The Copy-Cat and Other Stories Part 9

Arnold colored with shame and fury, and subsided. "Mind you don't tell,"

he said, taking Johnny's cue.

"I sha'n't tell," replied Lily, with majesty. "But you'll tell yourselves if you talk one side of trees without looking on the other."

There was then only a few moments before Madame's musical j.a.panese gong which announced the close of intermission should sound, but three determined souls in conspiracy can accomplish much in a few moments. The first move was planned in detail before that gong sounded, and the two boys raced to the house, and Lily followed, carrying a toadstool, which she had hurriedly caught up from the lawn for her object of nature to be taken into cla.s.s.

It was a poisonous toadstool, and Lily was quite a heroine in the cla.s.s.

That fact doubtless gave her a more dauntless air when, after school, the two boys caught up with her walking gracefully down the road, flirting her skirts and now and then giving her head a toss, which made her fluff of hair fly into a golden foam under her daisy-trimmed straw hat.

"To-night," Johnny whispered, as he sped past.

"At half past nine, between your house and the Simmonses'," replied Lily, without even looking at him. She was a past-mistress of dissimulation.

Lily's mother had guests at dinner that night, and the guests remarked sometimes, within the little girl's hearing, what a darling she was.

"She never gives me a second's anxiety," Lily's mother whispered to a lady beside her. "You cannot imagine what a perfectly good, dependable child she is."

"Now my Christina is a good child in the grain," said the lady, "but she is full of mischief. I never can tell what Christina will do next."

"I can always tell," said Lily's mother, in a voice of maternal triumph.

"Now only the other night, when I thought Christina was in bed, that absurd child got up and dressed and ran over to see her aunt Bella. Tom came home with her, and of course there was nothing very bad about it.

Christina was very bright; she said, 'Mother, you never told me I must not get up and go to see Aunt Bella,' which was, of course, true. I could not gainsay that."

"I cannot," said Lily's mother, "imagine my Lily's doing such a thing."

If Lily had heard that last speech of her mother's, whom she dearly loved, she might have wavered. That pathetic trust in herself might have caused her to justify it. But she had finished her dinner and had been excused, and was undressing for bed, with the firm determination to rise betimes and dress and join Johnny Trumbull and Arnold Carruth. Johnny had the easiest time of them all. He simply had to bid his aunt Janet good night and have the watch wound, and take a fleeting glimpse of his mother at her desk and his father in his office, and go whistling to his room, and sit in the summer darkness and wait until the time came.

Arnold Carruth had the hardest struggle. His mother had an old school friend visiting her, and Arnold, very much dressed up, with his curls falling in a s.h.i.+ning fleece upon a real lace collar, had to be shown off and show off. He had to play one little piece which he had learned upon the piano. He had to recite a little poem. He had to be asked how old he was, and if he liked to go to school, and how many teachers he had, and if he loved them, and if he loved his little mates, and which of them he loved best; and he had to be asked if he loved his aunt Dorothy, who was the school friend and not his aunt at all, and would he not like to come and live with her, because she had not any dear little boy; and he was obliged to submit to having his curls twisted around feminine fingers, and to being kissed and hugged, and a whole chapter of ordeals, before he was finally in bed, with his mother's kiss moist upon his lips, and free to a.s.sert himself.

That night Arnold Carruth realized himself as having an actual horror of his helpless state of pampered childhood. The man stirred in the soul of the boy, and it was a little rebel with sulky pout of lips and frown of childish brows who stole out of bed, got into some queer clothes, and crept down the back stairs. He heard his aunt Dorothy, who was not his aunt, singing an Italian song in the parlor, he heard the clink of silver and china from the butler's pantry, where the maids were was.h.i.+ng the dinner dishes. He smelt his father's cigar, and he gave a little leap of joy on the gra.s.s of the lawn. At last he was out at night alone, and--he wore long stockings! That noon he had secreted a pair of his mother's toward that end. When he came home to luncheon he pulled them out of the darning-bag, which he had spied through a closet door that had been left ajar. One of the stockings was green silk, and the other was black, and both had holes in them, but all that mattered was the length. Arnold wore also his father's riding-breeches, which came over his shoes and which were enormously large, and one of his father's silk s.h.i.+rts. He had resolved to dress consistently for such a great occasion.

His clothes hampered him, but he felt happy as he sped clumsily down the road.

However, both Johnny Trumbull and Lily Jennings, who were waiting for him at the rendezvous, were startled by his appearance. Both began to run, Johnny pulling Lily after him by the hand, but Arnold's cautious hallo arrested them. Johnny and Lily returned slowly, peering through the darkness.

"It's me," said Arnold, with gay disregard of grammar.

"You looked," said Lily, "like a real fat old man. What HAVE you got on, Arnold Carruth?"

Arnold slouched before his companions, ridiculous but triumphant. He hitched up a leg of the riding-breeches and displayed a long, green silk stocking. Both Johnny and Lily doubled up with laughter.

"What you laughing at?" inquired Arnold, crossly.

"Oh, nothing at all," said Lily. "Only you do look like a scarecrow broken loose. Doesn't he, Johnny?"

"I am going home," stated Arnold with dignity. He turned, but Johnny caught him in his little iron grip.

"Oh, shucks, Arnold Carruth!" said he. "Don't be a baby. Come on." And Arnold Carruth with difficulty came on.

People in the village, as a rule, retired early. Many lights were out when the affair began, many went out while it was in progress. All three of the band steered as clear of lighted houses as possible, and dodged behind trees and hedges when shadowy figures appeared on the road or carriage-wheels were heard in the distance. At their special destination they were sure to be entirely safe. Old Mr. Peter Van Ness always retired very early. To be sure, he did not go to sleep until late, and read in bed, but his room was in the rear of the house on the second floor, and all the windows, besides, were dark. Mr. Peter Van Ness was a very wealthy elderly gentleman, very benevolent. He had given the village a beautiful stone church with memorial windows, a soldiers'

monument, a park, and a home for aged couples, called "The Van Ness Home." Mr. Van Ness lived alone with the exception of a housekeeper and a number of old, very well-disciplined servants. The servants always retired early, and Mr. Van Ness required the house to be quiet for his late reading. He was a very studious old gentleman.

To the Van Ness house, set back from the street in the midst of a well-kept lawn, the three repaired, but not as noiselessly as they could have wished. In fact, a light flared in an up-stairs window, which was wide open, and one woman's voice was heard in conclave with another.

"I should think," said the first, "that the lawn was full of cats. Did you ever hear such a mewing, Jane?"

That was the housekeeper's voice. The three, each of whom carried a squirming burlap potato-bag from the Trumbull cellar, stood close to a clump of stately pines full of windy songs, and trembled.

"It do sound like cats, ma'am," said another voice, which was Jane's, the maid, who had brought Mrs. Meeks, the housekeeper, a cup of hot water and peppermint, because her dinner had disagreed with her.

"Just listen," said Mrs. Meeks.

"Yes, ma'am, I should think there was hundreds of cats and little kittens."

"I am so afraid Mr. Van Ness will be disturbed."

"Yes, ma'am."

"You might go out and look, Jane."

"Oh, ma'am, they might be burglars!"

"How can they be burglars when they are cats?" demanded Mrs. Meeks, testily.

Arnold Carruth snickered, and Johnny on one side, and Lily on the other, prodded him with an elbow. They were close under the window.

"Burglars is up to all sorts of queer tricks, ma'am," said Jane. "They may mew like cats to tell one another what door to go in."

"Jane, you talk like an idiot," said Mrs. Meeks. "Burglars talking like cats! Who ever heard of such a thing? It sounds right under that window.

Open my closet door and get those heavy old shoes and throw them out."

It was an awful moment. The three dared not move. The cats and kittens in the bags--not so many, after all--seemed to have turned into multiplication-tables. They were positively alarming in their determination to get out, their wrath with one another, and their vociferous discontent with the whole situation.

"I can't hold my bag much longer," said poor little Arnold Carruth.

"Hush up, cry-baby!" whispered Lily, fiercely, in spite of a clawing paw emerging from her own bag and threatening her bare arm.

Then came the shoes. One struck Arnold squarely on the shoulder, nearly knocking him down and making him lose hold of his bag. The other struck Lily's bag, and conditions became worse; but she held on despite a scratch. Lily had pluck.

Then Jane's voice sounded very near, as she leaned out of the window. "I guess they have went, ma'am," said she. "I seen something run."

"I can hear them," said Mrs. Meeks, querulously.

"I seen them run," persisted Jane, who was tired and wished to be gone.

"Well, close that window, anyway, for I know I hear them, even if they have gone," said Mrs. Meeks. The three heard with relief the window slammed down.

The light flashed out, and simultaneously Lily Jennings and Johnny Trumbull turned indignantly upon Arnold Carruth.