The Story of Dago Part 3

"You dasn't hurt a fly when he is around. Lucky for the monk that the man happened to stop in front of his house this mornin'. Come on, lets see what they do with it."

The children trooped off after him, and Phil and Elsie watched them down the street until they were out of sight, pushing and tripping at each other's heels in their eagerness to follow.

Then Phil climbed up on one of the gate-posts with me in his arms, and Elsie promptly scrambled up to the other.

"That's what might happen to Dago any day, sister," Phil said, in a solemn voice, as he hugged me tight. If we give him up, some old organ-grinder may get him, and beat him and beat him, and be cruel to him, and I'm just not going to let anybody have him. I'll hide him somewhere so n.o.body can find him."

"Trouble is he won't stay hid," answered Elsie, with a mournful look in her big blue eyes. "We'll have to think of some other plan."

It was a cold morning, but there they perched on the gate-posts, and thought and thought until the school-bell began to ring.

CHAPTER V.

WHAT DAGO TOLD ON FRIDAY.

Before the bell stopped ringing, some one called Elsie to the house to get ready for kindergarten, and Phil ran down to the stable with me.

He tied me to an iron ring in one of the stalls by a halter. Of course any knot that a boy of that size could tie would not keep me a prisoner very long. By the time he was halfway to school I was free and on my way back to the house.

I stayed in the laundry nearly all day, for the sun went under a cloud soon after breakfast, and a cold drizzling rain began to fall. It gave me the rheumatism, and I was glad to curl up in a big market-basket on the shelf behind the stove, and enjoy the heat of the roaring fire.

Nora was ironing, and singing as she worked. Not since I left the warm California garden had I been as peaceful and as comfortable. The heat made me so drowsy that not even the thump, b.u.mp of Nora's iron on the ironing-board, or the sound of her shrill singing could keep me awake.

I dreamed and dozed, and dozed and dreamed all day, in a blissful state of contentment.

It was nearly dark when I roused up enough to stretch myself and step out of the basket. Nora had gone up-stairs and was setting the supper-table. I could hear the cook beating eggs in the pantry. There would be m.u.f.fins for supper. The sound made me so hungry that I slipped into the dining-room, and hid under the sideboard until Nora had finished her work and gone back to the kitchen. The cook was still mixing m.u.f.fin batter in the pantry. I could hear her spoon click against the crock as she stirred it, so that I knew she would not be in to disturb me for some time.

I never saw a table more inviting. After I had leaped up on it, I sat and looked all around a moment, trying to decide what to take first.

Everything was so good. There wasn't much room to walk about, and when I stepped over the jelly to reach the cheese, which seemed to tempt my appet.i.te more than anything, my long tail switched the roses out of the bowl in the middle of the table. That confused me slightly, and in trying not to upset anything else I stepped flat into the b.u.t.ter, and dragged my little plaid flannel skirt through the applesauce. Why they persist in dressing me in this ridiculous fashion is more than I can understand.

You may be sure that I would have starved a week rather than have climbed on that table, if I had had the slightest foreboding of what was to follow. But how could I know that Miss Patricia was to choose that very moment for walking into the dining-room? She had just come in from the street, for she had on her bonnet, and carried an umbrella in her hand. Phil and little Elsie followed her.

"Oh, you little torment!" she cried, when she saw me, and, before I could make up my mind which way to jump, she flew at me with her umbrella, trying to strike me without breaking any of the dishes. I dodged this way and that. Seeing no way of escape from the room, I ran up the curtains, over and under the chairs, around and around,--anywhere to keep out of her way. She was after me at every step. When I ran up to the top of the high, carved back of the old-fashioned sideboard, I found myself out of her reach for one breathless minute. She was climbing on a chair after me, when the cook, hearing the unusual sounds, opened the pantry door and looked in.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'OH, YOU LITTLE TORMENT!' SHE CRIED."]

It was my only chance of escape, and, regardless of where I might land, I leaped wildly out. I escaped Miss Patricia's umbrella, it is true, but, just my luck, I went b.u.mp into the cook's face, and then into the crock of m.u.f.fin batter which she held in her arms. She dropped us both with a scream which brought everybody in the house hurrying to the dining-room, and I scuttled up to the highest shelf of the pantry, where I crouched trembling, behind some spice-boxes. I was dripping with cold m.u.f.fin batter, and more miserable and frightened than I had ever been before in my whole life.

I could hear excited voices in the dining-room. When Miss Patricia first struck me with the umbrella, Phil had cried out: "Stop that! You stop hitting my monkey!" Then as she chased me around the room, making vain attempts to reach me as I scampered over chairs and up curtains, he seemed to grow wild with rage. He was fairly beside himself and bristled up like an angry little fighting-c.o.c.k. "You're a mean old thing," he shrieked, breaking over all bounds of respect, and screaming out his words so loud that his father, pa.s.sing through the hall, heard the impudent rhyme he had made up the day before:

"Old Aunt Pat, You're mean as a rat!"

It was just as he yelled this that the cook opened the pantry door, and I made my fatal plunge into the dark and the crock of m.u.f.fin batter.

As I hid behind the spice-boxes I heard Doctor Tremont tell Phil, in a very stern voice, to march up-stairs, and stay there until he came for him. It must have been nearly an hour that I hid on that shelf, waiting for a chance to make my escape. The batter began to harden and cake on me until I could not move without every hair on my body pulling painfully.

Things were set to rights in the dining-room after awhile and the family had supper. Some bread and milk were sent up to Phil. Soon after I reached the laundry, Stuart found me there. He turned the hose on me and gave me a rough scrubbing. Then he wrapped me in a piece of a blanket and took me up-stairs to dry before the fire in his room. Phil had gone to bed, and was lying there sobbing, with his head under the pillows when we came in. He wouldn't talk at first, but after awhile he told Stuart that his father had given him a hard whipping for speaking so disrespectfully to an old lady like Miss Patricia, and that he could not go to the table again until he had asked her pardon. That Phil vowed he would not do so long as he lived.

He had made up his mind to run away in the morning. n.o.body treated him right, and he didn't intend to stand it any longer.

"But, Phil," said Stuart, "you know yourself, that it wasn't very nice of Dago to go walking around the table through the b.u.t.ter and applesauce, and all the things to eat. I don't wonder that Aunt Patricia was provoked, 'specially when he has done so many other things to tease her. She didn't hurt him much for all her whacking around. I saw nearly as much of the fight as you did. She didn't hit him more than one lime out of ten. I was perfectly willing that my half of Dago should get what it deserved."

At that, Phil cried still harder. "Well, if you say that," he sobbed, giving his pillow an angry thump, "then you don't love Dago as much as I do. You're against him, too. n.o.body cares anything for either of us, and I'll take him and go off with him in the morning. I'm going as soon as it is light."

But when the daylight came, Phil was not in such a hurry to go. He still refused to ask his Aunt Patricia's pardon, so his breakfast was sent up-stairs to him, and he ate in sulky silence. He waited until he saw his father drive away down the street, and then he went in search of Elsie. She is always wanting to do everything that he does, so he had no trouble in persuading her to help him carry out his plans.

"Put on the oldest, raggedest clothes you can find," he said to her, "and tie an old handkerchief over your head so't you'll look as beggary as possible. I'll tear some more holes in the old overalls that I played in last summer, and pull part of the brim off my straw hat. We'll take the music-box out of the hall, and put it in my little red wheelbarrow, and you and me and Dago will start off through the streets like the grind-organ man did yesterday, I planned it all last night while everybody in the house was sound asleep. We'll sing when the music-box plays songs, and you and Dago can dance when it plays waltzes. I'll give you part of the money that we get to buy you the prettiest doll in town. I'll take the rest and go off to the place that I'm thinking about."

He wouldn't tell her where the place was, although she begged him with tears in her eyes. "Some place where they're not cruel to little boys and monkeys," was all he would tell her. "Where they don't ever whip them, and where they don't mind 'em getting into mischief once in awhile."

An hour later everything was ready for the start. Except for the daintily embroidered ruffles of her white linen underskirt, that would show below her old gingham dress, little Elsie might have been taken for the sorriest beggar in town. The dress was faded and outgrown. The little shawl she had pinned over her shoulders had one corner burned out of it, and the edges of the hole were scorched and jagged. A faded silk m.u.f.fler that she had used in her doll-cradle was drawn tightly over her tousled curls, and tied under her chin.

Phil's outfit might have come from the ragbag, too, it was so tattered and patched. But he had forgotten to take off his silver cuff-b.u.t.tons, and the shoes he wore looked sadly out of place below the grimy jeans overalls. He was obliged to wear a pair of bright tan-coloured shoes, so new that they squeaked. They were the only ones he had, for his old ones had been thrown away the day before. At first he was tempted to go barefoot, but the November wind was chilly, although the sun shone, and he dared not risk it.

It was ten o'clock by the court-house dial, and the bell was on the last stroke, when little Elsie held open the alley-gate and Phil trundled the red wheelbarrow through. I was perched on the music-box.

Rather an uncertain seat, I found it, as it slid back and forth at every step. I had to hold on so tight that my arms were sore for two days afterward.

"Which way shall we go?" asked little Elsie, as she fastened the gate behind us. Phil looked up and down the alley in an uncertain way, and then said, "When the princes in the fairy tales start out into the wide world to make their fortunes, they blow a leather up into the air and follow that."

"Here's one," cried Elsie, running forward to pick up a bit of fluffy white down that had blown over from a pigeon-house on the roof of a neighbouring stable. "I'll blow, and you say the charm." She puckered up her rosy little mouth and gave a quick puff.

"Feather, feather, when we blow, Point the way that we should go,"

sang Phil. "West!" he exclaimed, as it sailed lazily across the alley and over a high board fence. "That means that we are to go down toward the cotton-mills. I don't know much about that part of town. Mostly poor people live there, who look as if they hadn't much money to give away. But we'll try it, anyhow."

Picking up the barrow-handles, he trundled down the alley toward Pine Street, with little Elsie holding fast to the tail of his tattered jacket. We were off at last, to seek our fortunes in the wide, wide world, and our hearts were light as we followed the feather.

CHAPTER VI.

WHAT DAGO SAID TO THE MIRROR-MONKEY ON SAt.u.r.dAY.

Such a day as that was! We enjoyed it at first, for the sun shone and a crowd of dancing children followed us everywhere we went. We were in a strange part of town, so no one recognised us, but more than one woman looked sharply at little Elsie's embroidered ruffles, peeping out below the old gingham dress, and at Phil's squeaky new shoes.

"Have you run away, honey, or did your mammy dress you up that way and send you out to beg?" asked a pleasant-voiced woman, with a baby in her arms, as she leaned over a gate to drop a penny in Elsie's cup.

Elsie gave a startled glance at Phil, not knowing what to say, and Phil, turning very red, moved away without answering.

The music-box was an old-fashioned affair that wound up noisily with a big key. It played several jerky little waltzes and four plaintive old songs: "Ben Bolt," "The Last Rose of Summer," "Then You'll Remember Me," and "Home, Sweet Home." The children had sung them so often that they knew all the words, and their voices rang out l.u.s.tily at first; but, about the twentieth time the same old round of tunes began, little Elsie drew a deep, tired breath.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Oh, Phil," she said, "I _can't_ sing those songs all over again. I'm sick of them." She sat down on the curbstone, refusing to join in the melody, clasping her hands around her knees, and rocking back and forth as the shrill voice of the music-box piped on alone.

"I just _hate_ 'Sweet Alice Ben Bolt,'" she complained. "Isn't it most time to go home?" It was noon now. At the sound of the factory whistles all our followers had deserted us, and gone home to dinner.

Phil sat down on the curbstone beside Elsie, and emptying the pennies out of the little cup she had been carrying, gravely counted them.

"There's only eleven," he announced. "Of course we can't go home yet."