The Annals of Ann

by Kate Trimble Sharber

I told her I certainly had heard the Aryan family spoken of, I couldn't remember where, but she said oh, yes, she knew it was a swell family and that I must have read about it in the pink sheet of the Sunday paper.

Then she said she had a souvenir of him, and, as I'm crazy about souvenirs, I begged her to go and get it, hoping very much that it was a miniature on ivory set in diamonds.

"What is it?" I kept asking her, as she was trying to get her legs untangled out of her petticoats to get up and go after it; we were sitting flat down on the floor, which sometimes tangles your heels dreadfully. Finally she got up, tearing a piece of trimming out, which she did up in a little ball and threw away, so her mother would lay it on the washerwoman when she saw the tear.

"Ashes;" she told me, kinder whispery, after she had reached the front door, for she was afraid somebody would hear; but it gave me a terrible feeling and I wondered how she got them away from his relations and whether she had to go to the graveyard in the middle of the night to do it or not. I comforted myself with the thought that they would be in a prettily ornamented urn, even if they were ashes, for I had read about urns in Roman history; but shucks! when she got back it wasn't a thing but a pink chewing-gum wrapper full of cigar ashes that he had thrown away one day right in front of her as they were going up the steps to the library.

Before I had time to tell her how disappointed I was there came a picture-taking man up the front walk and asked us to let him take Waterloo's picture for some post-cards. If you were pleased you could buy them and if you weren't you didn't have to. But he knew of course there wouldn't any lady be hardhearted enough not to buy a picture of her own baby.

Nothing could have delighted us more, unless the man had said take our pictures; and Jean remarked that Waterloo ought to be fixed up funny to correspond with the string of beads around his neck. She ran and got a pair of overalls that belonged to the lady she boards with's little boy and we stuffed Waterloo in. He looked too cute for anything and we was just settling him down good for the picture when Jean spoke up again and said oh, wasn't it a pity that he didn't have any hair on his head, as hair showed up so well in a picture. I told her it was aristocratic not to have hair when you're a baby, on your head. She said shucks! how could anything connected with a baby be aristocratic? This made me mad and I told her maybe she didn't know what it was to be aristocratic. She said she did, too; it was aristocratic to have a wide front porch to your house and to eat sweetbreads when you were dining in a hotel. I was thinking up something else to say when the picture-taking man said hurry up. There is a great deal more to this, but it is so late that I'm going to leave the rest for to-morrow night. Anyhow maybe my grandchildren will be more interested to go on and read, for magazine writers always chop their stories off at the most particular spot, when they are going to be continued, just where you are holding your breath, so as to make you buy the next number of the magazine.

Well, in just a minute after we were talking about the hair Jean said she knew the very thing! Her Aunt Merle was up on the far back porch drying her hair that she had just finished washing, and had left her rat lying on her bureau. She had seen it there when she went to get the ashes of Mr. Aryan. She said it was a lovely rat, which cost five dollars, all covered with long brown hair; and she said it was just the thing to set off Waterloo's bald head fine. So she ran and got it and we fixed it on. He looked exactly like a South Sea Islander which you see in the side show of an exposition by paying twenty-five cents extra. (An exposition is a large place which makes your feet nearly kill you.) But the picture-man said he looked mighty cute and snapped him in several splendid positions.

Now, if Mr. St. John had just stayed where he belonged this would be the end of the story and I could go on to bed to-night, without having to sit up by myself writing till the clocks strike eleven, which is a lonesome hour when everybody else is in bed.

But Mr. St. John didn't stay away; and, as all the bad things that happen are laid on Fate, I reckon she was the one that put it into his head to walk up those front steps and on to that porch before we noticed him, for we were trying our best to get Waterloo back into citizen's clothes.

He stopped to see what it was we were scrambling over, and when he saw that it was alive he threw up his nice white hands and remarked "Heavens!" which is the elegant thing to say when you're surprised, although father always says, "Jumping Jerusalem!"