Chapter VI: Part 6

“He’ll stop when _I_ tell him to,” Laurence said, in the grim tone his father sometimes used, and with an air of power and determination, he rolled up the right sleeve of his shirtwaist, exposing the slender arm as far as the elbow. Then he shook his small fist in Willamilla’s face.

“You quit your noise!” he said sternly. “You hush up! Hush up this minute! Hush _opp_!”

Willamilla abated nothing.

“Didn’t you hear me tell you to hush up?” Laurence asked her fiercely. “You goin’ to _do_ it?” And he shook his fist at her again.

Upon this, Willamilla seemed vaguely to perceive something personal to herself in his gesture, and to direct her own flagellating arms as if to beat at his approaching fist.

“Look out!” Laurence said threateningly. “Don’t you try any o’ that with _me_, Mister!”

But the mulatto baby’s squirmings were now too much for Daisy; she staggered, and in fear of dropping the lively burden, suddenly thrust it into Laurence’s arms.

“Here!” she gasped. “I’m ’most worn out! Take her!”

“Oh, golly!” Laurence said.

“Don’t _drop_ her!” both ladies screamed. “Put her back in the wagon.”

Obeying them willingly for once, he turned to the wagon to replace Willamilla therein; but as he stooped, he was forced to pause and stoop no farther. Hossifer had stationed himself beside the wagon and made it clear that he would not allow Willamilla to be replaced. He growled; his upper lip quivered in a way that exhibited almost his whole set of teeth as Laurence stooped, and when Laurence went round to the other side of the wagon, and bent over it with his squirming and noisy bundle, Hossifer followed, and repeated the demonstration. He heightened its eloquence, in fact, making feints and little jumps, and increasing the visibility of his teeth, as well as the poignancy of his growling. Thus menaced, Laurence straightened up and moved backward a few steps, while his two friends, some distance away, kept telling him, with unreasonable insistence, to do as they had instructed him.

“Put her in the wagon, and come _on_!” they called. “We got to go _back_! It’s after three _o’clock_! Come _on_!”

Laurence explained the difficulty in which he found himself. “He won’t let me,” he said.

“Who won’t?” Daisy asked, coming nearer.

“This dog. He won’t let me put him back in the wagon; he almost bit me when I tried it. Here!” And he tried to restore Willamilla to Daisy. “You take her an’ put her in.”

But Daisy, retreating, emphatically declined—which was likewise the course adopted by Elsie when Laurence approached her. Both said that Hossifer “must _want_” Laurence to keep Willamilla, for thus they interpreted Hossifer’s conduct.

“Well, I _won’t_ keep her,” Laurence said hotly. “I don’t expect to go deaf just because some old dog don’t want her in the wagon! I’m goin’ to slam her down on the sidewalk and let her lay there! I’m gettin’ mighty tired of all this.”

But when he moved to do as he threatened, and would have set Willamilla upon the pavement, the unreasonable Hossifer again refused permission. He placed himself close to Laurence, growling loudly, displaying his teeth, bristling, poising dangerously, and Laurence was forced to straighten himself once more without having deposited the infant, whom he now hated poisonously.

“My _good_nuss!” he said desperately.

“Don’t you see?” Daisy cried, and her tone was less sympathetic than triumphant. “It’s just the way we said; Hossifer _wants_ you to keep her!”

Elsie agreed with her, and both seemed pleased with themselves for having divined Hossifer’s intentions so readily, though as a matter of fact they were entirely mistaken in this intuitional analysis. Hossifer cared nothing at all about Laurence’s retaining Willamilla; neither was the oyster-coloured dog’s conduct so irrational as the cowed and wretched Laurence thought it. In the first place, Hossifer was never quite himself away from an alley; he had been upon a strain all that afternoon. Then, when the elderly coloured woman had forbidden him to accompany her, and he found himself with strangers, including a white boy, and away from everything familiar, except Willamilla, in whom he had never taken any personal interest, he became uneasy and fell into a querulous mood. His uneasiness naturally concerned itself with the boy, and was deepened by two definite attempts of this boy to approach him.

When the family Sunday walk was undertaken, Hossifer followed Willamilla and the wagon; for of course he realized that this was one of those things about which there can be no question: one does them, and that’s all. But his thoughts were constantly upon the boy, and he resolved to be the first to act if the boy made the slightest hostile gesture. Meanwhile, his nerves were unfavourably affected by the strange singing, and they were presently more upset by the blatancies of Willamilla. Her wailing acted unpleasantly upon the sensitive apparatus of his ear—the very thing that made him so strongly dislike tinny musical instruments and brass bands. And then, just as he was feeling most disorganized, he saw the boy stoop. Hossifer did not realize that Laurence stooped because he desired to put Willamilla into the wagon; Hossifer did not connect Willamilla with the action at all. He saw only that the boy stooped. Now, why does a boy stoop? He stoops to pick up something to throw at a dog. Hossifer made up his mind not to let Laurence stoop.

That was all; he was perfectly willing for Willamilla to be put back in the wagon, and the father, the mother and the visiting lady were alike mistaken—especially the father, whose best judgment was simply that Hossifer was of a disordered mind and had developed a monomania for a very special persecution. Hossifer was sane, and his motives were rational. Dogs who are over two years of age never do anything without a motive; Hossifer was nearing seven.

Daisy and Elsie, mistaken though they were, insisted strongly upon their own point-of-view in regard to him. “She _wants_ you to keep her! She _wants_ you to keep her!” they cried, and they chanted it as a sort of refrain; they clapped their hands and capered, adding their noise to Willamilla’s, and showing little appreciation of the desperate state of mind into which events had plunged their old friend Laurence.

“She _wants_ you to keep her!” they chanted. “She _wants_ you to keep her. She _wants_ you to keep her, Laurence!”

Laurence piteously entreated them to call Hossifer away; but the latter was cold to their rather sketchy attempts to gain his attention. However, they succeeded in making him more excited, and he began to bark furiously, in a bass voice. Having begun, he barked without intermission, so that with Hossifer’s barking, Willamilla’s relentless wailing, and the joyous shouting of Daisy and Elsie, Laurence might well despair of making himself heard. He seemed to rave in a pantomime of oral gestures, his arms and hands being occupied.

A man wearing soiled overalls, with a trowel in his hand, came from behind a house near by and walking crossly over the lawn, arrived at the picket fence beside which stood the abandoned wagon.

“Gosh, I never _did_!” he said, bellowing to be audible. “Git away from here! Don’t you s’pose nobody’s got no _ears_? There’s a sick lady in this house right here, and she don’t propose to have you kill her! Go on git away from here now! Go on! I never _did_!”

Annoyed by this labourer’s coarseness, Elsie and Daisy paused to stare at him in as aristocratic a manner as they could, but he was little impressed.

“_Gosh_, I never did!” he repeated. “Git on out the neighbourhood and go where you b’long; you don’t b’long around here!”

“I should think _not_,” Daisy agreed crushingly. “Where _we_ live, if there’s any sick ladies, they take ’em out an’ bury ’em!” Just what she meant by this, if indeed she meant anything, it is difficult to imagine, but she felt no doubt that she had put the man in his ignoble and proper place. Tossing her head, she picked up the handle of the wagon and moved haughtily away, her remarkably small nose in the air. Elsie went with her in a similar attitude.

“Go on! You hear me?” The man motioned fiercely with his trowel at Laurence. “Did you hear me tell you to take that noise away from here? How many more times I got to——”

“My gracious!” Laurence interrupted thickly. “_I_ doe’ want to stay here!”

He feared to move; he was apprehensive that Hossifer might not like it, but upon the man’s threatening to vault over the fence and hurry him with the trowel, he ventured some steps; whereupon Hossifer stopped barking and followed closely, but did nothing worse. Laurence therefore went on, and presently made another attempt to place Willamilla upon the pavement—and again Hossifer supported the ladies’ theory that he wanted Laurence to keep Willamilla.

“_Listen!_” Laurence said passionately to Hossifer. “_I_ never did anything to you! What’s got the matter of you, anyway? How long I got to keep all this _up_?”

Then he called to Elsie and Daisy, who were hurrying ahead and increasing the distance between him and them, for Willamilla’s weight made his progress slow and sometimes uncertain. “Wait!” he called. “Can’ chu _wait_? What’s the _matter_ of you? Can’ chu even _wait_ for me?”

But they hurried on, chattering busily together, and his troubles were deepened by his isolation with the uproarious Willamilla and Hossifer. Passers-by observed him with hearty amusement; and several boys, total strangers to him, gave up a game of marbles and accompanied him for a hundred yards or so, speculating loudly upon his relationship to Willamilla, but finally deciding that Laurence was in love with her and carrying her off to a minister’s to marry her.

He felt that his detachment from the rest of his party was largely responsible for exposing him to these insults, and when he had shaken off the marble-players, whose remarks filled him with horror, he made a great effort to overtake the two irresponsible little girls.

“_Hay!_ Can’ chu _wait_?” he bawled. “Oh, my good-_nuss_! For heavenses’ sakes! Dog-_gone_ it. Can’ chu _wait_! _I_ can’t carry this baby _all_ the way!”

But he did. Panting, staggering, perspiring, with Willamilla never abating her complaint for an instant, and Hossifer warning him fiercely at every one of his many attempts to set her down, Laurence struggled on, far behind the cheery vanguard. Five blocks of anguish he covered before he finally arrived at Elsie Threamer’s gate, whence this unfortunate expedition had set out.

Elsie and Daisy were standing near the gate, looking thoughtfully at Willamilla’s grandmother, who was seated informally on the curbstone, and whistling to herself.

Laurence staggered to her. “_Oh_, my! Oh, _my_!” he quavered, and would have placed Willamilla in her grandmother’s arms, but once more Hossifer interfered—for his was a mind bent solely upon one idea at a time—and Laurence had to straighten himself quickly.

“Make him _quit_ that!” he remonstrated. “He’s done it to me more than five hunderd times, an’ I’m mighty tired of all this around here!”

But the coloured woman seemed to have no idea that he was saying anything important, or even that he was addressing himself to her. She rolled her eyes, indeed, but not in his direction, and continued her whistling.

“Listen! _Look!_” Laurence urged her. “It’s Willie Miller! I wish he was dead; _then_ I wouldn’t hold him any longer, I bet you! I’d just throw him away like I ought to!” And as she went on whistling, not even looking at him, he inquired despairingly: “My goodness, what’s the _matter_ around here, anyways?”

“_Elsie!_” a voice called from a window of the house.

“Yes, mamma.”

“Come in, dear. Come in quickly.”

“Yes’m.”

She had no more than departed when another voice called from a window of the house next door, “Daisy! Come in right away! Do you hear, Daisy?”

“Yes, mamma.” And Daisy went hurriedly upon the summons.

Laurence was left alone in a world of nightmare. The hated Willamilla howled within his ear and weighed upon him like a house; his arms ached, his head rang; his heart was shaken with the fear of Hossifer; and Willamilla’s grandmother sat upon the curbstone, whistling musically, with no apparent consciousness that there was a busy world about her, or that she had ever a grandchild or a dog. His terrible and mystifying condition began to appear to Laurence as permanent, and the accursed Willamilla an Old-Man-of-the-Sea to be his burden forever. A weariness of life—a sense of the futility of it all—came upon him, and yet he could not even sink down under it.

Then, when there was no hope beneath the sky, out of the alley across the street came a delivering angel—a middle-aged, hilarious coloured man seated in an enfeebled open wagon, and driving a thin gray antique shaped like a horse. Upon the side of the wagon was painted, “P. SkoNe MoVeiNG & DeLiVRys,” and the cheerful driver was probably P. Skone himself.

He brought his wagon to the curb, descended giggling to Willamilla’s grandmother, and by the exertion of a muscular power beyond his appearance, got her upon her feet. She became conscious of his presence, called him her lovin’ Peter, blessed and embraced him, and then, consenting to test the tensile strength of the wagon, reclined upon him while he assisted her into it. After performing this feat, he extended his arms for Willamilla.

“He won’t let me,” Laurence said, swallowing piteously. “He wants me to keep him, an’ he’ll bite me if I——”

“Who go’ bite you, white boy?” the cheerful coloured man inquired. “Hossifer?” Laughing, he turned to the faithful animal, and swept the horizon with a gesture. “Hossifer, you git in nat wagon!”

With the manner of a hunted fugitive, Hossifer instantly obeyed; the man lifted Willamilla’s little vehicle into the wagon, took Willamilla in his arms, and climbed chuckling to the driver’s seat. “Percy,” he said to the antique, “you git up!”

Then this heavenly coloured man drove slowly off with Willamilla, her grandmother, Hossifer and the baby-wagon, while Laurence sank down upon the curbstone, wiped his face upon his polka-dotted sleeve and watched them disappear into the dusty alley. Willamilla was still crying; and to one listener it seemed that she had been crying throughout long, indefinite seasons, and would probably continue to cry forever, or at least until a calamity should arrive to her, in regard to the nature of which he had a certain hope.

He sat, his breast a vacancy where lately so much emotion had been, and presently two gay little voices chirped in the yard behind him. They called his name; and he turned to behold his fair friends. They were looking brightly at him over the hedge.

“Mamma called me to come in,” Daisy said.

“So’d mine,” said Elsie.

“Mamma told me I better stay in the house while that ole coloured woman was out here,” Daisy continued. “Mamma said she wasn’t very nice.”

“So’d mine,” Elsie added.

“What did you do, Laurence?” Daisy asked.

“Well——” said Laurence. “They’re gone down that alley.”

“Come on in,” Daisy said eagerly. “We’re goin’ to play I-Spy. It’s lots more fun with three. Come on!”

“Come on!” Elsie echoed. “Hurry, Laurence.”

He went in, and a moment later, unconcernedly and without a care in the world, or the recollection of any, began to play I-Spy with the lady of his heart and her next neighbour.

THE ONLY CHILD

THE little boy was afraid to go into the dark room on the other side of the hall, and the little boy’s father was disgusted with him. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Ludlum Thomas?” the father called from his seat by the library lamp. “Eight years old and scared! Scared to step into a room and turn the light on! Why, when I was your age I used to go out to the barn after dark in the winter-time, and up into the loft, all by myself, and pitch hay down to the horse through the chute. You walk straight into that dining-room, turn on the light, and get what you want; and don’t let’s have any more fuss about it. You hear me?”

Ludlum disregarded this speech. “Mamma,” he called, plaintively, “I want you to come and turn the light on for me. _Please_, mamma!”

Mrs. Thomas, across the library table from her husband, looked troubled, and would have replied, but the head of the house checked her.

“Now let me,” he said. Then he called again: “You going in there and do what I say, or not?”

“Please come on, mamma,” Ludlum begged. “Mamma, I lef’ my bow-an’-arry in the dining-room, an’ I want to get it out o’ there so’s I can take it up to bed with me. Mamma, won’t you please come turn the light on for me?”

“No, she will not!” Mr. Thomas shouted. “What on earth are you afraid of?”

“Mamma——”

“Stop calling your mother! She’s not coming. You were sitting in the dining-room yourself, not more than an hour ago, at dinner, and you weren’t afraid then, were you?”

Ludlum appeared between the brown curtains of the library doorway—the sketch of a rather pale child-prince in black velvet. “No, but——” he said.

“But what?”

“It was all light in there then. Mamma an’ you were in there, too.”

“Now look here!” Mr. Thomas paused, rested his book upon his knee, and spoke slowly. “You know there’s nothing in that dining-room except the table and the chairs and the sideboard, don’t you?”

Ludlum’s eyes were not upon his father but upon the graceful figure at the other side of the table. “Mamma,” he said, “won’t you _please_ come get my bow-an’-arry for me?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied, with eyes still pleadingly upon his mother.

“Well, then, what is there to be afraid of?”

“I’m not afraid,” said Ludlum. “It’s dark in there.”

“It won’t be dark if you turn on the light, will it?”

“Mamma——”

“Now, that’s enough!” the father interrupted testily. “It’s after eight. You go on up to bed.”

Ludlum’s tone began to indicate a mental strain. “I don’t _want_ to go to bed without my bow-an’-arry!”

“What do you want your bow and arrow when you’re in bed for?”

“I got to have it!”

“See here!” said Mr. Thomas. “You march up to bed and quit talking about your bow and arrow. You can take them with you if you go in there right quick and get them; but whether you do that or not you’ll march to bed inside of one minute from now!”

“I _got_ to have my bow-an’-arry. I got to, to go upstairs _with_.”

“You don’t want your bow and arrow in bed with you, do you?”

“Mamma!” Thus Ludlum persisted in his urgent appeal to that court in whose clemency he trusted. “Mamma, will you _please_ come get my bow-an’——”

“No, she won’t.”

“Then will you come upstairs with me, mamma?”

“No, she won’t! You’ll go by yourself, like a man.”

“Mamma——”

Mrs. Thomas intervened cheerily. “Don’t be afraid, dearie,” she said. “Your papa thinks you ought to begin to learn how to be manly; but the lights are lit all the way, and I told Annie to turn on the one in your room. You just go ahead like a good boy, and when you’re all undressed and ready to jump in bed, then you just whistle for me——”

“I don’t want to whistle,” said Ludlum irritably. “I want my bow-an’-arry!”

“Look here!” cried his father. “You start for——”

“I got to have my bow-an’——”

“You mean to disobey me?”

“I _got_ to have my——”

Mr. Thomas rose; his look became ominous. “We’ll see about that!” he said; and he approached his son, whose apprehensions were expressed in a loud cry.

“_Mamma!_”

“Don’t hurt his feel——” Mrs. Thomas began.

“Something’s got to be done,” her husband said grimly, and his hand fell upon Ludlum’s shoulder. “You march!”

Ludlum muttered vaguely.

“You march!”

“I got to have my bow-an’-arry! I _can’t_ go to bed ’less mamma comes with me! She’s _got_ to come with me!”

Suddenly he made a scene. Having started it, he went in for all he was worth and made it a big one. He shrieked, writhed away from his father’s hand, darted to his mother, and clung to her with spasmodic violence throughout the protracted efforts of the sterner parent to detach him.

When these efforts were finally successful, Ludlum plunged upon the floor, and fastened himself to the leg of a heavy table. Here, for a considerable time, he proved the superiority of an earnest boy’s wind and agility over those of a man: as soon as one part of him was separated from the leg of the table another part of him became attached to it; and all the while he was vehemently eloquent, though unrhetorical.

The pain he thus so powerfully expressed was undeniable; and nowadays few adults are capable of resisting such determined agony. The end of it was, that when Ludlum retired he was accompanied by both parents, his father carrying him, and Mrs. Thomas following close behind with the bow-an’-arry.

They were thoughtful when they returned to the library.

“I _would_ like to know what got him into such a state,” said the father, groaning, as he picked up his book from the floor. “He used to march upstairs like a little man, and he wasn’t afraid of the dark, or of anything else; but he’s beginning to be afraid of his own shadow. What’s the matter with him?”

Mrs. Thomas shook her head. “I think it’s his constitution,” she said. “I don’t believe he’s as strong as we thought he was.”

“‘Strong!’” her husband repeated incredulously. “Have I been dreaming, or _were_ you looking on when I was trying to pry him loose from that table-leg?”

“I mean nervously,” she said. “I don’t think his nerves are what they ought to be at all.”

“His nerve isn’t!” he returned. “That’s what I’m talking about! Why was he afraid to step into our dining-room—not thirty feet from where we were sitting?”

“Because it was dark in there. Poor child, he _did_ want his bow and arrow!”

“Well, he got ’em! What did he want ’em for?”

“To protect himself on the way to bed.”

“To keep off burglars on our lighted stairway?”

“I suppose so,” said Mrs. Thomas. “Burglars or something.”

“Well, where’d he get such ideas _from_?”

“I don’t know. Nearly all children do get them.”

“I know one thing,” Mr. Thomas asserted, “_I_ certainly never was afraid like that, and none of my brothers was, either. Do you suppose the children Ludlum plays with tell him things that make him afraid of the dark?”

“I don’t think so, because he plays with the same children now that he played with before he got so much this way. Of course he’s always been a _little_ timid.”

“Well, I’d like to know what’s at the root of it. Something’s got into his head. That’s certain, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Thomas said musingly. “I believe fear of the dark is a sort of instinct, don’t you?”

“Then why does he keep having it more and more? Instinct? No, sir! I don’t know where he gets this silly scaredness from, nor what makes it, but I know that it won’t do to humour him in it. We’ve got to be firmer with him after this than we were to-night. I’m not going to have a son of mine grow up to be afraid!”

“Yes; I suppose we ought to be a _little_ firmer with him,” she said dreamily.

However, for several days and nights there was no occasion to exercise this new policy of firmness with Ludlum, one reason being that he was careful not to leave his trusty bow and arrow in an unlighted room after dark. Three successive evenings, weapon in hand, he “marched” sturdily to bed; but on the fourth he was reluctant, even though equipped as usual.

“Is Annie upstairs?” he inquired querulously, when informed that his hour had struck.

“I’m not sure, dearie,” said his mother. “I think so. It’s her evening out, but I don’t think she’s gone.”

Standing in the library doorway, Ludlum sent upward a series of piercing cries: “Annie! Ann_ee_! Ann-_ee_! Oh, _Ann-nee-ee_!”

“Stop it!” Mr. Thomas commanded fiercely. “You want to break your mother’s ear-drums?”

“Ann-nee-_eeee_!”

“Stop that noise!”

“Ann——”

“Stop it!” Mr. Thomas made the gesture of rising, and Ludlum, interrupting himself abruptly, was silent until he perceived that his father’s threat to rise was only a gesture, whereupon he decided that his vocalizations might safely be renewed.

“Ann-_nee-ee_!”

“What _is_ the matter with him?”

“Ludlum, dear,” said Mrs. Thomas, “what is it you want Annie for?”

“I want to know if she’s upstairs.”

“But what for?”

Ludlum’s expression became one of determination. “Well, I want to know,” he replied. “I got to know if Annie’s upstairs.”

“By George!” Mr. Thomas exclaimed suddenly. “I believe _now_ he’s afraid to go upstairs unless he knows the housemaid’s up there!”

“Martha’s probably upstairs if Annie isn’t,” Mrs. Thomas hurriedly intervened. “You needn’t worry about whether Annie’s up there, Luddie, if Martha is. Martha wouldn’t let anything hurt you any more than Annie would, dear.”

“Great heavens!” her husband cried. “There’s nothing up there that’s going to hurt him whether a hundred cooks and housemaids are upstairs or downstairs, or in the house or out of it! _That’s_ no way to talk to him, Jennie! Ludlum, you march straight——”

“Ann-_nee-ee_!”

“But, dearie,” said Mrs. Thomas, “I told you that Martha wouldn’t let anything hurt——”

“She isn’t there,” Ludlum declared. “I can hear her chinkin’ tin and dishes around in the kitchen.” And, again exerting all his vocal powers of penetration, “_Oh, Ann-ee-ee!_” he bawled.

“By George!” Mr. Thomas exclaimed. “This is awful! It’s just awful!”

“Don’t call any more, darling,” the mother gently urged. “It disturbs your papa.”

“But, Jennie, that isn’t the reason he oughtn’t to call. It does disturb me, but the real reason he oughtn’t to do it is because he oughtn’t to be afraid to——”

“_Ann-ee-EE!_”

Mr. Thomas uttered a loud cry of his own, and, dismissing gestures, rose from his chair prepared to act. But his son briskly disappeared from the doorway; he had been reassured from the top of the stairs. Annie had responded, and Ludlum sped upward cheerfully. The episode was closed—except in meditation.

There was another one during the night, however. At least, Mr. Thomas thought so, for at the breakfast table he inquired: “Was any one out of bed about half-past two? Something half woke me, and I thought it sounded like somebody knocking on a door, and then whispering.”

Mrs. Thomas laughed. “It was only Luddie,” she explained. “He had bad dreams, and came to my door, so I took him in with me for the rest of the night. He’s all right, now, aren’t you, Luddie? Mamma didn’t let the bad dream hurt her little boy, did she?”

“It wasn’t dreams,” said Ludlum. “I was awake. I thought there was somep’m in my room. I bet there _was_ somep’m in there, las’ night!”

“Oh, murder!” his father lamented. “Boy nine years old got to go and wake up his _mamma_ in the middle of the night, because he’s scared to sleep in his own bed with a hall-light shining through the transom! What on earth were you afraid of?”

Ludlum’s eyes clung to the consoling face of his mother. “I never said I _was_ afraid. I woke up, an’ I thought I saw somep’m in there.”

“What kind of a ‘something’?”

Ludlum looked resentful. “Well, I guess I know what I’m talkin’ about,” he said importantly. “I bet there _was_ somep’m, too!”

“I declare I’m ashamed,” Mr. Thomas groaned. “Here’s the boy’s godfather coming to visit us, and how’s he going to help find out we’re raising a coward?”

“John!” his wife exclaimed. “The idea of speaking like that just because Luddie can’t help being a little imaginative!”

“Well, it’s true,” he said. “I’m ashamed for Lucius to find it out.”

Mrs. Thomas laughed, and then, finding the large eyes of Ludlum fixed upon her hopefully, she shook her head. “Don’t you worry, darling,” she reassured him. “You needn’t be afraid of what Uncle Lucius will think of his dear little Luddie.”

“I’m not,” Ludlum returned complacently. “He gave me a dollar las’ time he was here.”

“Well, he won’t this time,” his father declared crossly. “Not after the way you’ve been behaving lately. I’ll see to that!”

Ludlum’s lower lip moved pathetically and his eyes became softly brilliant—manifestations that increased the remarkable beauty he inherited from his mother.

“John!” cried Mrs. Thomas indignantly.

Ludlum wept at once, and between his gulpings implored his mother to prevent his father from influencing Uncle Lucius against the giving of dollars. “Don’t _let_ him, mamma!” he quavered. “An’ ’fif Uncle Lucius wuw-wants to give me a dollar, he’s got a right to, hasn’t he, mamma? _Hasn’t_ he got a right to, mamma?”

“There, dearie! Of course!” she comforted him. “Papa won’t tell Uncle Lucius. Papa is sorry, and only wants you to be happy and not cry any more.”

Papa’s manner indicated somewhat less sympathy than she implied; nevertheless, he presently left the house in a condition vaguely remorseful, which still prevailed, to the extent of a slight preoccupation, when he met Uncle Lucius at the train at noon.

Uncle Lucius—Lucius Brutus Allen, attorney-at-law of Marlow, Illinois, population more than three thousand, if you believed him—this Uncle Lucius was a reassuring sight, even to the eyes of a remorseful father who had been persecuting the beautiful child of a lovely mother.

Mr. Allen was no legal uncle to Ludlum: he was really Mrs. Thomas’s second cousin, and, ever since she was eighteen and he twenty-four, had been her favoured squire. In fact, during her young womanhood, Mrs. Thomas and others had taken it as a matter of course that Lucius was in love with her; certainly that appeared to be his condition.

However, with the advent of Mr. John Thomas, Lucius Brutus Allen gave ground without resistance, and even assisted matters in a way which might have suggested to an outsider that he was something of a matchmaker as well as something of a lover. With a bravery that touched both the bride and bridegroom, he had stood up to the functions of Best Man without a quaver—and, of course, since the day of Ludlum’s arrival in the visible world, had been “Uncle Lucius.”

He was thirty-five; of a stoutish, stocky figure; large-headed and thin-haired; pinkish and cheerful and warm. His warmth was due partly to the weather, and led to a continuous expectancy on the part of Ludlum, for it was the habit of Uncle Lucius to keep his handkerchief in a pocket of his trousers. From the hour of his arrival, every time that Uncle Lucius put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a handkerchief to dry his dewy brow, Ludlum suffered a disappointment.

In fact, the air was so sticky that these disappointments were almost continuous, with the natural result that Ludlum became peevish; for nobody can be distinctly disappointed a dozen or so times an hour, during the greater part of an afternoon, and remain buoyantly amiable.

Finally he could bear it no longer. He had followed his parents and Uncle Lucius out to the comfortable porch, which gave them ampler air and the pretty sight of Mrs. Thomas’s garden, but no greater coolness; and here Uncle Lucius, instead of bringing forth from his pocket a dollar, produced, out of that storage, a fresh handkerchief.

“Goodness me, but you got to wipe your ole face a lot!” said Ludlum in a voice of pure spitefulness. “I guess why you’re so hot mus’ be you stuff yourself at meals, an’ got all fat the way you are!”

Wherewith, he emitted a shrill and bitter laugh of self-applause for wit, while his parents turned to gaze upon him—Mrs. Thomas with surprise, and Mr. Thomas with dismay. To both of them his rudeness crackled out of a clear sky; they saw it as an effect detached from cause; therefore inexplicable.

“Ludlum!” said the father sharply.

“Dearie!” said the mother.

But the visitor looked closely at the vexed face. “What is it you’ve decided you don’t like about me, Luddie?” he asked.

“You’re too fat!” said Ludlum.

Both parents uttered exclamations of remonstrance, but Mr. Allen intervened. “I’m not so very fat,” he said. “I’ve just realized what the trouble between us is, Luddie. I overlooked something entirely, but I’ll fix it all right when we’re alone together. Now that I’ve explained about it, you won’t mind how often I take my handkerchief out of my pocket, will you?”

“What in the world!” Mrs. Thomas exclaimed. “What are you talking about?”

“It’s all right,” said Lucius.

Ludlum laughed; his face was restored to its serene beauty. Obviously, he again loved his Uncle Lucius, and a perfect understanding, mysterious to the parents, now existed between godfather and godson. In celebration, Ludlum shouted and ran to caper in the garden.

“By George!” said John Thomas. “You seem to understand him! I don’t. I don’t know what the dickens is in his mind, half the time.”

Mrs. Thomas laughed condescendingly. “No wonder!” she said. “You’re down-town all the daytime and never see him except at breakfast and in the evenings.”

“There’s one thing puzzles me about it,” said John. “If you understand him so well, why don’t you ever tell _me_ how to? What made him so smart-alecky to Lucius just now?”

Again she laughed with condescension. “Why, Luddie didn’t mean to be fresh at all. He just spoke without thinking.”

But upon hearing this interpretation, Mr. Allen cast a rueful glance at his lovely cousin. “Quite so!” he said. “Children can’t tell their reasons, but they’ve always got ’em!”

“Oh, no, they haven’t,” she laughed. And then she jumped, for there came a heavy booming of thunder from that part of the sky which the roof of the porch concealed from them. The sunshine over the pink-speckled garden vanished; all the blossoms lost colour and grew wan, fluttering in an ominous breeze; at once a high wind whipped round the house and the row of straight poplars beyond the garden showed silver sides.

“_Luddie!_” shrieked Mrs. Thomas; and he shrieked in answer; came running, just ahead of the rain. She seized his hand, and fled with him into the house.

“You remember how afraid they are of lightning,” said John apologetically. “Lightning and thunder. I never could understand it, but I suppose it’s genuine and painful.”

“It’s both,” the visitor remarked. “You wouldn’t think I’m that way, too, would you?”

“You are?”

“Makes me nervous as a cat.”

“Did you inherit it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Lucius; and he waved his host’s silent offer of a cigar. “No, thanks. Never want to smoke in a thunder-storm. I—_Whoo!_” he interrupted himself, as a flare of light and a catastrophe of sound came simultaneously. “Let’s go in,” he said mildly.

“Not I. I love to watch it.”

“Well——” Lucius paused, but at a renewal of the catastrophe, “Excuse _me_!” he said, and tarried no longer.

He found Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum in the centre of the darkened drawing-room. She was sitting in a gilt chair with her feet off the floor and upon a rung of the chair; and four heavy, flat-bottomed drinking-glasses were upon the floor, each of them containing the foot of a leg of the gilt chair. Ludlum was upon her lap.

“Don’t you believe in insulation, Lucius?” she asked anxiously. “As long as we sit like this, we can’t be struck, can we?”

He put on his glasses and gave her a solemn stare before replying. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “Of course John is safer out on the porch than we are in here.”

“Oh, no, no!” she cried. “A porch is the most dangerous place there _is_!”

“I don’t know whether or not he’s safe from the lightning,” Lucius explained. “I mean he’s safe from being troubled about it the way we are.”

“I don’t call that being safe,” his lady-cousin began. “I don’t see what——”

But she broke off to find place for a subdued shriek, as an admiral’s salute of great guns jarred the house. Other salutes followed, interjected, in spite of drawn shades and curtains, with spurts of light into the room, and at each spurt Mrs. Thomas shivered and said “Oh!” in a low voice, whereupon Ludlum jumped and said “Ouch!” likewise in a low voice. Then, at the ensuing crash, Mrs. Thomas emitted a little scream, and Ludlum emitted a large one.

“Ouch! _Ow!_” he vociferated. “Mamma, I want it to stop! Mamma, I can’t stand it! I can’t _stand_ it!”

“It’s odd,” said Lucius, during an interregnum. “The thunder frightens us more than the lightning, doesn’t it?”

“They’re both so horrible,” she murmured. “I’m glad they affect you this way, too, Lucius. It’s comforting. Do you think it’s almost over?”

“I’ll see,” he said; and he went to a window, whither Ludlum, having jumped down, followed him.

“Don’t open the curtains much,” Mrs. Thomas begged, not leaving her chair. “Windows are always dangerous. And come away from the window, Luddie. The lightning might——”

She shrieked at a flash and boom, and Luddie came away from the window. Voiceless—he was so startled—he scrambled toward his mother, his arms outstretched, his feet slipping on the polished floor; then, leaping upon her lap, he clung to her wildly; gulped, choked, and found his voice. He howled.

“That was about the last, I think,” observed Lucius, from the window. “It’s beginning to clear already. Nothing but a shower to make things cooler for us. Let’s go play with old John again. Come on, Luddie.”

But Ludlum clung to his mother, remonstrating. “No!” he cried. “Mamma, you got to stay in the house. I don’t want to go out there. It might begin again!”

She laughed soothingly. “But Uncle Lucius says it’s all over now, darling. Let’s go and——”

“I _d’wawn_’ to! I won’t go out of the house. You tell me a story.”

“Well,” she began, “once upon a time there was a good fairy and there was a bad fairy——”

“Where’d they live?”

“Oh, in a town—under some flowers in a garden in the town.”

“Like our garden?”

“I suppose so,” she assented. “And the good fairy——”

“Listen, mamma,” said Ludlum. “If they lived in the garden like those fairies you were tellin’ me about yesterday, they could come in the windows of the house where the pretty little boy lived, couldn’t they?”

“I suppose so.”

At this Ludlum’s expression became apprehensive and his voice peevish. “Well, then,” he complained, “if there was a window open at night, or just maybe through a crack under the door, the bad fairy could slip up behind the pretty little boy, or into the pretty little boy’s bedroom, an’——”

“No, no!” his mother laughed, stroking his head. “You see, the good fairy would always be watching, too, and the good fairy wouldn’t let the bad fairy hurt the pretty little boy.”

The apprehensive expression was not altogether soothed from the pretty little boy’s face. However, he said: “Go on. Tell what happened. Did the pretty little boy——”

“Lucius!” Mrs. Thomas exclaimed, “don’t stay here to be bored by Luddie and me. I’ve got to tell him this story——”

“Yes,” Ludlum eagerly agreed. “An’ then afterward she has to read me a chapter in our book.”

“So you go and make John tell _you_ a story, Lucius. I have to be polite to Luddie because he’s had such a fright, poor blessed child!”

Lucius was obedient: he rejoined John upon the porch, and the two men chatted for a time.

“What book is Jennie reading to the boy?” Mr. Allen inquired, after a subsequent interval of silence.

“I don’t know just now. Classic fiction of some sort, probably. She’s great on preparing his mind to be literary; reads an hour to him every day, and sometimes longer—translations—mythology—everything. All about gods and goddesses appearing out of the air to heroes, and Medusa heads and what not. Then standard works: Cooper, Bulwer, Scott, Hugo—some of the great romances.”

“I see,” said Lucius. “She always did go at things thoroughly. I remember,” he went on, with a musing chuckle, “I remember how I got hold of Bulwer’s ‘Zanoni’ and ‘Strange Story’ when I was about ten years old. By George! I’ve been afraid to go home in the dark ever since!”

“You have?” John smiled; then sent a serious and inquiring glance at the visitor, who remained placid. “Of course Jennie doesn’t read ‘Zanoni’ to Ludlum.”

“No, she wouldn’t,” said Lucius. “Not till he’s older. She’d read him much less disturbing things at his age, of course.”

His host made no additional comment upon the subject, but appeared to sit in some perplexity.

Mr. Allen observed him calmly; then, after a time, went into the house—to get a cigar of his own, he said.

In the hall he paused, listening. From the library came Mrs. Thomas’s voice, reading with fine dramatic fire:

“‘What! thou frontless dastard, thou—thou who didst wait for opened gate and lowered bridge, when Conrad Horst forced his way over moat and wall, must _thou_ be malapert? Knit him up to the stanchions of the hall-window! He shall beat time with his feet while we drink a cup to his safe passage to the devil!’

“‘The doom was scarce sooner pronounced than accomplished; and in a moment the wretch wrestled out his last agonies, suspended from the iron bars. His body still hung there when our young hero entered the hall, and, intercepting the pale moonbeam, threw on the castle-floor an uncertain shadow, which dubiously yet fearfully intimated the nature of the substance which produced it.

“‘When the syndic——’”

Ludlum interrupted. “Mamma, what’s a stanchion?” His voice was low and a little husky.

“It’s a kind of an iron bar, or something, I think,” Mrs. Thomas answered. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, does it mean—mamma, what does it mean when it says ‘he wrested out his last annogies?’”

“‘Agonies,’ dear. It doesn’t mean anything that little boys ought to think about. This is a very unpleasant part of the book, and we’ll hurry on to where it’s all about knights and ladies, and pennons fluttering in the sunshine and——”

“No; I don’t want you to hurry. I like to hear this part, too. It’s nice. Go on, mamma.”

She continued, and between the curtains at the door, Lucius caught a glimpse of them. Sunlight touched them through a window; she sat in a high-backed chair; the dark-curled boy, upon a stool, huddling to her knee; and, as they sat thus, reading “Quentin Durward,” they were like a mother and son in stained glass—or like a Countess, in an old romance, reading to the Young Heir. And Lucius Brutus Allen had the curious impression that, however dimly, both of them were conscious of some such picturesque resemblance.

Unseen, he withdrew from the renewed sound of the reading, and again went out to sit with John upon the porch, but Mrs. Thomas and Ludlum did not rejoin them until the announcement of dinner. When the meal was over, Lucius and his hostess played cribbage in the library; something they did at all their reunions—a commemoration of an evening habit of old days. But to-night their game was interrupted, a whispering in the hall becoming more and more audible as it increased in virility; while protests on the part of a party of the second part punctuated and accented the whispering:

“I _d’wawn_’ to!” . . . “I won’t!” . . . “I _will_ ast mama!” . . . “Leggo!”

The whispering became a bass staccato, though subdued, under the breath; protests became monosyllabic, but increased in passion; short-clipped squealings and infantile grunts were heard—and then suddenly, yet almost deliberately, a wide-mouthed roar of human agony dismayed the echoing walls.

The cavern whence issued the horrid sound was the most conspicuous thing in the little world of that house, as Ludlum dashed into the library. Even in her stress of sympathy, the mother could not forbear to cry: “Don’t, Luddie! Don’t stretch your mouth like that! You’ll spoil the shape of it.”

But Ludlum cared nothing for shape. Open to all the winds, he plunged toward his mother; and cribbage-board, counters, and cards went to the floor.

“Darling!” she implored. “What has hurt mamma’s little boy so awfully? Tell mamma!”

In her arms, his inclement eyes salting his cheeks, the vocal pitch of his despair rose higher and higher like the voice of a reluctant pump.

“_Papa twissud my wrist!_” he finally became coherent enough to declare.

“What!”

“He did!” All in falsetto Ludlum sobbed his version of things. “He—he suss-said I had to gug-go up to bed all—all alone. He grabbed me! He hurt! He said I couldn’t interrup’ your ole gug-game! ’N’ he said, ‘I’ll show you!’ ’N’ then—then—then—he _twissud_ my _wrist_!”

At that she gathered him closer to her, and rose, holding him in her arms. Her face was deeply flushed, and her shining eyes avoided her husband, who stood near the doorway.

“Put him down, Jennie,” he said mildly. “I——”

Straightway she strode by him, carrying her child. She did not pause, nor speak aloud, yet Lucius and John both heard the whispered word that crumpled the latter as the curtains waved with the angry breeze of her passing. “Shame!”

Meanwhile, Lucius, on his knees—for he never regarded his trousers seriously—began to collect dispersed cards and pegs. “What say?” he inquired, upon some gaspings of his unfortunate friend, John.

“She believed it!” (These stricken words came from a deep chair in the shadows.) “She thought I actually did twist his wrist!”

“Oh, no,” said Lucius. “She didn’t believe anything of the kind. Darn that peg!” With face to the floor and in an attitude of Oriental devotion, he appeared to be worshipping the darkness under a divan. “She was merely reacting to the bellow of her offspring. She knew he invented it, as well as you did.”

“It’s incredible!” said John. “The cold-blooded cunning of it! He was bound to have his way, and make her go up with him; and I’d turned him toward the stairway by his shoulders, and he tried to hold himself back by catching at one of those big chairs in the hall. I caught his wrist to keep him from holding to the chair—and I held him a second or two, not moving. The little pirate decided on the thing then and there, in his mind. He understood perfectly well he could make it all the more horrible because you were here, visiting us. I swear it appals me! What sort of a nature _is_ that?”

“Oh,” said Lucius, “just natural nature. Same as you and me.”

“I’d hate to believe that!”

“You and I got ashamed long ago of the tricks that came in our minds to play,” said Lucius, groping under the divan. “We got ashamed so often that they don’t come any more.”

“Yes, but it ought to be time they stopped coming into that boy’s mind. He was eight last month.”

“Yes—darn that peg!—there seems to be something in what you say. But of course Luddie thought he was in a fix that was just as bad to him as it would be to me if somebody were trying to make me walk into Pancho Villa’s camp all alone. _I’d_ make a fuss about that, if the fuss would bring up the whole United States Army to go with me. That’s what it amounted to with Luddie.”

“I suppose so,” groaned the father. “It all comes down to his being a coward.”

“It all comes down to the air being full of queer things when he’s alone,” said Lucius.

“Well, I’d like to know what makes it full of queer things. Where does his foolishness come _from_?”

“And echo answers——” Lucius added, managing to get his head and shoulders under the divan, and thrusting with arms and legs to get more of himself under.

But a chime of laughter from the doorway answered in place of echo. “What are you doing, Lucius?” Mrs. Thomas inquired. “Swimming lessons? I never saw anything——” And laughter so overcame her that she could speak no further, but dropped into a chair, her handkerchief to her mouth.

Lucius emerged crabwise, and placed a cribbage-peg upon the table, but made no motion to continue the game. Instead he dusted himself uselessly, lit a cigar, and sat.

“Luddie’s all right,” said the lady, having recovered her calmness. “I think probably something he ate at dinner upset him a little. Anyhow, he was all right as soon as he got upstairs. Annie’s sitting with him and telling him stories.”

“I wonder if that lightning struck anything this afternoon,” Lucius said absently. “Some of it seemed mighty near.”

“It was awful.”

“Do you remember,” Lucius asked her, “when you first began to be nervous about it?”

“Oh, I’ve always been that way, ever since I was a little child. I haven’t the faintest idea how it got hold of me. Children just get afraid of certain things, it seems to me, and that’s all there is to it. You know how Luddie is about lightning, John.”

John admitted that he knew how Luddie was about lightning. “I do,” was all he said.

Mrs. Thomas’s expression became charmingly fond, even a little complacent. “I suppose he inherits it from me,” she said.

“My mother has that fear to this day,” Lucius remarked. “And I have it, too, but I didn’t inherit it from her.”

“How do you know?” his cousin asked quickly. “What makes you think you didn’t inherit it?”

“Because my father used to tell me that when I was three and four years old he would sit out on the porch during a thunder-storm, and hold me in his lap, and every time the thunder came both of us would laugh, and shout ‘Boom!’ Children naturally like a big noise. But when I got a little bit older and more imaginative, and began to draw absurd conclusions from things, I found that my mother was frightened during thunder-storms—though she tried her best to conceal it—and, of course, seeing _her_ frightened, I thought something pretty bad must be the matter. So the fear got fastened on me, and I can’t shake it off though I’m thirty-five years old. Curious thing it is!”

Mrs. Thomas’s brilliant eyes were fixed upon her cousin throughout this narrative with an expression at first perplexed, then reproachful, finally hostile. A change, not subtle but simple and vivid, came upon her face, while its habitual mobility departed, leaving it radiantly still, with a fierce smoldering just underneath. How deep and fast her breathing became, was too easily visible.

“Everything’s curious, though, for the matter o’ that,” Lucius added. And without looking at his cousin—without needing to look at her, to understand the deadliness of her silence—he smoked unconcernedly. “Yes, sir, it’s all curious; and _we’re_ all curious,” he continued, permitting himself the indulgence of a reminiscent chuckle. “You know I believe my father and mother got to be rather at outs about me—one thing and another, goodness knows what!—and it was years before they came together and found a real sympathy between them again. Truth is, I suspect where people aren’t careful, their children have about twice as much to do with driving ’em apart as with drawing ’em together—especially in the case of an only child. I really do think that if _I_ hadn’t been an only child my father and mother might have been——”

A sibilant breath, not a word and not quite a hiss, caused Lucius to pause for a moment, though not to glance in the direction of the lips whence came the sound. He appeared to forget the sentence he had left incomplete; at all events he neglected to finish it. However, he went on, composedly:

“Some of my aunts tell me I was the worst nuisance they ever knew. In fact, some of ’em go out of their way to tell me that, even yet. They never could figure out what was the matter with me—except that I was spoiled; but I never meet Aunt Mira Hooper on the street at home, to this day, that she doesn’t stop to tell me she hasn’t learned to like me, because she got such a set against me when I was a child—and I meet her three or four times a week! She claims there was _some_ kind of a little tragedy over me, in our house, every day or so, for years and years. She blames _me_ for it, but Lord knows it wasn’t my fault. For instance, a lot of it was my father’s.”

“What did he do?” asked John.