Aladdin OBrien | Page 4

and the once stately ostrich feather upon her
Sunday hat, the envy of little girls whom the green monster possessed,
as flabby as a long sermon.
Meanwhile the tide having turned, little sister boat made fine way of it
down the river, and, burrowing in the fog, holding her breath as it were,
and greatly assisted by the tide, slipped past the town unseen, and put
for open sea, where it is to be supposed she enjoyed herself hugely and,
finally, becoming a little skeleton of herself on unknown shores, was
gathered up by somebody who wanted a pretty fire with green lights in
it. The main point is that she went her selfish way undetected, so that
the wide-lanterned search which presently arose for little Margaret
tumbled and stumbled about clueless, and halted to take drinks, and
came back about morning and lay down all day, and said it never did,
which it certainly hadn't. All the to-do was over Margaret, for Aladdin
had not been missed, and, even if he had, nobody would have looked
for him. His father was at home bending over the model of the
wonderful lamp which was to make his fortune, and over which he had
been bending for fifteen rolling years. It had come to him, at about the
time that he fell in love with Aladdin's mother, that a certain worthless
biproduct of something would, if combined with something else and
steeped in water, generate a certain gas, which, though desperately
explosive, would burn with a flame as white as day. Over the perfection
of this invention, with a brief honeymoon for vacation, he had spent
fifteen years, a small fortune,--till he had nothing left, --the most of his
health, and indeed everything but his conviction that it was a beautiful
invention and sure of success. When Aladdin arrived, he was red and
wrinkled, after the everlasting fashion of the human babe, and had no
name, so because of the wonderful lamp they called him Aladdin. And
that rendered his first school-days wretched and had nothing to do with
the rest of his life, after the everlasting fashion of wonderful names.

Aladdin's mother went out of the world in the very natural act of
ushering his young brother into it, and he remembered her as a thin
person who was not strictly honorable (for, having betrayed him with a
kiss, she punished him for smoking) and had a headache. So there was
nobody to miss Aladdin or to waste the valuable night in looking for
him.
About this time Margaret began to cry and Aladdin to comfort her, and
they stumbled about in the woods trying to find --anything. After
awhile they happened into a grassy glade between two steep rocks, and
there agreeing to rest, scrunched into a depression of the rock on the
right. And Margaret, her nose very red, her hat at an angle, and her
head on Aladdin's shoulder, sobbed herself to sleep. And then, because
being trusted is next to being God, and the most moving and gentlest
condition possible, Aladdin, for the first time, felt the full measure of
his crime in leading Margaret from the straight way home, and he
pressed her close to him and stroked her draggled hair with his cold
little hands and cried. Whenever she moved in sleep, his heart went out
to her, and before the night was old he loved her forever.
Sleep did not come to Aladdin, who had suddenly become a father and
a mother and a nurse and a brother and a lover and a man who must not
be afraid. His coat was wrapped about Margaret, and his arms were
wrapped about his coat, and the body of him shivered against the damp,
cold shirt, which would come open in front because there was a button
gone. The fog came in thicker and colder, and night with her strange
noises moved slower and slower. There was an old loon out on the river,
who would suddenly throw back his head and laugh for no reason at all.
And once a great strange bird went rushing past, squeaking like a
mouse; and once two bright eyes came, flashing out of the night and
swung this way and that like signal-lanterns and disappeared. Aladdin
gave himself up for lost and would have screamed if he had been alone.
Presently his throat began to tickle, then the base of his nose, then the
bridge thereof, and then he felt for a handkerchief and found none. For
a little while he maintained the proprieties by a gentle sniffling, finally
by one great agonized snuff. It seemed after that as if he were to be left

in peace. But no. His lips parted, his chin went up a little, his eyes