NO OBJECTION TO CHILDREN.
It was a block of yellow-brown houses in South Boston, looking as much like a sheet of gingerbread as anything.
An express-wagon had just backed up to No. 21 in that block, and the driver, unloosing ropes here and there, proceeded to unpack the luggage.
"What have we here?" exclaimed Mrs. Bacon, the downstairs tenant. "A menagerie, I do believe. Come here, John."
There was, indeed, on the very top of the load a gray horse that in the twilight looked very real till one noticed the rockers on which it stood. But there was a kennel with a live terrier's head at the window, a bird-cage with its fluttering tenant, a crib and high chair besides, suggesting that the folks in the other part might, in the language of Mrs. Bacon, "make music."
Now, the downstairs tenants, Mr. and Mrs. Bacon, were precise, orderly people, living, like many other city people, in desert-island fashion, and only hoping that everybody else would mind their own business. It had been for weeks their great comfort that the other part was unoccupied, and now this load of household goods brimming over with pets and their belongings was an unwelcome sight.
There were no young Bacons—no, indeed! Plants did not flourish in their shaded windows nor canary birds splash water from their tiny baths upon the clear glass. No dog barked a noisy welcome when his master returned at night. No cat purred in her mistress's lap. The housekeeping of the Bacons was a fight against dirt, dust, sunshine and noise; and somehow pets bring all these.
"Well, John," said Mrs. Bacon as she turned from the window and pulled the shade over the sacred glass, "there's an end to peace and quiet. We must keep the entry doors locked; and don't you be whistling round to attract a child. Give them an inch and they'll take an ell. If folks must have rocking horses and what goes with them, they ought to move into the country, where they will not be pestering other people."
But, to the surprise of the Bacons, they were not pestered, only by the patter of little feet overhead, or a woman's voice singing cradle-songs or joining in her child's laughter. Crying there was, too, sometimes, but it was so soon hushed in motherly caresses that it seemed a sort of rainbow grievance only.
At night, when the father came home, there was quite a joyful noise upstairs, at which time John's face was a little wistful. But the new family did not intrude for ever so small a favor.
Mrs. Bacon took good care to keep out of sight whenever the new tenants were passing through the entry-way. One small pair of boots had considerable traveling to do up and down the stairs for a stroll on the sidewalk or to old Dorchester Heights, just beyond, for spoils of wild flowers.
One day Little Boots came back from this favorite resort, and instead of climbing the stairs, as usual, strayed hesitatingly toward Mrs. Bacon's kitchen door.
"Smells the gingerbread," soliloquized Mrs. Bacon, grimly. "Glad the door is locked." She glanced toward it to be sure; yes, it was locked, though the key had been transferred to another door. But shining through the keyhole was a very bright and sweet-looking star of an eye. Only a moment it twinkled, and then there was thrust in very gently the stem of a dandelion, and the small boots scampered away up the stairs.
"Little mischief!" exclaimed Mrs. Bacon, and she would have pushed the intruding stem outside, but her hands were in the dough. "If he wanted a piece of gingerbread, why didn't he say so? Mebbe he was afraid of me; cats run like all possessed when they see me. I can't have my key-holes choked up with dandelion stems—that's so. Soon's I get my hands out of this it will walk into the stove, that dandelion will." But the dandelion was too fresh and perfect, and brought back the old childhood days to Mrs. Bacon so clearly that she changed her mind. There was an old horseradish bottle on the pantry-shelf which, filled with water, received the dandelion. There, resting in the kitchen window, it smiled all day.
There was quite a commotion upstairs that night, and John and his wife, drowsily hearing it, thanked their stars that they were not routed by children's ails. The next day Mrs. Bacon's watchful ear caught the sound of "Little Boots" on the stairs, and again the blue eyes twinkled at the keyhole. This time the door opened in response:
"Well, child, what is it? Want some gingerbread?"
"Oh no, thank you, dear," said the little voice—a very hoarse little voice it was, and the throat was all wrapped in flannel.
"I wanted to know if you liked my f'ower?"
"See?" Mrs. Bacon pointed to the glorified horseradish bottle.
"Is your name Mrs. Bacon, dear?"
"Bacon—no 'dear' about it."
"I like to call you 'dear.' Don't your little boy call you so?"
"No."
"Ally! Ally, child!" called the mother anxiously; "come back, darling; you'll get cold."
"I'll take him up," responded Mrs. Bacon; and taking with unwonted tenderness the three-years-old darling, she landed him safely upstairs.
"It's the croup," explained the mother. "He got cold yesterday, out for dandelions—his favorite flower, ma'am. Calls 'em preserved sunshine; saw me put up fruit last fall—there's where he got the idea; though, as to telling where he gets all his ideas, that beats me. The doctor says he's that kind of a child the croup is likely to go hard with. Scares me to death to hear him cough."
"Goose oil is good for croup," remarked Mrs. Bacon.
"Did you ever try it?" asked the new neighbor, innocently.
"Me? No use for it. Got a bottle, though. Have it if you like."
Alas! the doctor's prophecy was true. The fatal disease developed that very night.
Little boots are still and starry eyes shine afar off now. As he lay in his beautiful last sleep, a flower amid the white flowers, a woman's brown hand slipped a few dandelions tenderly—oh, so tenderly!—into the dainty cold fingers.
"That is right, Mrs. Bacon, dear," said the poor mother. "'Preserved sunshine!' That's what he is to us."
The new tenants have moved into the country, and No. 21, upper tenement, is again to let.
Mrs. Bacon hopes the landlord will add to his advertisement, "No objection to children."