MORE ABOUT "PARLEY-VOO."
OW a little boy came to be called by such a queer nickname as "Parley-voo" was told in the March number of "The Nursery." This is a story about the same boy.
"Where's Parley-voo?" asked aunt Tib one afternoon. "I haven't seen him for a long time."
"Where can he be?" said mamma, looking concerned.
"Where can he be?" echoed the French nurse, throwing down her sewing, and going in search of him. "Where can he be? Le méchant!" (She meant "The naughty little boy.") Then she ran down the walk, calling out, "Parley-voo, Parley-voo, Parley-voo!" But not a sound came back.
She went down the lane to the house of the tailoress, where Parley-voo had sometimes been known to go. "Have you seen our little boy to-day?" she asked anxiously of the tailoress, who sat at the window, making a vest.
The tailoress looked up over her glasses, and laughed. "Why, yes: he's here," said she; "and I don't know what his mother will say when she sees him."
The nurse went up to the window, and looked in. There sat Parley-voo on a little wooden cricket, and ever so much of his bright, pretty hair—as much as he could get at—lay on the floor beside him.
When Parley-voo saw the nurse, he ran into a corner, and hid his face. The poor nurse was so amazed, that she could hardly speak. How came the child in such a plight?
The tailoress told the story as follows. She had gone out to pick some peas in the garden, leaving her husband, a blind man, in the room with Parley-voo. He heard the little boy about the room, and, fearing that he might be in some mischief, told him that he "must not meddle."
But pretty soon the blind man heard the sound of shears going across the table. Parley-voo was certainly doing something with the shears.
"Little boy, you must not meddle," said the blind man again. The noise stopped. "Ah! the boy does not dare to disobey me," thought the blind man.
All of a sudden the noise began again; but it was a very different noise. It was not on the table. The shears went together every little while with a sharp click.
The blind man felt very uneasy. "I do wish," he thought, "my wife would come in and see what the little chap is up to."
To console himself, the blind man opened his snuff-box and took a pinch of snuff. What do you think the little chap did? He slyly put in his finger and thumb, and took a pinch too. And then how he did sneeze!
The tailoress heard him sneeze, and came in. She saw at once what had been going on. Parley-voo had been cutting his hair.
"Oh, my!" exclaimed mamma, when the nurse brought him home.
"Dear, dear!" cried aunt Tib, "what a looking child!"
Then the bonne told where she found him, and they looked at his hair, and talked so much about it, that Parley-voo wished he could sink through the floor out of sight. And he thought to himself that he would never again touch any thing he had been told not to.
The nurse took him up to the nursery, and dressed him all fresh and nice before his father came home. But the pretty yellow hair was two or three months growing out.
ELIZABETH A. DAVIS.
