Part 12 (1/2)
”Well? That's all. What do you mean, Aunty?”
”I was waiting to hear you tell the real grievance. That the children should want Mary for queen, when you have been one so many times, doesn't seem to be a reason.”
Barbara was too much surprised to speak.
”Yes, my dear, I mean it,” persisted her aunt. ”Now let us talk this over. Why should you always be queen on Mamma's birthday? Who gave you the right, I mean?”
”The children liked to have me,” faltered Barbara.
”Precisely. But this year they liked to have Mary.”
”But I worked so hard, Aunty. You can't think how I worked. I did everything; and sometimes I got dreadfully tired.”
”Was that to please the others?”
”Y-es--”
”Or would they rather have helped in the work, and did you keep it to yourself because you liked to do it alone?” asked Aunt Kate, with a smile. ”Now, my Barbie, listen to me. You have led always because you liked to lead, and the others submitted to you. But no one can govern forever. The rest are growing up; they have their own rights and their own opinions. You cannot go on always ruling them as you did when they were little. Do you want to be a good, useful older sister, loved and trusted, or to have Eunice slip into your place, and be the real elder sister, while you gradually become a cipher in the family?”
Barbara began to cry.
”Dear child,” said Aunty Kate, kissing her, ”now is your chance.
Influence, not authority, should be a sister's weapon. If you want to lead the children, you must do it with a smile, not a pout.”
The children were surprised enough that evening when Barbara came up to offer to help tie wreaths. Her eyes looked as if she had been crying, but she was very kind and nice all that night and next day. She was maid of honor to little Queen Mary, after all. Eunice gave her a rapturous kiss afterward, and said, ”Oh, Barbie, how _dear_ you are!” and, somehow, Barbara forgot to feel badly about not being queen. Some defeats are better than victories.
WHAT THE PINK FLAMINGO DID.
The great pink flamingo roused from his resting-place among the sedges when the noise began. At first he only stirred sleepily, and wondered, half awake, at the unusual sounds; but as they increased, curiosity began to trouble him. Party after party in launches or bright-hued gondolas glided past, all gay and chattering, and full of excitement about something, he did not know what. It was the first night on which the buildings and grounds of the Chicago Fair were illuminated, and the flamingo could not tell what to make of it, any more than could the herons and swans, the Muscovy ducks, the cranes, or any other of the winged creatures which had learned to make themselves at home on the banks of the lagoons.
The pink flamingo's name was Coco. He had been ”raised” on the sh.o.r.e of the St. Johns River, in Florida, as the pet and _protege_ of Cecil Schott, a boy who had taught him many tricks,--to catch fish and fetch them out in his mouth, as a retriever fetches a bird, to eat caramels, to dive after objects thrown into the water and bring them up in his beak:--after Cecil himself even, so long as he was small enough to be counted as an ”object.” Often and often had Coco plunged into the deep river, following the downward sweep of his little master, and seized him by the arm or foot before he was anywhere near the bottom. He would eat from Cecil's hand, also, and stand by his side, folding one wide wing across the boy's shoulder, as though it were an arm. Cecil was growing up now, and had been sent to school; so when Mr. Schott heard that the Chicago directors were making a collection of birds for the Fair Grounds, he offered Coco, whose fearlessness and familiarity with human beings seemed peculiarly to adapt him for a public position.
When the fifth electrical launch had sped past the sedges, and strange, hovering lights began to burn in the sky, and ring the domes and roofs in the distance toward the south, Coco could endure it no longer, and, betaking himself to the water, started on a tour of investigation. He looked very big in the dim light of the upper waterways,--almost as big as the smaller of the gondolas. The people in the boats exclaimed with astonishment as he pa.s.sed them, his broad wings raised above him, like rose-colored sails, and his stout legs beating the water into foam behind, like a propeller.
At first his course lay amid soft shadows. The upper part of the Fair Grounds was not illuminated, and only a bird's keen vision could have made out accustomed objects. But the flamingo had no difficulty in seeing. He knew exactly where to look for the nest of the female swan on the wooded island. He could even make out her dim white shape in the gloom, and hear the disturbed flutter of her wings. There was the plantation of white hyacinths, and there the outline of the shabby old ”Prairie Schooner,” into which he had more than once poked his inquisitive head. There stood the ”Log Cabin,” and beyond, the twinkling lanterns of the j.a.panese Tea Garden. The pink flamingo recognized them all. Under one graceful bridge after another, past one enormous beautiful building after another, he swept, following the curves and turnings of the waterways, startled here and there by unaccustomed lights and the sounds of a hurrying crowd, till at last, with one bold sweep, he glided under the last arch and out into the broad basin of the Court of Honor.
He had been there before. Catch the pink flamingo leaving any part of the Fair Grounds unexplored! He was not that sort of bird. He had even been there in the evening, when the moon shone clearly on the water, with only a point of light here and there on the surrounding sh.o.r.es, and no sounds to break the stillness but the plash of waves was.h.i.+ng in from the lake, and the low talk of little groups of late-stayers, sitting on the steps before the Liberal Arts Building, looking across to the fountain and the dim row of sculptured forms on the summit of the Peristyle. But now all was different. The gilded dome of the Administration Building was ringed with lines of fire. The facade of the Agricultural blazed with lights, which shone on the bas-reliefs and sculptures, on the winged Diana above, and the great bulls which guard the approach to the boat-landing. Every figure which topped the long double lines of the Peristyle stood out distinctly against the transparent sky; the gilding of the broad arch toward the lake glowed ruddy in the light, and so did the majestic figure of the Republic, its n.o.ble outline reflected in the s.h.i.+mmering waters beneath. The great fountain opposite caught the blaze, and sent its smooth shoots over the basin edges with a white phosph.o.r.escent radiance. Then a wide beam from a search-light swept across, and seemed to turn the figures into life; made the form of the Discoverer and the beautiful figures of the rowing women on either side, throb and pulsate, fluctuating with the fluctuating ray, till they seemed to bend and move. On either side, the electrical fountains lifted high in air great sheaves of iridescent colors, scarlet, green, and blue, like a flag of upheaving jewels, while the faces of the immense throng along the esplanades and on the dome of the Administration Building changed from gloom to glory and back again to gloom as the dancing ray wandered to and fro.
It was a scene from fairyland; but it did not altogether please Coco, who, startled and affrighted, made a dive, and disappeared under water by way of a relief to his feelings. Then he came up again, and, growing by degrees accustomed to these novel splendors, he recovered confidence, and began to look about him.
”Oh, what a beautiful bird!” he heard some one say; and though he did not understand the words, he knew well enough that he was being admired, and thereupon proceeded to make himself a part of the show. He splashed, dived, extended his wide wings, curved his long neck, and generally exhibited himself to the best of his ability, all the time maintaining an absent-minded air, as if he were not aware that any one else was present. Coco was very conceited for a bird.
Meanwhile, at about the same moment in which the pink flamingo was roused from his slumbers, a small Turkish boy named Ha.s.san awoke from his, in the retirement of the Midway Plaisance. He had not been at all a good little Turk since he came to America, his parents thought.
Something in the air of freedom had apparently demoralized him. It might be that domestic discipline had been relaxed since their arrival, for there had been much to do in getting the Turkish Bazaar and the Mosque and the Village ready; but certain it is that Ha.s.san had been naughtier and given more trouble during the past ten weeks than in all the previous years of his short life. Once, in a great rain-storm, he had actually run away, slipping past the guard at the gate, and tearing wildly down the street. Where he was going, he did not know or care; all he wanted was to run. How far he might have gone, or what would have become of him in the end, no one can say, had his father not caught a glimpse of the small fleeting figure.
”Beard of the Prophet!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the scandalized Mustapha. ”That son of Sheitan, the enemy of true believers, will be run over by the horses of the infidel if I do not overtake him speedily.”
He tucked up his blue robe, which almost touched the muddy ground, it was so long, revealing, as he did so, yellow boots topped with American socks, and, above these, a pair of green drawers, and started in pursuit. Alas! the guard at the turnstile stopped him, and demanded his pa.s.s. In vain Mustapha remonstrated, and explained, in fluent Turkish, that his sole object was to capture his evil child, who had escaped from home. The guard did not understand the language of Turkey, and persisted, explaining, in the tongue of Chicago, that he was acting under orders, and that no ”foreigner” could go in or out without proper authority.