The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI

"Papa letted me come," he said gaily, "and Peggy's here, too,—there!"

Peggy was attired with great care, her long red curls were shining and her eyes sparkled.

Immediately both children were immersed in the beauties of a collection of rejected models which had been obtained from the patent office, and which, surely, were the most diverting toys imaginable.

"Poor things, to them they are most valuable!" sighed Mrs. Winslow. She was making conversation about the Miller china; but Johnny-Ivan and Peggy not unreasonably conceived that she spoke of the beautiful churns and hayraking wagons and cars and wheeled chairs and the like marvels which Miss Hopkins was amiably explaining for them.

"The least chip would be irreparable, I suppose," continued Mrs. Winter, "thousands couldn't pay if one were broken!"

"Imagine the feelings of the custodian," said Emma. "I'm in a tremble all the time."

"I pity you," said Mrs. Winter, as the two ladies passed on to Mrs. Winter's great-grandmother's blue and white embroidered bedspread.

"Oh, Peggy, do be careful!" whispered Johnny-Ivan; Peggy was sending a velocipede in dizzy circles round the counter.

Now fate had ordered that at this critical instant the children should be unguarded. Miss Hopkins had stepped aside at the call of an agitated lady who had lost one of her art treasures in carriage; for the moment, there was no one near save a freckled boy in shabby overalls, who eyed the toys wistfully from afar. He was the same little boy whom Johnny-Ivan had bribed with a jack-knife to close the gate a few weeks before; and he was in the Museum to help his mother, the scrub-woman of the store.

Peggy grew more pleased with her play. The velocipede described wider and wider gyrations with accelerating speed; its keen buzz swelled on the air.

"It'll hit somepin!" warned Johnny-Ivan in an access of fear.

But Peggy's soul was dauntless to recklessness. "No, it won't," she flung back. Her shining head was between Johnny and the whirling wheels. He thought a most particularly beautiful little swinging gate in peril and tried to swerve the flying thing; how it happened, neither of the children knew; there was a smash, a crash, and gate and velocipede lay in splinters under a bronze bust. The glass of the show-case was etched with a sinister gray line.

"Now look what you've done!" exclaimed Peggy, with the natural irritation of disaster. "Oh, my!" squeaked the shabby little boy, "won't you catch it!" Peggy's anger was swallowed up in fright and sympathy; she pushed Johnny-Ivan ahead of her. "That Miss Hopkins is looking," cried she, "get behind these folks down the aisle!"

She propelled the little boy out of the immediate neighborhood of the calamity; she forced a wicked, deceitful smile (alas! guile comes easy to her sex) and pointed out things to him, whispering, "Look pleasant! Don't be so scared! They'll never know we did it." Already she was shouldering her share in crime, with a woman's willingness; she said "we" quite unconsciously; but she added (and this was of direct volition): "I did it more'n you; you were just trying to keep the nasty thing straight; I was a heap more to blame. Anyhow, I guess it ain't so awful bad. Just those wooden things."

Johnny-Ivan shook a tragic head; even his lips had gone bluish-white. "She said thousands wouldn't repair the damage," moaned he.

"You can't make me believe those mean little wooden tricks are worth any thousand dollars!" volleyed Peggy; nevertheless, her heart beat faster,—grown people are so queer. "Are you sure she meant them? Maybe it was those things in the next glass case; they're her own things! They're some kind of Chinese china and cost a heap." Peggy's sturdy womanly wits were rising from the shock.

"And the show-case is broked!" sniffed Johnny-Ivan, gulping down a sob.

"It ain't broke, it's only cracked; 'sides, it was cracked a right smart befo'!"

"But this was a new place—I know, 'cause I cut my finger on the other, scraping it over."

"Well, anyhow, I reckon it didn't be much value," Peggy insisted.

"I saw that young lady come back,"—Johnny-Ivan had switched on to a new track leading to grisly possibilities—"maybe she'll find it!"

"Well, we're gone, all right."

Peggy gave an unprincipled giggle; "Maybe she'll think it was him."

"Then we got to tell," moaned Johnny.

"No, we ain't. He'll run off and so she won't ask him questions."

"But she'll think it's him. It'll be mean."

"No it won't."

"It's mean to have somebody else take your blame or your punishment; mamma said so."

The small casuist was too discreet to attack Johnny's oracle; she only pouted her pretty lips and quibbled:

"'Tain't mean if the people who get blamed are mean themselves—like him. I don't care how blamed he gets; I wouldn't care if he got licked."

But Johnny's conscience was not so elastic. "I don't care, either," he protested. "I—I wouldn't care if he was deaded"—anxious to propitiate—"but it would be mean just the same. I got to tell papa, Peggy, I truly have."

Peggy grew very cross. "You are just the foolest, obsternatest little boy I ever did see," she grumbled; "you're a plumb idiot! I'd like to slap you! Your papa'll be awful mad."

Johnny-Ivan essayed an indifferent mien, but his eyes were miserable.

"Say, Jo'nivan,"—her voice sank to a whisper that curdled his blood—"were you ever spanked?"

"Only Hilma sorter kinder—not really spanking, you know," confessed Johnny with a toss of his head. "I just made faces at her; I didn't cry!" he bragged.

"Never your mamma or your papa?"

"Course not," said Johnny with a haughty air; "but, Peggy," he said very low, "were you—did—"

"Oh, my, yes! Mammy did when I was little. I'm too big now."

"I'm too big, too, now, ain't I?"

"I don't know," said Peggy. "Wulf Greiner was licked by teacher, and he's thirteen. It's whether it's mighty bad, you know."

Johnny-Ivan caught his breath and his legs shook under him; the horror of his father's "licking" him came over him cold; it was not the pain; he had never minded Hilma's sturdy blows and he had let Michael cut a splinter out of his thumb with a pocket-knife, and never whimpered; it was the ignominy, the unknown terror of his father's wrath that looked awful to him. As he looked down the crowded room and suddenly beheld Winslow's face bent gravely over Miss Hopkins, who was talking earnestly, he could hardly move his feet. Yet he had no thought of wavering. "I got to tell," he said, and walked as fast as he could, with his white face, straight to the group.

Winslow looked down and saw the two children; and one could discover the signals of calamity in their faces: Peggy's a fine scarlet and Johnny-Ivan's grayish-white.

"What's the matter, Johnny?" asked Winslow.

Johnny's eyelids were glued tight—just as they were when he pulled Peggy's tooth—he blurted everything out breathlessly: "I've done something awful, papa! It'll cost thousands of dollars."

Emma Hopkins had considered Winslow an unattractive man, of a harsh visage, but now, as he looked at his little son, she changed her mind.

"What did you do, son?" said he quietly; his hand found Johnny's brown curls and lay on them a second.

"He didn't do it, really; it was me," Peggy broke in, too agitated for grammar. "I was playing with the little tricks on the table, the models, sah, and I was making the v'losipid run round and he was 'fraid I'd break it; but I did it, really, sah."

"And the model fell on to something valuable? I see."

"But he wasn't playing with it, he was only trying to keep me from breaking—"

"Well, young lady, you two are evidently in the same boat; but you aren't a bit sneaky, either of you. Let's see the wreckage; I suppose you got into trouble because you wanted to see how things worked, and Johnny, as usual, couldn't keep out of other folks' hot water. Where's the ruin?"