Volume II Part 20 (1/2)
”A toadskin, ma,” replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell glance of contempt.
”Dear, dear! Where does the boy learn such horrid words?”
”Why, ma, don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one,” said Billy, drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. ”And don't I wish I had lots of 'em!”
”Oh!” sighed his mother, ”to think I should have a child so addicted to slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!”
”Well, mother,” replied Billy, ”if you wanted two boys just alike you'd oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel now, when he's got eleven years the start. Whoop! There's a dog-fight; hear 'em! It's Joe Casey's dog,--I know his bark!”
With these words my nephew s.n.a.t.c.hed his Glengarry bonnet from the table and bolted downstairs to see the fun.
”What will become of him?” said Lu, hopelessly; ”he has no taste for any thing but rough play; and then such language as he uses! Why _isn't_ he like Daniel?”
”I suppose because his Maker never repeats himself. Even twins often possess strongly marked individualities. Don't you think it would be a good plan to learn Billy better before you try to teach him? If you do, you'll make something as good of him as Daniel though it will be rather different from that model.”
”Remember, Ned, that you never did like Daniel as well as you do Billy.
But we all know the proverb about old maid's daughters and old bachelor's sons. I wish you had Billy for a month,--then you'd see.”
”I'm not sure that I'd do any better than you. I might err as much in other directions But I'd try to start right by acknowledging that he was a new problem, not to be worked without finding out the value of X in his particular instance. The formula which solves one boy will no more solve the next one than the rule-of-three will solve a question in calculus,--or, to rise into your sphere, than the receipt for one-two-three-four cake will conduct you to a successful issue through plum-pudding.”
I excel in metaphysical discussion, and was about giving further elaboration to my favorite idea, when the door burst open. Master Billy came tumbling in with a torn jacket, a b.l.o.o.d.y nose, the trace of a few tears in his eyes, and the mangiest of cur dogs in his hands.
”Oh my! my!! my!!!” exclaimed his mother.
”Don't you get scared, ma!” cried Billy, smiling a stern smile of triumph; ”I smashed the nose off him! He wont sa.s.s me again for nothing _this_ while! Uncle Teddy, d'ye know it wasn't a dog-fight, after all?
There was that nasty, good-for-nothing Joe Casey, 'n Patsy Grogan, and a lot of bad boys from Mackerelville; and they'd caught this poor little ki-oodle and tied a tin pot to his tail, and were trying to set Joe's dog on him, though he's ten times littler.”
”You naughty, naughty boy! How did you suppose your mother'd feel to see you playing with those ragam.u.f.fins?”
”Yes, I _played_ 'em! I polished 'em,--that's the play I did! Says I, 'Put down that poor little pup; ain't you ashamed of yourself, Patsy Grogan?' 'I guess you don't know who I am,' says he. That's the way they always say, Uncle Teddy, to make a fellow think they're some awful great fighters. So says I again, 'Well, you put down that dog, or I'll show you who I am'; and when he held on, I let him have. Then he dropped the pup, and as I stooped to pick it up he gave me one on the bugle.”
”_Bugle_! Oh! oh! oh!”
”The rest pitched in to help him; but I grabbed the pup, and while I was trying to give as good as I got,--only a fellow can't do it well with only one hand, Uncle Teddy,--up came a policeman, and the whole crowd ran away. So I got the dog safe, and here he is!”
With that Billy set down his ”ki-oodle,” bid farewell to every fear, and wiped his bleeding nose. The unhappy beast slunk back between the legs of his preserver and followed him out of the room, as Lu, with an expression of maternal despair, bore him away for the correction of his dilapidated raiment and depraved a.s.sociations. I felt such sincere pride in this young Mazzini of the dog-nation, that I was vexed at Lu for bestowing on him reproof instead of congratulation; but she was not the only conservative who fails to see a good cause and a heroic heart under a b.l.o.o.d.y nose and torn jacket. I resolved that if Billy was punished he should have his recompense before long in an extra holiday at Barnum's or the Hippotheatron.
You already have some idea of my other nephew, if you have noticed that none of us, not even that habitual disrespecter of dignities, Billy, ever called him Dan. It would have seemed as incongruous as to call Billy William. He was one of those youths who never gave their parents a moment's uneasiness; who never had to have their wills broken, and never forget to put on their rubbers or take an umbrella. In boyhood he was intended for a missionary. Had it been possible for him to go to Greenland's icy mountains without catching cold, or India's coral strand, without getting bilious, his parents would have carried out their pleasing dream of contributing him to the world's evangelization.
Lu and Mr. Lovegrove had no doubt that he would have been greatly blessed if he could have stood it....
Both she and his father always encouraged old manners in him. I think they took such pride in raising a peculiarly pale boy as a gardener does in getting a nice blanch on his celery, and so long as he was not absolutely sick, the graver he was the better. He was a sensitive plant, a violet by a mossy stone, and all that sort of thing....
At the time I introduce Billy, both Lu and her husband were much changed. They had gained a great deal in width of view and liberality of judgment. They read d.i.c.kens, and Thackeray with avidity; went now and then to the opera; proposed to let Billy take a quarter at Dodworth's; had statues in their parlor without any thought of shame at their lack of petticoats, and did mult.i.tudes of things which, in their early married life, they would have considered shocking.... They would greatly have liked to see Daniel s.h.i.+ne in society. Of his erudition they were proud even to wors.h.i.+p. The young man never had any business, and his father never seemed to think of giving him any, knowing, as Billy would say, that he had stamps enough to ”see him through.” If Daniel liked, his father would have endowed a professors.h.i.+p in some college and given him the chair; but that would have taken him away from his own room and the family physician.
Daniel knew how much his parents wished him to make a figure in the world, and only blamed himself for his failure, magnanimously forgetting that they had crushed out the faculties which enable a man to mint the small change of every-day society, in the exclusive cultivation of such as fit him for smelting its ponderous ingots. With that merciful blindness which alone prevents all our lives from becoming a horror of nerveless self-reproach, his parents were equally unaware of their share in the harm done him, when they ascribed to a delicate organization the fact that, at an age when love runs riot in all healthy blood, he could not see a Balmoral without his cheeks rivalling the most vivid stripe in it. They flattered themselves that he would outgrow his bashfulness; but Daniel had no such hope, and frequently confided in me that he thought he should never marry at all.
About two hours after Billy's disappearance under his mother's convoy, the defender of the oppressed returned to my room bearing the dog under his arm. His cheeks shone with was.h.i.+ng like a pair of waxy spitzenbergs, and other indignities had been offered him to the extent of the brush and comb. He also had a whole jacket on....
Billy and I also obtained permission to go out together and be gone the entire afternoon. We put Crab on a comfortable bed of rags in an old shoe-box, and then strolled hand-in-hand across that most delightful of New York breathing-places--Stuyvesant Square.