Sometimes Walter went down to peep into the kitchen. There is always a great deal going on in a hotel kitchen,—so many turkeys and chickens and birds and fish to fix for dinner. Walter liked to see them roast a little pig whole, and then put an ear of corn in his mouth and lay him on a plate—or make a lobster salad look like a turtle, or a boiled ham like a pork-upine! Then Pietro, the cook, was worth looking at, himself. He was a great six-footer of an Italian; with eyes—(my senses, how big and how black they were!) Walter thought he must look like the robbers that his uncle John, who had been across the seas, used to tell about. Then, Pietro had such big, fierce whiskers, too, and always wore a bright scarlet cap, with a long gilt tassel, and altogether, for a cook, he looked very picturesque—(Aunt Fanny knows that's a long word, but you must look it out in the dictionary.) When Pietro got angry with any of the waiters, I promise you he'd make his frying-pan fly across the kitchen as if it were bewitched, and then poor little Walter would fly up stairs as fast as his little fat legs could carry him.
But Pietro was not always cross, for all he looked as though he had been fed on thunder; no—he often tossed Walter a bunch of raisins, or a rosy apple; and it was quite beautiful when he did smile, to see his white teeth glitter. Sometimes, when he was waiting for some dish to cook, he would take Walter on his knee, and tell him of his own beautiful bright Italy, where the skies were as soft and blue as Walter's eyes, and where (if we might believe Pietro) one might dance and sing and eat grapes forever, without working for them; but when Walter looked up innocently and said, "then why didn't you stay there, Pietro?" Pietro would drop him as if he had been a red-hot potatoe, and hiss something in Italian from between his teeth, that poor little Walter could not begin to understand; but as he was a pretty sensible little boy, he always took himself off till Pietro felt better natured, and asked him no more questions.
One rainy day Walter had wandered all over the hotel, trying to get amused. The nurse had a friend call to see her, and she had given his little sisters all Walter's playthings, to keep them quiet, that they need not trouble her; and Walter's mamma told him, when he put his little head into the drawing-room, that "she didn't care what he did, if he didn't bother her;" so the poor little fellow was quite at his wits' ends to know what to do with himself. Finally it struck him that it would be fine fun to "play fish." So he went to one of his mother's drawers and got a long string, on the end of which he fastened a crooked pin; then he went way up—up—up—so many flights of stairs, to the very highest entry he could find, way to the top of the house; from there the stair-case wound round, and round, and round, like a cork-screw, down into the front entry, far enough to make you dizzy to look over.
Well, Walter let down his line, and then he reached over his little curly head to see how far it went. Poor, merry, bright-eyed little Walter!—how can I tell the rest? Over he went, beating and bruising his little head—down—down—till he reached the marble floor in the lower entry, where he was taken up—dead!
His young mamma cried very hard,—but that didn't bring back her poor, neglected little boy; but it made her a better mother. She loves to stay in the nursery now, with Walter's little sisters nestled in her lap; and sometimes when they smile, she will part the sunny curls from their little foreheads, and the tears will fall like rain drops on their rosy faces, as she remembers her poor, darling, mangled, little Walter.
[ CHILDREN, DID YOU EVER HEAR OF MR. "THEY SAY?" ]
I shan't ask you if you ever saw him, because I know that, like other cowards, he generally skulks out of sight; but I'm very sure if you could get a peep at him, you would find that he had a "cloven foot." But if I can't tell you who Mr. "They Say" is, I can tell you what he is.
It quite drives him frantic to see any person happier than himself, or more fortunate; and as sure as any one gets more love, or more money, than he has, he will knit his ugly brows to contrive somehow to give them the heart-ache. Sometimes he will do it in one way, and sometimes in another; sometimes he will do it by shrugging his shoulders, shaking his head, and looking as if he could say something dreadful bad about a person, if he only had a mind to. He has made many a poor woman, who had no brave arm to strike the coward down, weep her bright eyes dim, till she longed to lay her aching head with the silent company in the quiet church-yard.
You'd suppose that nobody who owned a heart, would ever choose the society of such a wicked villain. You'd suppose nobody who loved God, would ever listen to him, or repeat his false sayings; but, alas! people are so fond of hearing "something new," that they can't make up their minds to turn their backs upon him; so they sit, and smile, and listen, till he has nothing more to tell, and then they draw down their faces, and tell him he "ought not to talk so!"—just as if Mr. "They Say" didn't see that they were perfectly delighted with him? Certainly, he goes off laughing in his sleeve to think they suppose him such a fool.