CHAPTER IV.

THE BOY WHO WAS NEVER FRIGHTENED.

July was in. Milly's birthday was on the 17th, which was Friday. We had planned to have games in the garden in the afternoon, tea on the grass under the trees, and games in the evening in the drawing-room, breaking up about nine, for mother didn't believe in late hours for children.

Jim and Jerry were going to stop for the party, and return to London the next day. Jim wasn't the nice quiet boy Martha had thought him, but dreadfully mischievous and tiresome. I heard father say to mother one day, he should be glad "when that young rascal had gone again, as he kept going into the surgery meddling."

Percy didn't like him at all, neither did we. Jerry wasn't so bad. She would say queer things, but she didn't really mean to be rude. Martha said she hadn't been properly brought up.

Before I go any further, I must tell of something that was puzzling me very much at this time. Three or four days after Mrs. Emson came, I was standing in the hall, just before dinner, when Mrs. Emson, looking very hot and flushed, came in.

"Have you been for a long walk, Mrs. Emson?" I said.

"It isn't the walk that has made me so hot," she replied, rather crossly; "I've been to see your aunt, and she has made me feel very angry. Really, she doesn't seem to have a particle of feeling. She's just like a statue. She's so proud too. Dear me, one would think"--and there Mrs. Emson stopped, out of breath.

"My aunt! did you say?" I asked. "I haven't any aunt in Neesby. I've only Aunt Alice, you know, and she is in Scotland--she lives there."

Mrs. Emson stared at me, actually stared, in surprise for a minute; then she said--

"What! do you mean to say--Hem! don't take any notice of what I say, love. I talk foolishly sometimes;" and she went upstairs quickly. I stood quite still, wondering what she meant. Whom did she mean by my aunt? I hadn't any aunt but Aunt Alice,--Uncle Dick's wife,--and she was up in her Scotch home; and although Mrs. Emson said she talked foolishly sometimes, she was talking sensibly then. I knew she was, because she looked so confused when I asked her what she meant.

"She's just like a statue." Who! what did she mean? I didn't care to ask her any more. I couldn't ask either father or mother when Mrs. Emson was in the room. Milly wouldn't know any more than I did. Would Martha know? Down to the kitchen I ran.

"Martha! Martha!" Martha, red in the face, was stirring the gravy over the fire.

"What is it now, Miss Addie? How you do frighten anybody, tearing in like that. What is it?"

"Martha," I said, more quietly; "have I got an aunt living in Neesby?"

"A what?" cried she. "Stand out of the way, my dear, or you will get a sput from the gravy."

"No, I won't. Have I got an aunt in Neesby?"

"An aunt?" she repeated; "I don't know what you mean, Miss Addie."

"Yes, you do, Martha. An aunt, like your Aunt Lizzie or my Aunt Alice, you know-- Oh--oh--oh--." The "ohs" were because I had gone too near the fire, and the gravy had "sputted," as Martha had said it would.

"Child, don't make such a fuss! You ain't hurt. Where did it go? on your arm? goodness! I thought you was pretty near scalded to death."

"I'm not then," I retorted sharply; for Martha had made me feel I had cried out before I was hurt; "and, Martha, will you please answer my question?"

"Well, Miss Addie," lifting the saucepan off the fire and pouring the gravy into its dish; "'tis proper nonsense for you to go asking me such a thing as have you got an aunt living in Neesby, when you know as well as me, you haven't. What made you ask such a silly question?"

"It isn't a silly question. I wanted to know, that's all;" and I stalked out of the kitchen, with great dignity.

In the afternoon I was sitting in the parlour, with a book in my hand; but I wasn't reading. I was still thinking of Mrs. Emson's words. Suddenly father, who was reading the paper at the table, said, "What great question are you worrying about now, Addie?" I looked up and laughed a little, and, as we were alone in the room, I said, "It isn't a great question, father, but it is rather a puzzling one. Mrs. Emson said this morning she had been to see my aunt. I haven't an aunt here, have I? When I asked Mrs. Emson what she meant, she said she had been talking foolishly."

I looked across at father, but he was reading away as though he had not heard a word.

"Father," I said softly.

"Don't chatter, Addie. I'm busy reading;" so I was quiet, wondering on about this strange aunt, until I came to the conclusion that Mrs. Emson had made a mistake.

One week before the party, Milly wrote a dear little note to Eleanor (father having said she might) asking her to come on the 17th. By the next post Milly received the answer, written in the third person, saying that Miss Townley and her niece were obliged to Miss Millicent Dixon for her kind invitation, but the latter did not attend parties. It was something like that; I have forgotten how it went exactly.

Wasn't it horrid? Milly was put out when she received it. Mother seemed hurt; even I was forced to own that Miss Townley could be unkind if she liked.

Mrs. Emson screwed up her lips and said, "What did I tell you?" which made me look at her. I knew that she knew Miss Townley a little, for she had been up to the Court once or twice since she came; so I supposed Miss Townley had told her she did not intend Eleanor to come.

Meanwhile Jim had been tiring everybody by his mischievous tricks; always on the look-out, he never lost a chance to do someone an ill turn. We had many times been tripped up in the dusk by a piece of string tied across the path. The day before the party he was worse than ever. Martha said he was "enough to worrit the life right out of her;" and so he was.

In the first place, on Thursday morning, while Martha, rather later than usual, was having her breakfast, Master Jim came quietly into the kitchen and tied her into her chair by her apron-strings, and went out whistling. Martha, not knowing what Jim had done, called to Jane to "make haste up to Mrs. Day's after they eggs; I shall be waiting for 'em in another half-hour."

Off went Jane. Martha drank up her tea, pushed by her cup, tried to get up, but--found she couldn't. In an instant she knew what was the matter. She called Jim; she called mother; she called Tom and everybody else; but nobody could hear, as the door was shut and the kitchen seems quite away from the other parts of the house. The chair was a large one with a broad back, and do what she would, she couldn't possibly get out.

Presently Jim strolled by, and looking in at the window, said calmly, "Resting, Mrs. Martha? 'Tis very hot, to be sure, but I thought you said just now you had a lot of work to do?"

"Drat your imperence then," cried Martha, who forgot herself when she was excited; "you tied me in, you young rascal--you know you did."

"You will break a blood-vessel, I'm afraid, if you scream like that, Mrs. Martha. Your face is as red as Masters', now."

"Ugh! ugh!" groaned Martha. "Master Jim! come and untie my apron-strings this instant, or I'll know the reason why when I do get out."

"I'm not a lady's-maid, Mrs. Martha. You will have to wait until Jane comes in;" and so saying, the bad boy walked away, whistling for Tuts, who went bounding after him. Martha had to wait patiently, or impatiently, until Jane came, which was not too soon, as you may be sure.

After a good deal of laughing on Jane's side, and a good deal of scolding on Martha's, the strings were untied, and she was free. Jim had quite enough sense to keep away from the kitchen all the rest of the day.

His next prank was to tie Tuts to a nail in the wall, by a short chain, and the poor little thing nearly choked himself trying to get away. Tired of that pastime, he went into the garden, picked up all the snails he could find, and put them into Milly's hat, under the lining. When she went to put it on in the afternoon they all fell down, frightening poor Milly nearly out of her wits. For that, his mother shut him up in her bedroom for an hour; then, fearing what he might do if left to himself too long, she let him come down.

We were all sitting in the garden, eating ripe gooseberries, when Jim joined us. Milly was telling us how Miss Cole and she had seen a mouse in the old tool-house, and how frightened they had both been, thinking it was a rat.

"You'd have been just as frightened if you had _known_ it was a mouse," laughed Percy.

"I daresay I should," admitted Miss Cole; "I don't like mice."

"Oh, I don't mind mice," said Jerry; "but I can't bear black beetles."

"I'll tell you what I don't like," said I. "Caterpillars."

"Don't you?" said Jim sympathetically; "I daresay you don't," he added, putting--ugh! such a fat one right on my arm. Oh! you should have heard me scream. Up I jumped; down fell my gooseberries; off flew Jim out of the way, coming back, however, as soon as order and quietness were again restored.

"That's just the way of you girls," sneered he, seating himself comfortably on the grass; "you scream at nothing, and are frightened at everything. I never yet saw anything that frightened me!"

"Don't boast, and don't tell stories, Jim!" advised Jerry. "Don't you remember--" but at that moment, luckily for Jim, Mrs. Ellison's voice, calling "Jerry, Jerry, I want you," sent her flying indoors.

Jim, Jerry out of the way, started telling us a wonderful tale of two robbers, who came into his room in the house in India, when everybody else was asleep, and were going to shoot him, when he jumped up and took down an old sword of his father's that was hanging on the wall, and would have cut off their heads, only they fell on their knees, begging him to forgive them, and gave him two beautiful bracelets as a peace-offering. "The worst of it is," he concluded, "I quite forgot those bracelets when we came home, and left them in India."

"I daresay you did," shouted Percy, who had climbed to the top of one of the trees; "to view the landscape," he said; Miss Cole thought he wanted "to break one of his limbs, to give father a little more work to do." Martha said it was because he wanted to "tear all his clothes off his back."

Jim turned rather red as these words floated down, but he looked more uncomfortable still when Miss Cole remarked quietly, with a very grave face--

"I knew a boy who used to say he had been through just such wonderful adventures as the one you have just been telling us, and his mother found that a good whipping was the best thing to give him after he had seen or done such wonderful things."

Jim jumped up in a great hurry and tore across the garden.

"What's he after now?" called Percy from his high seat.

"More mischief, I expect," answered I. Percy climbed down.

"Fancies he can't be frightened, doesn't he! H'm! Fancy I could make him jump if I liked. Girls, let's think how we can do it."

Miss Cole, laughing, left us to our "plot-making," as she called it, and went indoors. We sat quiet, and thought. By and by Milly said, "I say! couldn't we put Tuts in his bed? I expect he'd"--

"The very thing to pay him out!" cried Percy. "After his treatment of poor Tuts, too. You girls go in now, and keep things quiet. I know how I'll manage."

The boys generally went to bed when we did, rather before it was dark enough to have a light, but this evening we all asked mother if we might sit up a little later. Mother was rather unwilling at first, but we told her we would lie on later in the morning; then we wouldn't be too tired for the party.

We sat in the schoolroom, in the dusk, telling stories of fairies, pixies, and ghosts. Jerry was in the secret, and she told dreadful tales. After some time Percy said, with a wink at me--

"If you girls tell any more tales, you won't be able to sleep for fright."

"I'm not frightened," cried Milly and Jerry in a breath.

"Goodness! who is? I like it," said Jim.

"Well," I said, getting up and pretending to yawn very much; "I think we had better go on to bed. We girls will, anyway."

Our part was to get Tuts into the bed. There was only room for one in Percy's bed; so while Jim was there, Jim slept in the bed, and Percy in a chair-bed in the same room. We said good-night, found Tuts, and carried him up to the boys' room. We put him right into the middle of the bed; he curled himself up into a ball and nestled down as though he quite understood. We put back the clothes carefully and went to our own room, Jerry coming with us.

Presently we heard the boys coming up; I slipped over and opened our door, and we waited to hear the fun. Quietness for some time, and then, oh! such a shriek and a howl, and cries of "What's the matter? what's the matter?" Up came father, two stairs at a time, and hurried into the boys' room.

"What is the matter?" we heard him asking.

"I was in bed, father, and Jim was just getting in. I had just put out the candle, and Jim screamed out," Percy said.

"Where are you, Jim? What is it?" asked father again.

"Oh! oh!" howled a dismal voice from the other end of the room; "there's something horrible in my bed. It's a ghost, or a witch, or something."

"Nonsense," said father. "Where are the matches? Where's the candle?"

"Here's the candle, father," said Percy in a shaky voice (he couldn't keep from laughing). Father lighted it, and then--you should have heard the peals of laughter.

"It's Tuts! it's Tuts," shrieked Percy. "Oh, Jim! Oh, Jim, I thought you were never frightened. Poor old Tuts! Oh, oh, oh!"

Father quieted them, not saying very much, and left them. Jerry, hearing her mother asking what was the matter, went out and told her all. Mrs. Emson was very angry with Jim; she promised him a punishment when they went back to London; she laughed heartily about Tuts in his bed. Mother came to us, and somewhat subdued our mirth by telling us it was rather a rude trick to play on a guest, but she was bound to laugh when we told her how Jim had howled. As for Jim himself, he indulged in a fit of sulks which lasted until he left us.

[Illustration: Chapter IV tailpiece]

[Illustration: Chapter V headpiece]