Half a Dozen Girls | Page 9

he was a genuine, rollicking boy, with never a trace of the prig about him.
"Well, what was it you wanted of me?" Alan asked, as soon as his head reached the level of the attic floor.
"We didn't want you; you came," retorted Molly, with the frankness of a sister.
"No such thing; you called me,--at least, Polly did." And Alan marched across the floor to seat himself beside his champion, sure that there he would find a welcome.
He was not mistaken, for Polly remarked protectingly,--
"I did call you, Alan, for we want to have some fun, this horrid day, and we need you to stir us up."
"All right; how shall I go to work?" inquired Alan cheerfully. "Shall I dance a breakdown, or will you play tag?"
"Let's play hide-and-seek," suggested Jean; "it's so nice and dark up here, to-day."
"Wait a minute," interposed Florence. "Alan, we may as well tell you now: Jean is going to write a play for us to act, and you are going to be John Smith and have your head cut off."
"The mischief, I am!" with a prolonged whistle of surprise and disgust. "It strikes me I have something to say about what shall be done with my head."
"Stop using such dreadful expressions, Alan," said Molly primly. "You know mamma doesn't like to hear you say 'the mischief.'"
"Well, she didn't, 'cause she isn't here," returned Alan, in nowise abashed by his reproof. "And I don't believe she'd like to hear you girls planning to cut my head off, either."
"Oh, Alan, you goose!" said Polly. "John Smith's head wasn't cut off, for Pocahontas saved him, you know. All you'll have to do will be to lie down with your head on a stone, and have one of us girls get ready to hit you with a club."
"If you girls are going to manage the club," remarked the boy, with masculine scorn, "I'd much rather have you try to hit me, for then I'd be safe."
"That's a very old joke, Alan," said Jean, with disgust; "and besides, it isn't polite. You ought to be proud to be asked to have a part in our grand play."
"Will you act, or won't you?" demanded Polly sternly, as she seized him by his short, thick hair.
"Oh, anything to get peace," groaned Alan.
"Say yes, then."
"Yes."
"Very well. Now, you are to be ready whenever we want you; you are to do just what we want, and do it in just the way we want. Do you promise?"
"Yes, yes! But do hurry up and play something, or it will be dark before you begin."
"There!" said Polly, nodding triumphantly to the girls as she released him. "Didn't I tell you I'd get him to act?"
"You couldn't bribe him to keep out of it," said Jean, as they sprang up for their game.
The old attic was a favorite meeting-place for the V, who held high carnival there, now racing up and down the great floor and hiding in dark corners behind aged chests and spinning-wheels, now robing themselves in the time-honored garments which had done duty for various ancestors of the Hapgood family, and exchanging visits of mock ceremony, or inviting Mrs. Hapgood up to witness a remarkable tableau or an impromptu charade. Piles of illustrated papers filled one corner, and, when all else failed, the children used to pore over the sensational pictures of the Civil War, dwelling with an especial interest on the scenes of death and carnage. In another corner was arranged a long row of old andirons, warming-pans, and candlesticks, flanked by an ancient wooden cradle with a projecting cover above the head. Rows of dilapidated chairs there were, of every date and every degree of shabbiness,--those old friends which start in the parlor and slowly descend in rank, first to the sitting-room or library, then up-stairs, and so, by easy stages, to the hospital asylum of the garret. And up through the very midst of it all, midway between the two small windows which lighted the opposite ends of the attic, rose the huge gray stone chimney, like a massive backbone to the body of the house. What stories of the past the old chimney could have told! What descriptions of Hapgoods, long dead, who had warmed themselves about it! What secret papers had been burned in its wide throat! What sweet and tender home scenes had been enacted on the old settles ranged before its glowing hearths, which put to shame our tiny modern fireplaces and insignificant grates! But the old chimney kept its own counsel, and did not whisper a word, even to the swallows that built their nests in the crannies of its sides. If it had spoken, there would be no need for any one else to write of the doings of the V; for the chimney had