“That’s exactly it. Now I want you never to feel safe. There is always danger of dropping your ball.”
CHAPTER XXVII.
CRICKET’S BOOMERANG.
Cricket was so completely subdued by this last piece of forgetfulness, and its consequences, that for weeks afterwards her improvement was simply wonderful.
But old habits are very strong. After a time Cricket’s watchfulness over herself grew less, and the old story began. She borrowed Marjorie’s new silk umbrella in a hurry, because she could not find her own, and left it in the horsecar. The very next week she took Zaidee and Helen out to walk, and left them on a seat in the park, while she ran to speak to some little friends. They, not knowing that she had the twins with her, urged her to go down to Howlett’s for hot chocolate with them. She went off, forgetting the children, whom she had charged “not to stir till I come back.” An hour after, when she reached home, she was met by Eliza with a demand for the twins. Nurse flew off on learning where they had been left, and fifteen minutes later she brought in two little shivering, crying girls, who had not stirred from the seat, because Cricket had bidden them stay there. Several policemen and kind-hearted passers-by had gathered around them, and were trying to find out where they belonged.
A fine attack of croup for Helen was the result, and a slight cold for Zaidee, who was stronger, and Cricket was in disgrace again.
“I don’t like to forget,” she said, miserably, when the entire family took her to task that evening. “I never mean to forget, and then I go and do it.”
“Go and don’t do it, you mean,” said Donald.
“The trouble is, little daughter,” said papa, as he had said a hundred times before, “that you do not pay sufficient attention. You know how many times I have told you that attention is putting your mind upon a point, with a view to remembering it.”
“I expect that’s the trouble,” said Cricket, quickly. “I do fasten my mind on a point. I put it on so hard that the point sticks through, and then of course I can’t remember.”
“I should think you’d remember sometimes, by mere accident,” remarked Marjorie, looking up from her book. “There are exceptions to all rules.”