CHAPTER I.
IT was raining dismally. Mabel, leaning her arms on the broad window-sill, watched the drops trickling down the panes. Before her was an array of paper dolls in gay tissue dresses. They sat perched upon pasteboard chairs in front of a circle of queer creatures with flat heads, and no feet; hand in hand these stood, rather flimsy in appearance. Mabel had cut them all in one from a bit of newspaper.
Presently she gave the whole company a sweep off on the floor.
“I’m tired of you,” she said. “And it’s raining, and I don’t know what to do. I wish I were twins, so I could have someone to play with.”
“Why, Mabel,” said her mother, “suppose I had two discontented little Mabels to be fretting around on a rainy day, what should I do?”
“You wouldn’t have to have two Mabels,” returned the little girl, “you could call one something else: Maude, or—oh, mamma, you could call one May and one Belle. I think I’d like to be May, myself. That’s what I’ll do next time I play by myself: I’ll pretend I have a twin sister named Belle.”
“Suppose you pick up that company of people, lying there by the window, now, and play with your twin awhile.”
Mabel looked up mischievously. “I think I’ll let Belle pick them up,” she said.
“Well, let me see her do it. There is a looking glass in which I can watch her.”
“Oh, like ‘Alice in the Looking Glass Country’. You watch and see Belle pick them up.” And she set to work, glancing over her shoulder once in a while to see if her mother took in the performance. “There!” she said, after a time, “Belle has picked them up, but we are both tired of paper dolls. Mamma, there is a red flag hanging out by a door across the street; in that house where the little boy lives. What is it for? Do you suppose he has scarlet fever?”
Her mother laughed. “No, there is an auction—a sale going on.”
“What for?”
“Why, I don’t know, dear. For some reason they are selling off their household goods and furniture.”
“Oh, I wonder if the little boy likes to do that. Who is selling the things—his papa?”
“No, an auctioneer.”
“Does he say, ‘Going, going, gone,’ like Uncle Lewis does when he pretends to sell me?”
“Yes.”
“Can anybody go to a—a nauction?”
“Why, yes. How many questions a little girl can ask.”
“Well, mamma, I think if you’ll ’scuse me, I’ll go down stairs and find something else to do.”
“I’ll excuse you, certainly. Don’t get into mischief.”
But Mabel was out of the door and on her way down the steps by this time. She stopped at the parlor, peeped in, and then went over to the piano which she opened and began to drum softly upon it, but she knew her mamma did not allow this, so she went across the hall to the library. This was a favorite room, especially on arainy day, and, when her father was not busy there, Mabel was often allowed to curl herself up in one of the big chairs with a book. To-day, however, she did not feel inclined to settle down and looked around to find something to invite her attention. A box of water-colors stood open upon the desk where her father had been working. He had been coloring some drawings to use in his class at the university.
Mabel stood gazing at the colors longingly; they did look so bright and pretty. She took up one of the brushes and wet it in the glass of water her father had been using; then she dipped it in the brightest vermillion in the box.
“I wish I had something to paint,” she said to herself. Looking through a pile of newspapers, she found nothing that would do, and her eyes next soughtthe books nearest her. She opened one; it was fresh and new. “Oh, I couldn’t take that,” she said. “But this old one, I don’t believe he cares much for this. It has pictures in it, but they are very queer, and so yellow, I’m sure the book isn’t of any account at all. I think it would look much better if I were to paint it up a little.” And, the action being suited to the word, the brush was soon making dabs at the colors on the box, and the figures in the engravings were given startling costumes of red, or blue, or yellow, as Mabel’s fancy dictated.
She could not help feeling a little guilty, though all the time telling herself that it was a worthless old book, and that her mamma often gave her old magazines to try her own paints upon.
Yet, when she heard a step on thestairs, she started guiltily, and shut the book with a snap, then put down her brush, unaware that she had upset the glass of water in her haste, and that it was running across the table and soaking through the book.
She hurried out of the door leading to the porch. Here she could listen to the voice of the auctioneer, as it came to her ears quite distinctly from across the street. It had stopped raining, though little puddles still lay among the bricks of the walk.
“Any one can go,” thought Mabel; “mamma said so. I should love to see a nauction. And that little boy, I wonder if he is there.”
It was mild spring weather, and Mabel thought she could dispense with a hat. She would rather not go in the house again just then; “I’ll go to the nauction,”she said. “It’s no more than going to a store; mamma said so.”
So, running across the street, she stood for a moment before the gate of the little boy’s home, then slipped in; another moment found her in a room full of people. She turned to run away, as several turned to look at her, but she caught sight of the forlorn figure of a little boy huddled up in one corner, hugging a large dog, and towards these two she made her way.
The little boy looked up with a faint smile as Mabel approached, then made room for her on the box on which he was sitting.
“Isn’t it funny?” whispered Mabel, while the auctioneer went on rapidly: “A dollar an’ a half an’ a half.”
But the little boy didn’t look as if he thought it very funny, for he turned hishead away, and Mabel thought she saw two tears rolling down his cheeks.
“Is your father here?” she asked.
The little fellow shook his head, and just then, the articles in that room being disposed of, the crowd went into the next, and the two children were left alone.
“Are you going to move?” asked Mabel. “I live across the street, you know, and I saw the red flag hanging out, so I just came over.”
The boy nodded.
“I’m Mabel Ford. My sister told me your name; it’s Harold, isn’t it? What a dear dog that is. What’s his name?” Mabel was not to be daunted by Harold’s silence.
“Don.” This time he answered her.
“I wish you were not going away. Do you want to?” Mabel’s questions continued.
“No,” returned Harold, “but you know father has to go with his regiment to Cuba, and so I have to go.”
“Oh, are you going to Cuba? What will you do when they are fighting? When are you going?”
“I don’t know when I am going, but I am not going to Cuba.”
“Oh, I should think you would be glad not to. Will they take all the things out of the house?”
“Yes, I suppose so. I expected to go to my aunt’s to-day, but Drake hasn’t heard from her; neither have I.”
“And your papa went and left you all alone?”
“He had to, for he had to join his troops, and he thought my aunt would be here before this.”
Mabel thought this a dreadful state of affairs, and looked her sympathy.
“You see,” Harold went on, “these aren’t our things; not many of them. Father rented the house furnished, and only brought a few of our own things here.”
“Oh!” That was better, Mabel thought, but her curiosity was still unsatisfied. “Where shall you go to-night?”
“Oh, I’ll go home with Drake, I suppose.”
“Who is he?”
“The coachman. Well, not the coachman, exactly. He does all sorts of things, and his wife has kept house for us all winter.”
“Oh, yes; but I should think it would be much nicer with your aunt.”
“Perhaps it will be when I can go to her, but I can’t yet. You see, she is probably away from home, and if I startedwithout knowing all about it, I might get to her house and find no one there, and then what should I do in a strange place?” Harold was fast growing more communicative.
“That would be dreadful,” agreed his companion, overcome by his lonely condition. “I tell you what I wish you’d do,” she hastened to say: “I wish you’d come over with me. We haven’t any boys at our house, and I’ve always wanted awfully to be a boy. You see it would be fine if I were, for now I’m just nothing. Alice is the oldest, so she’s some importance, and Louie is the baby, so she’s the pet, and I’m in the middle where I can’t be anything, and I don’t have anyone to play with, for Alice is fourteen and Louis is only two.”
“Your mother wouldn’t want me,maybe,” said Harold, though his eyes looked wistful.
“Oh, yes she would,” returned Mabel, confidently; “I’m sure she would. She lets me have my school friends come, and sometimes they stay all night.”
“But I’m a boy.”
“Well, never mind, we can’t help that. You can pretend you are a girl, if you want to, and I’ll lend you one of my frocks.”
This brought the first approach to a laugh which Harold had shown, and he consented to go and hunt up Drake, and Mabel went with him.
Drake, himself, was not to be found, but his wife was, and to her Mabel made known her request.
“Well, I just wish he would go,” declared Mrs. Drake. “He’s been moping around ever since his father wentaway, and we two old people can’t cheer him up like you could. Go along, Harold, if you like, and stay as long as you want to.”
So Harold followed his new friend across the street, and when the situation was explained, true enough, he was given a warm welcome by Mrs. Ford. An hour later the two children, with little Louie, were playing in the laundry, having great times, with a tub of water and some very primitive fishing lines.
“I don’t usually like babies tagging after me,” Mabel confided to her friend, fearing he might think her less like a boy than she had given him reason to suppose, “but Louie’s nurse has gone out,” she explained.
“Oh, I don’t mind her. I think she is a dear little girl,” Harold returned, and Mabel was relieved when his heartseemed entirely won by Louie’s overtures to “Boy,” as she called him.
All went merrily enough till supper time; then Mabel, intent only upon making Harold at home, brought him smilingly into the dining-room. She had forgotten the affair of the book, but it came back to her in a very unpleasant manner, when her father, with one of his most severe looks, greeted her with: “Mabel, was it you who was in the library this afternoon, meddling with my box of colors?”
Mabel turned as red as a beet, hung her head, tried to speak, and at last, faltered out: “I—I—yes, papa.”
“I might have expected it from a baby like Louie, but a girl as big as you must certainly have known better. You have ruined one of my most valuable and rare books,” Mr. Ford went on to say. Allthis before Harold. Poor Mabel felt as though she would sink through the floor. She wondered what punishment would be meted out to her, and she looked with pleading eyes at her mother.