THE CROSS-PATCH.
BY MRS. EMILY SHAW FARMAN.
I KNOW a little black-eyed boy, with tight curls all over his head. He is very sweet and pleasant when things go right; but he has days when everything seems to go wrong, and then he is called Cross-Patch. His other name is Frank. When these days come round, everybody wishes it was night.
Cross-Patch comes down to breakfast with a red nose and a snuffle, and drags his feet along as if they were flat-irons.
Papa hears him coming, and says, “Falling barometer, heavy showers, and, possibly, storms.” Papa says this as if he were reading the newspaper, but he is really reading Frank.
As Cross-Patch comes into the room and bangs the door, Tom, his big brother, exclaims, “Indicative mood!” and Susie, who goes to the High School, laughs and says, “Objective case, anddis-agrees with everybody in the first person singular!”
“I don’t care! I ain’t! and you shan’t laugh at me!” roars Frank.
“Croth-pash!” lisps little Lucy.
“Come here, Frank,” says mamma, very gently, “and tell mamma what is the matter.”
“Phebe got soap in my eyes, and she washed my face hard in the middle, just as if I didn’t have any nose at all, and the comb stuck in my hair every time, and hurt, and—”
“And you got out at the foot of the bed!” says provoking Tom.
“No, I didn’t. I got out at the side; and ’tisn’t fair!” cries Frank.
“No,” says papa, with a sigh, “I see it isn’t; it is very cloudy and threatening.”
Then they all laugh, and Cross-Patch gets worse and worse. He sits down at the table, and takes a baked potato; it is hot, and burns his fingers; so he pushes his plate away very hard, and upsets a glass of milk, and has to be sent up stairs. He puts an apple in his pocket, and goes off to school without any breakfast. On the way a big bad boy takes the apple away from him, just as he is going to take his first bite.
At school things are no better. The hardest word in the spelling lesson is t-h-r-o-u-g-h,through, and of course the teacher gives him that word to spell, and he sticks in the middle of it, and can’t getthrough.
Then comes the multiplication table, and the teacher asks him “nine times four,” and he answers, “sixty-three.” The crosswise has got into his brain, and he keeps on saying “sixty-three” till he thinks it is right; and then he is very cross when he is told to learn his lesson, and stay after school to recite it.
As he goes home he wishes he could meet the man that made the spelling book, and the other man that made the multiplication table, so that he might knock them both down, and jump on them with all his might a long time; but, as he doesn’t see them anywhere, he thinks he will play ball.
He plays that the front gate is the spelling-book man, and that the lantern post is the man that made the multiplication table, and he sends the ball, first at one, and then at the other, with great fury. At last, in a very wild throw, Cross-Patch hits the multiplication man—I mean the lantern post—on the head. The pieces come rattling down on the sidewalk, and this dreadful noise frightens away all the crossness. Frank runs into the house to his mamma, and tells her how sorry he is, and begs her to tell papa all about it, and gives her all the money in his little savings bank to pay for the broken lantern. Then mamma asks him if he is sure that Cross-Patch has gone away entirely, and he cries a great shower of tears, and says, “Yes, mamma, every inch of him!” and mamma gives Frank some supper, and puts him to bed, and tells him to pray to the good angels to drive Cross-Patch very far off, in the night, so that he can’t get back for a great many days.