleds, when the door leading into the library opened softly, and fair-haired Rosabel, Phil’s sister, appeared on the threshold. At the same moment an opposite door flew open with a jerk, and there stood Rosabel “done in sepia,” as it were; little brown Kate, Rosabel’s twin-sister.
Phil glanced up, and then became more than ever absorbed in his work. There was a peculiar expression on the twins’ faces. Phil instantly recognized it. “The errand cast of features,” he grimly called it.
“Phil, dear,” began Rosabel.
“Phil, dear,” echoed Kate.
Phil handled a screw-driver dextrously.
“Phil, dear, will you please run over to the station and see if my new skates have come by the twelve-o’clock train? Go when the cars are due, won’t you?”
“And Phil, dear,” chimed in Kate, “can’t you manage to go into the city to-day and call for a roll of music which is to be left for me at Hale and McPherson’s?”
Now could anything be more trying to the temper of the average youth than requests like these, made under the existing circumstances? Perhaps some of us may find it in our hearts to forgive Phil for answering with a certain touch of asperity:
“Don’t ‘Phil dear’ me! I’m not going to the station, and I’m not going to the city, and—”
Bang, bang, bang! the hammer expressed the rest of his sentiments.
Rosabel arched her eyebrows, and mildly withdrew.
Kate tarried to wheedle the enemy a bit, and, that failing, gave it as her opinion that boys ought never to have been created. Departing she closed the door with more force than was strictly needful, and left Phil alone.
That individual worked on in an injured and gloomy frame of mind.
“Mean enough in them to be forever nagging me. Mean enough in me not to get their skates and music.”
It was hard for Phil to decide which was the greater wretch, himself or Kate. Rosabel, he concluded, could never be a “blot on the earth,” whatever she did. It was Rosabel who had helped him write his composition on “Spring;” it was Rosabel who knit his mittens; it was Rosabel who never shirked her share of the stirring when they made molasses candy.
The remembrance of Rosabel’s virtues haunted Phil even after “Chain Lightning” was in order, and he was shooting down “Sullivan Hill,” lying prone on his sled, with his legs waving in the air.
Perhaps that was the reason that when his elder brother Will came hastily up the hill and offered him five cents if he would carry a bundle to a store next the railway station (you see that Phil was regarded as the family errand boy), he condescended to saunter in that direction. Not that he cared for the pennies, although he accepted them as a token of brotherly esteem.
He even quickened his pace as a shrill whistle sounded in the distance, and ended by racing up to the depot just as the twelve-o’clock train stopped.
No one seemed to know about Rosabel’s skates.
“Ask the man in the express office—perhaps they came on an earlier train,” suggested Fred Rodman, who was standing on the platform. “I’ll keep your sled for you. Or, see here, just slip the rope through this iron ring on the rear car.”
Phil did as he was bidden, and leaving his sharp-shooter tied with a slip-knot, went into the express office.
The man in the express office had never heard the proverb concerning “a place for everything;” or, if he had, knowing it was not among the Ten Commandments, felt under no obligation to heed it. He remarked that “somebody had said something about some skates being somewhere,” and went fumbling among boxes and bundles, exclaiming alternately, “Hi! here they be,” and “Ho! no they ain’t.”
NOT GOING TO LOSE “CHAIN LIGHTENING” AT ANY RATE!
At last, just as he laid his hand on a queer-looking package, and was next to sure that here were the skates, the engine bell rang, there was a slight scurry outside, and the train began to move.
Phil was out of the depot in a flash.
“Stop!” he cried; but the locomotive paid no heed.
Slowly past the platform glided the cars, pulling “Chain Lightning” behind.
Almost before he knew what he was doing, Phil had thrown himself on the sled and grasped its rope. To his horror the slip-knot suddenly tightened, and “Chain Lightning” was firmly fastened. Every moment the train quickened its speed.
I should not dare to tell the rest of this story, were it not true. I am not “making it up.” It really happened.
The sled hung on the car. Phil Sullivan clung to the sled. Do you suppose he would lose “Chain Lightning?” Not he.
Faster and faster—faster and faster still—dashed on the train. Over the sleepers bounded “Chain Lightning.” To this side, to that, it swayed madly. Phil’s grasp never slackened. On they rushed. Phil dared not roll off the sled now lest he should be killed. It seemed no less certain death to stay on.
The engine gave short panting breaths, as if it were frightened, itself, at the trick it was playing the boy.
A kindly tree stretched out a limb, but tried in vain to rescue Phil. The sled bounded far less now as the train whizzed along. The runners were half an inch from the ground. Held by its strong rope, the sharp-shooter was like a small tail to a big kite. Cinders flew—the cars flew—“Chain Lightning” flew—Phil flew. (I am telling you the truth.)
It seemed to our friend as if he had been rushing through space ever since he was born. It seemed as if he had come millions of miles. Would this awful ride never end? Phil’s fingers were numb, so tightly did they clasp “Chain Lightning’s” edge. He saw stars before him.
And now thump! bump! bump! thump! “Chain Lightning” was knocking the sleepers once more. It might have occurred to Phil that he could hardly bear this sort of travelling much longer had not his brain been too dizzy to do much thinking.
Presently, after another small eternity, with a final shriek the locomotive drew up in the city depot.
An hour later Philip Sullivan entered the paternal mansion. Never a word did he say in regard to the black-and-blue spots which dotted him from head to foot, not yet did he feel it necessary to mention that every bone in his body had an especial and separate ache.
“I thought I might as well go into town,” he remarked carelessly. “Here’s your music, Kate. Your skates will probably come to-morrow, Rosabel.”
“Well, you are a dear,” began Kate, looking up from her crocheting. But before she could finish there came a loud ring at the door-bell, and in rushed Fred Rodman. As he caught sight of Phil, his eyes and mouth opened wide, and he stared for a full minute.
At last, “Aren’t you dead?” he gasped.
“Pho!” said Phil loftily. “I’ve as much right to be living as you, sir.”
“Well, I never!” said Fred. “I was over to the post-office when the whistle blew, and came out just in time to see you off, and I raced most of the way to the city after you, and then I turned round and raced back to tell your folks!”
“Pho!” said Phil again.
We will pass over any family discussion of the incident; but within an hour one half of the boys in town were relating to the other half the story of Phil Sullivan’s ride. To be sure the versions differed, and to this day some of the lads a little out of Phil’s own circle are convinced he went to town on the cow-catcher, and other some believe that he rode all the way under a car, sitting on a brace between the wheels.
But that evening, Phil much bruised and battered, yet whole in every limb, told to a select few the full particulars of his journey; and the facts of the case are as I have here narrated them.