“No; but I thought you’d feel better to see me right here,”
responded the insinuating little party.
“I had much rather see you in bed, so march straight up again,
Robin.”
“Everybody that comes in here has to tell a story, and you can’t so
you’d better cut and run,” said Emil.
“Yes, I can! I tell Teddy lots of ones, all about bears and moons,
and little flies that say things when they buzz,” protested Rob,
bound to stay at any price.
“Tell one now, then, right away,” said Dan, preparing to shoulder
and bear him off.
“Well, I will; let me fink a minute,” and Rob climbed into his
mother’s lap, where he was cuddled, with the remark
“It is a family failing, this getting out of bed at wrong times. Demi
used to do it; and as for me, I was hopping in and out all night
long. Meg used to think the house was on fire, and send me down
to see, and I used to stay and enjoy myself, as you mean to, my bad
son.”
“I’ve finked now,” observed Rob, quite at his ease, and eager to
win the entree into this delightful circle.
Every one looked and listened with faces full of suppressed
merriment as Rob, perched on his mother’s knee and wrapped in
the gay coverlet, told the following brief but tragic tale with an
earnestness that made it very funny:
“Once a lady had a million children, and one nice little boy. She
went up-stairs and said, ‘You mustn’t go in the yard.’ But he
wented, and fell into the pump, and was drowned dead.”
“Is that all?” asked Franz, as Rob paused out of breath with this
startling beginning.
“No, there is another piece of it,” and Rob knit his downy
eyebrows in the effort to evolve another inspiration.
“What did the lady do when he fell into the pump?” asked his
mother, to help him on.
“Oh, she pumped him up, and wrapped him in a newspaper, and
put him on a shelf to dry for seed.”
A general explosion of laughter greeted this surprising conclusion,
and Mrs. Jo patted the curly head, as she said, solemnly,
“My son, you inherit your mother’s gift of story-telling. Go where
glory waits thee.”
“Now I can stay, can’t I? Wasn’t it a good story?” cried Rob, in high
feather at his superb success.
“You can stay till you have eaten these twelve pop-corns,” said his
mother, expecting to see them vanish at one mouthful.
But Rob was a shrewd little man, and got the better of her by
eating them one by one very slowly, and enjoying every minute
with all his might.
“Hadn’t you better tell the other story, while you wait for him?”
said Demi, anxious that no time should be lost.
“I really have nothing but a little tale about a wood-box,” said Mrs.
Jo, seeing that Rob had still seven corns to eat.
“Is there a boy in it?”
“It is all boy.”
“Is it true?” asked Demi.
“Every bit of it.”
“Goody! tell on, please.”
“James Snow and his mother lived in a little house, up in New
Hampshire. They were poor, and James had to work to help his
mother, but he loved books so well he hated work, and just wanted
to sit and study all day long.”
“How could he! I hate books, and like work,” said Dan, objecting
to James at the very outset.
“It takes all sorts of people to make a world; workers and students
both are needed, and there is room for all. But I think the workers
should study some, and the students should know how to work if
necessary,” answered Mrs. Jo, looking from Dan to Demi with a
significant expression.
“I’m sure I do work,” and Demi showed three small hard spots in
his little palm, with pride.
“And I’m sure I study,” added Dan, nodding with a groan toward
the blackboard full of neat figures.
“See what James did. He did not mean to be selfish, but his mother
was proud of him, and let him do as he liked, working by herself
that he might have books and time to read them. One autumn