Ch. 3 - The Little House - Page 2

And by-and-by when they were alone with their
night-light she would start up in bed crying "Hsh! what was that?"
Tony beseeches her! "It was nothing--don't, Maimie, don't!" and pulls
the sheet over his head. "It is coming nearer!" she cries; "Oh, look
at it, Tony! It is feeling your bed with its horns--it is boring for
you, oh, Tony, oh!" and she desists not until he rushes downstairs in
his combinations, screeching. When they came up to whip Maimie they
usually found her sleeping tranquilly, not shamming, you know, but
really sleeping, and looking like the sweetest little angel, which
seems to me to make it almost worse.

But of course it was daytime when they were in the Gardens, and then
Tony did most of the talking. You could gather from his talk that he
was a very brave boy, and no one was so proud of it as Maimie. She
would have loved to have a ticket on her saying that she was his
sister. And at no time did she admire him more than when he told her,
as he often did with splendid firmness, that one day he meant to
remain behind in the Gardens after the gates were closed.

"Oh, Tony," she would say, with awful respect, "but the fairies will
be so angry!"

"I daresay," replied Tony, carelessly.

"Perhaps," she said, thrilling, "Peter Pan will give you a sail in his
boat!"

"I shall make him," replied Tony; no wonder she was proud of him.

But they should not have talked so loudly, for one day they were
overheard by a fairy who had been gathering skeleton leaves, from
which the little people weave their summer curtains, and after that
Tony was a marked boy. They loosened the rails before he sat on them,
so that down he came on the back of his head; they tripped him up by
catching his bootlace and bribed the ducks to sink his boat. Nearly
all the nasty accidents you meet with in the Gardens occur because the
fairies have taken an ill-will to you, and so it behoves you to be
careful what you say about them.

Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for doing things, but
Tony was not that kind, and when she asked him which day he was to
remain behind in the Gardens after Lock-out he merely replied, "Just
some day;" he was quite vague about which day except when she asked
"Will it be today?" and then he could always say for certain that it
would not be to-day. So she saw that he was waiting for a real good
chance.

This brings us to an afternoon when the Gardens were white with snow,
and there was ice on the Round Pond, not thick enough to skate on but
at least you could spoil it for tomorrow by flinging stones, and many
bright little boys and