That Little Beggar Part 9

"I've had bad enough nights lately to make me so," she replied. "Master Chris--he is always waking up and coughing and coughing till I'm nearly driven wild. It's my belief it's the barley-sugar has got something to do with it. Ever since the doctor said some had better be given to him when he got coughing it seems to me his cough has got a deal worse."

"Why don't you put a little by his crib?" I suggested; "then he needn't wake you up when he wants it."

"I did try that last night," she answered, "but by the time I went to bed myself he had eaten it all up, and there wasn't a sc.r.a.p of it left."

"I think he will be well enough to get up soon," I said hopefully.

"I think so too," she replied. "It was only yesterday I said so to Dr.

Saunders, but he didn't seem to think the same.

"I don't altogether hold with him," she continued, with a return of her usual dignified manner; "and so I told my mistress this morning. He is over-careful, and I've no belief in these medical gentlemen who are given that way. When he comes to-morrow--There, if I didn't forget!" she interrupted herself to exclaim.

"What have you forgotten, Briggs?" I asked.

"My mistress asked me in particular to remind the doctor that he said Master Chris would be the better of a tonic, but he had forgotten to leave the prescription," she answered. "I never thought of it this morning when he was here."

"I should make a note of it," I suggested.

"Which is the very thing I'll do," she a.s.sented. "I'll write it down now on Master Chris's slate whilst it is in my mind. It's the only way to remember things, I do believe.

"Though it is my opinion, mum," she added, as she carried out her intention; "though it's my opinion a physician should not need reminding of such things. But there! he is always forgetting something. He has no head! I should like to know where it is sometimes, for it isn't always on his shoulders, I'll be bound!"

"How can the doctor's head not be on his shoulders?" asked a puzzled little voice. "'Cause he'd be quite dead if he had no head."

At this unexpected interruption Briggs and I looked in the direction whence the voice proceeded, and saw a little figure standing on the threshold of the door that led into the night-nursery. A little figure, in a long white nightgown, with tumbled, golden hair falling about the flushed little face, and two great violet eyes shining like stars, and dancing with mischief and glee.

I confess I felt a weak desire to take that naughty but bewitching little beggar in my arms, and kiss him in spite of all his sins. But Briggs experienced no such weakness.

"Master Chris!" she exclaimed in horrified amazement; "what next, I should like to know? This is past everything."

Then s.n.a.t.c.hing him up in her arms, she carried him back to bed, struggling and vehemently protesting at being treated in so summary and undignified a fashion.

As for me, I presently went downstairs laughing, with the sound of Chris's voice still ringing in my ears:

"Put me down, Briggs. I will be a good boy. I don't want to be carried like a baby." Then with his usual persistency: "But I want to know--why do you say that the doctor sometimes has no head on his shoulders, 'cause how could he live without a head?" Then again, in the most insinuating of voices: "Shall I tell the doctor about the medicine he forgot, and shall I write down all the things you want to know, and all the things I want to know, and everything. Would I be a good boy if I did? I want some barley-sugar, 'cause my cough's drefful bad."

"Chris is certainly recovering," I said to Granny when I joined her in the drawing-room, and told her what had occurred. "He is quite in his usual spirits again."

"His is a happy disposition, is it not?" she said, with satisfaction.

"The child is like a sunbeam in the house; so merry, so bright!"

The next morning, however, the sunbeam was comparatively still; not dancing, gay, and restless, as sunbeams often are.

The little beggar was in one of his quiet moods--moods of rare occurrence with him, as you will have gathered.

"The darling is like a lamb," Granny remarked when she came downstairs; "very gentle and so good. He wants you to go and sit with him a little, if you are not busy, my dear."

"Certainly," I said, and went up to the nursery to see Chris in this edifying role.

I found him busy, drawing strange hieroglyphics on a large sheet of foolscap paper with a red-lead pencil. As I entered he looked up at me for a moment with a preoccupied expression, then said mysteriously:

"Miss Beggarley, what do you think I am doing?"

"I don't know," I replied. "What is it? Let me see."

"No, no, no!" he cried, bending over the paper, "you mustn't see. I don't want you to know."

"Then why did you ask me?" I inquired.

"'Cause I wanted to see if you could guess," he said.

"It's nothing naughty, is it?" I asked.

"Oh no!" he replied in the most virtuous of voices, "it's very good.

"I've done now," he remarked a few minutes later, sitting up and putting the sheet of foolscap and the red-lead pencil under his pillow. "When I get better will you play horses with me? You said you would, and you never have."

"That is very wrong of me," I answered. "Yes, I will play with you when you are better."

"When will the doctor come?" he suddenly asked with some eagerness.

"Very soon now, I think," I replied. "It is just about his time."

"Will you be a lame horse when you play, or a well horse?"

"Which of the two horses has the least work?"

"The lame horse."

"Then I'll be the lame horse."

"Is that the doctor?"

I listened. "Wait a moment, I'll see," I replied, and went to the day-nursery.

Yes, it was the doctor. I could hear him and Granny talking as they walked along the pa.s.sage; Granny on her favourite topic--the virtues of her darling.

"Yes," she was saying, in answer to some observation of her companion's, "he really shows a great deal of character for one so young. But he has done that from the earliest, from the very earliest age. When he was a baby of but a few weeks old, he would clutch hold of his bottle with such resolution, such tenacity, that it was, I a.s.sure you, a difficult matter to take it from him."

"Quite so, quite so," the doctor answered blandly as they entered; "as you say, great tenacity of purpose.

"Well," I heard him continue, after having pa.s.sed through the day-nursery to the one beyond; "well, and how are we to-day?"

"Quite well," answered the little beggar's voice cheerfully.

"Quite well? We couldn't be better, could we?" he said jocularly. "Yes, I think we are looking so much better we may get up to-day, and go for a walk in the sun to-morrow. What do you say, Master Chris?"

"I want to ask you a lot," I heard Chris say importantly.