“Lolly,” say I, “little Jack Frost came in last night by the window panes; don’t you long to hear about little Jack?” and my voice is sweet as a sugar lump.
“No, marmy, I want some beefsteak. I smell it;” and Lolly gives so loud a sniff that I have to raise my voice, and thereby lose some of its sweetness.
“It is strange so many things should have Jack tied to them,” I continued. “There’s Jack-at-a-pinch, Jack-at-all-trades,—”
“Tom Bower,” breaks in Lolly, “has a toy he calls Jack-in-a-box; nasty thing, it jumps. I want my egg boiled so hard that this poker couldn’t smash it,” and he gives the fender such a bang that my nerves go ting-a-ling like a cracked bell,—not like poor Ophelia’s sweet bells, jangled, out of tune. But duty requires me to go on, for must not my Lolly understand something of great Nature’s laws? With sternness I proceed.
“There is, also, Jack-a-dandy, Jack-ass, Jack-a-napes, Jack Ketch, the hangman, Jack-pudding—”
“And Jack-straw,” cries Lolly; “and somebody’s lost my set of ivory Jack-straws.”
“My son, the substance, or appearance, which we call Jack Frost, is rigidly and beautifully regulated by laws, crystals—”
“Where is that boy?” asked papa Dinks, coming from behind his newspaper.
A moment afterward we heard him singing in the breakfast-room, “Spring, spring, gentle spring,” and presently found him near a beefsteak tranquilly munching a biscuit.
“The childhood,” says Milton, “shows the man, as morning shows the day;” but Milton was always saying one thing or another. If this is true, what will Lolly’s bump of reverence be when he has grown to be a man? Where shall a bank be found rich enough for him to draw the money he must have? And how many persons will be hired to find his garters, his hat, his knife, his book? I never could abear Paradise Lost, and I don’t wonder that the angel with the flaming sword kept Adam and Eve out of the garden, for Adam and Eve were a poky pair, after all, and could never have raised vegetables; that is, according to Milton. As a man, will this said Lolly domineer over his kind, and exact his rights? He thinks it hard that children should not have the privilege of scolding parents, when the parents are so old and the children so young; and why shouldn’t he contradict, when he is contradicted; he knows just as well as any old Dinks knows?