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Read Ebook: Little Sky-High; Or The Surprising Doings of Washee-Washee-Wang by Butterworth Hezekiah
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Ebook has 1239 lines and 104719 words, and 25 pages
LITTLE SKY-HIGH.
BELOW STAIRS.
The children came home from school--Charles and Lucy.
"I have a surprise for you in the kitchen," said their mother, Mrs. Van Buren. "No, take off your things first, then you may go down and see. Now don't laugh--a laugh that hurts anyone's feelings is so unkind--tip-toe too! No, Charlie, one at a time; let Lucy go first."
Lucy tip-toed with eyes full of wonder to the dark banister-stairs that led down to the quarters below. Her light feet were as still as a little mouse's in a cheese closet. Presently she came back with dancing eyes.
"Oh, mother! where did you get him? His eyes are like two almonds, and his braided hair dangles away down almost to the floor, and there are black silk tassels on the end of it, and kitty is playing with them; and when Norah caught my eye she bent over double to laugh, but he kept right on shelling peas. Charlie, come and see; let me go with Charlie, mother?"
Charlie followed Lucy, tip-toeing to the foot of the banister, where a platform-stair commanded a view of the kitchen.
It was a very nice kitchen, with gas, hot water and cold, ranges and gas-stoves, and two great cupboards with glass doors through which all sorts of beautiful serving-dishes shone. Green ivies filled the window-cases, and geraniums lined the window-sills. A fine old parrot from the Andes inhabited a large cage with an open door, hanging over the main window, where the wire netting let in the air from the apple boughs.
On reaching the platform-stair, Charlie was as astonished as Lucy could wish.
There sat a little Chinese boy, as it seemed, although at second glance he looked rather old for a boy. He wore blue clothes and was shelling peas. His glossy black "pigtail" reached down to the floor, and the kitten was trying to raise the end of it in her pretty white paws. As Lucy had said, heavy black silk cords were braided in with the hair, with handsome tassels.
The parrot had come out of her cage, and was eying the boy and the kitten, plainly hoping for mischief. Suddenly she caught Charlie's eye, and with a flap of her wings she cried out to him.
"He's a quare one! Now, isn't he?"
The bird had heard Irish Nora say this a number of times during the day and had learned the words. Charlie could not help laughing out in response. With this 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!
"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.
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 little girl has to tell me--something new that Nora has told you of the Fairy Shoemaker?"
"There's really a wonderful thing down in the kitchen, father," said Lucy; "wonderfuller than anything in the Fairy Shoemaker tales."
"And where did it come from?"
"Down from the sun, father, and Nora says it came in a coach!"
Mr. Van Buren turned to his wife.
"It came from the Consul's," she said--"from Consul Bradley's."
"Has Consul Bradley been here?" he asked, thinking some Chinese curio had been shipped over. Consul Bradley was a Chinese consular agent, a man of considerable wealth, with a large knowledge of the world, and a friend of the Van Buren family.
"No," said Mrs. Van Buren, "but his coach-man has brought me a kitchen-boy."
"That doesn't half tell it, father," cried Charlie. "He's a little Chineseman!"
"I was in the Consul's office this morning," went on Mrs. Van Buren, smiling at her husband's astonishment; "and the Consul said to me, 'Wouldn't you like to have a neat, trim, tidy, honest, faithful, tender-hearted, polite boy to learn general work?' I said to the Consul, 'Yes, that is the person that I have been needing for years.' He said, 'Would you have any prejudice against a little Chinese servant, if he were trusty, after the general principles I have described?' I said to him, 'None whatever.' He continued: 'A Chinese lad from Manchuria has been sent to me by a friend in the hong, and I am asked to find him a place to learn American home-making ideas in one of the best families. Your family is that place--shall I send him?' So he came in the Consul's coach, as Lucy said, and with him an immense trunk covered with Chinese brush-marks. He seems to be a little gentleman; and when I asked him his name he said, 'The Consul told me to tell you to call me Sky-High.' He doesn't speak except to make replies, but these are in very good English."
"May I give my opinion?" asked little Lucy.
"Well, Lucy," said her mother, smiling, "what is your opinion?"
"He looks like an emperor's son, or a mandarin," said Lucy.
"And what put such a thought into your head?" asked her mother.
"The pictures on my Chinese fans," said Lucy promptly.
"Well," said Mrs. Van Buren, "if he does well, you shall treat him exactly as though he were the son of an emperor or a wang--he says that kings are called wangs in his land."
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