Little Folks Astray | Page 3

I suppose I must submit," said Grace, with a face as cloudy as Horace's.
"Horace, my son, do you really feel equal to the task of taking this tuft of feathers to New York?"
"I don't know why not, father; I'm willing to try."
"Horace has good courage," said Grace, shaking her auburn curls like so many exclamation points. "I never could! I never would! I'd as soon have the care of a flying squirrel!"
"Hollis never called me a squirl," said Fly, demurely. "I've got two brothers, and one of 'em is an angel, and the other isn't; but Hollis is 'most as good as the one up in the sky."
"Well, my son," remarked Mr. Clifford, after a pause, "if your mother gives her consent, I suppose I shall give mine; but it does not look clear to me yet. One thing is certain, Horace; if you do undertake this journey, you must live on the watch: you must sleep with both eyes open. Don't trust the child out of your sight--not for a moment. Don't even let go her hand on the street."
"I do believe Horace will be as careful as either you or I, Henry, or I certainly wouldn't trust him with our last little darling," said Mrs. Clifford.
His mother's words dropped like balm upon Horace's wounded spirit. He looked up, and felt himself a man again.
CHAPTER II.
THE UNDERTAKING.
When Flyaway knew she was going to New York, it was about as easy to fit her dresses as to clothe a buzzing blue-bottle fly. With spinning head and dancing feet, she was set down, at last, in the cars.
"Here we are, all by ourselves, darling, starting off for Gotham. Wave your handkerchief to mamma. Don't you see her kissing her hand? There, you needn't spring out of the window! And I declare, Brown-brimmer, if you haven't thrown away your handkerchief! Here, cry into mine!"
"I didn't want to cry, Hollis; I wanted to laugh," said the child, wiping her eyes with her doll's cloak. "When you ride in carriages, you don't get anywhere; but when you ride in the cars, you get there right off."
"Yes; that's so, my dear. You are in the right of it, as you always are. Now I am going to turn the seat over, and sit where I can look at you--just so."
"O, that's just as splendid, Hollis! Now there's only me and Flipperty. There, I put her 'pellent cloak on wrong; but see, now, I've un-wrong-side-outed it! Don't she sit up like a lady?"
Her name was Flipperty Flop. She was a large jointed doll (not a doll with large joints,) had seen a great deal of the world, and didn't think much of it. She came of a high family, and had such blue blood in her veins, that the ground wasn't good enough for her to walk on. She wore a "'pellent cloak" and rubber boots, and had a shopping-bag on her arm full of "choclid" cakes. She was nearly as large as her mother, and all of two years older. A great deal had happened to her before her mother was born, and a great deal more since. Sometimes it was dropsy, and she had to be tapped, when pints of sawdust would run out. Sometimes it was consumption, and she wasted to such a skeleton that she had to be revived with cotton. She had lost her head more than once, but it never affected her brains: she was all the better with a young head now and then on her old shoulders. Her present ailment appeared to be small-pox; she was badly pitted with pins and a penknife. "I declare I forgot to get a ticket for her," said Horace. "What if the conductor shouldn't let her pass?"
"O, Hollis, but he must?" cried Fly, springing to her feet; "I shan't pass athout my Flipperty! Tell the 'ductor 'bout my white mouses died, and I can't go athout sumpin to carry."
"Pshaw! Dotty Dimple don't carry dolls. She don't like 'em: sensible girls never do."
"Well, I like 'em," said Flyaway, nothing daunted. "You knew it byfore; 'n if you didn't want Flipperty, you'd ought to not come!"
Horace laughed, as he always did when his little sister tried her power over him. The conductor was an old acquaintance, and he told him how it stood with Flipperty, how she was needed at New York, and all that; whereupon Mr. Van Dusen gave Fly a little green card, and told her to keep it to show to all the conductors on the road; for it was a free pass, and would take Flipperty all over the United States.
"Yes, sir, if you please," said Fly, with a blush and a smile, and put the "free pass" in Miss Flop's cloak pocket.
After this, she never once failed to show