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Jackanapes
by
“That the girls should have purity, and the boys courage, is what you would say, good Father?”
“Nature has done that,” was the reply; “I meant what I said.”
In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some robuster virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars. And the robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on the other hand, Jackanapes (who had a boy’s full share of the little beast and the young monkey in his natural composition) was none the worse, at his tender years, for learning some maidenliness–so far as maidenliness means decency, pity, unselfishness and pretty behavior.
And it is due to him to say that he was an obedient boy, and a boy whose word could be depended on, long before his grandfather the General came to live at the Green.
He was obedient; that is he did what his great aunt told him. But–oh dear! oh dear!–the pranks he played, which it had never entered into her head to forbid!
It was when he had just been put into skeletons (frocks never suited him) that he became very friendly with Master Tony Johnson, a younger brother of the young gentleman who sat in the puddle on purpose. Tony was not enterprising, and Jackanapes led him by the nose. One summer’s evening they were out late, and Miss Jessamine was becoming anxious, when Jackanapes presented himself with a ghastly face all besmirched with tears. He was unusually subdued.
“I’m afraid,” he sobbed; “if you please, I’m very much afraid that Tony Johnson’s dying in the churchyard.”
Miss Jessamine was just beginning to be distracted, when she smelt Jackanapes.
“You naughty, naughty boys! Do you mean to tell me that you’ve been smoking?”
“Not pipes,” urged Jackanapes; “upon my honor, Aunty, not pipes. Only segars like Mr. Johnson’s! and only made of brown paper with a very, very little tobacco from the shop inside them.”
Whereupon, Miss Jessamine sent a servant to the churchyard, who found Tony Johnson lying on a tomb-stone, very sick, and having ceased to entertain any hopes of his own recovery.
If it could be possible that any “unpleasantness” could arise between two such amiable neighbors as Miss Jessamine and Mrs. Johnson–and if the still more incredible paradox can be that ladies may differ over a point on which they are agreed–that point was the admitted fact that Tony Johnson was “delicate,” and the difference lay chiefly in this: Mrs. Johnson said that Tony was delicate–meaning that he was more finely strung, more sensitive, a properer subject for pampering and petting than Jackanapes, and that, consequently, Jackanapes was to blame for leading Tony into scrapes which resulted in his being chilled, frightened, or (most frequently) sick. But when Miss Jessamine said that Tony Johnson was delicate, she meant that he was more puling, less manly, and less healthily brought up than Jackanapes, who, when they got into mischief together, was certainly not to blame because his friend could not get wet, sit a kicking donkey, ride in the giddy-go-round, bear the noise of a cracker, or smoke brown paper with impunity, as he could.
Not that there was ever the slightest quarrel between the ladies. It never even came near it, except the day after Tony had been so very sick with riding Bucephalus in the giddy-go-round. Mrs. Johnson had explained to Miss Jessamine that the reason Tony was so easily upset, was the unusual sensitiveness (as a doctor had explained it to her) of the nervous centres in her family–“Fiddlestick!” So Mrs. Johnson understood Miss Jessamine to say, but it appeared that she only said “Treaclestick!” which is quite another thing, and of which Tony was undoubtedly fond. It was at the fair that Tony was made ill by riding on Bucephalus. Once a year the Goose Green became the scene of a carnival. First of all, carts and caravans were rumbling up all along, day and night. Jackanapes could hear them as he lay in bed, and could hardly sleep for speculating what booths and whirligigs he should find fairly established; when he and his dog Spitfire went out after breakfast. As a matter of fact, he seldom had to wait long for news of the Fair. The Postman knew the window out of which Jackanapes’ yellow head would come, and was ready with his report.