“That is the fine thing about it, O Spirit—the sweet ignorance of it! I hope I understand that.”
“I see that you are really wiser than you have always seemed,” she said, with her baffling smile. “Mischief, as you are prone to call so many things that children do, is as wholesome and sweet as a field of clover. I, the Spirit of Mischief, have a serious business in the world, which I’ll tell you about, as you are old and know so little. I’m here to combat and confuse the evil spirits that seek to stifle the good cheer of childhood. These little children that always go to bed without a fuss and say good night very sweetly in French, and never know bread and butter and jam by their real names—you really do not like them half as well as you like natural children. You remember that you laughed when Jessamine’s French governess came, and left the second day because the black cat got into her trunk. There was really no harm in that!”
The Spirit of Mischief laughed. She grew very small, and I watched her curiously, wondering whether she was really a creature of this work-a-day world. Then suddenly she grew to life-size again, and laughed gleefully, standing with her hands thrust deep into her coat pockets.
“Jessamine!” I exclaimed. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I was, a little bit; but you—you snored awfully,” she said, “and waked me up.”
She still watched me, laughing; and looking down I saw that she had been busy while I slept. A barricade of books had been built around me,—a carefully wrought bit of masonry, as high as my knees.
“You’re the wicked giant,” declared Jessamine, quite in her own manner, and with no hint of the half-real, elfish spirit of my dream. “And I’m the good little Princess that has caught you at last. And I’ll never let you out of the tower—Oh they’re coming! They’re coming!”
She flashed to the door and out upon the veranda where steps had sounded, leaving me to deliver myself from the tower of the Spirit of Mischief with the ignorant hands of Age.
Confessions of a “Best-Seller”
Confessions of a “Best-Seller”