A Little Girl in Old New York by Amanda Minnie Douglas (epub ebook reader txt) 📖

other boys. When I want him to go to the barber's I'll take him. You will find enough to do. Charles, get a lamp and go up to your own room."

"I don't allow him to have a lamp in his room. He will set something a-fire."

"Then go up in the parlor."

"The parlor!" his mother shrieked.

"I'll go to bed," said Charles. "I know my lesson."

There was a light in the upper hall. On the second floor were the sleeping-chambers. Charles' was the back hall room. He could see very well from the light up the stairway.

What happened in the basement dining-room he could not even imagine. His father so seldom interfered in any matter, and his mother had a way of talking him down. But Charles was asleep when they came to bed.

Still, he had a rather hard day on Sunday. His mother was coldly severe and captious. Once she said:

"I can't bear to look at you, you are so disfigured! If _that_ is what your father calls style----" and she shook her head disapprovingly.

He went to church and Sunday-school, and then his father took him up to Tompkins Square for a walk. It seemed as if they had never been acquainted before. Why, his father was real jolly. And it was a nice week at school after the boys got done asking him "Who his Barber was?" He could see the big B they put to it.

On Saturday afternoon Mrs. Reed had to go out shopping with a cousin. She was an excellent shopper. She could find flaws, and beat down, and get a spool of cotton or a piece of tape thrown in. When Charles came home from singing-school he was to go over to the Deans and play in the back yard. He was not to be out on the sidewalk at all.

They were going to have a splendid time. Elsie and Florence Hay would bring their dolls. Even Josie envied the pretty names, though she confessed to Hanny that she didn't think Hay was nice, because it made you think of "hay, straw, oats" on the signs at the feed stores. But the girls were very sweet and pleasant. Nora had come in with the cat dressed in one of her own long baby frocks.

Hanny ran in to get her doll. It was still her choice possession, and had been named and unnamed. Her mother began to think she was too big to play with dolls, but Margaret had made it such a pretty wardrobe.

Ben sat at the front basement window reading. Mr. and Mrs. Underhill had gone up to see Miss Lois, who was far from well. Margaret was out on "professional rounds," which Ben thought quite a suggestive little phrase. Martha was scrubbing and of course he couldn't talk to her. He had cut the side of his foot with a splinter of glass, and his mother would not allow him to put on his shoe.

Hanny brought down her doll. Ben looked rather wistfully at her.

"I wish you'd come in too. We're going to have such a nice time," she said in a soft tone.

"I'd look fine playing with dolls."

"But you needn't really play with dolls. Mrs. Dean doesn't. She's the grandmother. We go to visit her, and she tells us about the old times, just as Aunt Nancy and Aunt Patience do. Of course she wasn't there really, she makes believe, you know. And you might be the--the----"

"Grandfather who had lost his leg in the war."

Ben laughed. He had half a mind to go.

"Oh, that would be splendid. And you could be a prisoner when the British held New York. There'd be such lots to talk about. You could wear John's slipper, you see----"

She smiled so persuasively. She would never be as handsome as Margaret, but she had such tender, coaxing eyes, and such a sweet mouth.

"Well, I'll bring my book along." It was one of Cooper's novels that boys were going wild over just then. "Do you really think they'd like to have me?"

"Oh, I know they would," eagerly.

Ben had to walk rather one-sided. Joe said he must not bear any weight on the outside of his foot to press the wound open.

"I've brought Ben," announced the little girl. "And he's going to be a Revolutionary soldier."

"We are very glad to see him," and Mrs. Dean rose. She had a white kerchief crossed on her breast, and a pretty cap pinned up for the occasion.

The yard was shady in the afternoon. There was a piece of carpet spread on the grass, and some chairs arranged on it, and two or three rugs laid around. On the space paved with brick stood the table, and two boxes were the dish closets. There were some cradles, and a bed arranged on another box. It really was a pretty picture.

Josie and Charles were generally the mother and father of one household. Charles blushed up to the roots of his hair. He liked playing with the girls, when he was the only boy, with no one to laugh at him.

"Now you mustn't mind me or I shall go back home and stay all alone," said Ben. That appealed to everybody's sympathy. "I'm coming over here to talk to grandmother about what we did when we were young."

Grandmother had some knitting. People even then knit their husband's winter stockings because they wore so much better. "And Mrs. Pennypacker, you might come and call on us."

Nora laughed. That was Ben's favorite name for her when she had the cat.

The soft gray head and the gray paws looked rather queer out of the long white dress. Pussy Gray had a white nose and his eyes were fastened in with a black streak that looked like a ribbon.

"How is your son to-day?" Ben inquired.

"He is pretty well, except he's getting some teeth. Ain't you, darling?" and Nora hugged him up.

"Wow," said Kitty softly.

"Have you had the doctor?"

"No-o," answered Kitty, looking up pathetically.

"I'm afraid I've neglected him," explained Mrs. Pennypacker. "You poor darling! But your mother has been so busy."

"Meaow," said Kitty resignedly.

"Are you hungry, dear? Would you like a bit of cold chicken? He has to have something to keep up his strength. Teething is so hard on children."

"Me-e-a-ow," returned Kitty, with plaintive affirmation.

Mrs. Pennypacker went over to the table and gave him a mouthful of something. If it wasn't chicken it answered the purpose. Then she sat down to rock him to sleep and asked Ben in what battle he had lost his leg.

Ben thought it was the battle of White Plains. He was very young at the time.

"How hard it must be to have a wooden leg," sighed Nora. "And of course you can't dance a bit."

"Oh, no, indeed!"

"Did they treat you very badly when you were a prisoner?"

"Dreadful," answered Ben. "They didn't give us half enough to eat."

"That was terrible. I hope you'll be contented here, where everything is so nice and cheerful. I am going to see Mr. and Mrs. Brown now."

"Please give them my compliments and tell them I should be very happy to have them call."

Charles had been watching Ben furtively with an apprehension that the real enjoyment of the afternoon would be spoiled. And no doubt he would tell the Houston Street boys "all about it." He was hardly prepared to see Ben enter so into the spirit of the "make believe."

Then Ben and Mrs. Dean had a little talk that might have been considered an anachronism, since it was about the foot still fast to his body. He had stepped on a piece of glass in the stable, and it had gone through the old shoe he had on for that kind of work. But Joe had seen it that morning and thought it would get along all right.

They were talking very eagerly over the other side of the city. And presently quite a procession came to call on the old veteran. Ben and Charles fell into a discussion about some battles, and the misfortune it was to the country to lose New York so early in the contest. They compared their favorite generals and discussed the prospect of war with Mexico that was beginning to be talked about. And Mr. Brown said he had some cousins who were very anxious to see an old soldier of the Revolution. Could he bring them over?

Then Elsie and Florence Hay came. Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Pennypacker asked him to tea and he said he should be glad to accept.

Mrs. Dean thought they had better have their tea in the dining-room, but Josie said let them spread the cloth on the coping of the area, and bring the chairs and benches just inside. Charles said that would be a sort of Roman feast and the guests would make believe there were couches. They put down papers and then a cloth, and Josie brought out her dishes. Grandmother held the Pennypacker baby, who certainly was the best cat in the world and settled himself down, white dress and all.

Ben asked Charles if he was studying Roman history, and found he was reading the Orations of Cicero in Latin, and knew a great deal about Greece and Rome. He had read most of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and liked "Marmion" beyond everything.

"What was he going to do--enter college?"

"Mother wants me to. Father says I may if I like."

He colored a little, but did not say his mother had set her heart on his being a minister because his Uncle Robert, who died, had intended to enter that profession. Ben said the boys, John and the doctor, wanted him to go, but he wished he could be a newspaper man like Nora's father. His mother thought it a kind of shiftless business. They talked over their likes and dislikes in boy fashion, and Charles enjoyed it immensely. He thought it would be just royal to have a big brother who was a doctor, and a little sister like Hanny.

Meanwhile the little women had been very much engrossed with their children and their tea party, and the prospect of a grandmother and an old soldier coming to visit them.

"And Mr. Brown is so heedless," said Mrs. Brown. "He ought to be here to go to the store, but he's off talking and men are _so_ absent-minded."

Elsie said she'd go to the store, which was the closet in the basement.

Then the company came, and the old soldier limped dreadfully. Mrs. Brown scolded her husband a little, and then excused him, and everybody was seated in a row. There was a plate of thin bread-and-butter, some smoked beef cut in small pieces, some sugar crackers, quite a fad of that day, and a real cake. Mrs. Dean had given them half of a newly baked one.

It was quite a tea. Mr. Dean came home in the midst of it and sympathized warmly with the hero of 1776, and was extremely courteous to grandmother. The little girls cleared away the dishes, put their children to bed, had a fine swing and played "Puss in the Corner" with two sets.

Mr. Reed came in for Charles.

"I wish you'd come over and see my boy," he said to Ben. "He's a rather lonely chap, having no