It was Davie who had all these things to do, though. Lily, sweet little blossom, only followed around after him and said "Yes."
But as for Davie, he would willingly have done everybody's work all over the city, from the President of the University, wearing his four-cornered hat on Commencement Day, down to the charcoal man who went by a great many times a day making the prettiest noise you ever heard, and looking as though he were having the best time in the world, with nobody to worry him about washing his face or keeping his clothes clean.
But the mischief had to wait now; for the twins were lying in the cradle all day long, with their faces as red as poppies, and their poor little eyes shut up and swollen.
"It is as good as a poor play to see how beautifully the measles have come out. Davie and Lily will get along all right now, as sure as A is apple-dumpling, only we must see to it that they don't take any cold," said Aunt Ann, giving them a good drink of thoroughwort, and then hurrying off to attend to the duties of the shop, with her glasses in her hand and a pair of scissors dangling at her side by a long green braid.
It didn't seem much like a poor play, or any kind of a play, though to the twins to lie there in a bed of nettles with their eyes full of hot cotton and their throats full of pepper, and the air full of people making up dreadful faces at them, all with sore eyes and horrid red noses.
So there they lay in the cradle while a blue-bottle-fly buzzed shrilly from a dark corner where a fat gray spider had tied him up by his feet and was sharpening her bill ready to make chops of him.
The milkman whopped at the back gate; the cracked school-bell around the corner rang out long and loud; somewhere a carpenter was pounding stroke upon stroke; and, as a background, beneath all came up the heavy grinding roll of wheels and the clashing beat of hoofs upon the rough pavement.
The tall brass clock ticked and ticked and held up its hands in solemn surprise at finding it was only ten o'clock after all. Why! it seemed already as long as a whole day since the bell on the First Baptist church had struck nine.
Then Lily began to cry with a gentle little noise, about as though a humming-bird was fluttering his wings against the cup of a trumpet-flower.
"What is the matter, Lily?" asked Davie, feebly. "What you crying for?"