“But let me tell you,” I said, with a serious air, “you would not be the Night-cap children. I have a new idea in my head. I am going to write stories this time, in which I intend to show the evil effects of special faults and bad habits, and the unfailing happiness children will find in being good, and doing good. Yes, I am going to fire guns this time; and then, if the stories are first told to you, what do you think you will be called?”
“W-h-a-t?” cried all the children, with breathless interest.
I put on a monstrous solemn face, and raising my arms as if I was going to shoot, uttered the first four words very slowly, and the last four, very quickly—
“You—will—be—called—The Pop-gun Children—Bang!”
But I could not help a merry twinkle in my eyes, and the children saw it; so after the first instant of surprise at their new and queer title, they burst out into hearty chuckling laughter, exclaiming, “Oh, what fun! We are to be the ‘Pop-gun Children!’ Shoot away, Aunt Fanny. Make ready! Take aim! Fire! Bang! bang! bang!” and they commenced to shoot each other with their fore-fingers, and made such a terrible racket, that two very grave and very prim old ladies, who were knitting stockings on the other side of the room, looked at us so severely through their big round spectacles, that I had a great mind to tell the children to take hold of hands, and we would all march up in one long row, and with a One, two, three! fall down plump on our fourteen knees, and say we were sorry for being happy so loud.
But the next moment, I thought, that perhaps these poor old souls had no children in their own homes, and were not used to so much noise—perhaps they had only cats and parrots to love them—and then I felt sorry for them in earnest, and whispered to the children, “Come, let us go out under the trees, and finish our talk.”
It would have made you smile, if you could have seen how they tried to get the dimples out of their faces, as they walked past the two old ladies. They puckered their mouths into button-holes, and seemed to be stepping on eggs, but the very instant they got outside the front door I really thought they had wings all at once, for they seemed to fly under a great oak-tree, where there was a large rustic seat, and tumbling down pell-mell upon it, Fred, the eldest boy, cried out, “Walk up, ladies and gentlemen! Here you will see the celebrated Pop-Gun Children, each a head and five pair of shoulders taller than anybody else, because they have got Aunt Fanny all to themselves: ten cents each, and children half-price, and we intend to give the money to the insanitary commission.”
This made me laugh so, that I did not perceive that a lady and gentleman who had been sitting reading under another tree a little way off, had left their seats, and were standing close to us smiling, until Sophie said, “Dear mamma and papa, this is ‘Aunt Fanny.’”
I tried to look grave, as I shook hands with “mamma and papa,” and heard their kind words of welcome: words so kind, that I do not like to tell them—and then all the children speaking at once, told about their new funny name, and my new stories, at which mamma and papa seemed very much delighted.
“But when will they begin?” asked the children; “to-morrow?”