One day little Sallie's mother was very ill indeed; she was lying on the bed with a bandage dipped in ice water around her head, for her head was throbbing and aching as if it were made entirely of double rows of teeth, every one of them afflicted with a jumping, raging toothache, and her little daughter felt so sorry for her, that she begged permission to go to a shop and buy her a new head.

Sallie was an only child; she played little with other children, and she was so accustomed to being constantly with her father and mother, and other grown persons, that she talked in a very amusing and funny fashion, for she would use very long words, perfectly understanding their meaning, but with such comically strange jumblings and twistings, and alterings of syllables, as to make it very difficult to preserve a becoming gravity while listening to her. If you laughed, the fun was all over, for Sallie would turn as red as a whole box of wafers; all the dimples in her face would take French leave, and you could almost have declared there was a bonfire lighted up in each of her eyes; but this only lasted a moment, for she was a sweet-tempered, affectionate little creature, and got over being laughed at as quick as possible, which is a great deal quicker than you or I would have done.

"Dear mamma," said Sallie, her face perfectly beaming with tenderness and sympathy; "dear mamma, what a terrible pain you are in; it is really _overpalling_! It's very _instraordinary_ that you should have such a head. I can feel the beating! I wish you could sell it to the drummer of a _regimen_, and buy a new one; I wish I could give you mine, mamma; mine is perfectly empty; not a speck of pain, or anything else, in it, and it would last just so, as long as you live, and ever so much longer.

It is so _destressing_ to have a head so brimful of _sufferling_;" and little Sallie looked as grieved as c.o.c.k-robin's wife when he was killed by the sparrow, with his bow and arrow.

"My dear dove and darling," said her mother, "I know you would give your head and shoulders, and all your new shoes, to make me well, but you can do nothing but keep perfectly quiet, as still as a mouse with the lock-jaw. As the Frenchman says, you must 'take hold of your tongue, and put your toe on your mouth;'--he meant finger, I suppose. You need not leave the room, my little Sallie, only do not make any noise."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Play softly, Kitty; your Mamma is very undisposed."]

So Sallie sat down very quietly on the carpet with her kitten, only whispering once in a while, "Play softly, kitty, for your mamma is very _undisposed_."

Just at this moment another little girl came darting like a sunbeam into the room. It was f.a.n.n.y. f.a.n.n.y was Sallie's cousin; she was a dear little weeny woman of seven years, with a lily-white skin, hazel eyes, and a sweet, musical voice, and she ran up to Sallie with such a gentle, song-like salutation, you would have supposed it was a bob-o-link, saying, "How do you do?" Let me tell you, if you have never heard a bob-o-link, its few low notes are deliciously sweet, and are only surpa.s.sed by the sweet voice of a good little girl.

f.a.n.n.y had come to spend the day with Sallie. She was about a year older than her cousin; she had the same amiable, affectionate ways, and used almost as many long words, so they got on together famously.

It was raining a little, and f.a.n.n.y said the mud in the streets was very _stickery_, and she had hard work to keep her boots clean. "I declare,"

she continued, "such very dirty streets are only fit for _esquarians_."

"_Esquarians!_" said Sallie, "what kind of an animal is that? Pigs?"

"My patience!" said f.a.n.n.y, "did you never hear of _esquarian_ exercise?

I take it every day at Mr. Disbrow's. It is riding on horseback."

"Oh!" said Sallie, rubbing her chin, "of course. I was a perfect goose not to know that. I wish, when the streets are muddy, we could fly like birds through the air: how pleasant it must be to be dangling in the air, with nothing to do but stare at the sun! I would not come down for a week. Just fancy! what perfect happiness!"

"And no lessons to learn," said f.a.n.n.y. "Now, there's grammar--I hate it like pepper, and the hard words in the dictionary nearly _discolates_ my jaw. You ought to be thankful, Sallie, that you don't go to school; for my part, I am always glad when '_chatterday_' comes, as you call it."

Sallie knew better than that, but she called Sat.u.r.day chatterday, because f.a.n.n.y almost always spent that day with her, and they chattered so much you would hardly believe but what they had breakfasted on two or three dictionaries apiece, and each word was undergoing digestion.

"I think I should like to go to Mr. Abbott's school," said Sallie; "mamma says that they have an _intermittent_ of five minutes in every hour. Only think! you can talk to everybody, or walk with anybody, or put your head in your desk, or eat candy, or drink water all the time, or never stop laughing, or anything else you please till the five minutes are over. That's the school for me. I should think he would have a million of scholars. I am sure if I studied all the time, my head would be cracked in a week. Why, f.a.n.n.y, I tried to say the alphabet backward the other evening, and it _fatwigged_ me so I had to go to bed."

Here Sallie's mother gave a little laugh, which was instantly changed into a smothered groan, for the laughing hurt her head, that it seemed as if a whole regiment of dragoons was galloping through her brain; but the long words and the wrong words sounded so funny, and the children acted and talked so much like two old ladies over a cup of tea, it was not human nature to keep from being amused; and, in fact, their comical prattle acted like a fairy talisman or distant music; it soothed her, and made her in a measure forget her pain.

Sallie heard only the groan, and coming softly to the bed, she whispered: "Dear mamma, did we talk too loud? I meant to be as moute as a muce. I mean as mute as a mouse."

Her mother laughed again at this funny mistake; she could not help it, and Sallie laughed too, and said, "That was a mistake, you know; I had a kink in my tongue; I do believe it must have been twisted like a corkscrew. It is all right now, isn't it, mamma?" and Sallie ran her tongue out till you could nearly see the roots, and it seemed quite wonderful where she kept it all, and that it did not get worn out with all the hard work and exercise she gave it; but I suppose some people's tongues are like dogs' tails, they like to show how happy they are by keeping up a continual wagging.

"Shall we go into the next room and play there?" asked Sallie; "we will be so still you will think the very chairs and tables are taking a nap; we will be like the mummies in the _cats' combs_, and I should like very much to know what a _cats' comb_ is, and how a mummy can be buried in it."

"You mean _cacatombs_," laughed little f.a.n.n.y. "Papa says they are either taverns or caverns--I forget which he said--in Egypt, where they bury the mummies."

"You must call it _catacombs_, my dear little girls; they are large caverns, not taverns: a mummy in a tavern would frighten all the idlers and ragam.u.f.fins out of it. I don't know but what it would be a good plan, but you two dear little twisters and turners of the king's English would frighten that cranky old fellow, Dr. Johnson, into a long sickness, if he was only alive and could hear you. I love to hear you talk; it does me good. Don't go out of the room, but take that pack of cards I gave you to play with, and sit down on the floor and build card houses."

The children thought this a capital idea. Down they sat in great glee, and immediately commenced the business of building houses, their eyes nearly starting out of their heads, in their anxiety to make houses three stories high; but, spite of all their efforts, the moment they attempted the third story, down would come all the cards with a flop, leaving the builders with a long-sounding O--h, to stare at the ruins.

"The fact is," said Sallie, looking so wise and solemn you would have thought she was an owl's granddaughter, at least, "the fact is, there is one _peculiarrarity_ about card houses."

"What's that?" asked f.a.n.n.y, pursing up her mouth and trying to look as if she knew already.

"Why, I'll tell you," answered Sallie, taking a long breath for the prodigious long word that was coming, "if you ever expect to build card houses, or c.o.c.ked hats, or steamboats, you must go to work _systimystiattically_."

"That's not the word," said f.a.n.n.y, looking as dignified as ten judges; "that's not the word at all, Sallie."

"What is it, then?" said Sallie, shutting one eye, and looking very hard at f.a.n.n.y with the other.

"_Sister Mister Macalley!_ There! don't I know?"

"My dear child," answered Sallie, with a patronizing air, and her head on one side, "you are right. It is _Sister Mister Macalley_; I only said _systimystiattically_ for fun, you know--just for fun and fancy, old Aunt Nancy." And the little girls laughed merrily, and thought it a capital joke.

Sallie's mother had to laugh too, until she was almost killed, at this last sally. She did not wonder that the long word "_systematically_" had proved one too many for the children; she expected, the next thing, to hear of "indivisibility," or "incompatibility," or something twice as long, if possible; but, at any rate, the laughing or something else did her so much good that she felt well enough to get up and drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of dry toast, while the little girls were having their luncheon, and desperate were the efforts she was obliged to make, to keep from laughing at the speeches they made over the meal. They were twenty times more amusing than the heavy, long-winded jokes with which aldermen, and other big bugs entertain each other for hours at the great public dinners, where they are obliged to give each other the wink to let every one know _where the laugh ought to come in_. No! it was just one little, rollicking, chuckling laugh all lunch time; and how they managed to make so much bread and b.u.t.ter and raspberry jam disappear, I am sure I cannot tell.

Sallie lived in the city of New York, in Eleventh street, very near Broadway. Directly round the corner was Mrs. Wagner's ice cream saloon, or, as Sallie called it, "Mrs. Waggles."

In the afternoon her mother said she and f.a.n.n.y might go, by themselves, to this saloon, and buy each a treat of six-pence worth of ice cream.

The children were in a perfect ecstasy of delight at this announcement; their faces were radiant with good humor and happiness. Only to think of it! what grandeur! to go all by themselves! that was the great point!

not a cousin, or a grandmother, or even a nurse to take care of them; and they scrabbled up on all the chairs, and jumped down again, and twirled round and round till Sallie's mother said it was fortunate their heads, and arms, and legs were all fastened together very strong, or they would long ago have been whirled off their bodies, and out of the windows.

I wish you could have seen Sallie having her hair curled that afternoon.

Her mother would be in the act of laying a curl gracefully over one ear, when Sallie's head would bob suddenly round, and the curl would be planted right between her eyes, making her squint dreadfully; and when a curl was to repose on her temple, Sallie would bob the other way, and the curl would be landed on the back of her head, the end sticking up like a horn. She _did_ try, but who could keep still, on such a delightful occasion, when they were going to walk about the world just like grown people, with their money in their pockets! Sallie even wanted her mother to lend her a lace veil, and her gold watch, to add to her dignity--"so as to come home in time for tea, you know, mamma;" but her mother concluded, as Sallie could not tell the time by the watch, the necessity for carrying it was rather doubtful. And after considerable tumbling and popping around like fire-crackers, and making cheeses and whirligigs, and chattering like a whole army of magpies, the children were dressed, at last, and sent on their way rejoicing.

When they got into the street, they took hold of each other's hands _and ran all the way_, as an inevitable matter of course, and arrived at the ice cream saloon in a laughing, breathless condition, so very little like grown people that I am afraid they must have forgotten their dignity, or left it locked up in the bookcase at home.

They took their seats at one of the marble tables, and with very large eyes and innumerable giggles gave their order, and then there never before was such splendid ice cream! It was so cold, they really had to blow it, and they had to stop a great many times to laugh, and to wonder what the other people thought of them; at any rate, everybody would think they were "_instraordinary_" good girls to be allowed to come out all by themselves.

"Only imagine," continued Sallie, "perhaps, after this, we shall be _considit_ such excellent children--kind of oldey and serious, you know--that mamma will pack up our trunks, and let us go eleventeen times farther than this. How perfectly delightful! to go in every direction at once, and rush all round the world like the _comic_ papa told me of the other day;" and Sallie became so excited with this brilliant prospect that she jumped up and down, and gave a little scream of joy.

"What's all that noise?" said a queer, discordant voice at the farther end of the saloon.

The children started, and looked back a little frightened; their charming castles in the air put to flight, "like the baseless fabric of a vision," by the rough question which they thought had been aimed at them.

"Walk in, ladies! take a seat! What will you have? Shut up! G-o-o-d morning!"

The words sounded as if they had been rubbed through a nutmeg grater.

"Take a piece of pie? don't forget to pay for it! Shut up! Call again!

I'm all right! Hurra!" And the parrot--for it _was_ a large and handsome parrot--hopped upon a chair, from the floor where he had been strutting about, and looked at the company with eyes as sharp as a carving-knife.

f.a.n.n.y and Sallie, by this time, had found out that it was a bird that was talking to them, and not cross old Mr. Grumpy, as they had at first supposed, who, always being in an ill humor himself, never could bear to see any one looking happy. They walked up to where the bird was, and stood there lost in admiration at his accomplishments; and really he was a very wonderful bird, and sometimes talked as if he understood what he was saying, which, between you and me, is what some birds, b.o.o.bies for instance, cannot do.

While they were standing there as still as could be expected, for they had to give a little skip now and then, under such remarkable circ.u.mstances, a nurse came up with a very beautiful baby in her arms, and two young gentlemen also drew near to listen to the parrot. As soon as Poll saw the baby, he yelled out: "Sweet little baby! sweet little baby! G-o-o-d morning, little baby! Is it a girl?"

The nurse, who was a very silly-looking goose of a girl, turned very red at this question, and, dropping a courtesy to Poll, simpered out: "No, sir; if yez plaze, sir, it's a boy, sir!" A roar of laughter from all around followed this answer, and the poor girl looked as if she thought the parrot was a police officer, in a bright-green great coat, who meant to put her instantly to death for daring to answer him. She concluded she had better run for her life, which she accordingly did, stumbling against all the tables, and breaking her toes over every chair; but she disappeared at last, the parrot shrieking most horribly after her, and all the people laughing till their sides ached.

With many a lingering, admiring glance at their funny new friend, the children at last left the enchanting saloon, and hastened home to tell of all the wonderful things they had seen and heard; both talking, exclaiming, and laughing at once, until it would have taken at least six mammas to have heard it all.

When Sallie's father came home, of course he had to hear how they went out, "just like two old women, very independent, and eat a poll parrot and heard an ice cream," at which he was greatly astonished until they explained that it was the ice cream they had eaten, and the poll parrot they had heard.