“Show me immediately where they are,” commanded Mrs. Burton, rising from her chair.
“Den will you lend ’em to us nexsht time we playzh housh?” asked Toddie.
“No,” said Mrs. Burton, with cruel emphasis.
Toddie pouted, rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, and led the way to the rear of the garden where, in a hollow at the base of an old apple-tree, were the missing spoons. Wondering whether other valuable property might not be there, Mrs. Burton cautiously and with a stick examined the remaining contents of the hole, and soon discovered one of her damask napkins.
“Datsh goin’ to be our table-cloff,” explained Toddie, “an’ dat”—this, as an unopened pot of French mustard was unearthed “is pizzyves” (preserves).
Mrs. Burton placed her property in the pocket of her apron, led her two nephews into the house, seated them with violence upon a sofa, closed the doors noisily, drew a chair close to the prisoners, and said:
“Now, boys, you are to be punished for taking auntie’s things out of the house without permission.”
“Don’t want to be shpynkted!” screamed Toddie, in a tone which seemed an attempt at a musical duet by a saw-filer and an ungreased wagon-wheel.
“You’re not to be whipped,” continued Mrs. Burton, “but you must learn not to touch things without permission. I think that to go without your dinners would help you to remember that what you have done is naughty.”
“Izhe ’most ’tarved to deff,” exclaimed Toddie, bursting out crying. (N.B. Breakfast has been finished but a scant hour.)
“Then I will put you into an empty room, and keep you there until you are sure you can remember.”
Toddie shrieked as if enduring the thousand tortures of the Chinese executioner, and Budge looked as unhappy as if he were a young man in love and in the throes of reluctant poesy, but Mrs. Burton led them both to the attic, and into an empty room, placed chairs in two corners and a boy in each chair, and said:
“Don’t either of you move out of a chair. Just sit still and think how naughty you’ve been. In an hour or two I’ll come back, and see if you think you can be good boys here-after.”
“DON’T EITHER OF YOU MOVE OUT OF A CHAIR”.
As Mrs. Burton left the room, she was followed by a shriek that seemed to pierce the walls and be heard over half the earth. Turning hastily, she saw that Toddie, from whom it had proceeded, had neither fallen out of his chair, nor been seized by an epileptic fit, nor stung by some venomous insect; so she closed the door, locked it, softly placed a chair against it, sat down softly and listened. There was silence after the several minutes required by Toddie to weary of his crying, and then Mrs. Burton heard the following conversation:
“Tod?”
“What?”
“We ought to do something!”
“Chop Aunt Alish into little shnipsh of bitsh—datsh what I fink would be nysh.”
“That would be dreadful naughty,” said Budge, “after we’ve bothered her so! We ought to do something good, just like big folks when they’ve been bad.”
“What doezh big folks do?”
“Well, they read the Bible an’ go to church. But you an’ me can’t go to church, ’cause ’tain’t Sunday, an’ we ain’t got no Bible, an’ we wouldn’t know how to read it if we had.”
“Den don’t letsh do noffin’ but be awful mad,” said the unrepentant Toddie. “I’ll tell you what we can do. Let’s do like dat Maggydalen dat mamma’s got a picture of, and dat was bad an’ got sorry; letsh look awful doleful and cwosh. See me.”
Toddie apparently gave an illustration of what he thought the proper penitential countenance and attitude, for Budge exclaimed:
“I don’t think that would look nice at all. It makes you look like a dead puppy-dog with his head turned to one side. I’ll tell you what; we can’t read Bibles like big folks, but we can tell stories out of the Bible, an’ that’ bein’ just as good as if we read ’em.”
“Oh, yes,” said Toddie, repenting at once. “Letsh! I wantsh to be good just awful.”
“Well, what shall we tell about?” asked Budge.
“ ’Bout when Jesus was a little boy,” said Toddie, “for he was awful good.”
“No,” said Budge; “we’ve been naughty, an’ we must tell about somebody that was awful naughty. I think old Pharaoh’s about the thing.”
“Aw right,” said Toddie. “Tell us ’bout him.”
“Well, once there was a bad old king down in Egypt, that had all the Izzyrelites there an’ made ’em work, an’ when they didn’t work he had ’em banged. But that dear little bit of a Moses, that lived in a basket in the river, grew up to be a man, an’ he just killed one of Pharaoh’s bad bangers, an’ then he skooted an’ hid. An’ the Lord saw that he was the kind of man that was good for somethin’, so he told him he wanted him to make Pharaoh let the poor Izzyrelites go where they wanted to. So Moses went and told Pharaoh. An’ Pharaoh said, ’No, you don’t!’s Then Moses went an’ told the Lord, an’ the Lord got angry, and turned all the water in the river into blood.”
“My!” said Toddie. “Then if anybody wanted to look all bluggy, all he had to do was to go in bavin’, wasn’t it?”
“But he wouldn’t let ’em go then,” continued Budge. “So the Lord made frogs hop out of all the rivers an’ mud-puddles everywhere, and they went into all the houses an’ folks couldn’t keep ’em out.”
“I just wis mamma an’ me’d been in Egypt, den,” said Toddie. “Den she couldn’t make me leave my hop-toads out of doors, if de Lord wanted ’em to stay in de house. I loves hop-toads. I fwallowed one de uvver day, an’ it went way down my ’tomach.”
“Didn’t it kick inside of you?” asked Budge, with natural interest.
“No-o!” said Toddie. “I bited him in two fyst. But he growed togvver ag’in, an’dzust hopped right out froo de top of my head.”
“Let’s see the hole he came out of?” said Budge, starting across the floor.
“It all growded up again right away,” said Toddie, in haste, “an’ you’s a bad boy to get out of your chair when Aunt Alice told you not to, and you’s got to tell annuvver story ’bout naughty folks to pay for it. Gwon!”
Budge returned to his chair, and continued:
“An’ old Pharaoh went down to Moses’s house an’ said, ‘Ask the Lord to make the frogs hop away, an’ you can have your old Izzyrelites—I don’t want ’em.’ So the Lord done it, an’ all the glad old Pharaoh was, was only ’cause he got rid of ’em; an’ he kept the Izzyrelites some more. Then the Lord thought he’d fix ’em sure, so he turned all the dirt into nasty bugs.”
“What did little boys do den, dat wanted dyte to make mud-pies of?” asked Toddie.
“Well, the bugs was only made out of dry dirt,” exclaimed Budge; “just dust like we kick up in the street, you know.”
“Oh,” said Toddie. “I wonder if any of dem bugs was ’tato-bugs?”
“I dunno, but some of ’em was the kind that mammas catch with fine combs after their little boys have been playin’ with dirty children. An’ Pharaoh’s smart men, that thought they could do everythin’, found they couldn’t make them bugs.”
“Why-y-y,” drawled Toddie,