All the Cubs’ mothers had been “awfully bucked,” as one of the Cubs said, when their sons took to cleaning everything and lighting fires and making their beds themselves. But poor Dicky never seemed able to please his mother.
There was the time when he was standing on the step-ladder in the street, cleaning the windows, and a very elegant lady, Mrs. Jones, had called and been much shocked, so that mother was angry and had punished Dicky, as though he were doing something wrong!
There was the time Cook was so furious because she found him about to put a match to the kitchen fire, which he had laid himself at 6 A.M. as a surprise for her. She had said he was a naughty little boy; he was playing in her kitchen and trying to set the house afire! And then the time mother was so cross because he had blacking on his hands and a smudge on his nose. And when he had explained that he had been making his boots lovely and black and shiny, like coal—and Cook’s as well—she had been still more angry, and said he must not be so mischievous, and meddle with what did not concern him. Altogether, everything was very sad. He went to bed one night feeling especially down in the dumps, for his mother had again scolded him.
The next morning’s post brought Mrs. Dean some very bad news. The bank in which she had nearly all her money had closed its doors; it was paying nothing at all, and she was left with a very little sum of money and the house which her husband had built a few years before he died. Her friend, Mrs. Jones, came to condole with her.
“There was the time he was standing on a step-ladder in the street, cleaning the windows, and a very elegant lady, Mrs. Jones, had called and been much shocked”
When she had heard the whole sad story, she looked very serious.
“And you say you are going to dismiss both your servants? My dear Mrs. Dean, what will you do? Who will do the work for you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” sobbed Mrs. Dean. “I shall have to myself, I suppose. It’s hard, very hard. And it’s not as if I had a daughter. I’ve only Dicky—a great, helpless boy. Why, it’s all we can do to keep him out of mischief.”
Mrs. Dean was very unhappy.