"Which one?"

"Tell me one that I never heard before at all."

"Well, let's see; I guess I'll tell--"

"Ah--ah--ah--ah--ee--ee--ee," sounded afar off, but fatefully. It came nearer--it came down the stairway and into the library, accompanied by Toddie, who, on spying me, dropped his inarticulate utterance, held up both hands, and exclaimed:--

"Djonah bwoke he tay-al!"

True enough; in one hand Toddie held the body of a mouse, and in the other that animal's caudal appendage; there was also perceptible, though not by the sense of sight, an objectionable odor in the room.

"Toddie," said I, "go throw Jonah into the chicken-coop, and I'll give you some candy."

"Me too," shouted Budge, "cos I found the mouse for him."

I made both boys happy with candy, exacted a pledge not to go out in the rain, and then, turning them loose on the piazza, returned to my book. I had read perhaps half-a-dozen pages when there arose and swelled rapidly in volume a scream from Toddie. Madly determined to put both boys into chairs, tie them and clap adhesive plaster over their mouths, I rushed out upon the piazza.

"Budgie tried to eat my candy," complained Toddie.

"I didn't," said Budge.

"What DID you do?" I demanded.

"I didn't bite it at all--I only wanted to see how it would feel between my teeth--that's all."

I felt the corners of my mouth breaking down, and hurried back to the library, where I spent a quiet quarter of an hour in pondering over the demoralizing influence exerted upon principle by a sense of the ludicrous. For some time afterward the boys got along without doing anything worse than make a dreadful noise, which caused me to resolve to find some method of deadening piazza-floors if _I_ ever owned a house in the country. In the occasional intervals of comparative quiet I caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of very funny conversation. The boys had coined a great many words whose meaning was evident enough but I wonder greatly why Tom and Helen had never taught them the proper subst.i.tutes.

Among others was the word "deader," whose meaning I could not imagine.

Budge shouted:--

"O Tod; there comes a deader. See where all them things like rooster's tails are a-shakin'?--Well, there's a deader under them."

"Dasth funny," remarked Toddie.

"An' see all the peoples a-comin' along," continued Budge, "THEY know 'bout the deader, an' they're goin' to see it fixed. Here it comes.

h.e.l.lo, deader!"

"Hay-oh, deader," echoed Toddie.

What COULD deader mean?

"Oh, here it is right in front of us," cried Budge, "and AIN'T there lots of people? An' two horses to pull the deader--SOME deaders has only one."

My curiosity was too much for my weariness; I went to the front window, and, peering through, saw--a funeral procession! In a second I was on the piazza, with my hands on the children's collars; a second later two small boys were on the floor of the hall, the front door was closed, and two determined hands covered two threatening little mouths.

When the procession had fairly pa.s.sed the house I released the boys and heard two prolonged howls for my pains. Then I asked Budge if he wasn't ashamed to talk that way when a funeral was pa.s.sing.

"'TWASN'T a funeral," said he. "'Twas only a deader, an' deaders can't hear nothin'."

"But the people in the carriages could," said I.

"Well," said he, "they was so glad that the other part of the deader had gone to heaven that they didn't care WHAT I said. Ev'rybody's glad when the other parts of deaders go to heaven. Papa told me to be glad that dear little Phillie was in heaven, an' I WAS, but I do want to see him again awful."

"Wantsh to shee Phillie aden awfoo," said Toddie, as I kissed Budge and hurried off to the library, unfit just then to administer farther instruction or reproof. Of one thing I was very certain--I wished the rain would cease falling, so the children could go out of doors, and I could get a little rest, and freedom from responsibility. But the skies showed no signs of being emptied, the boys were snarling on the stairway, and I was losing my temper quite rapidly.

Suddenly I bethought me of one of the delights of my own childish days--the making of sc.r.a.p-books. One of Tom's library drawers held a great many Lady's Journals. Of course Helen meant to have them bound, but I could easily repurchase the numbers for her; they would cost two or three dollars; but peace was cheap at that price. On a high shelf in the playroom I had seen some supplementary volumes of "Mercantile Agency" reports which would in time reach the rag-bag; there was a bottle of mucilage in the library-desk, and the children owned an old pair of scissors. Within five minutes I had located two happy children on the bath-room floor, taught them to cut out pictures (which operation I quickly found they understood as well as I did) and to paste them into the extemporized sc.r.a.p-book. Then I left them, recalling something from Newman Hall's address on "The Dignity of Labor." Why hadn't I thought before of showing my nephews some way of occupying their mind and hands? Who could blame the helpless little things for following every prompting of their unguided minds? Had I not a hundred times been told, when sent to the wood-pile or the weediest part of the garden in my youthful days, that

"Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do?"

"Never again would I blame children for being mischievous when their minds were neglected.

I spent a peaceful, pleasant hour over my novel, when I felt that a fresh cigar would be acceptable. Going up-stairs in search of one I found that Budge had filled the bathtub with water, and was sailing boats, that is, hair-brushes. Even this seemed too mild an offense to call for a rebuke, so I pa.s.sed on without disturbing him, and went to my own room. I heard Toddie's voice, and having heard from my sister that Toddie's conversations with himself were worth listening to, I paused outside the door. I heard Toddie softly murmur:--

"Zere, pitty yady, 'tay ZERE. Now, 'ittle boy, I put you wif your mudder, tause mudders likes zere 'ittle boys wif zem. An' you sall have 'ittle sister tudder side of you,--zere. Now, 'ittle boy's an' 'ittle girl's mudder, don't you feel happy?--isn't I awfoo good to give you your 'ittle tsilderns? You ought to say, 'Fank you, Toddie,--you'se a nice, fweet 'ittle djentleman.'"

I peered cautiously--then I entered the room hastily. I didn't say anything for a moment, for it was impossible to do justice, impromptu, to the subject. Toddie had a progressive mind--if pictorial ornamentation was good for old books, why should not similar ornamentation be extended to objects more likely to be seen? Such may not have been Toddie's line of thought, but his recent operations warranted such a supposition. He had cut out a number of pictures, and pasted them upon the wall of my room--my sister's darling room, with its walls tinted exquisitely in pink. As a member of a hanging committee, Toddie would hardly have satisfied taller people, but he had arranged the pictures quite regularly, at about the height of his own eyes, had favored no one artist more than another, and had hung indiscriminately figure pieces, landscapes, and genre pictures. The temporary break of wall-line, occasioned by the door communicating with his own room, he had overcome by closing the door and carrying a line of pictures across its lower panels. Occasionally, a picture fell off the wall, but the mucilage remained faithful, and glistened with its fervor of devotion. And yet so untouched was I by this artistic display, that when I found strength to shout "Toddie!" it was in a tone which caused this industrious amateur decorator to start violently, and drop his mucilage-bottle, open end first, upon the carpet.

"What will mamma say?" I asked.

Toddie gazed, first blankly and then inquiringly, into my face; finding no answer or sympathy there, he burst into tears, and replied:--

"I dunno."

The ringing of the lunch-bell changed Toddie from a tearful cherub into a very practical, business-like boy, and shouting "Come on, Budge!" he hurried down-stairs, while I tormented myself with wonder as to how I could best and most quickly undo the mischief Toddie had done.

I will concede to my nephews the credit of keeping reasonably quiet during meals; their tongues doubtless longed to be active in both the princ.i.p.al capacities of those useful members, but they had no doubt as to how to choose between silence and hunger. The result was a reasonably comfortable half-hour. Just as I began to cut a melon, Budge broke the silence by exclaiming:--

"O Uncle Harry, we haven't been out to see the goat to-day!"

"Budge," I replied, "I'll carry you out there under an umbrella after lunch, and you may play with that goat all the afternoon, if you like."

"Oh, won't that be nice?" exclaimed Budge. "The poor goat! he'll think I don't love him a bit, 'cause I haven't been to see him to-day. Does goats go to heaven when they die, Uncle Harry?"

"Guess not--they'd make trouble in the golden streets, I'm afraid."

"Oh, dear! then Phillie can't see my goat. I'm so awful sorry," said Budge.

"_I_ can see your goat, Budgie," suggested Toddie.

"Huh!" said Budge, very contemptuously. "YOU ain't dead."

"Well, Izhe GOIN' to be dead some day 'an zen your nashty old goat sha'n't see me a bit--see how he like ZAT." And Toddie made a ferocious attack on a slice of melon nearly as large as himself.

After lunch Toddie was sent to his room to take his afternoon nap, and Budge went to the barn on my shoulders. I gave Mike a dollar, with instructions to keep Budge in sight, to keep him from teasing the goat, and to prevent his being impaled or b.u.t.ted. Then I stretched myself on a lounge, and wondered whether only half a day of daylight had elapsed since I and the most adorable woman in the world had been so happy together. How much happier I would be when next I met her! The very torments of this rainy day would make my joy seem all the dearer and more intense. I dreamed happily for a few moments with my eyes open, and then somehow they closed, without my knowledge. What put into my mind the wreck-scene from the play of "David Copperfield," I don't know; but there it came, and in my dream I was sitting in the balcony at Booth's, and taking a proper interest in the scene, when it occurred to me that the thunder had less of reverberation and more woodenness than good stage thunder should have. The mental exertion I underwent on this subject disturbed the course of my nap, but as wakefulness returned, the sound of the poorly simulated thunder did not cease; on the contrary, it was just as noisy, and more hopelessly a counterfeit than ever. What could the sound be? I stepped through the window to the piazza, and the sound was directly over my head. I sprang down the terrace and out upon the lawn, looked up, and beheld my youngest nephew strutting back and forth on the tin roof of the piazza, holding over his head a ragged old parasol. I roared--

"Go in, Toddie--this instant!"

The sound of my voice startled the young man so severely that he lost his footing, fell, and began to roll toward the edge and to scream, both operations being performed with great rapidity. I ran to catch him as he fell, but the outer edge of the water-trough was high enough to arrest his progress, though it had no effect in reducing the volume of his howls.