"It is the nursery," said my companion. "Look about you and see for yourself."
I did as I was bidden, and such an array of toys as that inspection revealed! Truly it looked as if the toy-market in all sections of the world had been levied upon for tribute. Had all the famous toy emporiums of Nuremberg itself been transported thither bodily, there could not have been playthings in greater variety than there greeted my eye. From the most insignificant of tin-soldiers to the most intricate of mechanical toys for the delectation of the youthful mind, nothing that I could think of was missing.
The tin-soldiers as ever had a fascination for me, and in an instant I was down upon the floor, ranging them in their serried ranks, while the face of my companion wreathed with an indulgent smile.
"You'll do," said she, as I loaded a little spring-cannon with a stub of a lead-pencil and bowled over half a regiment with one well-directed shot.
"These are the finest tin-soldiers I ever saw!" I cried with enthusiasm.
"Only they're not tin," said she. "Solid silver, every man-jack of them—except the officers—they're made of platinum."
"And will you look at that little electric railroad!" I cried, my eye ranging to the other end of the salon. "Stations, switches, danger-signals, cars of all kinds, and even miniature Pullmans, with real little berths that can be let up and down—who is the lucky kid who's getting all these beautiful things?"
"Sh!" she whispered, putting her finger to her lips. "He is coming—go on and play. Pretend you don't see him until he speaks to you."
As she spoke, a door at the far end of the apartment swung gently open, and a little boy tiptoed softly in. He was a golden-haired little chap, and I fell in love with his soft, dreamy eyes the moment my own rested upon them. I could not help glancing up furtively to see his joy over the discovery of all these wondrous possessions, but alas, to my surprise, there was only an unemotional stare in his eyes as they swept the aggregation of childish treasures. Then, on a sudden, he saw me, squatting on the floor, setting up again the army of silver warriors.
"How do you do?" he said gently, but with just a touch of weariness in his sad little voice.
"Good morning, and a Merry Christmas to you, sir," I replied.
"What are you doing?" he asked, drawing near, and watching me with a good deal of seeming curiosity.
"I am playing with your soldiers," said I. "I hope you don't mind?"
"Oh, no indeed," he replied; "but what do you mean by that? What is playing?"
I could hardly believe my ears.
"What is what?" said I.
"You said you were playing, sir," said he, "and I don't know exactly what you mean."
"Why," said I, scratching my head hard in a mad quest for a definition, for I couldn't for the life of me think of the answer to his question offhand, any more than I could define one of the elements. "Playing is—why, it's playing, laddie. Don't you know what it is to play?"
"Oh, yes," said he. "It's what you do on the piano—I've been taught to play on the piano, sir."
"Oh, but this is different," said I. "This kind is fun—it's what most little boys do with their toys."
"You mean—breaking them?" said he.
"No, indeed," said I. "It's getting all the fun there is out of them."
"I think I should like to do that," said he, with a fixed gaze upon the soldiers. "Can a little fellow like me learn to play that way?"
"Well, rather, kiddie," said I, reaching out and taking him by the hand. "Sit down here on the floor alongside of me, and I'll show you."
"Oh, no," said he, drawing back; "I—I can't sit on the floor. I'd catch cold."
"Now, who under the canopy told you that?" I demanded, somewhat impatiently, I fear.
"My governesses and both my nurses, sir," said he. "You see, there are drafts—"
"Well, there won't be any drafts this time," said I. "Just you sit down here, and we'll have a game of marbles—ever play marbles with your father?"
"No, sir," he replied. "He's always too busy, and neither of my nurses has ever known how."
"But your mother comes up here and plays games with you sometimes, doesn't she?" I asked.
"Mother is busy, too," said the child. "Besides, she wouldn't care for a game which you had to sit on the floor to—"
I sprang to my feet and lifted him bodily in my arms, and, after squatting him over by the fireplace where if there were any drafts at all they would be as harmless as a summer breeze, I took up a similar position on the other side of the room, and initiated him into the mystery of miggles as well as I could, considering that all his marbles were real agates.
"You don't happen to have a china-alley anywhere, do you?" I asked.
"No, sir," he answered. "We only have china plates—"
"Never mind," I interrupted. "We can get along very nicely with these."
And then for half an hour, despite the rich quality of our paraphernalia, that little boy and I indulged in a glorious game of real plebeian miggs, and it was a joy to see how quickly his stiff little fingers relaxed and adapted themselves to the uses of his eye, which was as accurate as it was deeply blue. So expert did he become that in a short while he had completely cleaned me out, giving joyous little cries of delight with every hit, and then we turned our attention to the soldiers.
"I want some playing now," he said gleefully, as I informed him that he had beaten me out of my boots at one of my best games. "Show me what you were doing with those soldiers when I came in."
"All right," said I, obeying with alacrity. "First, we'll have a parade."
I started a great talking-machine standing in one corner of the room off on a spirited military march, and inside of ten minutes, with his assistance, I had all the troops out and to all intents and purposes bravely swinging by to the martial music of Sousa.
"How's that?" said I, when we had got the whole corps arranged to our satisfaction.
"Fine!" he cried, jumping up and down upon the floor and clapping his hands with glee. "I've got lots more of these stored away in my toy-closet," he went on, "but I never knew that you could do such things as this with them."
"But what did you think they were for?" I asked.
"Why—just to—to keep," he said hesitatingly.
"Wait a minute," said I, wheeling a couple of cannon off to a distance of a yard from the passing troops. "I'll show you something else you can do with them."
I loaded both cannon to the muzzle with dried pease, and showed him how to shoot.
"Now," said I, "fire!"
He snapped the spring, and the dried pease flew out like death-dealing shells in war. In a moment the platinum commander of the forces, and about thirty-seven solid silver warriors, lay flat on their backs. It needed only a little red ink on the carpet to reproduce in miniature a scene of great carnage, but I shall never forget the expression of mingled joy and regret on his countenance as those creatures went down.
"Don't you like it, son?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said, with an anxious glance at the prostrate warriors. "They aren't deaded, are they?"
"Of course not," said I, restoring the presumably defunct troopers to life by setting them up again. "The only thing that'll dead a soldier like these is to step on him. Try the other gun."
Thus reassured, he did as I bade him, and again the proud paraders went down, this time amid shouts of glee. And so we passed an all too fleeting two hours, that little boy and I. Through the whole list of his famous toys we went, and as well as I could I