YOUTH
VOL. I June 1902 No. 4
By Sidney Marlow
PRISCILLA just laughed quietly to herself and lay perfectly still. Then Susette called again, but now you could tell from the sound that she had taken Grace and Halbert and gone further into the woods. Probably she had decided that Priscilla had run on ahead and would be waiting for them at the shaky little bridge or the old red saw mill. What a scare Susette would have when she reached the old mill and Priscilla wasn’t there? And what business had Susette to make such an awful fuss just because a person chose to eat quite a good deal of cake, and a pickle, and a rather large plate of ice cream at the same meal? They wouldn’t hurt Susette, anyway.
Then once more the little girl heard her nurse calling her, and the voice came from such a long way off that somehow the sound made Priscilla feel just the least bit lonely. In about a minute and a half she would get up and follow the others. She would hide, though, and watch Susette clap her hands to her ears, and hear her give one of those jumpy little French screams when she came to the mill and there was no one there. No one could be quite so funny as Susette when she was really and truly frightened.
Priscilla was still smiling at the way the prim little nurse was sure to behave when she caught sight of something that made Susette, and the children, and the bridge, and the old mill, all fly out of her head just the way she had seen a flock of English sparrows dart out of the front lawn when Rover pounced down upon them from the terrace. It was only a big yellow and black bumble-bee, but who in this world ever saw a bumble-bee act like—well, the best way is just to go ahead and tell what it really did.
Almost the very first thing, and before Priscilla had time to even think whether she liked him or not, he put his little front foot up to his pert little countenance and wiggled his saucy little fingers at her, in a most objectionable manner. It was exactly for all the world like what the butcher’s boy did when Priscilla offered him a cream chocolate on the first day of April. At least, that’s the way it looked to Priscilla, but, between you and me, I rather suspect the bumble-bee was just wiping off the pollen that had stuck to his lips ever since dinner time. He hadn’t any napkin, you know, so what else could he do?
However, that wasn’t any excuse at all for what he did next. Remember, Priscilla had her eyes on him all the time, so there couldn’t be any mistake about it. The bumble-bee just simply reached up and raised his—yes, it was really—a dainty little three-cornered hat—just like the one in the picture of her great-great ancestor in the dining-room. Then he bowed, and he did it every bit as politely as Mr. Alwin, the minister, when he came up the front steps Sunday afternoon. Did you ever hear of anything like it? At first Priscilla thought she must have fallen asleep, so she sat bolt upright and rubbed her eyes. The moment she moved the bumble-bee again took off his hat, but for the life of her Priscilla couldn’t tell what he did with it. Once it seemed as if he must have slipped it under his left wing, but it’s quite as likely that he swallowed it. At any rate, there he sat with his head cocked to one side, and his little black bead of an eye twinkling impertinently, as if he had just asked, “Did you speak, ma’am?” It was very provoking.
Now, I wonder whether any little girl who reads this would have been wise enough to do what Priscilla did next? She saw now that at the very instant—really, at the beginning of the instant—she began to move, the bumble-bee would stop doing all these remarkable things. So she just lay quietly back in the deep, soft grass and half closed her eyes—or, perhaps, it was three-quarters—and must have looked exactly as though she were asleep. Then some things happened in that big oak tree which I’m sure never, never would have happened if the bumble-bee had known that, really, Priscilla was perfectly wide awake.
Indeed, his conduct was so very singular that Priscilla almost stopped being surprised. You couldn’t blame her, though, for giving a little start when she saw that he had changed his color from yellow to all black, and that, instead of buzzing about her, he was running along the limb of the tree on all his six legs, just exactly like—Why, really, he’d changed into a big black spider. To tell the truth, just at this point Priscilla was so astonished again that she couldn’t so much as move an eyelid.
The spider came running along the limb of the big oak until he was straight above Priscilla’s head. Then he stopped suddenly and began to fumble in some sort of a back pocket in his black velvet coat. The next moment a delicate silken thread came dangling down, down, down, and, before she fairly understood what was happening, Priscilla felt it tickling her very puggish little nose. Of course she was indignant, and raised her hand and brushed the ugly thing away. Only—the thread stuck to her fingers, and when she tried to wipe it off with her other hand, it stuck to that hand, too. And the miserable old spider, holding the thread lightly over one claw and pressing the other against the side of his puffy black stomach, was looking down and laughing fit to shake his eyes out.
But that was only the beginning. Priscilla was no coward, but you can guess how she felt when suddenly that old spider sat up straight and commenced to whirl his claws around each other like an electric fan, and the web commenced to roll up, and the girl began to be drawn right straight up into the tree. Even a grown person would have been astonished. And the spider kept on laughing.
In almost no time she was up in the tree, and truly she didn’t feel much bigger than the spider, and yet it didn’t seem to her that she’d lost much flesh since she left the ground. It was all very puzzling.
“That’s what I call bringing you up with a round turn,” said the spider, laughing immodestly—or immoderately, Priscilla wasn’t quite sure which of the words her mother used in such cases. His jacket was so tight that it seemed it must burst the very next giggle.
“Now, to business,” he remarked, suddenly, tucking his line away in his coat-tail pocket, and looking severely at Priscilla, as though it were she, and not himself, who had been behaving so foolishly.
“The Hopolanthus desires you to call and explain.”
“The—the who? I want to go right straight home.” interrupted Priscilla, with quite a good deal of shakiness in her voice.
The spider looked surprised, and for a moment he stood up perfectly erect—that is to say, as perfectly erect as is possible for a person with that kind of a stomach.
“Whenever a little girl lies down in the shade of the Hopolanthus Tree,” he went on, sternly, “it means that the Hopolanthus has business with her, and the only thing for me to do is to decide upon the route. I must ask you a question or two. Did you ever study botany?”
“Why—why, yes—some,” replied Priscilla, as soon as she had caught her breath.
“You have, eh! Well, then, how many cousins had your grandfather’s aunt? Be a little quick, please.”
“Why—but—you see—I guess I—I don’t know. Anyway,” she added, indignantly, as it dawned upon her that she was being imposed upon, “that hasn’t anything to do with botany. Not the least mite in the world.”
“Yes, it has. Yes, it has,” retorted the old spider, testily.
“It’s the very first thing you ought to know. It’s about your own family tree. I’m simply shocked.”
“You’re just dreadful,” exclaimed Priscilla, angrily, stamping her foot on the rough bark. “I shall not go a—”
“Oh, yes, I guess you will,” responded the spider, with a queer little twinkle in his eyes.
Then, before Priscilla could tell him that she really and truly wouldn’t move a step, she felt herself rapidly approaching the trunk of the tree. It seemed as if the old oak were suddenly drawing in the limb upon which she stood, just as a turtle draws in its long neck. She noticed, too, for the first time, a hole in the trunk—a very ordinary knot-hole, she would have said a moment before—which was growing bigger and bigger as she approached. Unless, perhaps, she, herself, was shrinking smaller and smaller. Suddenly, and exactly as if she did it on purpose—although she tried her best not to do it—Priscilla raised her two hands over her head and dived right through the knot-hole, just grazing the tip of her nose as she went in. Indeed, if her nose had been the least bit longer, or had stuck straight out from her face, like some people’s noses, instead of having its own neat upward curve, it would have been badly nipped. Of course, though, Priscilla had no time just then to think about noses. Down she went, and around she went, and very queerly, indeed, she felt.
Now, it isn’t quite easy to count the time while a person is falling, as I am sure any friend of yours who has dropped from the top of a church steeple will tell you if you ask him. To Priscilla it seemed as if she had been going just about as long as her little brother Halbert could sit still at the dinner table, when—puff, whist—and she had stopped.
“Now, come right along and don’t talk back. That’s one thing the Hopolanthus will not stand. You can say anything you choose if he hasn’t spoken first, but—”
“But suppose he speaks just as soon as I come into his parlor?”
“That’s impossible,” responded the spider, in a very positive tone. “He hasn’t any parlor; but come along.”
Everything was done in such a dreadful hurry that Priscilla felt as if she were not getting more than half as many breaths as she should.
“Please, Mr. Spider,” she protested, “you know I’ve come quite a—a quick distance, and I want to sit down and rest a few minutes.”
“Yes, of course,” replied the spider. But the instant Priscilla sat down she found herself moving along after her guide just as fast as before. It seemed to her that she was sliding out through one of the roots of the big oak tree.
“Here we are. Now be sure you don’t talk back.”
Slowly it seemed to grow light—not bright light, but just so that she could see where she was. She was in a room, and it looked a good deal more like a cellar than a parlor.
At one end of the room sat the Hopolanthus, and really until he spoke he wasn’t very terrible. He looked exactly like the kangaroo Priscilla once saw in the Zoo—only after you’d looked at him twice he was a good deal different.
“What has this—this young person been doing, now?”
The way he emphasized that word “now” made Priscilla forget all about not talking back. It was just as much as to say that of course she was always doing something wrong, and the only question was as to what she had done last. She opened her mouth to reply, when she was violently seized by the arms, and a shrill voice from just behind answered for her.
“Ah, she eat ze cake—ze big piece of cake, and ze big—ah, ze emense plate of ze ice cream. It is not wonder she lie here and keek ze grass, and make ze dreadful groan. Ze sillee child.”
And Susette shook her again, and Grace and Halbert danced around and yelled like a pair of young savages. It was a full minute before Priscilla could find her voice.
“You had no business to wake me up just when—you always do things wrong. I was just going to tell the old Hopolanthus that—”
But the children stopped dancing around, and Susette stood still and stared—which wasn’t common for Susette—and Priscilla couldn’t help seeing that they didn’t know what on earth she was talking about. She rubbed her eyes and looked up among the branches of the big oak. There was nothing there—neither bumble-bee, nor spider, nor Hopolanthus—only a small green tree toad who winked his dull little eyes just exactly as if he might, or might not, know all about it.