The flower of the flock, and The Badgers of Belmont

II .Of WASH'

NEW YORK, CINCINNATI, CHICAGO :

BENZIGER BROTHERS,

Printers to the Holy Apostolic See,

Copyright, 1894, by Benziger Brothers.

MISS MAY CRONYN,

OF BUFFALO,

“THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.”

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The author gratefully acknowledges that the demands of many young people have induced him to put these stories into a book and to offer it to all boys and girls with the compliments of all seasons.

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Contents

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

CHAPTER page

I. — The Fatal Snowball, . . . . . ii

Chapter I. The Fa Tal Snowball

T he brothers — there were three — were away.

Jack was at sea — how queer it is that Jacks seem especially fond of the sea! — Samuel was in business in Chicago ; and Arnold was giving singing lessons in Portland, Maine.

Reginald was the youngest, and the flower of the flock. His aunt often said that he was a “perfectly lovely boy.” He was fifteen years of age; he had glossy black hair, which he combed down into a bang on his forehead ; black eyes, a rather pale face, a straight nose, and he always wore his cap back on his head to show his bang. He never put his hands in his pockets; he never had, even when a small boy, a nail, or a lump of string, or a piece of shoemaker’s wax, or a pi^e of candy, or even a dead mouse in his pockets. He had always a clean face; and, after school every day, he took his best trousers out into the kitchen and ironed the legs of them with his own hands, so that they would not bag at the knees. He changed his clothes after school, and put on old things, on which, however, there was never a spot. He never played games in the street, because that

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

was “rough”; and when old ladies came to visit his aunt and to drink tea and gossip, he was always permitted to sit with them; and sometimes they listened to his remarks about people, and said what a lovely boy he was, and how different he was from his brothers, who had all been noisy.

Reginald was an orphan; he had a little money of his own, as his other brothers had refused to touch the small estate his father had left. He often spoke at school of his “ money,” and pitied those poor boys who had nothing at all, and who never could buy as many agates as they liked. Once he had been seen riding in an open carriage from a funeral, — in the kind of an open carriage called a “ barouche.” Boys in Philadelphia often went to funerals. In fact, it was looked on as a reward of merit ; but few ever rode in a barouche. After this Reginald was looked on with awe and other feelings. But I hope that will try to love him; for we must remember that even if a boy of fifteen wears a bang and irons out the legs of his trousers every day, he is still a human being, and worthy of all the esteem we can give him.

Mrs. Danby, Reginald’s aunt, kept a shop. Shops have gone out of fashion, but when Reginald was fifteen there were many of them in the straight streets of Philadelphia. There were jars of peppermint candy — big, plaited sticks, with enough flavor in them to scent a large house; jars of lemon drops, jars of clove drops, and several gingerbread men and horses, with dots of pink and white sugar on them.

On one side of the little frame house, whose threshold was level with the street, was a coal-box painted green. It was large enough to serve — if it were needed — as a home for four or five of the largest

THE ELOIFEE OF THE FLOCK.

Newfoundland dogs one can think of. It was filled with coal every day, and Mrs. Danby sold it by the bucket. On the counter there were tin pans filled with molasses candy, brown and yellow, and clear yellow and red candy “toys.” On the shelves behind the counters there were jars of buttons, and tobacco, and starch, and stick cinnamon, and cough drops, and pepper; and there were ‘also canisters of tea and coffee. If you wanted onions, you could have them for so much a string. But if you had asked for cabbages or turnips, Mrs. Danby would have thought you were mad.

At New Year’s she always bought a cake, with a Grecian temple upon it, and a wreath of silver leaves around it. In this Grecian temple there always stood a young lady, made of white sugar, holding a silver rose. Slices of this cake were given to Mrs. Danby’s best customers; and if you were especially agreeable to her, she would ask you into the back room, and let you sit on her haircloth sofa and have a glass of currant wine. The wine was hard to take; but if you were a boy of fine feelings, you would consider it a great honor, and hope that she would give you another piece of cake. And, besides, if you were quick, you could perhaps give Reginald a little kick — not enough to hurt him, you know — as you went out. Of course, then, Reginald always told on you, and you were never asked to have cake again. During the rest of the year the Grecian temple and the white-sugar lady stood under a glass case in Mrs. Danby’s best bedroom upstairs, where there was a mahogany bed, with a blue canopy over it and a “ valance ” about it.

Reginald often made remarks about the hidden

THE FLO WEE OF THE FI^OCK.

splendors of his aunt’s house, and once he even said that he had an uncle who was a policeman; but, though it was understood that Mrs. Danby could afford to give away ten cents’ worth of taffy and not feel it at all, this last touch of grandeur was not believed. It was too much, and it was soon discovered that Reginald told fibs. And it was found out in this way. Reginald never threw snowballs, because he was afraid. Now, would a boy whose uncle was “ on the police” be afraid? In this manner Reginald was found out; for everybody knew that if you had a friend “on the force” you would never be a slave to fear.

The truth is, that if Reginald had not occasionally brought gum drops or a chunk of “ no go ” to school, he would not have been treated with any regard at all, after the fiction about the uncle was sifted. Nearly all the boys Reginald knew were honest, if they were “rough ”; they knew it was wrong to tell lies, but it seemed to them that Reginald ought to go to jail for telling an untruth on such an important subject. Still, when a boy at your school lives in a candy shop, it is very hard to look at his faults impartially, — very, very hard. And, then, if you did anything to Reginald, he always told; so that Mrs. Danby would give you a very small cent’s worth of lemon taffy, and perhaps refuse to “ make ” a cent’s worth of cream cocoanut — a soft, white, sticky compound that happily went out after the war.

On the whole, Reginald got on very well until Miles McGarry came to live at Mrs. Danby’s. Miles’ parents were dead, and he, like Reginald Danby, fell to his aunt’s charge. From the moment Miles entered the house trouble came. Miles was not

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

“ lovely ” like Reginald. He wore his trousers turned up; he sometimes ran into the street to “catch on” to a wagon, in a red flannel shirt and one suspender; his hair was stubborn, and refused to be combed, except on Sunday, when Mrs. Danby soaked it with castor-oil and bergamot. Then it shone; but then,- too, Mrs. Danby made him wear her sunbonnet in the house, for fear that his greasy head should touch the yellow and blue wall-paper in her back room. It was not pleasant to have to steal about in the back room between Mass and the Catechism class, with a blue-and-white checked sunbonnet flapping about, and to be permitted to take it off only at dinner. And it was not pleasant to have Reginald sitting straight or lounging about, free to do as he pleased, and putting on airs. • Miles was two years younger than his cousin, and Reginald lectured him and bossed him, and told him how very wicked it was to eat raw turnips, to go down to the Neck, and to carry various things about in his pockets.

Miles was a short boy, with the brightest blue eyes in the world, plenty of freckles, and with two chubby hands, with two large warts on the thumb of each. Mrs. Danby and the old ladies did not ask him in to tea. He was not the kind of boy to ornament a tea party. In truth, the only time he was admitted he pulled the cat’s tail and caused her to upset the teapot. Reginald did not like him; for he yelled out loud and laughed at him, and he would not wait on him; and instead of asking Mrs. Danb)’, he put his hand into the gum-drop jar and helped himself. This caused Mrs. Danby to lock the gum drops in the little glass case, and so Reginald’s supply of his favorite ceased.

What Miles McGarry hated most of all was the necessity of coming home the moment school was out. There was always a stone fight going on somewhere, or one was certain of seeing a boy “ arrested,” or the hook-and-ladder company was out; but Reginald always hurried home to iron out his trousers, to have his aunt say what a good boy he was, and to hear her declare that Miles would live to be hanged. All this was galling to the smaller boy, who could not see why he should be hanged because his clothes would not stay clean. Still, he bore no ill-will to Reginald. He once heard his aunt speak of some unfortunate person as “ afflicted. ” Heapplied the word to Reginald and pitied him.

There was a boy at school whose father kept a shoe shop, and this boy did not admire Reginald, because Reginald had seen him throwing spitballs at the ceiling, and made some gentle remarks about it to the teacher, who, however, had observed Johnny Schonbrun’s actions already. Perhaps Johnny Schonbrun might have learned to love Reginald in spite of this — Mrs. Danby said that everybody loved him — if the sweet boy had not refused to give Johnny a bite from a big apple he had brought to school one day.

Johnny lived opposite a baker shop, in the window of which round, glazed cakes studded with currants, known as Dutch cakes, and twisted loaves of bread were displayed, at Christmas-time and New Year’s, with one or two iced pound-cakes suggestive of great wealth and luxury, surrounded by garlands of evergreens. The baker’s name was Hans Gewitz, and he might be seen almost any evening with his head peeping just above his cellar door. He always wore a white cap, his nose was generally covered with flour, and he seldom spoke. Far into the night and early morning his oven blazed away; and his bread, especially his milk loaves, Avere greatly in demand. He was known among the boys as “ flour nose.” Sometimes Johnny Schonbrun put his head within the baker’s cellar door and reminded him of the fact. This occasioned a coolness between Johnny and the baker.

Miles McGarry and Johnny were devoted friends. They had much in common. Together they hunted muskrats down “ in the banks ” when rare opportunities occurred. Together they caught frogs and threw stones at reed-birds in that part of the suburbs called the Neck. Together they chased cats; together they tied strings to door-bells on Hallow Eve, and led the guileless walker to tangle himself in these strings, and to alarm the people.

But they were not together very often. Mrs. Danby ruled Miles McGarry with a rod of iron. On certain evenings, when the old ladies came to tea, Reginald, of course, was not permitted to “ mind the shop.” He had toast and tea and “smear-case” — which the vulgar modern calls cottage cheese — in the chosen circle; while Miles was made to sit on a high stool behind the counter, by the light of a smoky lamp, and wait for customers. The worst of it was that whenever the door opened, a harsh bell rang, and it was hard for him to sneak out for a breath of fresh air with the warning of that bell in danger of being heard.

One night — a fatal night — the snow was on the ground, trodden hard in the middle of the sidewalk, but deep and soft on either side. Miles heard the delightful crunch of people walking on it, of boys’ 2 sleds gliding over it, — even of a ringing skate as Johnny Schonbrun passed, balancing himself, like a stork, on one leg. Then followed a peculiarly shrill whistle. Miles knew it well. It meant that Johnny would like to see him. He crept toward the door and moved it. The bell tinkled.

“ Miles! ” cried his aunt’s voice.

“ Yes’m!”

“ Is there a customer in the shop? ”

“I thought I heard the bell.”

Then Miles crept through the crack and was out under the sky, with the river wind blowing in his face. The lights of the butcher shop opposite (the beef and mutton and turkeys were wreathed with evergreen, for it was near Christmas) looked joyful and gay. Everything seemed to invite a boy with legs to use them. The big stool had cramped Miles; he had sat still in school nearly all day, and now he was free. There was a great turkey hanging in the shop for show, not for sale; and Mrs. Danby had made a large keg of mince-meat. The knowledge of all this filled Miles with delicious gayety. He uttered a wild yawp. It sounded like this: “Yea! yea! yea! ”

It was the war-cry of the small boys of-his time. Then he knocked the hat off a boy who had his back to him, kicked over the nearest ash-barrel, and started for a run around the square. Johnny Schonbrun was ahead, near his own house, limping and gliding alternately on his one skate. Miles picked up a handful of snow, which was rather wet, — just in condition to be made into the hardest kind of snowball, called a “soaker.” He let it fly. It flew.

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

There was a crash of glass. It had flown through the baker’s window, and lay among the fragments of one of those beautiful Grecian temples which Reginald spoke of with awe, and which Miles himself had learned to reverence! He fled like a bird, not too late to see the white-capped baker dart from his cellar and seize Johnny Schonbrun.

Chapter II. The Fatal Dutch Cake

R eginald in the mean time had sat at the tea-table, very demurely joining in the conversation of the old ladies. They spoke of the wickedness of boys in general; and he told them stories of the horrors of which boys were capable, and did not hesitate to assert that Miles McGarry was capable of almost anything.

The night was frosty, and the old ladies had had a long walk, and so the piles of buttered toast quickly disappeared. Reginald had the warmest seat, near the stove ; but this did not interfere with his appetite. Mrs. Danby, in the glow of her hospitality, suggested that perhaps some fresh Dutch cake might be “ nice.” And thereupon Reginald volunteered at once to procure the delicacy, which was a slightly sweetened bread, more or less permeated with currants. The old ladies took extra cups of tea, and admired Reginald.

“ To think of his being so ready to go out on such a cold night just to please us!” they said; while Mrs. Danby tied his comforter carefully around his

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

neck and hoped he would not catch cold. Reginald smacked his lips over the thought of the Dutch cake, and wondered whether the baker might not give him some lemon drops, as it was about Christmas-time, and hurried off. He ran through the shop, never deigning to notice whether Miles was there or not.

It happened that just as the baker seized Johnny Schonbrun, Reginald reached the shop. Johnny’s howls naturally attracted his attention, and indeed Johnny seemed to have reason to howl; for nothing can be more difficult than to stand upright on one skate when a stalwart hand threatens to choke the breath out of your body.

Reginald saw the broken window, and a thrill of horror ran through him. Who had been so wicked as to do this thing, — to expose the beautiful Grecian temple, the spotless icing, and the brown Dutch cakes to the cold night air? What a new tale of terrible depravity he would have to relate to the old ladies when he should reach home!

He stood still, divided between the wreck of the baker’s window and the echoing howls of Johnny Schonbrun. He believed that Johnny Schonbrun was a wicked boy, for Johnny often made faces at him across the school-room; and he was only too ready to believe that he was the villain who had worked this deadly ruin.

He now heard words that froze his blood.

“Who broke my window?’’ demanded the baker.

“ I won’t tell! ’’

The baker gave Johnny a series of cuffs, each of which left a floury mark on the right side of his face.

“It was the Danby boy!’’ cried Johnny at last,

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

unable to stand the struggle, which was dislocating his neck and spraining his ankle. To do him justice, he always thought of Miles McGarry as one of the Danby boys; he had no intention whatever of implicating Reginald.

These were the words that froze Reginald’s blood. Here was total depravity indeed. But he did not forget the Dutch cake; he put his hand through the broken pane, took one of the cakes, left ten cents in its place — for he was a strictly honest boy, — and fled homeward.

The ladies at the tea-table were alarmed at his agitation, especially as one of them was in the act of reciting the details of some horrible occurrence which had taken place when General Howe’s troops occupied Philadelphia.

“Dear me!” said Mrs. Danby. “You’d think the child had seen the headless horseman ! Why, what’s the matter ? ”

Before Reginald could make a reply, a loud voice was heard in the shop, and Miles answering it.

“Your brother broke my window, and he has spoiled ten dollars’ worth of cake. You will have to pay! ” exclaimed the baker, addressing Miles, who sat on his high stool, under the smoky lamp, with a tattered copy of “ The Seven Champions of Christendom,” held upside down in a trembling hand; his heart was like a lump of ice.

“I have no brother,” said Miles.

Hereupon the baker called out loud that Miles was a “ story-teller — a liar.”

Upon this Mrs. Danby entered the shop in her most dignified manner.

“ Did I hear a conversation ? ” she asked, as if the baker’s voice had not already attracted a crowd in front of the door,

“ Your son broke my window, and I must be paid ten dollars, ma’am,” said the baker, red with anger.

Mrs. Danby smiled, and said kindly, as if speaking to a person who had lost his senses:

“ Poor, dear man! I have no son here.”

Upon this, words seemed to coagulate in the baker’s throat. Mrs, Danby was afraid that he would have apoplexy. She waited until his roarings seemed done, and then she asked:

“ Are you quite sober, good man ? ”

This capped the climax. The baker became frantic.

“ I — I broke the window, ” said Miles, feeling that if he did not confess he might be responsible for the man’s death.

The baker only shook his fist at Miles, and called him “a mocker” in German. Mrs, Danby looked at her younger nephew reproachfully.

“ Have all my lessons about truthfulness been thrown away?” she asked. “You are heartless, Milesius, to make fun of this poor intoxicated man.”

Miles dropped his eyes on “ The Seven Champions of Christendom.” After all, he thought, how wrong it was to contradict one’s elders! They ought to know.

“You have another boy in the place? You have,

■ — you have!”

“Come forth, Reginald,” said Mrs. Danby, elegantly. “I have another boy, also my nephew; and one,” she added, with a reproachful glance at Miles, “incapable of falsehood.”

Reginald reluctantly came out of the back room. The baker pounced on him.

“ This is the one, — this is the wicked one that broke my window! Ah, here he is! I have him at last. It was the big Danby boy. I saw him myself, — I saw him running. And he had a Dutch cake under his arm.”

“ Oh, no, indeed ! ” cried Miles, earnestly. “ I broke your window, but I did not steal a Dutch cake.”

The baker took no notice of him.

“ Didn’t you run home with a Dutch cake?”

“ Yes, yes! ” gasped Reginald. “ But you are soiling my collar, good man. You are indeed! And aunt expects me to keep it clean until Sunday.”

The baker did not respond to this appeal. He shook Reginald as he had shaken Johnny Schonbrun.

“ I did not break your window! ” exclaimed Reginald, choking.

“ I have a witness already,” said the baker. “ You must pay, and I will put you into jail besides for stealing the Dutch cake.”

” Mr. — man,” said Mrs. Danby, with great dignity, “ cease this treatment of my nephew, or I shall be obliged to call the police.”

“/will call the police! ” exclaimed the baker, out of breath. “You have my Dutch cake in the house. I will have you all arrested.”

“ I paid for the cake. I took it out of the window, and put a ten-cent piece in its place, — indeed I did.”

The baker laughed a hollow laugh.

“Reginald is incapable of falsehood,” said Mrs. Danby, putting herself between her injured nephew

24 THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCLC.

and the infuriated baker; “and I beg you to retire from my shop until you are sober — quite sober.”

The baker gasped ; perspiration made tracks down his floury face. “Do I wake or sleep?” he seemed to say. He bounded toward Reginald, but Mrs. Danby was too quick. She pushed the boy into the back room, and locked the door.

“Come to-morrow and talk it over,” she said, “when your head is clear, my good man.”

“You may take me to jail, if you like,” ventured Miles in a weak voice; “but I didn’t steal your cake.”

The baker shook his fist at him, and left the shop, swearing vengeance on all the Danbys.

“You may go to bed now, Milesius,” said his aunt severely; “and to-morrow at breakfast you may partake of bread and water as a punishment for your persistent falsehood.”

Miles opened his lips to speak; but he was prevented by a loud ring at the door. Hans Gewitz thrust his head into the shop again.

“I will come to-morrow,” he said, in a voice that struck terror into the heart of Reginald, “ and I will take your big boy to jail — to Moyamensing, — that I will do.”

He shook his fist at Reginald once more and retired.

Mrs. Danby was in a state of towering indignation. She was not at all frightened by the threats of the baker. Miles was called into the back room and cross-examined by the old ladies and his aunt. He persisted in his statement that he had broken the window, and at last one of the old ladies suddenly discovered that he was a hero.

“ He is taking the blame on himself to shield dear Reginald,” she remarked.

Miles opened his eyes at this. It was a new view of the matter,

“ I can imagine any sacrifice made for dear Reginald,” Mrs, Danby said; “but if Miles is making any such sacrifice, he is, nevertheless, telling a falsehood; and I despise all falsehoods, A lie, even to save Reginald, would not be justifiable,”

In vain Miles protested that he had broken the window ; in vain he admitted that he had run around the square “just for fun,” Nobody believed, and he was sent to bed in disgrace, to refiect on the disadvantages of having a bad reputation.

Miles slept in the attic, in a little iron bedstead. He could see stars through the dormer-window. At times the snow came in through the cracks, and the wind was such an old friend that Miles was not at all offended when tricks were played with his hair and cold slaps made at his face.

He said his prayers, and then reflected that Reginald would have a hard time in jail. He was sure that the baker would carry out his threat. He thought for a moment how pleasant it would be to see Reginald in a real scrape; but then, like the good-hearted boy he was, he remembered that he was a Christian, and said a fervent prayer that Reginald might come out “all right,”

He had been asleep only a little whil£ when a sound near his ear made him start.

THE FLOWER OF THE FLOCK.

Chapter III. The Terrors Of The Night

R emorse and repentance kept Miles awake; fear and terrible forebodings disturbed Reginald. Miles went over in his mind the scene in front of Hans Gewitz’s window. Why had he thrown such a hard snowball ? Why had he not stayed in the shop and resisted that temptation to take the run around the square? He saw Reginald in jail — perhaps for life. For an instant a cruel feeling of pleasure ran through his mind at the thought of the good, the highly praised Reginald locked within those gates, which it was often predicted would one day open for himself ; but he rejected the thought as from the devil. At this moment he freely forgave Reginald all the taunts, all the sneers, he had uttered, yes, he even determined not to remember that Reginald ironed his trousers every afternoon and wore a “ bang.” *

Reginald said his prayers and made a hundred good resolutions. If he could only get out of this horrible scrape — worse, he believed, than had ever befallen any other boy, — he would never tell a lie or be bad again. He turned on one side and then on the other, groaned, moaned, and wept. He hoped that the night would be very long. As long as it was dark, he knew that he was safe; but in the

* A critic in Philadelphia informs me that no bangs were worn in the late sixties; but that the young “ dude ” plastered a half-circle of hair on his forehead, and that the boys called it a “waterfall.” This was what Reginald wore.

morning would come the terrible baker, the policeman, and Moyamensing!

He shuddered and covered his head with the bedclothes. He had once been taken by his aunt for a visit to the jail. He had seen little black cars in which hard biscuits and soup were sent to the prisoners. And one prisoner, who grinned amiably at him through the iron bars, had sold him a drawing of Shakespeare for a quarter. It was down-stairs on Mrs. Danby’s mantelpiece. And where was the prisoner now? Perhaps the rats had eaten him; perhaps he had been hanged.

New horrors rose before Reginald. If he could be accused and taken to jail for breaking a pane of glass which he had not even touched, why could they not accuse him of murdering somebody he had never seen? The old ladies had whispered at Mrs. Danby’s tea-table that the doctors sometimes wanted dead bodies, and that they were not at all particular how they got them. Suppose they should want his, after he were hanged for something he did not do ? There would be no stopping them.

He thought of one of those gloomy stories in which the old ladies delighted, — the story of the maid and the magpie. And how the maid — she wore a frilled cap in the picture — had been hanged or burned in some old German city for stealing silver spoons which a magpie had hidden. Horrors piled on horrors in his mind, his tears wet his pillow. And they were all for himself ; he never once thought of Mrs. Danby’s anguish in case one-tenth of the disasters he imagined should come true. He was sure Miles had done the deed which had brought this misfortune on him, — sure. And to think that he was considered