"Sister Mister Macalley! There! don't I know?"
"My dear child," answered Sallie, with a patronizing air, and her head on one side, "you are right. It is Sister Mister Macalley; I only said systimystiattically for fun, you know—just for fun and fancy, old Aunt Nancy." And the little girls laughed merrily, and thought it a capital joke.
Sallie's mother had to laugh too, until she was almost killed, at this last sally. She did not wonder that the long word "systematically" had proved one too many for the children; she expected, the next thing, to hear of "indivisibility," or "incompatibility," or something twice as long, if possible; but, at any rate, the laughing or something else did her so much good that she felt well enough to get up and drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of dry toast, while the little girls were having their luncheon, and desperate were the efforts she was obliged to make, to keep from laughing at the speeches they made over the meal. They were twenty times more amusing than the heavy, long-winded jokes with which aldermen, and other big bugs entertain each other for hours at the great public dinners, where they are obliged to give each other the wink to let every one know where the laugh ought to come in. No! it was just one little, rollicking, chuckling laugh all lunch time; and how they managed to make so much bread and butter and raspberry jam disappear, I am sure I cannot tell.
Sallie lived in the city of New York, in Eleventh street, very near Broadway. Directly round the corner was Mrs. Wagner's ice cream saloon, or, as Sallie called it, "Mrs. Waggles."
In the afternoon her mother said she and Fanny might go, by themselves, to this saloon, and buy each a treat of six-pence worth of ice cream.
The children were in a perfect ecstasy of delight at this announcement; their faces were radiant with good humor and happiness. Only to think of it! what grandeur! to go all by themselves! that was the great point! not a cousin, or a grandmother, or even a nurse to take care of them; and they scrabbled up on all the chairs, and jumped down again, and twirled round and round till Sallie's mother said it was fortunate their heads, and arms, and legs were all fastened together very strong, or they would long ago have been whirled off their bodies, and out of the windows.
I wish you could have seen Sallie having her hair curled that afternoon. Her mother would be in the act of laying a curl gracefully over one ear, when Sallie's head would bob suddenly round, and the curl would be planted right between her eyes, making her squint dreadfully; and when a curl was to repose on her temple, Sallie would bob the other way, and the curl would be landed on the back of her head, the end sticking up like a horn. She did try, but who could keep still, on such a delightful occasion, when they were going to walk about the world just like grown people, with their money in their pockets! Sallie even wanted her mother to lend her a lace veil, and her gold watch, to add to her dignity—"so as to come home in time for tea, you know, mamma;" but her mother concluded, as Sallie could not tell the time by the watch, the necessity for carrying it was rather doubtful. And after considerable tumbling and popping around like fire-crackers, and making cheeses and whirligigs, and chattering like a whole army of magpies, the children were dressed, at last, and sent on their way rejoicing.
When they got into the street, they took hold of each other's hands and ran all the way, as an inevitable matter of course, and arrived at the ice cream saloon in a laughing, breathless condition, so very little like grown people that I am afraid they must have forgotten their dignity, or left it locked up in the bookcase at home.
They took their seats at one of the marble tables, and with very large eyes and innumerable giggles gave their order, and then there never before was such splendid ice cream! It was so cold, they really had to blow it, and they had to stop a great many times to laugh, and to wonder what the other people thought of them; at any rate, everybody would think they were "instraordinary" good girls to be allowed to come out all by themselves.
"Only imagine," continued Sallie, "perhaps, after this, we shall be considit such excellent children—kind of oldey and serious, you know—that mamma will pack up our trunks, and let us go eleventeen times farther than this. How perfectly delightful! to go in every direction at once, and rush all round the world like the comic papa told me of the other day;" and Sallie became so excited with this brilliant prospect that she jumped up and down, and gave a little scream of joy.