Little Sky-High | Page 2

encouragement Polly came down towards the door of the cage, and thrust her green and yellow head out into the room. "Now, isn't he, sure?" cried she, in Nora's own voice.
Nora was sole ruler of this cheerful realm below stairs; the only other inhabitants of the kitchen were the parrot and the kitten, and now this Chinese boy. Nora's special work-room was a great pantry with a latticed window. Near-by a wide door led out into a little garden of apple, pear, and cherry trees; the garden had a grape-arbor too, which ran from the door to a roomy cabin. Here was every convenience for washing and ironing.
Nora was a portly woman, with a round face, large forehead, and a little nose which seemed to be always laughing. She was a merry soul; and she used to tell "the children," as Charles and Lucy were called, "Liliputian stories," tales of the Fairy Schoolmaster of Irish lore.
The Chinese boy did not look up to Polly as she gazed and exclaimed at him, but shelled his peas.
Presently, however, the pretty kitten whirled the industrious boy's pigtail around in a circle until it pulled. Then he cast his almond eyes at her, and addressed her in a tone like the clatter of rolling rocks.
"Ok-oka-ok-a-a!"
The kitten flew to the other side of the room, and Nora appeared from the pantry. When she saw the two children on the stairs, she put her hands on her sides and laughed with her nose. "We've a quare one here, now, haven't we?" said she.
Polly stretched her lovely head out into the room from the cage, and flapped her wings, and swung to and fro, and the kitten returned, whereupon the boy drew up his pigtail and tied it around his neck like a necktie.
"See, children," said Nora, pointing, "what your mother has brought home! She says we must all be good to him, and it's never hard I would be to any living crater. He came down from the sun, he says. What do you think his name is? And you could never guess! It's Sky-High, which is to say, come-down-from-the-sun. And a man in a coach it was that brought him. Sure, I never came here in a coach, but on my two square feet; he came from the consul's office--Misther Bradley's--and a ship it was that brought him there. Ah, but he's a quare kitchen-boy!
"But your mother, all with a heart as warm as pudding, she's going to educate him; and if he does well, she's going to promote him up aloft, to take care of all the foine rooms, and furniture and things, and to wait upon the table, and tend the door for aught I know. She made me promise I would be remarkable good to him--but it don't do no harm for me to say that he's a quare one! he can't understand it--he speaks the language of the sun, all like the cracking of nuts, or the rattling of a loose thunder-storm over the shingles."
"Sky-High?" ventured little Lucy mischievously.
The Chinese boy looked up, with a quick blink of his eyes.
"At your service, madam," said he in very good English.
Nora lifted her great arms.
"And he does speak English! Who knows but he understood all I said, and what the parrot said too. Poll, you go into your cage! 'At your service, madam!' And did you hear it, Lucy? No errand-boy ever spoke in the loikes o' that before! I'd think h'd been brought up among the quality. It maybe he's a Fairy Shoemaker, spaking the queen's court-language, and no errand-boy at all!"
A bell sounded up-stairs, and the two children ran back.
"Oh, mother, never was there a boy like that!" said Charlie.
"Well," said Mrs. Van Buren, "you shall tell your father how you found little Sky-High--it will be a pretty after-supper story. I want you to think kindly of him, for if he does well he is to stay with us a year."
The children found their father in the dining-room; and as they kissed him they both cried, "Oh, oh!"
"What is it now?" asked Mr. Van Buren. "What has happened to-day?"
"Wait until after supper," said Mrs. Van Buren; "then they shall tell you of a curious event in the kitchen. There really is something to tell," she added, smiling.

II.
BEFORE THE MANDARIN!
As Mr. Van Buren was a prudent, wise, and good-natured man, he left all the affairs of housekeeping to his wife. He had so seldom been "below stairs" that he never had even made the acquaintance of Polly, the lively bird of the kitchen. The kitten sometimes came up to visit him; on which occasions she simply purred, and sank down to rest on his knee.
After supper was over, Mr. Van Buren caught Lucy up.
"And now what amusing thing is it that my