Democratic Sentinel, Volume 2, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 February 1878 — A SMALL BOY. [ARTICLE]

A SMALL BOY.

**Oh ! I say, she’s out, ” said small Ned, as he opened the door. “She’s gone to the dressmaker’s, but she’ll be back soon, ’cause she’s got to friz hen hair for diuuer. Come in and wait.” I accepted the invitation, and installed myself in the easiest chair in the parlor, after rolling it to the bay-win-dow, to an to command a view of the street, wljile Ned “ histed” himself, as he called it, on a marble-topped table beside me, and sat there, with the crispy cheekiness of early boyhood, whistling and swinging his feet. Ned was a chap of 10 years, with a remarkable memory—as I was fated to discover—the youngest brother of Miss Victoria Conrad; and Miss Victoria Conrad was a handsome, dashing, clever g rl whom I had met at a picnic the preceding summer, and with whom I had immediately fallen desperately in love. I use the word “ desperately” advisedly, for it was my first really serious entanglement, and my charmer, being a thorough mistress of the arts by which young and susceptible male hearts are subjugated, had inthralled me most completely. True, before I cast mysqjf at her feet, I had felt a great tendernets for a sweet little third or fourth cousin of mine—a slight, pale voting girl, with hair of the faintest gold, and eyes of the softest blue, and an innocent, trusting, child-like look in her pretty face. But beside Miss Conrad, with her magnificent form, glorious auburn tresses, and wonderful big black eyes, May Newton faded into insignificance. It was as though one placed a delicate, cream-colored lily in the same vase with a gorgeous, flame-daslied-with-crimson-leaved, brown-throated gladiole. And so I found, on becoming acquainted with Miss Conrad, that my feeling for May, which had existed since our earliest childhood, was only a tenderness, while my feeling for Victoria, although but three months old, already amounted t* a passion. But, in spite of my infatuation for the hitter, I was not blind to the fact that she was a finished coquette, and I didn’t half like the way, after the very decided encouragement she had given me, she flirted with my intimate friend Charley Thornton. Sometimes, indeed, it flashed upon me that there ha I been a love affair between them which had not entirely ended even now, and it was after one of these flashes I had sought her house, determined to discover what her real feelings toward mo were, and resolved that when I left her it should be either as an accepted or rejected suitor. To speak frankly, I had every reason t > believe, in spite of the flashes, it would 1> ■as tin accepted one. For, as much as Thornton was distinguished by Miss Conrad above her other admirers, just so much had I been of late distinguished above Thornton. And we two were equal iu age, .looks, family, education, and (our lady-love thought) fortune. I say our lady-love thought, for the truth was, compared to mo, Charley was poor. How rich I was I had taken care should not be known; for, though only three-and-twenty, I had already grown tired of a single life, with its attendant boarding houses, and was booking for a wife, with a view to a comfortable home of my own. Ami, like Lord Burleigh and other romantic, poetical fellows, I wanted to be loved for myself alone. Only Charley Thornton knew of my recently inherited wealth, and him I 'had bound by all that is sacred iu friendship not to disclose it. “So in singling me out for favor,” I argued, “ Victoria leads me to suppose she loves me. And, if she consents to be my wife, that supposition will turn into a happy certainty, for she certainly, with her beauty and ta’ents, might make a much' finer match than the one I offer her. And what delight it will be, when the words are said that seal my happiness and make her all my own, to see her resplendent’eyes grow larger and brighter as she lea.ns that in accepting a few thousands she has become the mistress of half a million I” But to go back to the small boy, swinging his feet and evidently anxious to enter into conversation. “Isay,” he blurts out at last, “do you like to look at photographs ? Charley Thornton does. He and Vic looked at this book”—taking one from the table on which he sat—“tor more’n an hour the other day. I like him. He gave me two white mice and a guinea-pig; the cat ate the white mice, and the guineapig’s dead. But they wasn’t looking at it all the time either. They was talking. Your picture’s there, you know. His used to be on the other page, but he coaxed Vic to put it somewhere else. ” “Why?” I asked, ceasing to watch tor the coming of my divinity, and turning toward the small boy with awakened curiosity. “ ’Cause,” said Ned, evidently trying to repeat the very words—“’cause he couldn’t bear even his picture to have always before it the face of his rival, his successful—yes, that’s it—his successful rival.” My heart gave a bound. She did love me, then. Poor Charley ! ‘ And w’hat reply did your sister make to that ?” I asked. “OhJ S^e ‘ non sense,’but she took the picture out—Charley’s, you know—and he kissed her hand, and she carneel it up to her room, and it’s there now, hanging between the ‘ Huguenot Lovers and ‘ His Only Friend.’ He’s a poor barefooted boy a lying fast asleep in the road, and his only friend’s a dog —one of them big fellows, you know ” “ Yes, yes,” 1 interrupted, rather impatiently; “ I know all about it. ’’

Ned, evidently somewhat offended, was silent for about three minutes, and then began sgaiw. “Oh, myhehdn’t they talk that day! Vic sent word to everybody else that came that she was out. Wasn’t that a whopper! I was snuggled up on the sofa over in that dark corner there, and they didn’t see me, and I heard every word they said. Wouldn’t Vic have boxed my ears if she’d caught me ?” “I wonder what they talked of,” I said to myself, with a jealous qualm—to tell the truth, I’d been a little staggered by the picture episode; and then, though it wasn’t exactly the right thing to do, although certainly excusable in a case like this, where a man’s whole happiness was at stake, I made up my mind if possible to find out “Ned,” said I, “I saw a splendid knife the other day—six blades.” “ Six blades I” repeated Ned, his eyes sparkling. “ Yes, or five blades and a file, I don’t remember which. It was a beauty, though, and if I wasn’t afraid you’d cut yourself with it, I’d buy it and give it to you.” “ Cut myself I” said the small boy, with infinite scorn ; “I ain’t a baby.” “Well,” said I, “the knife shall be yours.” And then I continued, in a nonchalant manner : “What was it you said your sister and Mr. Thornton were talking about?” “I didn’t say nothing,” said Ned. “ When’ll you bring the knife ?” “You shall have it to-morrow,” I replied. “Did they say anything about me, for instance?” “ Oh, lots I” said Ned, starting off rapidly. “ Charley said, ‘ Oh, Vic, you’d never have given me up if I hadn’t told you how rich he was. What a fool I’ve been I I might have known that that would have been too much of a’— let me see: ‘Lead us not into temptation’—‘temptation for such a girl as you are. Good heavens!’ and he grabbed hold of his hair just as though he was going to pull it all out;” and the small boy suited the action to the word, and tugged at his own curly locks with such an assumption of desperation as brought the tears into his eyes. “ ‘ Good heavens !’ he says, ‘ how selfish and cruel you are I I’m sure I don’t know how I can love you. Are you going to marry him ?’ And Vic says, ‘ I am. ’ ” “Ohl you are,” thinks the attentive listener.

“ ‘ It would be awful silly,’ she says,” the small boy rattles on, “ ‘for us to get married. I might think I was happy for a little while, ’cause I b’lieve I hive you as well as I could love anybody, and then I’d be jolly miserable, for I must have a seal-skin jacket and anew switch, and hair like mine costs like ’ Oh no; that’s what she said to ma this morning. I mean she says: ‘For I never could be happy without a fine house, and a carriage, and all sorts of nobby things,’ and ever so much more I can’t remember. ‘And so be a good boy,’ she’ says, ‘ and console yourself with May Newton. She likes you, I’m sure, and she is a sweet little thing, and would make you an excellent wife. ’ ” “ I don’t believe she ever will, then,” I mutter between my teeth. “Goon, Ned.” “‘No, she wouldn’t,’ says Charley; ‘ and as for her liking me, you never were more mistaken in your life; or, if she does like me, it is because I am the friend of the man she loves— Arthur Bell’”—(I’m Arthur Bell) —‘“yes, she loves him as dearly as I do you, and has loved him for years. It was for his sake she refused handsome Phil Akers, to say nothing of that rich old bachelor Quimby, that all the other girls are pulling caps for. Poor little wretch I I know how to pity her. ’ ‘ You’ll both recover,’ says Vic, ‘and, ten chances to one, fall in love with each other. There’s nothing like catching a ball on the bounce. ’ ” “‘A heart on the rebound,’ I think you mean, Ned,” I say, with astonishing calmness. “Well, perhaps I do,” assents the Small boy, whittling a oouplo of baza of “ Yankee Doodle” thoughtfully. “Anyhow,” ending with a false note that makes me shudder, “Vic stuck to it she’d marry you, ’cause you was so slap-bang-set-’em-up-again rich; and Charley smashed his hat on his head and walked out of the room like this,” and, slipping from the table, the small boy seized my hat from my hand, literally “smashed” it upon his curly head, and strode out into the hall in such a melodramatic manner that I smiled in spite of myself. When he returned I left the easy-chair —not quite as much at ease as when I sat down in it—took possession of my hat, restored it as nearly as possible to its original shape, and said, “Ned, you’ve been remarkably entertaining — in fact, I never met such an entertaining small boy before; but I won’t wait any longer. Give my respects to your sister—” “Don’t you mean your love?” asks Ned, with wide-opened eyes, and adds, confidentially, “ Oh! come now, you needn’t be bashful. I know all about it, you know.” “I don't mean my love,” I say, most emphatically. ‘ ‘ And when’ll you come again ?” “ Impossible to tell.” “But the knife the one with six blades, or five blades and a file ?” “I'll send it tomorrow morning early.” “ You’re a trump !” exclaims the small boy, cutting a caper. “And, I say, when yon marry Vic and ask me out to yonr country-house to spend my vacation, will you give me’ a boat and a Shetland pony—one of them really jolly ones with hair hanging all over their eyes?” “ When I marry Vic, I will,” 1 promise solemnly. "Good-by.” But I never marry Vic. Mr. Quimby, the rich old bachelor, does, though ; and a precieus time, they say, she has with the cranky, hot-tem-pered, asthmatic old fellow. My wife has soft blue eyes and faint, golden hair; and I have come to the conclusibn that a delicate, cream-colored lily is much to be preferred to a gorgeous, flame-dashed-with-crimson-leaved, brown-throated gladiole.—Harper's Weekly.