More Bed-Time Stories

by Louise Chandler Moulton

The cold weather came on early that year. Before the middle of December Westbrook pond was frozen over, and then began the winter's fun. Every afternoon Ralph Rosenburgh drove his ponies down to the very edge of the pond, and sat there for awhile, a patient looker-on at the frolics he could not share.

With Christmas, however, there came to him from the fond, maternal Santa Claus, a chair constructed on purpose for pushing over the ice, and then he became a daily partaker in the festivities upon the pond. The chair was modelled after a certain kind of invalid, garden chair, which is arranged to be either propelled by some one else from behind, or by the occupant turning a kind of crank at the sides.

Ralph soon learned to manage it for himself, and finding himself strong enough to do so, he used to make the iron-gray man stay with the ponies, while he himself moved round among the skaters.

And, now that he seemed really one of themselves, the young people, all except Jack Smalley, began to feel a kindly interest in him. Jack alone went on hating him more and more, finding daily fresh causes of offence in this boy who wore velvet and fur in place of his own coarse gray cloth, and woollen, hand-knit comforter. What was he, this puny wretch, without pluck enough to stand on his own legs, that he should wear the garments of a young prince? You see that Master Smalley had the primitive idea of young princes, and supposed them clad in everlasting velvet and ermine. But there were no princes in America, thank Heaven, and nobody in Westbrook wanted fools round who tried to look like king's sons. Very innocent of trying to look like any one was poor Ralph, if the truth had been known,—this mother's darling of a boy, who took no more thought of his attire than a weed, but whom Mrs. Rosenburgh wrapped assiduously in all that was softest and warmest, as she had, all his life, surrounded him with warmth and softness.

After a while there came a January afternoon, over which a gray, moist sky brooded. Already the ice had shown some symptoms of breaking up, and everybody was out, making the most of it while it lasted.

Among the rest Ralph Rosenburgh came down to the pond,—left Pease-blossom and Mustard seed in the iron-gray man's charge, as usual, and began to propel himself over the ice, with arms whose increasing vigor was a daily and happy astonishment to himself.

At last he wandered away a little from most of the skaters. He felt himself and his chair rather in their way, they were wheeling and zigzagging so swiftly, and he moved along the pond quite rapidly toward the eastern end.

It chanced that no one noticed his course except Jack Smalley, and Jack knew that he was going directly toward a place where the ice had been recently cut, and where it was thin and treacherous now. Slowly Jack followed him.

"I'd like to see him and that fine chair of his get a good ducking," Jack muttered. "It would serve him right. I guess all them prince's feathers and fineries would look a little more like common folks', after they'd been soused."

I do not think another and darker possibility crossed Jack's mind. Hating Ralph Rosenburgh though he did, I do not think one wish for his death had ever entered his heart. He himself had been in the water, time and again, and got no other harm from it than perhaps a hard cold. He did not realize what a different thing it would be for this delicate invalid, seated in his heavy chair. And so Ralph propelled himself along toward destruction, and Jack, with an evil sneer on his face, skated slowly after him.