The William Henry Letters

When we all sat round the table the girls seemed full of tickle, which they tried to hide, – and one of them asked me, – I think it was Hannah Jane, – with a very sober face, —

"Mr. Fry, will you take some fried fish?"

I laughed and said, "No, I never take anything fried."

Then we all laughed together, and so got acquainted very pleasantly; for I have observed that a little ripple of fun sets people nearer together than a whole ocean of calm conversation.

After supper Uncle Jacob read the paper aloud, while the girls washed up the dishes. All were eager to hear; and I found they kept the run of affairs quite as well as townspeople. When there was too much rattling of dishes for Uncle Jacob to be heard, and the girls lost some important item, he was always willing to read it over. Little Tommy was rolled up in a shawl and set down in the rocking-chair (that cushion did come out of it) while his mother mended his clothes. This was the way he usually got punished for tearing them. He was done up in a shawl, arms and all, and kept in the rocking-chair while the clothes were being mended, and he was obliged to remain pretty quiet, or the chair would tip. Aunt Phebe said Tommy was so careless, something must be done, and keeping him still was the worst punishment he could have.

When the girls finished their dishes and took out their sewing, and were going to light the large lamp, their mother said that we mustn't think of settling ourselves for the evening. She said we must all go in to grandmother's, for she'd be dreadful lonely, missing Billy so.

Then Aunt Phebe told me how her nephew, Billy, a ten-year old boy, had gone away to school only the day before, and how they all missed him.

"Isn't he pretty young to go away to school?" I asked.

"That's what I told his father," said she.

"His father sent him away to keep him," said Uncle Jacob. "Grandmother was spoiling him."

"Ruining the boy with kindness?" said Lucy Maria.

"Well," said Aunt Phebe, "I suppose 't was so. I know 't was so. But we did hate to have Billy go!"

Uncle Jacob then took me across the garden, and introduced me to Mr. Carver, the father of William Henry, and to Grandmother, – old Mrs. Carver, as the neighbors called her.

She was a smiling, blue-eyed old lady, though with a little bit of an anxious look just between the eyes. I thought there was no doubt about her being a grandmother that would spoil boys.

"Why, there's Towser, now?" said Uncle Jacob. "He didn't come to meet me to-night."

"He's been there, off and on, pretty much all day," said grandmother. "You see what he's got his head on don't you?"

"Billy's old boots!" said Uncle Jacob.

"Yes. He set a good deal by Billy. I haven't put the boots away yet," she said, with a sigh.

"Here, Towser! come here, sir!" cried Uncle Jacob.

Towser was a big, shaggy, clever-looking dog. He got up slowly, sniffed at my trousers, then walked to Uncle Jacob, then round the room, then to the door, then up stairs and down again, and then back he went and lay down by the boots.

"He misses my grandson," said grandmother to me, trying to smile about it.

The little girl, Georgiana, sat on a cricket, holding a kitten, tying and untying its ribbon. A square of patchwork had fallen on the floor. She stooped to pick it up and dropped her spool. That rolled away towards the door, and kitty jumped for it and soon got the thread in a tangle. The door opened so suddenly that she hopped up about two feet into the air and tumbled head over heels.

It was Lucy Maria who opened the door. The other girls came soon after; and when Tommy was asleep Aunt Phebe came too. We had a very sociable time. I don't call myself a talker, but I didn't mind talking there, they seemed so easy, just like one's own folks. I told grandmother many things about the contrabands, and about Southern life, and Southern people, and about soldier life and battles and rations and making raids, and the Washington hospitals, and how needy the contrabands were, and about my barrel. "Poor creatures!" said she. "I must look up some things for them to-morrow." Aunt Phebe thought there might be a good many things lying about that would be of use to folks who hadn't anything.

"Billy's boots!" cried Hannah Jane.

"Why, yes," said her mother, "no use keeping boots for a growing boy."

This and other remarks brought us back to William Henry again, and grandmother seemed glad of it. She liked to keep talking about her boy.

"I shall feel very anxious," she said. "I hope he will write soon as he gets there. I told him he'd better write every day, so I could be sure just how he was. For if well one day, he mightn't be the next."

"O grandmother, that's too bad!" said Lucy Maria. "'T is cruel to ask a boy to write every day!"

"I wouldn't worry, mother," said Aunt Phebe. "Billy's always been a well child."

"These strong constitutions," said grandmother, "when they do take anything, 't is apt to go hard with 'em."

"He's taken pretty much everything that can be given to him already," said Aunt Phebe.

"I suppose they'll put clothes enough on his bed," said grandmother. "I can't bear to think of his sleeping cold nights."

"Perhaps they have blankets in that part of the country," said Uncle Jacob.

"But people are not always thoughtful about it," said grandmother. "I really hope he'll take care of himself, and not be climbing up everywhere. Houses and trees were bad enough; but now they have gymnastic poles and everything else, to tempt boys off the ground. O dear! when we think of everything that might happen to boys, 't is a wonder one of them ever lives to grow up. Isn't there a pond near by?"

"O yes," said Lucy Maria, "Crooked Pond. That's what gives the name to the school, – Crooked Pond School."

"I hope he won't be whipped," said his little sister.

"Whipped!" cried Aunt Phebe, "I should like to see anybody whipping our Billy!"

"O mother, I shouldn't," said Matilda.

"'T isn't an impossible thing," said grandmother. "He's quick. Billy's good-hearted, but he's quick. He might speak up. I gave him a charge how to behave. But then, what's a boy's memory? I don't suppose he'll remember one half the things I told him. I meant to have charged him over again, the last thing, not to stay out in the rain and get wet, where there's nobody to see to his clothes being dried."

"Well," said Uncle Jacob, "if a boy doesn't know enough to go into the house when it rains, he better come home?"

"What I hope is," said Aunt Phebe, "that he'll keep himself looking decent."

"If he does," said Lucy Maria, "then 'twill be the first time. The poor child never seemed to have much luck about keeping spruced up. If anybody here ever saw William Henry with no buttons off and both shoes tied, and no rip anywhere, let 'em raise their hands!"

Everybody laughed. I thought grandmother's eye wandered round the circle, as if half taking it all in earnest, and half hoping some hand would go up. But no hand went up.

"Billy always was hard on his clothes," she said, with a sigh. "If he only keeps well I won't say a word; but there's always danger of boys eating unwholesome things, where there's nobody to deny them."

"Billy's stomach's his own, and he must learn to have the care of it," said Mr. Carver.

Mr. Carver seemed a very quiet, thoughtful man, and of quite a different turn from his brother.

I suggested that boarding-house diet was apt to be plain; and then told grandmother about a nephew of mine, a nice boy, who was rather older than her grandson, who was named after me, and of whom I thought everything. I told her he had been away at school a year, and that he enjoyed himself, and went ahead in his studies, and never had a sick day, and came home with better manners than he had when he went away. As this pleased her, I said everything I could think of about my nephew, including some anecdotes of little Silas, when he was quite small; and she told a few about William Henry, the others helping her out, now and then, with some missing items.

Uncle Jacob said he shouldn't dare to say how many times she'd been frightened almost to death about Billy. Many and many a time she was sure he was lost, or drowned, or run over, or carried off, and would never come back alive; but he always managed to come out straight at last. Uncle Jacob said that if all the worry that was worried in this world were piled up together, 't would make a mountain; but if all of it that needn't be worried were knocked off, what was left wouldn't be bigger than a huckleberry hill.

Mr. Carver said there was one thing which made him entirely willing to trust William Henry away, and that was, he had always been a boy of principle. "I have watched him pretty closely," said Mr. Carver, "and have noticed that he has a kind of pride about him that will not permit him to lie, or equivocate in any way.

"That's true!" cried Aunt Phebe. "True enough! Billy don't always look fit to be seen, but he isn't deceitful. I'll say that for him!"