The Story of Dago

Chapter 3

WHAT THE MIRROR-MONKEY HEARD ON WEDNESDAY.

Do you see any gray hairs in my fur, Ring-tail, or any new wrinkles in my face? Life in this family is such a wear and tear on the nerves that I feel that I am growing old fast. So much happens every day. Something is always happening here. Really, I have had more exciting experiences in one short forenoon, here in this house, than I used to have in a whole month in the Zoo. It is bad for me to be in such a state of constant fright.

The day after I was divided between Phil and Stuart, the boys of the neighbourhood had a Cuban war in our back yard. At least they started to have one,--built a camp-fire and put up a tent and got their ammunition ready. Each side made a great pile of soft mud-balls, and it was agreed that as soon as a soldier was hit and spotted by the moist clinging stuff he was to be counted dead. You see the sport was not dangerous, only dirty.

Stuart had his coat off, rolling mud-balls with all his might and main. He was plastered with mud to his elbows, and his face was a sight.

Phil was busy sweeping up dead leaves for the camp-fire. Suddenly he dropped his old broom and went trotting off toward the house. "I am going to get something that will make it sound like a real war," he said to me as he left. The boys did not hear him, and he came back presently, with his little blue blouse all pouched out in front with the things he had stuffed inside of it.

I followed him into the tent and watched him unload. First there was the old powder-horn that always hangs over the hall mantelpiece. Then there was a big, wide-necked bottle, a large, clean handkerchief, and a spool of thread. "You see this, Dago?" he said to me. "Now you watch and see what happens."

He tore the hem off the handkerchief, poured a lot of powder into the middle of the square that was left, and then drew the corners together in one hand. With the other hand he squeezed the powder into a ball in the middle of the handkerchief, and wrapped the thread around and around above it to keep the wad in place.

"Now I'll put the wad of powder into the bottle," he said, "and leave the ends of the cloth sticking out for a fuse. See?"

I didn't know anything about gunpowder then, so I put my head close to his as he squatted there in the tent, talking as he worked. "Come on, Dago," he said, when it was ready, "I'll light this at the camp-fire and hold the bottle straight out in the air, so it won't hurt anything. It'll go off like a pistol--bim!--and make the boys jump out of their boots." I thought it would be better for me to get out of the way if a racket like that was coming, so I scuttled up to the top of the tent-pole.

Phil stooped down by the bonfire, held the rag to the coals until it began to smoulder, and swung around to point it at the fence. There was no sound. Evidently the bottle did not make as good a pistol as he thought it would. "The light's gone out," he muttered, bringing the bottle cautiously around to look at it. Then he blew it, either to see if he could rekindle it, or to make sure that the last spark was out,--I could not tell. The next instant there was a puff, a flash, and then, jungles of my ancestors! such a noise and such screams and such a smell of burning powder! After that I could see nothing but a tangled mass of boys, all legs and elbows, crowding around poor little Phil to see what had happened. If war is like that, then my voice and vote are henceforth for peace, and peace alone. It's awful!

They carried him up-stairs, and his father was sent for, and the neighbours came running in as soon as the boys had scampered home with the news. For awhile it seemed to me that the whole world was topsy-turvy. Miss Patricia was so frightened she couldn't do a thing. I really pitied her, for her hands trembled and her voice shook, and even the little bunches of gray curls bobbed up and down against her pale cheeks. I have had the shivers so often that I can sympathise with any one whose nerves are unstrung from fright.

The doctor turned us all out of the room, and I waited with the boys out by the alley-gate until he came down-stairs and told us how badly Phil was burned. His front hair and eyebrows and beautiful long curly lashes were singed off, and his face was so full of powder that it was as speckled as a turkey egg. The grains would have to be picked out one by one,--a slow and painful proceeding. The doctor could not tell how badly his eyes were hurt until next day, but thought he would have to lie in a dark room for a week at least, with his eyelids covered with cotton that had been dipped in some soothing kind of medicine.

But that week went by, and many a long tiresome day besides, before Phil could use his eyes again. They would not let me go into the room that first day, but after Phil had gone to sleep I hid under a chair in the upper hall, where Miss Patricia and the doctor were talking. "Tom," said Miss Patricia, "what do you suppose made that child do such a reckless thing? Sometimes I think that boys are like monkeys, and are possessed by the same spirit of mischief. Neither seem satisfied unless they are playing tricks or making some kind of a disturbance. They are always getting into trouble."

"Yes, it does seem so," answered the doctor, "but if we could look down to the bottom of a boy's heart, we would find that very little of the mischief that he gets into is planned for the purpose of making trouble. He does things from a pure love of fun, or from some sudden impulse, and because he never stops to think of what it may lead to. Phil never stopped to think any more than Dago would have done, what would be the result of setting fire to the powder. You must remember that he is a very little fellow, Aunt Patricia. He is only eight. We shouldn't expect him to have the reasoning powers of a man, and the caution and judgment that come with age."

Now I thought that that was a very sensible speech. It seemed to excuse some of my own past mistakes. But Miss Patricia put on her old war-eagle look.

"Really, Tom," she said, "that sounds very well, but it is not what was taught in my day. A wholesome use of the rod after the first act of disobedience helps boys to stop and think before committing the second. It is a great developer of judgment, in my opinion. If you had punished Phil the first time he took down his grandfather's powder-horn after you had forbidden him to touch it, he would never have taken it down the second time, and so would have been spared all this suffering to-day."

"I know you are right, Aunt Patricia," said the doctor, "but I seem to remember my own boyhood so clearly, the way I thought and felt and looked at things, that I have a very warm sympathy for my little lads when they go wrong."

Miss Patricia rose to go down and prepare the lemon jelly that Phil had asked for, saying, as she moved toward the stairs:

"Well, I love Phil and Stuart dearly. I'm devoted to them, and willing to do anything in my power for their comfort, but I'm free to confess that I don't understand them. I never did understand boys." Then she tripped over me as I nearly upset us both in my frantic efforts to get out of her way. "Or monkeys either," she added, shaking her skirts at me with a displeased "Shoo," as if I had been a silly old hen.

It was very quiet about the house for a few days, and then some jolly times began in Phil's room. As soon as the boys were allowed to visit him I showed them some of my tricks, and kept them in roars of laughter. I wheeled little Elsie's doll carriage around the room, and I sat up with the doctor's pipe in my mouth, I drilled and danced, and performed as if I had been on a stage. It was wonderful to them, for they had never guessed how much I knew. One day I sat down in a little rocking-chair with a kitten in my arms, and rocked and hugged it as if it had been a baby. It wasn't breathing when I stopped. The boys said I hugged it too hard, but they kept on bringing me something to rock every day, until five kittens and a rabbit had been put to sleep so soundly that they wouldn't wake up.

One day Phil was moved into Miss Patricia's room while his own was being cleaned. Of course no boys were allowed to go in there with him except Stuart. They had a good time, for Miss Patricia told them stories and showed them the curious things in her cabinet and gave them sugar-plums out of the big, blue china dragon that always stands on top of it. But I could see that she was not enjoying their visit. She was afraid that Stuart's rockers would bump against her handsome old mahogany furniture, or that they would scratch it in some way, or break some of her fine vases and jardini***.

After awhile she was called down to the parlour to receive a guest, and there was nothing to amuse the boys. Time dragged so heavily that Phil begged Stuart to bring his little rubber-gun--gumbo-shooter he called it. It was a wide rubber band fastened at each end to the tips of a forked stick shaped like a big Y. They used buckshot to shoot with, nipping up a shot in the middle of the band with thumb and finger, and drawing it back as far as possible before letting it fly.

There was a fire in the grate, so they were comfortably warm even when they opened the window to take turns in shooting at the red berries on the vine just outside. It was as much as Phil could do, lying on the sofa, to send a buckshot through the open window without hitting the panes above, but Stuart cut a berry neatly from the vine at each trial.

Soon he began to boast of his skill, and aimed his sling at an ancient portrait over the mantel. It was of a dignified old gentleman in a black stock and powdered wig. He had keen, eagle eyes like Miss Patricia, which seemed to follow one all around the room.

"I bet I could hit that picture square in the apple of its eye," he bragged, "right in its eye-ball,--bim!"

"Oh, don't try!" begged Phil. "It's our great-great-grandfather, and Aunt Patricia thinks a lot of that picture."

"'Course I wouldn't do it," answered Stuart, taking another aim, "but I could, just as easy as nothing." Still dallying with temptation, he pointed again at the frowning eye and drew the rubber slowly back. All of a sudden, zip! The buckshot seemed to leap from the rubber of its own accord, and Stuart fell back, frightened by what he had done. A round black hole the size of the buckshot gaped in the middle of the old-ancestor's eye-ball, as clean cut as if it had been made with a punch. It gave it the queerest, wickedest stare you can imagine. It was the first thing one would notice on looking about the room. Stuart was white about the mouth.

"Oh, dear," sighed Phil, half crying, "if Aunt Patricia was only like the wise monkeys of Japan, then she wouldn't notice."

"But she will," said Stuart; "she always sees everything."

Phil had given me an idea. As soon as I heard Miss Patricia's silk skirts coming slowly through the hall with their soft swish, swish, I ran and sat in the doorway with my hands over my eyes, in token that there was something that she ought not to look at. It should have amused her, for she knew the story of the ebony paper-weight, but instead it seemed to arouse her suspicion that something was wrong. She looked at the boys' miserable faces and then all around the room, very slowly. It was so still that you could have heard a pin drop. At last she looked up at the picture. Then she fairly stiffened with horror. She couldn't find a word for a moment, and Stuart cried out, "Oh, Aunt Patricia, I'm so sorry. It was an accident. I didn't mean to do it, truly I didn't!"

There's no use harrowing up your feelings, Ring-tail, repeating all that was said. Miss Patricia simply couldn't believe that the shot could have struck dead centre unless the eye had been deliberately aimed at, and she thought something was wrong with a boy who would even take aim at his great-great-grandfather's eyeball.

Stuart was sent from the room in disgrace to report to his father, and the last I saw of Miss Patricia that day, she was looking up at the portrait, and saying, with a mournful shake of her gray curls: "How can they do such things? I must confess that I don't understand boys!"