FullReads

So, in the rainy winter afternoons, when the other children had gone, Patsy and I stayed together and arranged the next day’s occupations. Slang was being gradually eliminated from his conversation; but it is no small task to correct nine years of bad grammar, and I never succeeded in doing it. Alas! the time was all too short.

It was Patsy who sorted the wools and threaded the needles, and set right the sewing-cards of the babies; and only the initiated can comprehend the labyrinthine maze into which an energetic three-year-old can transform a bit of sewing. It was he who fished the needles from the cracks in the floor, rubbed the blackboards, and scrubbed the slates, talking busily the while.

“Jiminy! (I take that back.) Miss Kate, we can’t let Jimmy Buck have no more needles; he sows ’em thick as seed round his chair. Now, now jis’ look yere! Ef that Battles chap hain’t scratched the hull top of this table with a buzzer! I’d lam him good ef I was you, I would.”

“Do you think our Kindergarten would be the pleasant place it is if I whipped little boys every day?”

“No-o-o! But there is times”–

“Yes, I know, Patsy, but I have never found them.”

“Jim’s stayin’ out nights, this week,” said he one day, “‘nd I hez to stay along o’ Mis’ Kennett till nine o’clock.”

“Why, I thought Jim always stayed at home in the evening.”

“Yes, he allers used ter; but he’s busy now lookin’ up a girl, don’t yer know.”

“Looking up a girl! What do you mean, Patsy?”

Patsy scratched his head with the “ten-toothed comb of Nature,”–a habit which prevailed with terrible and suggestive frequency when I first came “into my kingdom,”–and answered:–

“Lookin’ up a girl! Why, I s’posed yer knew that. I dunno ‘zackly. Jim says all the fellers does. He says he hates to git the feed an’ wash the dishes orfly, ‘nd girls likes ter do it best of anything.”

“Oh!” cried I, light bursting in upon my darkened intellect when dish-washing was mentioned; “he wants to get married!”

“Well, he has ter look up a girl first, don’t yer s’pose?”

“Yes, of course; but I don’t see how Jim can get money enough to take care of a wife. He only has thirty dollars a month.”

“Well, he’s goin’ ter get a girl what’ll ‘go halveys,’ don’t yer know, and pay for her keep. He’d ruther have a ‘millingnary’ girl–they’re the nicest; but if he can’t, he’s goin’ to try for one out of the box factory.”

“Oh, Patsy! I wish”–

“Why, didn’t I ought ter say that?”

“I wish you had a mother, dear.”

“If I had, I’d know more ‘n I do now,” and a great sigh heaved itself upward from beneath the blue jacket.

“No, you wouldn’t know so much, Patsy, or at least you would get the right end first. Never mind, dear boy, you can’t understand.”

“Jim says Mis’ Kennett ‘nd I needn’t set such store by you, ’cause the fust chance you gits you’ll git married.” (I always did have an elective antipathy for Jim.) “Shall yer, Miss Kate?”

“Why, dear, I think we are very happy as we are, don’t you?”

“Yes, ef I could only stay f’rever, ‘nd not go ter the reel school. Jim says I ought ter be gittin’ book learnin’ pretty soon.”

“Did you tell him that Miss Helen was teaching you to read and write a little while every afternoon?”

“Yes, I told him. He liked it fust rate. Mis’ Kennett said she’d let her childern stay f’rever with yer, ef they never larned a thing, ‘nd so would I, dear, dear Miss Kate! Oh, I bet God would like to see you in that pretty blue dress!” and he hung over me with a speechless caress; his first, and last indeed, for he was shy and reticent in emotion, and never once showed his affection in the presence of the other children.

CHAPTER VII. PATSY FINDS HIS THREE LOST YEARS.