Jackanapes | Page 5

instance of in her well-bred and high-stepping family. And as to
behavior, it was not that it was either quarrelsome or moping, but
simply unlike the rest. When the other chicks hopped and cheeped on
the Green all at their mother's feet, this solitary yellow one went
waddling off on its own responsibility, and do or cluck what the
spreckled hen would, it went to play in the pond.
It was off one day as usual, and the hen was fussing and fuming after it,
when the Postman, going to deliver a letter at Miss Jessamine's door,
was nearly knocked over by the good lady herself, who, bursting out of
the house with her cap just off and her bonnet just not on, fell into his
arms, crying--
"Baby! Baby! Jackanapes! Jackanapes!"
If the Postman loved anything on earth, he loved the Captain's

yellow-haired child, so propping Miss Jessamine against her own
door-post, he followed the direction of her trembling fingers and made
for the Green.
Jackanapes had had the start of the Postman by nearly ten minutes. The
world--the round green world with an oak tree on it--was just becoming
very interesting to him. He had tried, vigorously but ineffectually, to
mount a passing pig the last time he was taken out walking; but then he
was encumbered with a nurse. Now he was his own master, and might,
by courage and energy, become the master of that delightful, downy,
dumpy, yellow thing, that was bobbing along over the green grass in
front of him. Forward! Charge! He aimed well, and grabbed it, but only
to feel the delicious downiness and dumpiness slipping through his
fingers as he fell upon his face. "Quawk!" said the yellow thing, and
wobbled off sideways. It was this oblique movement that enabled
Jackanapes to come up with it, for it was bound for the Pond, and
therefore obliged to come back into line. He failed again from
top-heaviness, and his prey escaped sideways as before, and, as before,
lost ground in getting back to the direct road to the Pond.
[Illustration]
And at the Pond the Postman found them both, one yellow thing
rocking safely on the ripples that lie beyond duck-weed, and the other
washing his draggled frock with tears, because he too had tried to sit
upon the Pond, and it wouldn't hold him.
CHAPTER III.
... If studious, copie fair what time hath blurred, Redeem truth from his
jawes; if souldier, Chase brave employments with a naked sword
Throughout the world. Fool not; for all may have, If they dare try, a
glorious life, or grave.
* * * * *
In brief, acquit thee bravely: play the man. Look not on pleasures as
they come, but go. Defer not the least vertue: life's poore span Make

not an ell, by trifling in thy woe. If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the
pains. If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.
GEORGE HERBERT.
Young Mrs. Johnson, who was a mother of many, hardly knew which
to pity more; Miss Jessamine for having her little ways and her
antimacassars rumpled by a young Jackanapes; or the boy himself, for
being brought up by an old maid.
Oddly enough, she would probably have pitied neither, had Jackanapes
been a girl. (One is so apt to think that what works smoothest works to
the highest ends, having no patience for the results of friction.) That
Father in GOD, who bade the young men to be pure, and the maidens
brave, greatly disturbed a member of his congregation, who thought
that the great preacher had made a slip of the tongue.
"That the girls should have purity, and the boys courage, is what you
would say, good Father?"
"Nature has done that," was the reply; "I meant what I said."
In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some robuster
virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars. And the
robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on the other
hand, Jackanapes (who had a boy's full share of the little beast and the
young monkey in his natural composition) was none the worse, at his
tender years, for learning some maidenliness--so far as maidenliness
means decency, pity, unselfishness and pretty behavior.
And it is due to him to say that he was an obedient boy, and a boy
whose word could be depended on, long before his grandfather the
General came to live at the Green.
He was obedient; that is he did what his great aunt told him. But--oh
dear! oh dear!--the pranks he played, which it had never entered into
her head to forbid!

It was when he had just been put into skeletons (frocks never suited
him) that he became very friendly with