XV.
SOME MINORS.
TOLD BY JACK.
INSTEAD of going in the country early, as usual, this year we just hung on and hung on until the weather was quite warm, waiting for papa to get strong enough to stand the journey. It seemed to us as if he were an awful while getting well: long after he was able to be dressed, he had to lie on the lounge for the greater part of every day,—the least exertion used him up; and as for his work, Dr. Archard said he wasn't to even think of touching it. But at last—after changing the date several times—a day was set for us to start. We were all delighted; we love to be at the Cottage. You see we have no lessons then, 'cause Miss Marston goes away for her holidays, and we can be out of doors all day long if we choose; papa doesn't mind as long as we're in time for meals and looking clean and decent. There's a lovely cove near our house,—it isn't deep or dangerous,—and there we go boating and swimming; then there's fishing and crabbing, and drives about the country in the big, rattly depot-wagon behind Pegasus,—that's our horse, but he's an awful old slow-poke,—and rides on our donkey, G. W. L. Spry. Oh, I tell you now, it's all just splendid! We always hate to go back to the city.
Perhaps you think our donkey has a queer name. Most people do until we explain. Well, his real name is George Washington Lafayette Spry,—so the man said from whom papa bought him,—but that was such a mouthful to say that Fee shortened it to G. W. L. Spry, and I do believe the "baste," as cook calls him, knows it just as well as the other name,—any way, he answers to it just as readily. He is pretty spry when he gets started, but the thing is to start him.
"G. W. L. SPRY."
Well, to go back, we were delighted at the prospect of getting away, and we all worked like beavers helping to get ready. Miss Marston and the girls and Phil packed,—his college closed ever so long ago,—Fee directed things generally, and addressed and put on tags, and we children ran errands. Almost everything was ready; in fact, some of the furniture had gone,—there're such a lot of us that we have to take a pile of stuff,—when two unexpected things happened that just knocked the whole plan to pieces.
For a good while Max had been urging and urging papa to go to his place in the Adirondacks; he said his mother was there, and she was first-rate at taking care of sick people, and that she'd be awfully glad to see Nannie, too, who, Max declared, needed the change as much as ever papa did. But papa refused, and it was settled that we were all to go to the Cottage, when suddenly Dr. Archard turns round and says that mountain, not sea air was what papa should have, and insisted so on it that at last papa gave in and accepted Max's invitation for Nannie and himself. So then it was arranged that papa, Nannie, and Max were to go to the mountains, and we to the Cottage with Miss Marston,—they going one day, and we the next.
