“I mean people who aren’t little things, like Zaidie and Helen, or grown up, like mamma,” explained Cricket defensively. “Just scattered along, like all of us, I mean.”
The days flew by on wings. Edith was sufficiently companionable to Marjorie for the latter to be included in many of the little doings that mamma planned for the younger girls. Will and Archie sometimes accompanied them also, and sometimes were off on their own account.
Archie was as much of a tease as ever, and with the four girls right under his thumb, so to speak, he had a most congenial employment in tormenting them. Indeed, the various tricks on both sides formed a large part of the entertainment.
The second night of his arrival, Archie carefully made apple-pie beds, in which he was an adept, for the occupants of the spare room, and the girls soon found it wisest not to go to bed on any night without carefully examining everything in the room. One night all the sheets were thickly strewn with salt, which, being white, did not show at a casual glance, but was painfully apparent when they lay down. Again, he cut up the splints of a number of whisk brooms, and the straws he scattered on the mattress under the sheet. Did you ever go to bed under the same circumstances? It is not comfortable. Another night, he lined the pillow-cases with white paper, carefully basted on the ticking. Once, by an ingenious arrangement of some nails tied together with string and hung outside the window one windy night, a weird sound, like a clanking chain, was made, and the girls had a lively hunt for the mysterious noises that kept them all awake.
Mamma watched the fun carefully, but let them go on, as long as it was all good-natured. And indeed, the girls found many a way to repay their ingenious tormentor. They sewed up the sleeves of his night-shirt securely, not only of the one he was wearing, but of all he had with him, and Will’s also, lest Archie should borrow. They filled his tooth-powder bottle with soda, and stuffed the fingers of his best gloves with cotton.
One night, when Archie had been particularly bad all day, Cricket took her revenge by creeping stealthily into his room after he was asleep—having been kept awake herself, for the purpose, by the united efforts of the other three—and very cautiously pasted postage stamps over his eyelids. Like most boys, when once asleep, he rivalled the “Seven Sleepers,” and he never stirred during the performance. Adorned with the stamps, he peacefully slept on all night, while Cricket jubilantly crept back to bed. By morning, the stamps stuck as tightly as if they had been nailed there.
When Archie awoke, to his horror, he could not open his eyes. He felt of them, but the stamps stuck so close that he could not imagine what was the matter, and called out in alarm to Will. Will, of course, when he once opened his own sleepy eyes, was nearly in convulsions of laughter over the blue one-cent stamp adornment on Archie, but, in pretended fright, advised him not to touch his eyes till he could call his uncle. He summoned Doctor Ward in hot haste. Archie, really much disturbed in mind over this strange disorder, was lying perfectly still when his uncle entered. The doctor, entering into the joke, told him that it was nothing serious yet, only a strange growth that had come during the night—perhaps from cold—and he would get his surgical instruments and remove it. Archie groaned at the sound, but his uncle assured him that it would not hurt him much, if he kept perfectly quiet and did not touch his eyes, while he got his instruments. Then the doctor stepped to the bathroom, and came back with a sponge and warm water, and, after much preparation, he began swabbing Archie’s eyes, talking all the time, till Archie was nearly frantic.
“By Jupiter, uncle! How long will I have to keep my eyes bandaged after this operation? What ails the confounded things, anyway? They feel all right, now, if only I could get them open.”
“There!” said his uncle at last, “now try, very carefully, if you can open your eyes. Slowly, mind.”
Archie raised his eyelids, and looked about him.