The Copy-Cat, and Other Stories. Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
bushes into a field. “Aunt Laura's nice embroidered pillow,” said she. “Make yourself just as flat as you can, Johnny Trumbull.”
Johnny obeyed, but he was obliged to double himself up like a jack-knife. However, there was no sign of him visible when the two buggies drew up. There stood a pale and frightened little girl, with a baby-carriage canopied with rose and lace and heaped up with rosy and lacy coverlets, presumably sheltering a sleeping infant. Lily was a very keen little girl. She had sense enough not to run. The two men, at the sight of Aunt Janet prostrate in the road, leaped out of their buggies. The doctor's horse stood still; the policeman's trotted away, to Lily's great relief. She could not imagine Johnny's own father haling him away to state prison and the stern Arm of Justice. She stood the fire of bewildered questions in the best and safest fashion. She wept bitterly, and her tears were not assumed. Poor little Lily was all of a sudden crushed under the weight of facts. There was Aunt Janet, she had no doubt, killed by her own nephew, and she was hiding the guilty murderer. She had visions of state prison for herself. She watched fearfully while the two men bent over the prostrate woman, who very soon began to sputter and gasp and try to sit up.
“What on earth is the matter, Janet?” inquired Dr. Trumbull, who was paler than his sister-inlaw. In fact, she was unable to look very pale on account of dust.
“Ow!” sputtered Aunt Janet, coughing violently, “get me up out of this dust, John. Ow!”
“What was the matter?”
“Yes, what has happened, madam?” demanded the chief of police, sternly.
“Nothing,” replied Aunt Janet, to Lily's and Johnny's amazement. “What do you think has happened? I fell down in all this nasty dust. Ow!”
“What did you eat for luncheon, Janet?” inquired Dr. Trumbull, as he assisted his sister-inlaw to her feet.
“What I was a fool to eat,” replied Janet Trumbull, promptly. “Cucumber salad and lemon jelly with whipped cream.”
“Enough to make anybody have indigestion,” said Dr. Trumbull. “You have had one of these attacks before, too, Janet. You remember the time you ate strawberry shortcake and ice-cream?”
Janet nodded meekly. Then she coughed again. “Ow, this dust!” gasped she. “For goodness' sake, John, get me home where I can get some water and take off these dusty clothes or I shall choke to death.”
“How does your stomach feel?” inquired Dr. Trumbull.
“Stomach is all right now, but I am just choking to death with the dust.” Janet turned sharply toward the policeman. “You have sense enough to keep still, I hope,” said she. “I don't want the whole town ringing with my being such an idiot as to eat cucumbers and cream together and being found this way.” Janet looked like an animated creation of dust as she faced the chief of police.
“Yes, ma'am,” he replied, bowing and scraping one foot and raising more dust.
He and Dr. Trumbull assisted Aunt Janet into the buggy, and they drove off. Then the chief of police discovered that his own horse had gone. “Did you see which way he went, sis?” he inquired of Lily, and she pointed down the road, and sobbed as she did so.
The policeman said something bad under his breath, then advised Lily to run home to her ma, and started down the road.
When he was out of sight, Lily drew back the pink-and-white things from Johnny's face. “Well, you didn't kill her this time,” said she.
“Why do you s'pose she didn't tell all about it?” said Johnny, gaping at her.
“How do I know? I suppose she was ashamed to tell how she had been fighting, maybe.”
“No, that was not why,” said Johnny in a deep voice.
“Why was it, then?”
“SHE KNEW.”
Johnny began to climb out of the baby-carriage.
“What will she do next, then?” asked Lily.
“I don't know,” Johnny replied, gloomily.
He was out of the carriage then, and Lily was readjusting the pillows and things. “Get that nice embroidered pillow I threw over the bushes,” she ordered, crossly. Johnny obeyed. When she had finished putting the baby-carriage to rights she turned upon poor little Johnny Trumbull, and her face wore the expression of a queen of tragedy. “Well,” said Lily Jennings, “I suppose I shall have to marry you when I am grown up, after all this.”
Johnny gasped. He thought Lily the most beautiful girl he knew, but to be confronted with murder and marriage within a few minutes was almost too much. He flushed a burning red. He laughed foolishly. He said nothing.
“It will be very hard on me,” stated Lily, “to marry a boy who tried to murder his nice aunt.”
Johnny revived a bit under this feminine disdain. “I didn't try to murder her,” he said in a weak voice.
“You might have, throwing her down in all that awful dust, a nice, clean lady. Ladies are not like boys. It might kill them very quickly to be knocked down on a dusty road.”
“I didn't mean to kill her.”
“You might have.”
“Well, I didn't, and—she—”
“What?”
“She spanked me.”
“Pooh! That doesn't amount to anything,” sniffed Lily.
“It does if you are a boy.”
“I don't see why.”
“Well, I can't help it if you don't. It does.”
“Why shouldn't a boy be spanked when he's naughty, just as well as a girl, I would like to know?”
“Because he's a boy.”
Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull. The great fact did remain. He had been spanked, he had thrown his own aunt down in the dust. He had taken advantage of her little-girl protection, but he was a boy. Lily did not understand his why at all, but she bowed before it. However, that she would not admit. She made a rapid change of base. “What,” said she, “are you going to do next?”
Johnny stared at her. It was a puzzle.
“If,” said Lily, distinctly, “you are afraid to go home, if you think your aunt will tell, I will let you get into Aunt Laura's baby-carriage again, and I will wheel you a little way.”
Johnny would have liked at that moment to knock Lily down, as he had his aunt Janet. Lily looked at him shrewdly. “Oh yes,” said she, “you can knock me down in the dust there if you want to, and spoil my nice clean dress. You will be a boy, just the same.”
“I will never marry you, anyway,” declared Johnny.
“Aren't you afraid I'll tell on you and get you another spanking if you don't?”
“Tell if you want to. I'd enough sight rather be spanked than marry you.”
A gleam of respect came into the little girl's wisely regarding blue eyes. She, with the swiftness of her sex, recognized in forlorn little Johnny the making of a man. “Oh, well,” said she, loftily, “I never was a telltale, and, anyway, we are not grown up, and there will be my trousseau to get, and a lot of other things to do first. I shall go to Europe before I am married, too, and I might meet a boy much nicer than you on the steamer.”
“Meet him if you want to.”
Lily looked at Johnny Trumbull with more than respect—with admiration—but she kept guard over her little tongue. “Well, you can leave that for the future,” said she with a grown-up air.
“I ain't going to leave it. It's settled for good and all now,” growled Johnny.