"Dago isn't the only one that loves you, 'cause there's me. Don't cry."

"But, oh," wailed Phil, "papa didn't say one word about my staying! He doesn't care if I run away. He never once asked me not to, and I believe he'll be glad when I'm gone, 'cause he can't bear to see Aunt Patricia worried, and everything I do seems to worry her. She says she doesn't understand boys, and I s'pose it's best for me to go. But I don't want to. _Aow, I don't want to!_"

By this time he had worked himself up into such a spasm of crying that he could not stop, for all little Elsie's begging. She wiped his eyes on the sheet with her little dimpled hands, and kissed him a dozen times. Then I think she must have grown frightened at his sobs, for she slipped off the bed to the floor, "I'll tell papa that you don't want to go," she said, trailing out of the room in her long white nightgown. She had to hold it up in front to keep from tripping, and her little bare feet went patter, patter, down the long stairs to the library. Wondering what would happen next, I followed her into the hall, and swung by my tail over the banister.

Doctor Tremont was sitting in a big armchair before the fire, with his head in his hands. He looked very much troubled over something. She opened the door, and ran up to him.

"Why, Elsie, child, what is the matter?" he cried, catching her in his arms. "What do you mean by running around the house in your nightgown?

Doesn't my little daughter know that it will make her cough worse, and maybe make her very, very ill?"

He started quickly up the stairs with her, to carry her back to bed.

She clasped her arms around his neck, and laid her soft pink cheek against his. "Oh, daddy dear," I heard her say, "Phil is crying and crying up there in the dark, and the monkey's patting his head, trying to make him stop. He's crying because you don't love him any more. He said you didn't kiss him good night, and you don't care if he runs away, and he hasn't a friend in the world but me and the monkey. He feels awful bad about having to leave home. Oh, daddy dear, _please_ tell him he can stay!"

CHAPTER VII.

WHAT DAGO TOLD THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON SUNDAY.

As soon as Elsie was put back to bed, Doctor Tremont came into the room where I was still trying to comfort Phil, for I had skipped back to him when they started up the stairs. Stirring the fire in the grate until it blazed brightly, he turned to look at Phil. There was a long silence; then he said, "Phil, come here, my boy. Come and sit on my knee by the fire. I want to talk to you awhile."

His voice was so kind and gentle that it seemed to me n.o.body could have been afraid of him then, but Phil climbed out of bed very slowly, as if he did not want to obey. Wrapping him in a warm, fleecy blanket, the doctor drew him over to a big rocking-chair in front of the fire, and sat down with him on his knee. I crawled back to my cushion on the hearth.

For a little while there was nothing said. The old chair crooned a comforting lullaby of _creakity-creak_, _creakity-creak_, as the doctor rocked back and forth, with the boy's curly head on his shoulder. At last he said: "You think that I am unkind, Phil, because I want to send your pet away, and cruel because I punished you for speaking rudely to your Aunt Patricia. Now, I am going to tell you her story, and maybe you will understand her better. The truth is, you do not understand your Aunt Patricia, or why many of the little things you do should annoy her. I want you to put yourself in her place as near as you can, and see how differently you will look at things from her standpoint.

"She was the only child in a houseful of grown people, and growing up among prim elderly persons made her orderly and exact in everything she did. When she was a very little girl she was sent to a strict, old-fashioned school every morning, where she learned to work samplers as well as to read and spell. They used to tell that, at the age of seven, she came home one day with two prizes which she had taken. One was for scholarship, and one was for neatness in her needlework.

When she brought them home, her grandmother (that is your great-great-grandmother, you know) praised her for the first; but her grandfather (the one whose portrait Stuart shot) said: 'Nay, it is for the neatness that the little la.s.s should be most commended, for it is ever a pleasing virtue in a woman.' Then he gave her a gold dollar, to encourage her in always being neat and exact. She was so proud of it that nothing could have persuaded her to spend it. She had a hole bored in it so that she could hang it on a ribbon around her neck. For a long, long time she wore it that way. She has often said to me that the sight of it was a daily reminder of what her grandfather wanted her to be, and that it helped her to form those habits of orderliness and neatness in which her family took such pride. Long after she stopped wearing the little coin, the sight of it used to recall the old proverbs that she heard so often, such as '"A st.i.tch in time saves nine," Patricia,' or, 'Remember, my dear, "have a place for everything, and everything in its place."' It used to remind her of the praise they gave her, too. Her grandfather's 'Well done, my good little la.s.s,' was a reward that made her happy for hours.

"Her room was always in perfect order. Even her toys were never left scattered about the house. She has her old doll packed away now, in lavender, in nearly as good condition as when it was given to her, sixty years ago. You can see how anything would annoy her that would break in on these lifelong habits of hers. She was a child that took great pleasure in her little keepsakes, and the longer she owned them the dearer they became. She kept that little gold coin, that her grandfather gave her, for over half a century; and that is the dollar that Dago lost. Do you wonder that she grieved over the loss of it?

"The old blue china dragon is one of her earliest recollections. It used to sit on a cabinet in her grandmother's room, and there were always sugar-plums in it, as there have been ever since it was given to her. I can remember it myself when I was a boy. One of the pleasures of my visit to the old house was listening in the firelight to grandfather's 'dragon tales,' as we called them. They were about all sorts of wonderful things, and we called them that because, while he told them, the old dragon was always pa.s.sed around and we sat and munched sugar-plums. That jar has been in the family so long that your great-great-grandfather remembered it when he was a boy,--and that is the jar that Dago broke.

"There were very few children in the neighbourhood where your Aunt Patricia lived. For a long time she had no playmates except the little boy who lived on the adjoining place, Donald McClain. But he came over nearly every day for four years, and they grew to love each other like brother and sister. It was a lonesome time for the little Patricia when the McClains moved away. Donald brought her a tiny carnelian ring the day he came over for the last time. 'To remember me by,' he said, and she put it on her finger and remembered him always, as the kindest, manliest little playmate any child ever had.

"She grew up after awhile to be a beautiful young girl. I will show you her miniature sometime, with the pearls around it. The little carnelian ring was too small then, and she had to lay it away; but she never forgot her old playmate. When she was nineteen her mother died, and, soon after, her father lost his eyesight, and she gave up all her time to caring for him. She sang to him, read to him, led him around the garden, and amused him constantly. She never went anywhere without him, never thought of her own pleasure, but stayed alone with him in the quiet old house, year after year, until he died.

"Donald came back once after he was a man, and had been through college, and stayed all summer in his old home. He was going to Scotland in the fall. Before he left, he asked Aunt Patricia to be his wife and go with him. She said, 'I would, Donald, if I were not needed so much here at home; but how could I go away and leave my poor old blind father?'

"He would not take no for an answer, but went away, saying that he would be back again in a year, and then they would take care of the dear old father together. But when the year was over, the ship that was bringing him home went down at sea in a storm, and all that Aunt Patricia had left of his was his letters, and the little carnelian ring he had given her, when they were children, to 'remember him by.'

And that is the ring that Dago lost."

Phil raised his head quickly from his father's shoulder. "Oh, papa!"

he cried. "I'm so sorry! I never could have said anything mean to her if I had known all that."

His father went on. "That is why I am telling you this now, my son.

Maybe children could understand old people better, if they knew how much they had suffered in their long lives, how much they had lost, and how much they had given up for other people's sakes. Aunt Patricia has been like a mother to me ever since I was left without any, when I was Stuart's age. She sent me to college, she gave me a home with her until I was successfully started in my profession, and has shown me a thousand other kindnesses that I have not been able to repay. I have been able to make up to her what she has spent in money, but a lifetime would not be long enough to cancel my debt to her for all the loving care she has given me. But even if she hadn't been so kind; even if she were crabbed and cross and unreasonable, I couldn't let a son of mine be rude to an old lady under my roof. One never knows what troubles have whitened the hair and made the wrinkles come in the temper as well as the face. Old age must be respected, no matter how unlovely.

"As for Aunt Patricia,--if you would only remember how good she was to you after your accident, how she nursed you, and waited on you, and read to you hour after hour,--she has been tender and loving to all of you, especially little Elsie, and is trying to help me bring up my children as best we can, alone. And, Phil, my boy, sometimes it is as hard for us as it is for you, to always know what is best to do without the little mother's help."

Phil's arm stole around his father's neck. "I'll ask Aunt Patricia's pardon in the morning, the very first thing," he said, in a low voice.

"I'll tell her that I didn't understand her, just like she didn't understand me, and after this I'll be like the three wise monkeys of j.a.pan."

"How is that?" asked his father, smiling.

"Why, never say or hear or see more than I ought to. Keep my hands over my eyes or ears or mouth, whenever I'm tempted to be rude.

Instead of thinking that she's fussy and particular, I'll only see the wrinkles in her face that the trouble made, and I'll remember how good she's been to you and all of us."

His father hugged him closer. "If you can always remember to do that,"

he said, "your part of the world will certainly be a happy place to live in. If you can be blind and deaf to other people's faults and speak only pleasant things."

"Papa," said Phil, in the pause that followed, hiding his face on his father's shoulder and speaking with a tremble in his voice, "I'm mighty sorry I did so many bad things to-day: broke the music-box, and ran away with Elsie, and mortified the family name, begging on the streets. That's what Aunt Patricia told Mrs. Driggs. I never want to run away again as long as I live. Oh, if you'll only forgive me and let me stay, I'd rather be your little boy than anybody else's in the whole world!"

The doctor gathered him closer in his arms and kissed him. "Do you think that anything in the whole world could make me give you up, my little Philip?" he said. "You have been a great worry to me sometimes, but you are one of my very greatest blessings, and I love you--oh, my child, you will never know how much!"

A great, happy "bear-hug" almost choked him, as Phil's arms were clasped about his neck. Then he said, "I think we understand each other all the way around, now. Shut your eyes, little man, and I'll rock you to sleep."

Phil snuggled down against him like a little bird in a warm nest, and there they sat in the firelight together. The old rocking-chair threw a giant shadow on the wall as it swung slowly back and forth, back and forth. "_Creakity-creak_," droned the rockers. "_Creakity-creak_, _squeakity-squeak_," and to the music of their drowsy song Phil fell fast asleep in his father's arms.

CHAPTER VIII.

DAGO BIDS FAREWELL TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY.

Hey there, Ring-tail, I've just slipped in a moment to say good-bye.

I'm off for California in the morning. It seems that I'm at the bottom of all the trouble in this family, so I'm to be shipped by the fast express. But you needed waste any sympathy on _me_. I am going back to the old California garden among the vines and the pepper-trees, where I shall miss all the winter's snow and ice that I have been dreading.

The boys do not feel that they are giving me up entirely, for they will see me once a year when they visit their grandfather. I am sorry to leave them, but the kindest master in the world couldn't make me as happy as the freedom of the warm, wide outdoors. Next time you hear of me I shall be back in that land of summer, watching the water splash over the marble mermaid in the fountain, and the goldfish swim by in the sun.

Think of me, sometimes, Ring-tail; not as you have known me here, caged in a man-made house, and creeping about in everybody's way, but think of me as the happiest, freest creature that ever swung from a bough. Free as the birds and the bees in the old high-walled garden, and as happy, too, as they, when the sunshine turns to other sunshine all the Gold of Ophir roses. Good-bye! old fellow!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE END.

Works of Annie Fellows Johnston

THE LITTLE COLONEL SERIES

The Little Colonel The Giant Scissors Two Little Knights of Kentucky

(The three stories above are also published in one volume, ent.i.tled The Little Colonel Stories)