Not Quite Eighteen

"That'll be nice," said Mrs. Carpenter, with a dry, unbelieving cough. She did not mean to be as discouraging as she sounded, but a woman can scarcely be the wife of an unsuccessful genius for fifteen years, and see the family earnings vanish down the throat of one invention after another, without becoming outwardly, as well as inwardly, discouraged.

"Now, don't be a wet blanket, Mother," said Mr. Carpenter, good-humoredly. "We've had some upsets in our calculation, I confess, but this time it's all coming out right, as you'll see. And I wanted to ask you about something, and that is what you'd think of Amy's having one of the dolls for her Christmas? Don't you think it'd please her?"

"Why, of course; but do you think you can afford it, Robert? The dolls are five dollars, aren't they?"

"Yes, to customers they are, but I shouldn't have to pay anything like that, of course. I can have one for cost price, say a dollar seventy-five; so if you think the child would like it, we'll fix it so."

"Well, I should be glad to have Amy get one," said Mrs. Carpenter, brightening up. "And it seems only right that she should, when you invented it and all. She's been pretty good these last weeks, and she'll be mightily tickled."

So it was settled, but the pile of orders to be filled was so incessant that it was not till Christmas Eve that Mr. Carpenter could get hold of a doll for his own use, and no time was left in which to dress it. That was no matter, Mrs. Carpenter declared; Amy would like to make the clothes herself, and it would be good practice in sewing. She hunted up some pieces of cambric and flannel and scraps of ribbon for the purpose, and when Amy woke on Christmas morning, there by her side lay the big, beautiful creature, with flaxen hair, long-lashed blue eyes, and a dimple in her pink chin. Beside her was a parcel containing the materials for her clothes and a new spool of thread, and on the doll's arm was pinned a paper with this inscription: —

"For Amy, with a Merry Christmas from Father and Mother.

"Her name is Dolly Phone."

Amy's only doll up to this time had been a rag one, manufactured by her mother, and you can imagine her delight. She hugged Dolly Phone to her heart, kissed her twenty times over, and examined all her beauties in detail, – her lovely bang, her hands, and her little feet, which had brown kid shoes sewed on them, and the smile on her lips, which showed two tiny white teeth. She stood her up on the quilt to see how tall she was, and as she did so, wonder of wonders, out of these smiling red lips came a voice, sharp and high-pitched, as if a canary-bird or a Jew's-harp were suddenly endowed with speech, and began to talk to her!

What did the voice say? Not "Good-morning, Mamma," or "I'm so sleepy!" or "Mistress Mary quite contrary," or "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," – none of these things. Her sister dolls might have said these things; what Dolly Phone said, speaking fast and excitedly, was, —

"It's unjust! Mamma is as mean as she can be! Scolding me because that old baby wouldn't go to sleep! I hate everybody! I wish I was dead! I wish everybody else was dead!" And then, in a different tone, a good deal deeper, "Good-morning, ma-m – " and there the voice stopped suddenly.

Amy had listened to this remarkable address with astonishment. That her beautiful new baby could speak, was delightful, but what horrible things she said!

"How queerly you talk, darling!" she cried, snatching the doll into her arms again. "What is the matter? Why do you speak so to me? Are you alive, or only making believe? I'm not mean; what makes you say I am? And, oh! why do you wish you were dead?"

Dolly stared full in her face with an unwinking smile. She looked perfectly good-natured. Amy began to think that she was dreaming, or that the whole thing was some queer trick.

"There, there, dear!" she cried, patting the doll's back, "we won't say any more about it. You love me now, I know you do!"

Then, very gently and cautiously, she set Dolly on her feet again. "Perhaps she'll say something nice this time," she thought hopefully.

Alas! the rosy lips only uttered the self-same words. "Mean – unjust – I hate everybody – I wish everybody was dead," in sharp, unpitying sequence. Worst of all, the phrases began to have a familiar sound to Amy's ear. She felt her cheeks burn with a sudden red.

"Why," she thought, "that was what I said in the workshop the day I was so cross. How could the doll know? Oh, dear! she's so lovely and so beautiful, but if she keeps on talking like this, what shall I do?"

Deep in her heart struggled an uneasy fear. Mother would hear the doll! Mother might suspect what it meant! At all hazards, Dolly must be kept from talking while mother was by.

She was so quiet and subdued when she went downstairs to breakfast, with the doll in her arms, that her father and mother could not understand it. They had looked forward to seeing her boisterously joyful. She kissed them, and thanked them, and tried to seem like her usual self, but mothers' eyes are sharp, and Mrs. Carpenter detected the look of trouble.

"What's the matter, dear?" she whispered. "Don't you feel well?"

"Oh, yes! very well. Nothing's the matter." Amy whispered back, keeping the terrible Dolly sedulously prone, as she spoke.

"Come, Amy, let's see your new baby," said Mr. Carpenter. "She's a beauty, ain't she? Half of her was made in this house, did you know that? Set her up, and let's hear her talk."

"She's asleep now," faltered Amy. "But she's been talking up-stairs. She talks very nicely, Papa. She's tired now, truly she is."

"Nonsense! she isn't the kind that gets tired. Her tongue won't ache if she runs on all day; she's like some little girls in that. Stand her up, Amy, I want to hear her. I've never seen one of 'em out of the shop before. She looks wonderfully alive, doesn't she, Mother?"

But Amy still hesitated. Her manner was so strange that her father grew impatient at last, and, reaching out, took the doll from her, and set it sharply on the table. The little button on the sole of the foot set the curious instrument within in motion. As prepared phrases were rolled off in shrill succession, Mr. Carpenter leaned forward to listen. When the sounds ended, he raised his head with a look of bewilderment.

"Why – why – what is the creature at?" he exclaimed. "That isn't what I put into her. 'I Wish I was dead! Wish everybody else was dead!' I can't understand it at all. I charged all the dolls myself, and there wasn't a word like that in the whole batch. If the others have gone wrong like this, it's all up with our profits."

He looked so troubled and down-hearted that Amy could bear it no longer.

"It's all my fault!" she cried, bursting into tears. "Somehow it's all my fault, though I can't tell how, for it was I who said those things. I said those very things, Papa, in your workshop one day when I was in a temper. Don't you recollect the day, Mother, – the day when I didn't go to the picnic, and Baby wouldn't go to sleep, and I slapped him, and you boxed my ears? I went up-stairs, and I was crying, and I said, – yes, I think I said every word of those things, though I forgot all about them till Dolly said them to me this morning, and how she could possibly know, I can't imagine."

"But I can imagine," said her father. "Where did you sit that day, Amy?"

"On the floor, by the door."

"Was there a row of things close by, with tin funnels stuck in them and a cloth over the top?"

"I think there was. I recollect the funnels."

"Then that's all right!" exclaimed Mr. Carpenter, his face clearing up. "Those were the phonographs, Mother, and, don't you see, she must have been exactly opposite one of the funnels, and her voice went in and filled it. It's the best kind of good luck that that cylinder happened to be put into her doll. If all that bad language had gone to anybody else, there would have been the mischief to pay. Folks would have been writing to the papers, as like as not, or the ministers preaching against the dolls as a bad influence. It would have ruined the whole concern, and all your fault, Amy."

"Oh, Papa, how dreadful! how perfectly dreadful!" was all Amy could say, but she sobbed so wildly that her father's anger melted.

"There, don't cry," he said more kindly; "we won't be too hard on you on Christmas Day. Wipe your eyes, and we'll try to think no more about it, especially as the spoiled doll has fallen to your own share, and no real harm is done."

In his relief Mr. Carpenter was disposed to pass lightly over the matter. Not so his wife. She took a more serious view of it.

"You see, Amy," she said that night when they chanced to be alone, "you see how a hasty word sticks and lasts. You never supposed that day that the things you said would ever come back to you again, but here they are."

"Yes – because of the doll, – of her inside, I mean. It heard."

"But if the doll hadn't heard, some one would have heard all the same."

"Do you mean God?" asked Amy, in an awe-struck voice.

"Yes. He hears every word that we say, the minister tells us, and writes them all down in a book. If it frightened you to have the doll repeat the words you had forgotten, think how much more it will frighten you, and all of us, when that book is opened and all the wrong things we have ever said are read out for the whole world to hear."

Mrs. Carpenter did not often speak so solemnly, and it made a great impression on Amy's mind. She still plays with Dolly Phone, and loves her, in a way, but it is a love which is mingled with fear. The doll is like a reproach of conscience to her. That is not pleasant, so she is kept flat on her back most of the time. Only, now and then, when Amy has been cross and said a sharp word, and is sorry for it, she solemnly takes Dolly, sets her on her feet, and, as a penance, makes herself listen to all the hateful string of phrases which form her stock of conversation.

"It's horrid, but it's good for me," she tells the baby, who listens with a look of fascinated wonder. "I shall have to keep her, and let her talk that way, till I'm such a good girl that there isn't any danger of my ever being naughty again. And that must be for a long, long time yet," she concludes with a sigh.

A NURSERY TYRANT

IT was such a pleasant old nursery that it seemed impossible that anything disagreeable should enter into it. The three southern windows stood open in all pleasant weather, letting in cheerful sun and air. For cold days there was a generous grate, full of blazing coals, and guarded by a high fender of green-painted wire. There were little cupboards set in the deep sides of the chimney. The two on the left were Barbara's and Eunice's; the two to the right, Reggy's and Roger's. Here they kept their own particular treasures under lock and key; while little May, the left-over one, was accommodated with two shelves inside the closet where they all hung their hats and coats.

No one slept in this nursery, but all the Erskine children spent a good part of the daytime in it. Here they studied their lessons, and played when it was too stormy to go out; there the little ones were dressed and undressed, and all five took their suppers there every night. They liked it better than any other room in the house, partly, I suppose, because they lived so much in it.

Barbara was the eldest of the brood. It would have shocked her very much, had she guessed that any one was ever going to speak of her as a "tyrant." Her idea of a tyrant was a lofty personage with a crown on his head, like Xerxes, or King John, or the Emperor Nero. She had not gotten far enough in life or history to know that the same thing can be done in a small house that is done on a throne; and that tyranny is tyranny even when it is not bridging the Dardanelles, or flinging Christians to the wild beasts, or refusing to sign Magna Charta. In short, that the principle of a thing is its real life, and makes it the same, whether its extent or opportunities be more or less.

This particular tyrant was a bright, active, self-willed little girl of eleven, with a pair of brown eyes, a mop of curly brown hair, pink cheeks, and a mouth which was so rosy and smiled so often that people forgot to notice the resolute little chin beneath it. She was very good-humored when everybody minded her, warm-hearted, generous, full of plans and fancies, and anxious to make everybody happy in her own way. She also cared a good deal about being liked and admired, as self-willed people often do; and whenever she fancied that the children loved Eunice better than herself (which was the case), she was grieved, and felt that it was unfair. "For I do a great deal more to please them than Eunie does," she would say to herself, forgetting that not what we do, but what we are, it is which makes us beloved or otherwise.

But though the younger ones loved Eunice best, they were much more apt to do as Barbara wished, partly because it was easier than to oppose her, and partly because she and her many ideas and projects interested them. They never knew what was coming next; and they seldom dared to make up their minds about anything, or form any wishes of their own, till they knew what their despot had decided upon. Eunice was gentle and yielding, Mary almost a baby; but the boys, as they grew older, occasionally showed signs of rebellion, and though Barbara put these down with an iron hand, they were likely to come again with fresh provocation.

The fifteenth of May was always a festival in the Erskine household. "Mamma's May Day," the children called it, because not only was it their mother's birthday, but it also took the place of the regular May Day, which was apt to be too cold or windy for celebration. The children were allowed to choose their own treat, and they always chose a picnic and a May crowning. Barbara was invariably queen, as a matter of course, and she made a very good one, and expended much time and ingenuity in inventing something new each year to make the holiday different from what it had ever been before. She always kept her plans secret till the last moment, to enhance the pleasure of the surprise.

It never occurred to any one, least of all to Barbara herself, that there could be rotation in office, or that any one else should be chosen as queen. Still, changes of dynasty will come to families as well as to kingdoms; and Queen Barbara found this out.

"Eunie, I want you to do something," she said, one afternoon in late April, producing two long pieces of stiff white tarlatan; "please sew this up there and there, and hem it there, – not nice sewing, you know, but big stitches."

"What is it for?" asked Eunie, obediently receiving the tarlatan, and putting on her thimble.

"Ah, that is a secret," replied Barbara. "You'll know by and by."

"Can't you tell me now?"

"No, not till Mother's May Day. I'll tell you then."

"Oh, Barbie," cried Eunice, dropping the tarlatan, "I wanted to speak to you before you began anything. The children want little Mary to be the queen this year."

"Mary! Why? I've always been queen. What do they want to change for? Mary wouldn't know how to do it, and I've such a nice plan for this year!"

"Your plans always are nice," said the peace-loving Eunice; "but, Barbie, really and truly, we do all want to have Mary this time. She's so cunning and pretty, and you've always been queen, you know. It was the boys thought of it first, and they want her ever so much. Do let her, just for once."

"Why, Eunice, I wouldn't have believed you could be so unkind!" said Barbara, in an aggrieved tone. "It's not a bit fair to turn me out, when I've always worked so hard at the May Day, and done everything, while the rest of you just sat by and enjoyed yourselves, and had all the fun and none of the trouble."

"But the boys think the trouble is half the fun," persisted Eunice. "They would rather take it than not. Don't you think it would be nice to be a maid of honor, just for once?" – persuasively.

"No, indeed, I don't!" retorted Barbara, passionately. "Be maid of honor, and have that baby of a Mary, queen! You must be crazy, Eunice Erskine. I'll be queen or nothing, you can tell the boys; and if I backed out, and didn't help, I guess you'd all be sorry enough." So saying, Barbara marched off, with her chin in the air. She was not really much afraid that her usually obedient subjects would resist her authority; but she had found that this injured way of speaking impressed the children, and helped her to carry her points.

So she was surprised enough, when that evening, at supper, she noticed a constraint of manner among the rest of the party. The children looked sober. Reggy whispered to Eunice, Roger kicked Reggy, and at last burst out with, "Now, see here, Barbie Erskine, we want to tell you something. We're going to have Baby for queen this time, and not you, and that's all there is about it."

"Roger," said the indignant Barbara, "how dare you speak so? You're not going to have anything of the kind unless I say you may."

"Yes, we are. Mamma says we ought to take turns, and we never have. Nobody has ever had a turn except you, and you keep having yours all the time. We don't want the same queen always, and this year we've chosen Mary."

"Roger Erskine!" cried Barbara, hotly. "You're the rudest boy that ever was!" Then she turned to the others. "Now listen to me," she said. "I've made all my plans for this year, and they're perfectly lovely. I won't tell you what they are, exactly, because it would spoil the surprise, but there's going to be an angel! An angel – with wings! What do you think of that? You'd be sorry if I gave it up, wouldn't you? Well, if one more word is said about Mary's being queen, I will give it up, and I won't help you a bit. Now you can choose."

Her tone was awfully solemn, but the children did not give way. Even the hint about the angel produced no effect. Eunice began, "I'm sure, Barbie – " but Reggy stopped her with, "Shut up, Eunice! Everybody in favor of Mary for queen, can hold up their hands," he called out.

Six hands went up. Eunice raised hers in a deprecating way, but she raised it. "It's a vote," cried Roger. Barbara glared at them all with helpless wrath; then she said, in a choked voice, "Oh, well! have your old picnic, then. I sha'n't come to it," and ran out of the room, leaving her refractory subjects almost frightened at their own success.

Two unhappy weeks followed. True to her threat, Barbara refused to take any share in the holiday preparations. She sat about in corners, sulky and unhappy, while the others worked, or tried to work. Sooth to say, they missed her help very much, and did badly enough without her, but they would not let her know this. The boys whistled as they drove nails, and sounded very contented and happy.

Presently Fate sent them a new ally. Aunt Kate, the young aunt whom the children liked best of all their relations, came on a visit, and, finding so much going on, bestirred herself to help. She was not long in missing Barbara, and she easily guessed out the position of affairs, though the children made no explanations.

One afternoon, leaving the others hard at work, she went in search of Barbara, who had hidden herself away with a book, in the shrubbery.

"Why are you all alone?" she asked, sitting down beside her.

"I don't know where the others are," said Barbara, moodily.

"They are tying wreaths to dress the tent to-morrow. Don't you want to go and help them?"

"No, they don't want me! Oh, Aunt Kate!" with a sudden burst of confidence, "they have treated me so! You can't think how they have treated me!"

"Why, what have they done?"

"I've always been queen on mother's May Day, – always. And this year I meant to be again. And I had such a nice plan for the coronation, and then they all chose Mary."

"Well?"

"They insisted on having Mary for queen, though I told them I wouldn't help if they did," repeated Barbara.

"Well?"

"Well? That's all. What do you mean, Aunty?"

"I was waiting to hear you tell the real grievance. That the children should want Mary for queen, when you have been one so many times, doesn't seem to be a reason."

Barbara was too much surprised to speak.

"Yes, my dear, I mean it," persisted her aunt. "Now let us talk this over. Why should you always be queen on Mamma's birthday? Who gave you the right, I mean?"

"The children liked to have me," faltered Barbara.

"Precisely. But this year they liked to have Mary."

"But I worked so hard, Aunty. You can't think how I worked. I did everything; and sometimes I got dreadfully tired."

"Was that to please the others?"

"Y-es – "

"Or would they rather have helped in the work, and did you keep it to yourself because you liked to do it alone?" asked Aunt Kate, with a smile. "Now, my Barbie, listen to me. You have led always because you liked to lead, and the others submitted to you. But no one can govern forever. The rest are growing up; they have their own rights and their own opinions. You cannot go on always ruling them as you did when they were little. Do you want to be a good, useful older sister, loved and trusted, or to have Eunice slip into your place, and be the real elder sister, while you gradually become a cipher in the family?"

Barbara began to cry.

"Dear child," said Aunty Kate, kissing her, "now is your chance. Influence, not authority, should be a sister's weapon. If you want to lead the children, you must do it with a smile, not a pout."

The children were surprised enough that evening when Barbara came up to offer to help tie wreaths. Her eyes looked as if she had been crying, but she was very kind and nice all that night and next day. She was maid of honor to little Queen Mary, after all. Eunice gave her a rapturous kiss afterward, and said, "Oh, Barbie, how dear you are!" and, somehow, Barbara forgot to feel badly about not being queen. Some defeats are better than victories.

WHAT THE PINK FLAMINGO DID

THE great pink flamingo roused from his resting-place among the sedges when the noise began. At first he only stirred sleepily, and wondered, half awake, at the unusual sounds; but as they increased, curiosity began to trouble him. Party after party in launches or bright-hued gondolas glided past, all gay and chattering, and full of excitement about something, he did not know what. It was the first night on which the buildings and grounds of the Chicago Fair were illuminated, and the flamingo could not tell what to make of it, any more than could the herons and swans, the Muscovy ducks, the cranes, or any other of the winged creatures which had learned to make themselves at home on the banks of the lagoons.

The pink flamingo's name was Coco. He had been "raised" on the shore of the St. Johns River, in Florida, as the pet and protégé of Cecil Schott, a boy who had taught him many tricks, – to catch fish and fetch them out in his mouth, as a retriever fetches a bird, to eat caramels, to dive after objects thrown into the water and bring them up in his beak: – after Cecil himself even, so long as he was small enough to be counted as an "object." Often and often had Coco plunged into the deep river, following the downward sweep of his little master, and seized him by the arm or foot before he was anywhere near the bottom. He would eat from Cecil's hand, also, and stand by his side, folding one wide wing across the boy's shoulder, as though it were an arm. Cecil was growing up now, and had been sent to school; so when Mr. Schott heard that the Chicago directors were making a collection of birds for the Fair Grounds, he offered Coco, whose fearlessness and familiarity with human beings seemed peculiarly to adapt him for a public position.

When the fifth electrical launch had sped past the sedges, and strange, hovering lights began to burn in the sky, and ring the domes and roofs in the distance toward the south, Coco could endure it no longer, and, betaking himself to the water, started on a tour of investigation. He looked very big in the dim light of the upper waterways, – almost as big as the smaller of the gondolas. The people in the boats exclaimed with astonishment as he passed them, his broad wings raised above him, like rose-colored sails, and his stout legs beating the water into foam behind, like a propeller.

At first his course lay amid soft shadows. The upper part of the Fair Grounds was not illuminated, and only a bird's keen vision could have made out accustomed objects. But the flamingo had no difficulty in seeing. He knew exactly where to look for the nest of the female swan on the wooded island. He could even make out her dim white shape in the gloom, and hear the disturbed flutter of her wings. There was the plantation of white hyacinths, and there the outline of the shabby old "Prairie Schooner," into which he had more than once poked his inquisitive head. There stood the "Log Cabin," and beyond, the twinkling lanterns of the Japanese Tea Garden. The pink flamingo recognized them all. Under one graceful bridge after another, past one enormous beautiful building after another, he swept, following the curves and turnings of the waterways, startled here and there by unaccustomed lights and the sounds of a hurrying crowd, till at last, with one bold sweep, he glided under the last arch and out into the broad basin of the Court of Honor.