The Second Chance. Nellie L. McClung
do the dishes. Hustle, you young lads, git off your boots now and scoot for bed. I never could bear the clatter of children. Come here, and I'll loosen your laces"—this to Bugsey, who sat staring at her very intently. "What's wrong with you?" she exclaimed, struck by the intent look on his face.
"I'm just thinkin'," Bugsey answered, without removing his eyes from the knothole on the door.
"And what are you thinkin'?" she demanded curiously.
"I'm just thinkin' how happy my Uncle Bill must be up there … ploughin' … without any one to bother him."
Mrs. Shenstone turned to her brother and shook her head gravely: "Mind you, John," she said, "you'll have to watch yon lad—he's a deep one."
Aunt Kate had only been a few days visiting at her brother John's when the children decided that something would have to be done. Aunt Kate was not an unmixed blessing, they thought.
"She's got all cluttered up with bad habits, not havin' no family of her own to raise," Pearl said. "She wouldn't jump up and screech every time the door slams if she'd been as used to noises as Ma is, and this talk about her nerves bein' all unstrung is just plain silly—and as for her not sleepin' at nights, she sleeps as sound as any of us. She says she hears every strike of the clock all night long, and she thinks she does; but she doesn't, I know. Anyway, I'm afraid Ma will get to be like her if we don't get her stopped."
"Ma backed her up to-day when she said my face was dirty just after I had washed it, so she did," Mary said with a grieved air.
Nearly every one of them had some special grievance against Aunt
Kate.
"Let's make her sign a Charta," Tommy said, "like they did with
John."
The idea became immensely popular.
"She won't sign it," said Bugsey, the pessimist. "Let her dare to not," said Jimmy gravely, "and she shall know that the people are the king."
Pearl said that it would do no harm to draw up the paper anyway, so a large sheet of brown paper was found, and Pearl spread it on the floor. Mrs. Watson and Aunt Kate had gone downtown, so every person felt at liberty to speak freely. Pearl wasn't sure of the heading and so wrote:
Mrs. Kate Shenstone
Please take notice of these things, and remember them to do them, and much good will follow here and hereafter.
She read it over to the others, and everybody was well pleased with it.
After receiving suggestions from all, the following by-laws were recommended to govern the conduct of Aunt Kate in future:
1. Keep your nerves strung. 2. Don't screech at every little noise. It don't help none. 3. Don't make nobody wash when they are already done so. 4. Sleep at night, snore all you want to, we don't stay awake to listen to you. 5. Don't bust yourself to think of things for us to do. We kep the wood-box full long before we ever saw you, also waterpail and other errings. 6. Don't make remarks on freckles. We have them, and don't care, freckles is honourable. (This was Jimmy's contribution.) 7. Don't always say you won't live long, we don't mind, only Mrs. Jane Watson is picking it up now from you. We don't like it, it ain't cheerful. 8. Don't interfere about bedtime. We don't with you. 9. Don't tell about children raised in idleness that turned out bad. It ain't cheerful, and besides we're not.
Just then the cry was raised that she was coming, and the Magna
Charta was hastily folded up, without receiving the signatures.
Aunt Kate, who was very observant, suspected at once that the children had been "up to something."
"What have you youngsters been up to now, while we were away?" she demanded.
There was a thick silence. Mrs. Watson asked the children to answer their Auntie.
Mary it was who braved the storm. "We've been drawing up a list of things for you," she said steadily.
Aunt Kate had seen signs of rebellion, and had got to the place where she was not surprised at anything they did.
"Give it here," she said.
"Wait till it's signed," Pearl said. "It's Charta, Aunt Kate," she went on, "like 'King John to sign."
"I didn't hear about it. Pearl explained.
"Let me see it, anyway." Pearl gave her the document, and she retired to her room with it to look it over.
"Say, Pearl," said Jimmy, "go in there and get out my catapult, will you? She may sign it and then cutup rough."
There was no more said about it for several days, but Aunt Kate was decidedly better, though she still declared she did not sleep at night, and Pearl was determined to convince her that she did. Aunt Kate was a profound snorer. Pearl, who was the only one who had ever heard her, in trying to explain it to the other children, said that it was just like some one pulling a trunk across the room on a bare floor to see how they would like it in this corner, and then, when they get it over here, they don't like it a bit, so they pull it back again; "and besides that," Pearl said, "she whistles comin' back and grinds her teeth, and after all that she gets up in the mornin' and tells Ma she heard every hour strike. She couldn't hear the clock strike anyway, and her kickin' up such a fuss as she is, but I'm going to stop her if I can; she's our aunt, and we've got to do our best for her, and, besides, there's lots of nice things about her."
The next morning Pearl was very solicitous about how her aunt had slept.
"Not a bit better," Aunt Kate said. "I heard every hour but six. I always drop off about six."
"Did you really hear the clock last night, Auntie?" Pearl asked with great politeness.
"Oh, it's very little you youngsters know about lying awake. When you get to the age of me and your mother, I tell you, it's different I get thinkin', thinkin', thinkin', and my nerves get all unstrung."
"And you really heard the clock?" Pearl said. "My, but that is queer!"
"Nothin' queer about it, Pearl. What's queer about it, I'd like to know?"
"Because I stopped the clock," Pearl said, "just to see if you could hear it when it's stopped," and for once Aunt Kate, usually so ready of speech, could not think of anything to say.
Aunt Kate went to bed early the next night, leaving the children undisturbed to enjoy the pleasant hour as they had done before she came. The next morning she handed Pearl the sheet of brown paper, and below the list of recommendations there it was in bold writing:
"Kate W. Shenstone."
"See that, now," said Pearl triumphantly, as she showed it to the children, "what it does for you to know history!"
"Say," said Jim, "where could we get some of them things, what did you call them, Pearl?"
"'Twouldn't do any good, she wouldn't eat them," Billy said.
"Lampreys or lampwicks, or somethin' like that."
"Now, boys," said Pearl, "that's not right. Don't talk like that. It ain't cheerful."
CHAPTER IV
SOMETHING MORE THAN GESTURES
Wanting is—what?
Summer redundant,
Blueness abundant.
Where is the blot?
——Robert Browning.
PEARLIE WATSON, the new caretaker of the Milford school, stood broom in hand at the back of the schoolroom and listened. Pearlie's face was troubled. She had finished the sweeping of the other three rooms, and then, coming