Rensselaer Union, Volume 5, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1873 — “A PERFECT PLAGUE.” [ARTICLE]

“A PERFECT PLAGUE.”

BY ANNIE M. LIBBY.

Whiz — whew rattle—slam—bang—clump, clump! Everybody knew Fred was coming. Ilis mother began to gaze anxiously toward the door, trying to imagine in what plight her boy would enter. Aunt Harriet dropped her work, ready to run for rags, strings, or plasters, long experience having taught her to be on the alert for wounds, cuts and bruises. The door flew open with a jerk, and with two leaps Fred and a big basket landed beside a table where Lute "was mounting autumn leaves. “See here, Lute!” exclaimed Fred, pushing the basket on the table, hitting the varnish-bottle, which, in its turn, gave the mucilage a friendly push, till over they went together. “O Fred, you are the biggest torment I ever saw; you spoil something every time you.come near me!” cried Lute, in her impatience. If she had seen the look that crossed Fred’s happy, handsome face, she would nave been sorrv for the thoughtless words; but she didn’t look up. The hurt, sorry look changed to a hard, defiant one as it settled in his bright blue eyes, and he took up the basket to go out, muttering, “I guess she’ll know it before I -go near her again!” “O dear !” groaned Lute, as she picked up the leaves, and wiped up the two little streams of mucilage and varnish that were slowly trickling down on the carpet, “that boy grows worso and worse! lie’s a perfect plague!” “You ought not to speak to him as you did,-Lucy," said her mother, gently. “I think Fred was sorry, but you didn’t give him a chance to say so.” “Well, what if he was sorry? He will do something else just as bad'in half au hour.” “I know he’s a little rough,” Iter mother went on, “but he doesn’t mean any harm.” “Now, mother, how can you say so? Only last week he threw the cat into the soap-barrel, and lie must climb that young ash after his cap, and knock off my hang-ing-basket and break it. He could have taken a ladder, and not gone on the side of the tree where the basket hung. After he got his cap, instead of putting it on he threw it at the cat, and broke the handsomest dahlia in the garden. Then, last night, when Will Schofield and all the others were up hero playing croquet—l suspose you will think it was silly—Will asked if I got my roses working in the garden. Before I had time to answer, Fred spoke up, and said, ‘I guess she puts the roses on in her chamber; that’s why she’s so late to breakfast.’ Of course, I couldn’t say anything, and I don’t know what they all thought. Then, just look at wliat lie’s done now! and the tears trembled in Lute’s eyes. “You’re somewhat to blame for. that yourself,” replied Aunt Harriet, “for you know- I told you to spread a paper on the table-cloth and another on the carpet under the table. As*for what he said last night, it isn’t likely Will Schofield noticed it, or, if he did, remembered it two minutes. He’ll outgrow such ways by and bv.” “O yea, I know, you and mother always take Frod’s part,” sobbed Lute. “I guess if mother would tell father some of his tricks he would ‘outgrow’ some of them pretty quick. But if father finds out anything it is all smoothed over.” It was strange how, with a slight difference in the subject, Fred’s thoughts were running in the same direction as Lute’s. “She grows crosser and crosser,” he muttered', digging his toes into the chips behind the wood-house, ‘’and since Will Schofield comes up here, she don’t want me round at all. 1 s’posc I do plague her. I don’t see why I have to. upset everything before 1 fairly get near it.” And the boy actnally sat with his cap over his eyes full three minutes, resolving he would be very careful next time. “Plaze, marm, can masthcr Frid go to the sthorc fur me?” asked Bridget, putting her head in at the door, an hour later. “Certainly,” said Mrs. Randall. “An’ is he not back yit?” “Why, isn’t he about the house somewhere?” “Bhure, marm, an’ he stharted fur Toompson’s Pond wid half a dozen boys an hour agone, but I thought ho was back afoor.” “Thompson’s- Pond?” repeated his mother, aghast. “Why, his father has told him never to go there with the boys!” “You sec now just how well he obeys,” said Lute, rather pleased with an opportunity to show her superiority in reading Fred’s character. “O marm,” cried Bridget, putting her head in again, “shure, there’s a man here as says the boys is all kilt, and masther Fred drowndid wid both his legs broke, failin’ out a tree!” O dear! how still the house was! Father and mother gone to find Fred, and Lute left with Aunt Harriet and Bridget, to get ready for their coming home. What kind of a coming home would it be? They didn’t dare think. Tommy Witham, a sort of Job’s comforter, came inland followed Lute as shw went restlessly about the house trying to do something. In one corner of the hall lay the big basket that had made so much trouble, but somehow Lute wanted it now. As she lifted it up, the cover slipped one side, and two or three bright leaves fell out. The basket was full. “Yes," said Tommy, who found the silence very oppressive, “me and Fred’s been away over to Brickett’s w#<kls this afternoon to get them for you. I should ha’ thought he’d ha’ been too tired to go off again. I’m ’bout used up.” A

manly expression Tommy w r as fond oif using. “And he was going to give them to me when I drove him off,” thought Lute, with a sharp pang. “What a wicked thing I am! Why don’t they come? He must be—” No, she couldn’t bring herself to speak the word; and, catching up Fred’s geography, she turned the leaves from sheer necessity of doing something: V . ; On the fly-leaf was “Freddie Randall,” in her father’s writing. She remembered when he wrote it; they had all said it was hard to tell which was prouder—Fred of the new book, or the father that his only son had advanced a step in learning. Would he ever write his boy’s name again? Then there was the boy’s scrawl, and here the name again in old English type, and on another leaf strange-looking birds with banners in their beaks, bearing that name so precious now. And now his favorite picture of a prancllrg horse. "How hard he werked over that with dirty fingers, head on one side and tongue stuck hard into his cheek—and how Lute had scolded because he abused his books so! She would have been glad at that minute to see him drawing in Tennyson’s Poems, a present from Will Sclicfleld last birthday. He had taken two or three of her paints to color the illustrations in the book. Here the Falls of Niagara were painted a bright red with a dark green sky overhead. A party of negroes in very blue shirts were cutting yellow sugar-cane; and in a picture of the arctic regions, a ship was frozen among straw-colored and scarlet icebergs, while orange and vermilion Northern Lights streamed over the scene. Out from the leaves fluttered a bit of paper upon which Tommy again vouchsafed information. “Fred writ that right in— the teacher had company—her teller, I guess,” he added, by way of explanation. “He was going to put it in the post-office, but had to get an envelope first. Read it.” Ajid Tommy glowed with pride at Fred’s skill. “I give him the paper,” he added, swelling with generosity. The paper looked as if it had been cut with a dull knife from the back of au old letter; and Lute read: “Mr. Skofield I do not want you to think what I sed about my sister was tru I toled it to plage hir she get up before I do she is the best girl in the world and I fuess you think so two I rote this beeuws do not want wliat I sed to he a ly. Randall.” "Teacher thought lie was writin’ in his writin’-book all the time,” snickered Tommy, hut Lute didn’t hear. -It was very still now. The early twilight had fallen, and it was almost dark, but nobody had thought of lamps. Aunt Harriet was slowly rocking to and. fro; Lute, having cried herself so sick that she could cry no more, lay on the sofa, trying hard not to think; Tommy was stretched beside her on the floor; and Bridget, with her apron over her head, was rocking back and forth on the kitchen floor, moaning for the “two eves that were the light of the house.” Was that the street door? It shut with a slam. Gus Robbins, probably. Why couldn’t people stay away just now*! Somebody tumbled on the Starrs. llow much that sounded like Fred! If we could only hear him tumble up stairs again—- “ Why, what are you all in the dark for?” Everybody jumped. Therewasno mistake this time, for this was nobody but Fred. In answer to Aunt Harriet’s and Lute’s questions and Tommy’s open-mouthed wonder, he only said, “O, Bridget is so stupid! We went up on Thompson’s hill after beech-nuts, and Rufe Douglass did fall out of a tree and break his arm. When father and mother found me all right, they thought they’d go round by Uncle Job’s. Father told me to come and tell you, but I wanted to go round by Lin Foye’s and see if liisdoves had any squabs yet, so I didn’t get along very quickBeen to supper? I’m ’bout starved/’ Supper! Who had thought of supper? —and going after squabs when they, were suffering so! They didn’t know whether to give him all the preserves he could eat, for joy that he was safe, or send him to bed without a mouthful, they were so vexed at his not getting “along very quick." But I rather think joy triumphed, for it was reported Fred had said at school it was “first-rate to have folks think you were drowned, it made ’em awfhl clever to a feller’’; and about a week after, as -Bridget was scolding because -Fred had, left mud tracks on the clean floor, when he had been told so many times to wipe his feet, Lute wiped up the mud herself, and said, “You can’t expect a boy to remember everything, Bridgol.’’’— Our Young Folk*.