Little boys know how soon their sailor-coat-sleeves will dry up tearful eyes and let bright sunshine again into boy-hearts (for mammas and nurses well know that a little boy’s handkerchief is a myth), and Artie was soon chasing his sister up the stairs, “two steps at a time,” to hunt for his fishing-line, which, in New York, had only caught such fish as might present themselves, whilst angling over the bannisters, or from between the bars of nursery windows, but now the young fisherman’s eyes sparkled as he thought of squirming perch, silvery scup and tautog to be caught in old Narragansett Bay, as his Papa had done in his boy-days.
CHAPTER II.
“I pray you hear my song of this nest,
For it is not long.”
I suppose I must follow the fashion of all story-tellers, and introduce my young readers to the Haven family, one by one. I grant it is rather tiresome, but you know, the first thing in the study of grammar is to get some knowledge of all the little parts which make up the great Family of Speech; so, in your Geography, you must make the separate acquaintance of little streams and bays as well as of great rivers and oceans, tiny capes, huge promontories, and continents, before you can have much idea of the great world; so, in every-day life, we get on better, and feel much more at our ease with new acquaintances, after we have learned something about them, so I will begin by telling you that Mr. and Mrs. Havens lived in a brown stone house on Madison avenue, and if you had chanced to pass Forty-second street early some Spring morning, and looked up to the third story windows of one of the houses on your left, you, most likely, would have seen six little faces looking out, six little noses and six pairs of chubby cheeks flattened against the window-panes, earnestly studying the movements of that little girl in soiled dress. Poor child! her tatters, flapping apart with the motion of the warm south wind, show two thin, stockingless, shoeless legs, telling a tale of want and neglect at home, as her little iron hook clinks against the curb-stones, seeking to find hidden treasures of rags or bread-crust to fill the bag she bears. Do you guess why the thin, soiled, childish face looks up so earnestly at the window of No. 310, as she passes? It is because there she finds the one little rift of cheer which steals into the poor heart, the day long. Child as she is, knowing nothing of a true home and mother’s tenderness, she reads, with a child’s instinct, the sympathy and companionship in those bright young faces, and well remembers how, early every Sunday morning, a little basket is let down from those windows filled with nice bits which the children have saved from their Saturday’s dinner and Sunday’s breakfast, gifts costing them often a little self-denial, for which they are well repaid by the bright look in the girl’s face as she draws out the apple or the orange which, yesterday, was handled over so many times, and wistfully gazed at before its owner could quite willingly consign it to the little basket. Can you not see, now, why Papa and Mamma, gazing from the windows, regard that poor child’s bag with so much interest, nay, almost reverence? They feel as if, somehow, it became the little altar on which, each Lord’s day, their dear ones offered up their gifts of that which had cost them something of self-denial, and they prayed that the Holy Dove might ever nestle in their young hearts, prompting to love and kindly deeds which, offered to those little neglected city waifs, is indeed offered to Him who has said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me.”
Those third-story windows let in, too, a deal of sunlight to the Family Menagerie, in the nursery, where the Keeper, Master Artie, a bright boy of ten, when not engaged—as, very sorry I am to say it, he sometimes is—in teasing the little animals in the nursery cage, is often to be found quirled up in the wide window-seat, following Napoleon Bonaparte through his snowy Russian marches, or on the bloody, fatal field of Waterloo, or reading aloud to the never-wearied trio of the wonderful content and skilful management of that remarkable Swiss Family Robinson, who seem to have borrowed the brains as well as the daring of the great Crusoe.
Daisy, the family Owl, has a wise look beaming from her large full eyes. Seldom does eight years bring such a deal of wisdom to a young mind, such wonderful acuteness in discovering family faults, and such readiness in reproving the same; but Daisy is loving, perfectly truthful, and really a great help to the nurses in the care of the little ones. She is a most devoted mother to two wax, two china, and one large rag doll. Patiently and uncomplainingly, has she watched over their sick-beds, nursing them tenderly through their various stages of whooping cough, measles, and scarlet fever, and the nurses tell “how pale Miss Daisy looked, one morning, when, on going to Felicie’s little bed, she saw the face of the young French beauty quite disfigured with what was, probably, the very disease which was then raging in New York.”
Poor Felicie was taken, for fear of infection, to the attic, and even now, bears traces of the sad disease. It was a most curious fact that Master Artie, too, was kept, that very day, in solitary confinement by Mamma for some reason, and it was whispered among the servants that he could tell, better than any one else, just how and where Felicie caught the disease. Two kittens claim Daisy as their Mamma also; she is very careful of them, fearful that their lives may be brief, like those of most of her pets; and it is strange that kittens, grown in the same house with small boys, are not generally long-lived.