Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table January 12 1897 by Various

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Ebook has 399 lines and 30189 words, and 8 pages

The five aunts were somewhat aghast at this proposition. Since Miss Thomasine had given up her dolls and packed them tenderly away in the attic many, many years ago, childhood was unknown to them, for Theodora's home was far away, and she had never visited them before.

However, it was a girl--a boy would have been absolutely impossible--and next to Theodore she was their nearest of kin. And Mrs. Middleton herself had suggested a means of relief should her daughter prove to be too much care for them.

"If you grow tired of her, or if she gives you any trouble, send her to boarding-school. She will be happy at Miss Ford's, where I went, and I have made every arrangement for her to go if she should be too much for you. But I am sure no one could grow tired of my Teddy!"

At first all went well. The aunts felt so sorry for poor little Theodora when she was left for the first time in her life without her parents that they vied with one another in their efforts to make her happy. Miss Thomasine unpacked her dolls and carried them carefully downstairs, smelling strongly of camphor, and seeming to blink their round, unseeing black eyes in the unaccustomed glare of day.

But Theodora only looked at them with a languid curiosity, spoke of their being so "funny and old-fashioned," and then sneezed from the fumes of the camphor, and turned away.

Miss Joanna unlocked the corner cupboard and brought out her own china tea-set, unplayed with now these fifty years. But Theodora almost laughed at the clumsy shape of the sugar-bowl, and then accidentally broke it, upon which Miss Joanna locked them all up again with an air which showed that Theodora had handled them for the last time.

Had not her aunts any boys' stories? She liked them best. Upon which the five Misses Middleton looked at one another, and mentally held up their hands in horror and dismay. And soon, all too soon, was it discovered that the only things which really made Theodora happy were boys and boys' games and boys' books.

Miss Middleton herself, in the solemn conclave which took place upon the morning when this story opens, was courageous enough to put the matter into words.

"I verily believe," said she, "that our niece Theodora is what is called a--a tomboy!"

"Sister!" cried they all, while four pairs of hands were uplifted and then dropped into four silk laps; and Miss Middleton, having made this statement, looked distinctly relieved.

"And the worst of it," said Miss Joanna, "is that I strongly suspect we have brought it upon ourselves. In order to save ourselves the trouble of providing entertainment for Theodora, we actually suggested--one of us did--that she should be allowed to play with the Hoyt children."

Here she glanced severely at her sister Dorcas. Miss Dorcas made no reply, but she looked guilty, and dropped a stitch in her knitting.

"Dorcas forgot that they were all boys, I have no doubt," said Miss Thomasine, in her gentle voice. "We knew Ellen Hoyt when she was young, Joanna, you remember. As gentle a girl as ever lived."

"Yes," rejoined Miss Dorcas, her courage returning when she found that she had a champion. "It was natural that we should suppose her children should be quiet and gentle too. I am sure I never dreamed that they were all boys."

"It has been most disastrous," continued Miss Joanna.

"But there is one resource left," suggested Miss Melissa. "You know, sisters, what Theodore's wife said--she spoke of it herself--I am sure we should never have thought of it."

Miss Melissa had a vague, hurried manner which never failed to irritate her sister Joanna, who was brisk, and in other conditions of life would have been businesslike.

"If you mean the boarding-school plan, Melissa;" she said, "why do you not say so in plain words? For my part, I think it would be the best place for the child."

"Not if we can help it," pleaded Miss Thomasine. "She is our niece, you know, and I do not like the idea of closing our doors against her."

"Thomasine, you are so extreme in your language," said Miss Middleton. "I am sure no one dreams of closing our doors against Theodora; but if we cannot control her, I quite agree with Joanna that it would be the best place for her."

It was just at this point in the conversation that a startling clamor was heard from downstairs. The ladies were sitting in the "spare chamber" on the second floor, as they were apt to do of a morning. The noise drew nearer. It was unmistakably a cry of mingled wrath and pain, and it was accompanied by the sound of hurrying feet. Children's shoes were scuffling up the old oak staircase. It sounded as if at least a dozen pairs of feet were hurrying toward the live Misses Middleton.

The door opened with a burst, and into the room came Theodora. Blood was streaming from her nose, tears from her eyes, and in her arms she carried--was it? could it be? The five Misses Middleton looked, and looked again. Their niece was bringing into their presence a dead kitten! She was accompanied by two of her friends the Hoyt boys, but they, dismayed by the sight of a circle of five ladies, retreated into the hall, and peered through the crack of the half-open door. Still another was at the foot of the stairs, not daring to come up higher.

"Theodora, what is it?" cried Miss Middleton, while Miss Melissa shuddered and felt for her smelling-salts. She was afraid of cats, even of dead ones.

"A black eye! Theodora, I insist upon knowing the cause of this uproar. And the blood! Have you been hurt?"

"Let me wash it away from your face," said Miss Thomasine; "but first, if it is possible, Theodora, I think you had better get rid of that--that cat."

"Poor little kitten! We are going to have a nice funeral to make up to it for all its sufferings. And I am not really much hurt, Aunt Tom. It's a nose-bleed, so it looks as if I were. The boy punched me right in the nose. But I kicked and scratched him well, I can tell you."

The five aunts rose to their feet as one woman. They looked at Theodora, and then they looked at one another. Finally they all sat down again.

"Give that animal to those boys in the hall to take away, and then give an account of yourself," commanded Miss Middleton.

Theodora hesitated for a moment, and then she retired to the hall, where she held a whispered conference with her waiting friends.

"As nice a box as you can find," were her last words, "and loads of flowers. Dig it pretty deep. I'll be there as soon as I can."

Again there was the sound of clattering shoes upon the stairs, and Theodora returned to her aunts. A maid was sent for, and the marks of her recent conflict were washed away, to which proceedings she submitted quietly, and then in a clean white apron she came back once more. She closed the door into the hall at her aunts' request, and opened the conversation at once.

"I'll tell you how it was," she said. "You see, I was playing 'I spy' with the Hoyts, having the best time you ever heard of; and do you know, I can run as fast as Arthur and Clem, and almost as fast as Ray! We were playing the kind of 'I spy' where you have to hide, and then run in to goal when It is not looking. Did you ever play that way, Aunt Tom?"

"No," murmured Miss Thomasine.

"Do not stop for such questions," said Miss Middleton; "and do not address your aunt so disrespectfully."

"Why, I didn't mean to be disrespectful, Aunt Adaline. I call her that because I love her, and I asked her last night, when she came to kiss me good-night, if I might call her 'Aunt Tom,'and if she would please call me 'Teddy' instead of hateful long Theodora, and she said I might, and she would. Of course I shouldn't dream of calling you 'Aunt Ad,' or Aunt Joanna 'Aunt Jo'; but Aunt Tom is different. She seems younger, and as if she might be sort of jolly if you would only let her, so that is the reason I asked her if she ever played that kind of 'I spy.' Of course I don't suppose the rest of you ever played 'I spy' at all."

And she looked about upon the group with some scorn. Teddy spoke very rapidly, so this speech did not consume much time.

"No, we never did," replied Miss Middleton, "and now we should be glad to hear the remainder of your story."

"Oh yes, I'm going to tell you. I got away from the others somehow, and I thought I'd reach goal by a shorter way if I climbed the stone wall and went by the road a little way."

"Theodora!"

"What, Aunt Joanna?"

"Surely you did not climb the stone wall?"

"Why, yes; it is as easy as anything! I'm sure you could yourself, Aunt Joanna, just in that place. You put your foot right on a stone that juts out, and if I were there to give you a boost, you would go over as easy as anything."

"Oh, my dear niece!" cried Miss Melissa; "I do hope, I really do hope that your aunt Joanna-- She could not-- I am sure--"

"Melissa," exclaimed her sister, "if you think over the matter for a moment you will realize that no power on earth could tempt me to climb the stone wall."

"I hoped not, but--"

Awed by a wrathful glance from behind Miss Joanna's spectacles, Miss Melissa subsided, and again sniffed her salts.

"Again I must ask you to continue," said Miss Middleton to her niece. "I suppose you fell, which caused your nose to bleed?"

"No, I didn't. I didn't fall at all. But who do you suppose I found in the road? That horrible Andy Morse! You know he is a great big fellow--bigger than Ray Hoyt. You've seen him about, probably. And he was throwing stones at that poor dear kitten." Theodora's eyes grew big, and her words came more slowly now, and with great emphasis. "He had it tied to a stump, and he was throwing stones at it, and the last one, just as I came up, killed the kitten." She paused, and looked about for sympathy. "I suppose you all feel just as I did," she said, presently. "As if your throats were all choked up, and you couldn't speak, and your hearts were going to fly right out of your bodies, and your heads were going to burst. That is the way I felt, and I am sure you would have done just as I did. I walked right up to that boy, and before he even knew I was there, I kicked him and scratched him, and banged my fist right in his eye. 'There, Andy Morse,' I said, 'that's what you get for stoning a kitten! How do you like that?' And he banged back, and that's what made my nose bleed. Then he ran off as hard as he Could. Great coward!" she added, contemptuously. "Think of stoning a kitten and being driven off by a girl! If there were not a commandment about killing people, I should really be almost sorry I hadn't killed him. Why isn't it just as wicked to kill a cat as to kill a bad boy, Aunt Adaline?"

"I--I really cannot answer such a question, Theodora. You do not realize what you are saying, I am sure. But you have done very wrong. I scarcely know how to express my feelings at such conduct. I beg you will not do so again. It was most unladylike, to say the least."

"But he was hurting that poor kitten, Aunt Adaline! How could I help it? Don't you think I did right, Aunt Tom?" she asked, turning in despair to her favorite aunt.

Miss Thomasine hesitated beneath the glare of eight sisterly eyes while they awaited her reply. Theodora hoped for support, but she was disappointed.

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