A Brace of Boys | Page 9

Billy!"
"Well"--his voice dropped to a whisper and he stole close to my side--"I had such a nice dream about her just the last thing before the bell rang; and when I woke up I felt so queer--so kinder good and kinder bad--and I wanted to see her so much, that if I hadn't been a big boy, I believe I should have blubbered. I tried ever so much to go to sleep and see her again; but the more I tried the more I couldn't. After all, I had to get up without it, though I didn't want any breakfast, and only ate two buckwheat cakes, when I always eat six, you know, Uncle Teddy. Can you keep a secret?"
"Yes, dear, so you couldn't get it out of me if you were to shake me upside down like a savings-bank."
"Oh, ain't you mean! That was when I was small I did that. I'll tell you the secret, though--that girl and I are going to get married. I mean to ask her the first chance I get. Oh, isn't she a smasher!"
"My dear Billy, shan't you wait a little while to see if you always like her as well as you do now? Then, too, you'll be older."
"I'm old enough, Uncle Teddy, and I love her dearly. I am as old as the Kings of France used to be when they got married--I read it in Abbott's history. But there's the clock striking nine! I must run or I shall get a tardy mark and perhaps she'll want to see my certificate some time."
So saying, he kissed me on the cheek and set off for school as fast as his legs could carry him. Oh, Love, omnivorous Love, that sparest neither the dotard leaning on his staff nor the boy with pantaloons buttoning on his jacket--omnipotent Love, that, after parents and teachers have failed, in one instant can make Billy try to become a good boy!
With both of my nephews hopelessly enamored and myself the confidant of both, I had my hands full. Daniel was generally dejected and distrustful; Billy buoyant and jolly. Daniel found it impossible to overcome his bashfulness, was spontaneous only in sonnets, brilliant only in bouquets. Billy was always coming to me with pleasant news, told in his slangy New York boy vernacular. One day he would exclaim: "Oh, I'm getting on prime! I got such a smile off her this morning as I went by the window!" Another day he wanted counsel how to get a valentine to her--because it was too big to shove in a lamppost and she might catch him if he left it on the steps, rang the bell, and ran away. Daniel wrote his own valentine, but, despite its originality, that document gave him no such comfort as Billy got from twenty-five cents' worth of embossed paper, pink cupids, and doggerel.
Finally Billy announced to me that he had been to play with Jimmy and got introduced to his girl.
Shortly after this Lu gave what they call "a little company"--not a party, but a reunion of forty or fifty people with whom the family were well acquainted, several of them living in our immediate neighborhood. There was a goodly proportion of young fold and there was to be dancing; but the music was limited to a single piano played by the German exile usual on such occasions, and the refreshments did not rise to the splendor of a costly supper. This kind of compromise with fashionable gayety was wisely deemed by Lu the best method of introducing Daniel to the beau monde--a push given the timid eaglet by the maternal bird, with a soft tree-top between him and the vast expanse of society. How simple was the entertainment may be inferred from the fact that Lu felt somewhat discomposed when she got a note from one of her guests asking leave to bring along her niece who was making her a few weeks' visit. As a matter of course, however, she returned answer to bring the young lady and welcome.
Daniel's dressing-room having been given up to the gentlemen, I invited him to make his toilet in mine, and indeed, wanting him to create a favorable impression, became his valet pro tem., tying his cravat and teasing the divinity-student look out of his side hair. My little dandy Billy came in for another share of attention, and when I managed to button his jacket for him so that it showed his shirt studs "like a man's," Count d'Orsay could not have felt a greater sense of his sufficiency for all the demands of the gay world.
When we reached the parlor we found Pa and Ma Lovegrove already receiving. About a score of guests had arrived. Most of them were old married couples which,