Aunt 'Liza's Hero, and Other Stories

"Shoo!" he cried, savagely, "you tormentin' old things!" Then he hopped across the room and banged the door after them, and hopped back.

The throbbing pain in his foot, and the deserted appearance of the house, brought the tears to his eyes. Then he remembered the show, and that his foot would not be well enough for him to earn the money dropping corn. He would have to miss it. Throwing himself on the lounge again, he cried softly to himself with great sobs that nearly choked him.

When his mother came home, she found him fast asleep with cheeks and lashes wet, and sobbing at intervals in his sleep.

Aunt Jane undertook to lecture him next day about his disobedience and what it led to, but he began to cry again, and she relented.

"Well, Joseph," she said, looking over her square-bowed spectacles, "I guess you've had a hard lesson, and one you won't forget in a hurry. As long as your heart's set on goin' to that show, if you'll learn to sew carpet-rags I'll pay you by the pound, and you can earn the money that way."

So Jode went patiently to work with thread and needle, and all those long April days sat in the house with his foot on a pillow, and sewed yards and yards of carpet-rags.

The pounds grew slowly, but the day came at last when he rolled his balls into the sack with Aunt Jane's, and two new silver dimes and a nickel jingled in his pockets.

Johnny Harris came every day to ask about the foot, and see the size of the balls. He looked enviously at the shining coins when Jode proudly displayed them.

"Gracious! Ain't she pretty?" he exclaimed, spinning one of the dimes around on the table. Then he balanced it on his thumb-nail, and tried its edge with his teeth, and finally put it in his mouth, while he watched Aunt Jane get out the steelyards, to weigh the warp for the new carpet.

Presently he turned to Jode with a white, scared face. "Oh, I've done swallered it!"

"You mean old thing," cried Jode. "I worked days and days to earn that dime. O Johnny! what did you do it for?"

"I didn't mean to," protested Johnny, eagerly. "It just slipped down as easy – this way." Suiting the action to the word, he took up the other dime, and popped it into his mouth.

"I was rolling it 'round with my tongue this way, and I sort o' choked, and it just slipped – ker-che-ew!"

Unlucky Johnny! This dime slipped also, for a mighty sneeze seized him, and sent the money rolling across the floor. Both boys darted after it with outstretched hands, but it bounced through the open door, and slipped out of sight behind the old stone steps. It was useless to attempt to move them. The toys of half a century had found a hiding-place in that crack, and Aunt Jane herself had, years ago, seen it swallow up the cherished treasure of her childish affection – a string of amber beads.

Johnny stood in open-mouthed horror at what he had done, while Jode's gaze wandered from the steps to Johnny, as if he saw the whole menagerie, animals, tent and all, disappearing down that gaping crack and the little red throat. It was more than he could bear.

"It's all your fault, Johnny Harris; if it hadn't been for you, I wouldn't have burnt my foot in the first place. I just can't bear to do it all over again, and besides, there isn't time anyway."

He lifted his hand angrily, and slapped Johnny's fat, freckled face. Then both the boys began to cry.

Aunt Jane disappeared in the closet for something, and stood there a moment, shaking with inaudible laughter, till the square-bowed spectacles slid down her nose. She looked very stern, though, when she came out and said, "There! there! boys, that's enough. It's no use to cry over spilled milk or swallowed money, either."

"Oh, please, ma'am, Miss Jane," begged Johnny, "won't you teach me to sew carpet-rags? I'll pay him back sure if you'll let me."

Aunt Jane looked at the clumsy little hands, brown, dirty, and covered with warts, and shook her head. It seemed a hopeless task. But the earnest look on the face and in the anxious eyes made her relent, and she gave a reluctant promise.

The rag-sewing commenced again. This time two boys sat on the door-step, longing to be out in the spring wind and sunshine, and one nursed his lame foot, and one wrestled manfully with thread that would snarl, and needles that would stick into his clumsy fingers.

As they sewed they talked, and the subject that came up oftenest was the circus. How Johnny longed to go! After awhile a hope whispered to him, that maybe he could pay his debt to Jode in time to earn enough money to go himself.

Although Aunt Jane sorted the rags so that most of the short ones fell to her lot, and the long ones to Johnny's, and contributed many a yard on the sly, Jode's foot was well before Johnny proudly paid over the two dimes, and only a long, red scar remained, to remind Jode of his disobedience and punishment.

"Wisht I was goin', too," sighed Johnny, when the last pound was weighed and delivered.

Then, regardless of ceremony, he pulled his hat over his eyes, and started home on the run. He did not go all the way. Aunt Jane spied him when she went to the barn for eggs. He was lying on the hay with his face in his arms.

She stood and looked at him a moment, thinking what an honest little heart it was, beating under the patched, faded jacket, – thinking of his drunken father and his miserable home, – of how much he wanted to go with the other boys, and how keenly he felt his poverty.

Then she took the eggs to the house, and tying her sunbonnet tighter, started resolutely down the lane to the big road in the direction of Johnny's home. The hand under her gingham apron gripped firmly an old leather purse.

That evening as Jode sat in the twilight, just inside the door, listening to the frogs croaking in the meadow-pond, a dusky little figure came running down the path. It was Johnny.

"Hi! Jode," he cried, "I'm a-goin', too! I'm a-goin', too! I'm too glad to hold still. The money jest rained down like the manna on ole Moses! I don't know who left it, but it was left at our house, and it was left fer me!"

Then, throwing himself on the ground, he turned one somersault after another down the path into the dewy darkness of the warm April night.

JIMMY'S ERRAND

"Well, I declare if Abe isn't the most forgetful boy I ever saw!" exclaimed Mrs. Perkins, as she emptied the contents of a large market-basket upon the kitchen table. "This makes the second time he's been to town and back this week, and he's forgotten that soda both times. Jimmy!" she called out to a freckle-faced boy who was making the old dog walk around the kitchen floor on its hind feet, "climb up to the top pantry shelf and see if there's any spice left in those tin boxes."

"What are you going to make, ma?" languidly inquired a pale girl who sat by the stove shaking with a chill.

"Why, I intended to make a cake for the new preacher's donation-party," answered Mrs. Perkins. "That's what the committee asked for – marble-cake and biscuits. Did you find anything, Jimmy?"

"No'm. They're all empty." The boy jumped down and went back to the patient old dog, which he now converted into a wheelbarrow and trundled around on its clumsy fore paws.

"What shall I do!" exclaimed Mrs. Perkins, in despair. "There's not a speck of spice or soda in the house."

This was before the days of baking-powder, and it was eight miles to the nearest town.

"I'll tell you," answered Maria, with her teeth chattering. "Let Abe saddle old Blaze and go up to Doctor Spinner's. He always keeps such things on hand, and we can send for some more quinine at the same time."

"And be about as likely to get soap and knitting-needles as anything else!" replied her mother, with a frown. "It's a pity a boy as old as Abe is can't be trusted to remember anything!"

"Let Jimmy go," suggested Maria. "It's only three miles, and he can easily get back by dinner-time."

"Yes," said Mrs. Perkins, "I don't know of any reason why he shouldn't be trusted with the horse, and he can be depended on to do the errand a sight better than Abe."

Jimmy's freckled face beamed with delight. He had expected to spend the morning hoeing in the garden. He had been waiting the last half-hour for his father to call him and set him at work; but it was not the prospect of escaping a disagreeable task or of cantering along the road on the old blaze-faced horse that pleased him most. It was the fact that his mother and Maria regarded him as more trustworthy than Abe, and Abe was nearly grown.

He had never before so completely appreciated his true worth nor felt such a sense of his own importance as when his mother entrusted him with the errand, and gave him a message for the doctor's wife. Maria's words of praise were still in his ears when he ran down the path, hitching up a broken suspender as he went.

"What are you up to now?" inquired Abe, as Jimmy walked into the barn in a lordly way and took down the saddle.

"Up to takin' a ride," answered Jimmy, in a way that nettled his older brother.

"Not on that saddle, you ain't!" retorted Abe. "I'm goin' to mill."

"Then you'll have to ride bareback," was the cool reply. "I'm goin' on an errand for mother, and, what's more, I'm goin' to have the saddle. Can't I, pa?" he asked, as his father came in.

"No, Jimmy," answered his father, when both boys had stated the case. "Abe is bigger, and he's got the farthest to go."

Abe laughed provokingly. "I don't care!" muttered Jimmy. "You couldn't be trusted to do the errand. Mother said so. So you needn't laugh."

Abe's face flushed. He knew his failing, and did not like to be reminded of it.