LITTLE BOY BLUE
BY C. A. GOODENOW.
NOT the identical one that slept under the haystack, while the cows trampled the corn; no, indeed, he was quite too wide awake for that! Our little Boy Blue had another name; but he was seldom called by it, and did not much like it when he was. For when he heard people say “John Allison Ware!” he knew that he was in mischief, and justice was about to be meted unto him.
Why was he called little Boy Blue? Because, when he was a tiny baby, his eyes were so very blue—“real ultramarine,” Aunt Sue said; but baby only wrinkled his nose at the long word, and mamma smiled.
However, the eyes kept their wonderful color as the baby grew up, so the name was kept, too.
Boy Blue had four sisters: three older, one younger, than himself. He used, sometimes, to wish for a brother, but mostly he was too busy to worry over trifles. He had so much to do the days were not long enough.
He had to work in his garden; it was about as large as a pocket-handkerchief, but it required a great deal of care. He had to feed the kitty, help shell the peas for dinner, ride on the saw-horse, and be an ice-man, a strawberry-seller, a coal-heaver and a fish-monger, all with only the aid of his wheelbarrow.
Above all, he had to help Jotham.
What Jotham would have done without his help I cannot tell. With it, he kept the garden in order, mended the broken tools, made sleds, swings, skipping-ropes, carts and baby-houses for the five little Wares.
If Jotham could not have got along without Boy Blue, I am sure the little Wares would have sadly missed Jotham.
One day Jotham was making a sled for Elsie. It was June, and people do not usually wish to slide on the daisies and clover; but Jotham liked to get things finished early. I suppose he knew, too, that when Elsie’s sled was done he would have to make one a-piece for Lill, for Dora, for Boy Blue, and for little Tot; so, perhaps, he thought from June to December was not too long time for so much work.
The sled was ready to be painted; and blue paint, in a nice little bucket, with a small brush in it, was waiting for the sled. Boy Blue stood by helping.
Just then somebody called Jotham into the house.
“I might paint a little until he comes back,” thought Boy Blue. “Don’t fink I’d better, maybe. Elsie said blue stripes; ’haps I shouldn’t get them even. H’m!”
The blue eyes twinkled, and the funny little mouth was puckered in a round, rosy button as their owner considered the matter.
“I might practice, first,” said Boy Blue.
So he tugged the paint-bucket down from the bench; he slopped a little over, too. It did not fall on his trowsers; they were short, and fastened at the knee with three buttons; the blue splashes were on the white stockings below the trowsers, and Boy Blue saw them.
“Buttheywill wash,” said he to himself.
Then Boy Blue and the paint-bucket walked off behind the tool-house; that was a good place to practice, because the clapboards were so smooth, and of a nice gray color, on which the blue paint showed beautifully.
“I’ll make five stripes, ’cause I’m most five years old,” thought Boy Blue.
The first were crooked, and he had to make five more; they-were too long, so he made some shorter ones. Soon all the side of the tool-house, as high as his short arm could reach, was painted in blue stripes.
“If I only had a ladder!” mused Boy Blue. “Fink I’d better get one.”
He trudged into the shed, still carrying the paint-bucket; it was not so full now as when Jotham left it, and did not slop much.
There was no ladder in the shed, so he went on into the barn.
“Ouf! ouf!” grunted Piggy White, hearing steps, and expecting dinner.
“I’m busy now, Piggy White,” said Boy Blue, looking over the side of the pen. “I’m painting. Oh my! Piggy White, you’d look just beautiful if you only had some blue stripes!”
Piggy White was a young pig, quite clean and pretty; the little Wares made a pet of him. He had a fresh straw bed every night, and Jotham took a deal of care to keep his house tidy. He was so accustomed to visits from the children he only gently grunted in reply to Boy Blue’s remark.
The next thing seen of that small lad he had climbed over and was as busy over Piggy White as he had been on the tool-house. Piggy liked to have his back rubbed, and was very quiet while Boy Blue painted a long stripe down his spine and shorter ones across his sides.
“Piggy White,ifyou wig your tail so I fink I’ll scold. I want to paint the end of it.”
By this time there was not much paint in the bucket, but there was a great deal on Boy Blue’s hands, on his stockings, on the short trowsers, and on the front of his little blouse.
“H’m!” said Boy Blue, suddenly looking up. “I fink—Jotham—I fink I’ve got frough.”
“The land of liberty!” said Jotham, looking down. “You’reblue, sure enough.”
Then he picked up the little workman and carried him into the house.
When mamma had been out and looked at the tool-house and Piggy White, and had come in and looked at Boy Blue, she said what she had said about five hundred times:
“I don’t know what Ishalldo with you!”
But she did. For she told Nurse Norah to give him a bath.
When he had been scrubbed and rubbed and dried, and stood very red and warm to have his hair brushed, he sobbed:
“Somebody didn’t ought to look after me better!”
“Sure, ’twould take a paycock’s eyes, and more, to look after sich a stirabout! Now run, see the organ-man with your sisters, and be good,” said Norah.
The organ-man carried a monkey, and the monkey carried a tambourine, with which he played such pranks the little Wares fell off the steps one after another in fits of laughter, and Boy Blue decided at once to buy that monkey if he could. So when the organ-man went away Boy Blue followed. Only Tot saw him go, for the others were running back to the nursery to see if the dolls were awake. And Tot could not make people understand what her little, lisping tongue meant to say.
It grew late and later; it was almost dark. Boy Blue did not come home. They began to wonder; they began to be anxious; they began to look for him. They called his name everywhere. They shouted, “Little Boy Blue! Boy Blu-u-u-e! Blu-u-u-ue!”
He did not come. They thought what if he should never come back!
Mamma cried.
“Somebody has stolen him!” said Norah.
“He is drowned!”
“He is run over!”
“He is—”
“Herehe is!”
So he was! They had looked everywhere and inquired of everybody, and given up in despair. Papa and Jotham had gone to get help in searching for him. Mamma was in distress. And there little Boy Blue came walking into the house himself!
“Where have you been?” cried the sisters.
He had followed the monkey until he was tired, had come back unseen, had climbed into the hammock in the orchard, and had been asleep there ever since.
“And we just crazed about ye, ye bad boy!” said Norah, while mamma hugged him.
“You needn’t finkI’dget lost,” said Boy Blue, proudly. “Idon’t do such fings. I want my supper!”
He had it. But at our house we still keep asking this question:
“Whatshallwe doWith little Boy Blue?”
“Whatshallwe doWith little Boy Blue?”
“Whatshallwe doWith little Boy Blue?”
“Whatshallwe do
With little Boy Blue?”