Paula had labored long and seriously with her little brother; but he didn’t take polishing well at all—that is, of the sort which his elder sister was minded to give him. It made not the slightest impression on this small man to be forbidden a dozen times a day to use the language which came naturally to his lips, and which from his association with the boys of the street he had come to consider smart.
More than this, Uncle Fritz was always inclined to concur in Fritz, junior’s, own opinion. But, for the matter of that, pretty nearly everything the little lad did was “smart” in the eyes of his adoring uncle, who firmly believed that his namesake was an epitome of every human grace and virtue. He would not have had the child different for half his fortune; and it was well for the little fellow that he had the wholesomest and sweetest of natures, and that he had sprung from a race of gentlefolk.
But there was a polishing he did take, readily. If by any chance—alas! they were frequent—he had inadvertently really pained any living heart, he could not rest till he had done his childish utmost to banish that pain. Once, on one never-to-be-forgotten, dreadful day, he had told Fritzy Nunky a lie! “Story” does not express it; fib is too mild; falsehood or untruth indicate a premeditation which was absent from the offence; so, though it is an ugly word, never to be carelessly uttered or written, it must stand. No matter what the lie was about; that was between the two Fritzes. Suffice it to tell that the big Fritz had suffered actual agony, fearing that his idol was going to be found wanting in that first foundation of all nobility,—truthfulness. And the little Fritz has seen the agony, and—but the sorrow of a little child is sacred.
So that rough corner of his character was polished till the shining gold showed bright and sparkling. Fritz never told a second lie; nor would he have done so for any enticement which could have been offered him.
Now he remembered that he had been “spunky” and almost “killed” somebody; and somehow this tender-hearted little gentleman felt as if his day would begin better if he could get that unpleasant memory off his mind. So he slipped out of bed, threw his nightshirt into one corner of the room, soused the water in the bowl all over the floor, in his vain effort to make it answer for the tubbing to which he was accustomed, tried to straighten his curly tangles of hair with two strokes of the brush, then to button his shoes on the wrong feet, and gave up the matter as satisfactorily settled by leaving both unfastened, put his knickerbockers on wrong side before with a goodly protuberance of shirt waist to protest against the arrangement, and hied himself out of the room.
As he passed a little chamber under the stairs, he heard the familiar snore of Fritz the elder, and was about to run back and get a pillow to hurl at him. It was a kind of awakening to which both the Fritzes were accustomed, in their loving equality of playfellows, but for once Fritz, junior, refrained.
Not from the slightest hesitation about disturbing his guardian, but because it would hinder him from finding and apologizing to Melville. He was in a great hurry to get that job off his hands; then he would be free to hunt up that donkey who lived with his pretty aunt, and ask his permission to be ridden.
Melville was in a refreshing sleep. His feeble body needed it as much as his tired brain, for half of the invalid’s crossness came, had his relatives but known it, from a restlessness of mind which needed to be understood before it could be cured. There had never been any one about him to understand it; so the crippled lad had lain month in and month out weaving his fancies to himself, and disdaining to confide them to any other, as one shrinks from trusting a perfectly and freshly ripened cluster of grapes to the careless fingers of a child, lest its delicate bloom be lost before its beauty becomes known.
Out of his dreamless rest he was awakened by the touch of a little hand.
“Wake up, you poor crippler, can’t you! I want to tell you I— Say, can’t you wake up?”