If Charlie had been a grown man, with whiskers, and going to some European Court as Minister Extraordinary, he couldn’t have felt the importance of his prospective journey more, or been more weighed down by the preparations for it. The train which was to carry him did not start until two o’clock, and in the six hours which intervened his little tongue was in constant motion, and his little feet tramping up and down stairs, “getting ready.”
“But you’re only going to stay for a week, you know, Charlie,” said Aunt Mary, dismayed at the heap of toys he had industriously gathered in a corner of the sitting-room for transportation, “and you’ll see so many pretty things that you won’t care for any of these.”
“I want to carry my wheelbarrow. I will be cross if I don’t carry my wheelbarrow. And my cunnin’ little cunnin’ watlin’ pot, and my high chair, and some more.”
But Aunt Mary couldn’t get them into her trunk, and the railroad man wouldn’t let Charlie take them into the cars. “Put them all away nicely, and then Charlie will have them when he comes home.”
It required a great deal of judicious argument, intermingled with promises, to gain the point, and final success was only achieved by a formal agreement, to which grandma was made a witness, by virtue of which Charlie was to become the possessor of “a speckled rocking-horse, just like Johnny Baker’s, with real hair ears, and a tight tail, that boys couldn’t pull out.” This compact having been made, Charlie submitted to the washing and dressing process with comparative good grace.
An exceedingly light dinner preceded the start, varied by excursions to the front door to see if the depot stage was coming. It came at last, and, after the leave-taking, Charlie and Aunt Mary were packed in among half a dozen others. The whip cracked, the coach gave a sudden lurch, and then dashed down the street at the heels of the horses, who seemed anxious to get to the station at the earliest possible moment. There was just time to get tickets and seats before the train started.
If Charlie was unmanageable before, he was doubly so now. At every stopping-place he made desperate efforts to get out of the car, and once or twice, in spite of Aunt Mary’s efforts, very nearly succeeded. He dropped his hat out of the window; he dirtied his face beyond redemption with dust and cinders; he put cake crumbs down the neck of an old lady who had fallen asleep on the seat just in front, and horrified the more staid portion of the passengers in the car by a series of acts highly inconsistent with the rules of good breeding, and the character of a nice boy.
Boston was reached at last, and the perils of procuring a hack and getting safely home in it were surmounted. So thankful was Aunt Mary that she could have dropped upon her knees on the sidewalk in front of the door; but she managed to control her feelings, paid the hackman his dollar, still keeping a tight grip upon Charlie, and, despite his struggles to join the distant audience of a hand-organ, managed to get him safely into the house, where he was at once delivered over to the other members of the household.
“I never, never, never will go out of the house with that child again!” she declared, half crying, and sinking into a chair without taking her bonnet off. “He’s enough to kill anyone outright. No wonder they wanted to get rid of him at home! It’ll be a mercy if he don’t drive us all crazy before the week is out. One thing is certain, they’ll have to send for him. I’ll never take him home again.”
“Why didn’t you drug him, Aunt Mary,” asked Tom, with a great show of sympathy. “I would.”