where I can see them, and the bads I lock up tight, but they get out,
and I have to keep putting them in and squeezing them down, they
are so strong. The thoughts I play with when I am alone or in bed,
and I make up and do what I like with them. Every Sunday I put
my room in order, and talk with the little spirit that lives there, and
tell him what to do. He is very bad sometimes, and won’t mind me,
and I have to scold him, and take him to Grandpa. He always
makes him behave, and be sorry for his faults, because Grandpa
likes this play, and gives me nice things to put in the drawers, and
tells me how to shut up the naughties. Hadn’t you better try that
way? It’s a very good one;” and Demi looked so earnest and full of
faith, that Dan did not laugh at his quaint fancy, but said, soberly,
“I don’t think there is a lock strong enough to keep my badness
shut up. Any way my room is in such a clutter I don’t know how to
clear it up.”
“You keep your drawers in the cabinet all spandy nice; why can’t
you do the others?”
“I ain’t used to it. Will you show me how?” and Dan looked as if
inclined to try Demi’s childish way of keeping a soul in order.
“I’d love to, but I don’t know how, except to talk as Grandpa does. I
can’t do it good like him, but I’ll try.”
“Don’t tell any one; only now and then we’ll come here and talk
things over, and I’ll pay you for it by telling all I know about my
sort of things. Will that do?” and Dan held out his big, rough hand.
Demi gave his smooth, little hand readily, and the league was
made; for in the happy, peaceful world where the younger boy
lived, lions and lambs played together, and little children
innocently taught their elders.
“Hush!” said Dan, pointing toward the house, as Demi was about
to indulge in another discourse on the best way of getting badness
down, and keeping it down; and peeping from their perch, they
saw Mrs. Jo strolling slowly along, reading as she went, while
Teddy trotted behind her, dragging a little cart upside down.
“Wait till they see us,” whispered Demi, and both sat still as the
pair came nearer, Mrs. Jo so absorbed in her book that she would
have walked into the brook if Teddy had not stopped her by saying
“Marmar, I wanter fis.”
Mrs. Jo put down the charming book which she had been trying to
read for a week, and looked about her for a fishing-pole, being
used to making toys out of nothing. Before she had broken one
from the hedge, a slender willow bough fell at her feet; and,
looking up, she saw the boys laughing in the nest.
“Up! up!” cried Teddy, stretching his arms and flapping his skirts
as if about to fly.
“I’ll come down and you come up. I must go to Daisy now;” and
Demi departed to rehearse the tale of the nineteen cats, with the
exciting boot-and-barrel episodes.
Teddy was speedily whisked up; and then Dan said, laughing,
“Come, too; there’s plenty of room. I’ll lend you a hand.”
Mrs. Jo glanced over her shoulder, but no one was in sight; and
rather liking the joke of the thing, she laughed back, saying, “Well,
if you won’t mention it, I think I will;” and with two nimble steps
was in the willow.
“I haven’t climbed a tree since I was married. I used to be very
fond of it when I was a girl,” she said, looking well-pleased with
her shady perch.
“Now, you read if you want to, and I’ll take care of Teddy,”
proposed Dan, beginning to make a fishing-rod for impatient Baby.
“I don’t think I care about it now. What were you and Demi at up
here?” asked Mrs. Jo, thinking, from the sober look on Dan’s face,
that he had something on his mind.
“Oh! we were talking. I’d been telling him about leaves and things,