W. A. G.'s Tale

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I thought I'd never get tired of having a river at our back door, but one day I nearly hated the Delaware.

This is how it happened: Aunty Edith had a rowboat with a place in the stern where you could fix a big sketching-umbrella, and go sketching without getting too sunburnt; and when I was very good, 'specially good, I could go with her.

When I was just ordinary good, and Aunty Edith wasn't using the boat, Aunty May and I used to borrow it and play "Robinson Crusoe," and Aunty May made the funniest "Man Friday" you ever saw. She would pretend not to know any language but "glub-glub," and so I had to teach her the names of things and she would shake all her hair down and dance a war-dance, when I got her to understand. This was when we'd reached our Island. There was one across the river from us, and on a corner of it we used to picnic and play.

Mr. Turner's children all were girls, and they went to school, or had music-lessons, or something, so I only had them once in a while to play with, and then they always wanted to play fairy-tales, and make me the Prince. I hate Princes because they're always bothering about finding some Princess. I'd rather have been an Ogre or a Dwarf or a Bad Giant. They had some fun. But the girls always got their Indian Boy to be those. He was a big boy from the Carlisle Indian School, who came in the summer to help about the house and the grounds, and he was great fun. He showed me how to make bows and arrows, and taught me how to swim and things like that, and how to push off a canoe. But mostly Aunty May was the one I had to play with right on the spot, and just when you'd made up your mind that she was a grown-up and wouldn't do it, she'd begin some funny thing, and she was almost as good as a real boy.

Well, Mr. Turner had a man visiting him, a painting-man, and he came down to see Aunty Edith, and they put their heads on one side and screwed up their eyes, and looked at paintings, and had tea, and talked about art so long that Aunty May and I couldn't be quiet any longer, but just had to go down into the garden and play Wild Men of Borneo. That means taking a beanpole and yelling and dancing and trying to see who can vault and jump the farthest with the pole, and when you win you say, "Glug-Glug."

We were right in the middle of this, and Aunty May was a little red-faced, and her hair was kind of wild, when we heard somebody laugh, and there was the painter-man down by the river, laughing as hard as he could laugh; and Aunty Edith trying to look severe at Aunty May and not able to, on account of her looking so comical. She had a black smudge from the end of the beanpole, which had been in a bonfire, across her forehead. You see she had just jumped the farthest, and was hollering, "Glug-Glug."

Aunty May laughed pretty hard, too, and we all laughed then, and Aunty May went up to the house to turn into a clean-faced grown-up again, and Aunty Edith unlocked the boat and handed the big umbrella to the man and told him to use the boat as often and as long as he liked. He put his paint-box and sketch-block in, and got in himself, and I stood looking at him, wishing he'd ask me—when he did.

"Want to come, young man?" he said, and I said, "Yes, I'll take my book and my fish-line and be very quiet. May I, Aunty Edith?"

Aunty Edith said, kind of doubtful, "I'm not going, William. Maybe you'd better not."

Well, I guess I looked awful sorry at that, for the man said, his name was Mr. Garry Louden,—"Oh, let him come, Edith, I'll look after him"; and Aunty Edith said, "But you're such an absent-minded beggar, Garry, and this is Burt's most precious charge."

"Oh, he'll be all right," Mr. Garry said; "I'll bring him home right as a trivet. Hop in, son."

So I jumped in and waved good-bye to Aunty Edith, and we started up the river.

"What's an absent-minded beggar?" I asked Mr. Garry, and he said, "Oh, a fellow like me, who's always got his head full of pictures and things, and forgets what he's at."

"Then you don't really beg for anything, do you?" I said.

"Lord, no," he said, "except when I'm out with talkative young sports, and then I beg them to keep quiet."

So I took my fish-line and sat still as a mouse, while he looked up and down the river, and whistled to himself—when he got a good idea, I guess, for after he'd whistled some, he'd let the boat drift and make marks in his sketch-book. He was a nice man, but not used to little boys, I think, for he used awful big words, and didn't answer questions like Aunties and Uncles do.

By and by I told him about the Island, and he said, "Right you are, young Soc-ra-tees," and we landed there, and he kept saying, "Ripping," "Splendid," and things like that, and by and by he fished out some sandwiches and sweet chocolate from his pocket, and gave me some, and told me to stay there while he rowed around and explored farther up the side of the Island. I said, "All right," for with things to eat, and a nice brook, and a shady place, and a book, no boy need have any trouble finding things to do to keep himself amused. And I didn't.

I made a ship, and loaded it, and I made a fort on the other side of the brook, and when the ship came near the fort, the men from the fort came out and had a fight and sank her. Then when I got tired of that I read my book, and I read all I wanted to, and still Mr. Garry didn't come back. I could hear voices on the river, and once in a while a canoe shot past, but none of them was Mr. Garry, or Aunty Edith's rowboat.

By and by they stopped coming past and then I got up and went along the bank and looked for him. I could see, way across the river, a little white speck, shining through the trees, which I knew was our house.

My! didn't I want to be there! I didn't have any matches, of course. I'm not allowed to carry them. I couldn't make a fire, or anything, though it began to get dusky, and still Mr. Garry didn't come.

Then, suddenly, I remembered that he was an absent-minded beggar who forgot things, and maybe he'd forgot me. That made me feel awfully queer and lumpy inside me, and besides I was getting tired.

Nobody lived on that Island, except maybe some ground-hogs and squirrels and snakes, and—it wasn't any place for a boy who didn't have any food or tent or fire.

First thing I knew, when that struck me, I heard myself bawl—right out, "Oh, Aunty May—COME! Oh, Aunty May!" and then I was really frightened, for it sounded so loud, and so scared, and so babyish.

I kept still for a minute, and swallowed hard and then I yelled, "Hey! Hey!" out loud, without crying—hoping somebody would hear me. I did it a great many times, but nobody answered. Then I remembered that the boys were always landing here and hollering and shouting in fun, and nobody would pay any attention to it.

I tried to remember what Uncle Burt'd do if he was caught like this, and little like me. I thought maybe he'd take off his shirt and wave it, but then I remembered it'd be too dark to see. But anyway I guessed I'd better do something, so I took off my blouse, and put my sweater on, and tied my blouse to a tree, and it waved, quite fine, for there was a little breeze coming up. I tried rubbing sticks together for a light, but whoever made up that plan must have had stronger arms and hands than I had, for I rubbed till my arms ached so that I cried some, but I didn't get a single spark of light.

By this time it was very dark, and I was so hoarse with hollering, and so aching in my arms with rubbing sticks, and my legs hurt so with running up and down trying to see a boat or something, that I just dumped myself down on the grass and cried—and—I guess I—fell asleep. For the next thing I knew I heard some one calling my name, kind of loud, and kind of scared, "Billy, Billy, darling, are you there?" It was Aunty May in a canoe. I tried to call to her, but I was so hoarse and tired, I just made a kind of noise in my throat.

Then I was so afraid she'd paddle away that I let out the finest yell you ever heard, and Aunty May called out, "Hey, Robinson Crusoe. Here's your Man Friday"; and she slid the canoe up to the bank, and I fell in so stiff, and she hugged me so hard, that it's a wonder we didn't upset.

Usually I don't like hugging, but this time it was all right.

Then Aunty May told me that she had begun to get worried and so had Aunty Edith, knowing that Mr. Garry was an absent-minded beggar. Aunty Edith had gone up to Mr. Turner's to find if he was home, but Aunty May had insisted on going out in the canoe, though Mr. Taylor didn't like her to alone, and Mr. Taylor had gone down the towpath, toward the village, looking for us. Well, wasn't Aunty May mad when she found out how long I'd been alone and how badly I'd wanted her. She just paddled as fast as she could, and all the time pretended that we were wild savages who would catch Mr. Garry and put him on a desert island, just to see how he'd like it.

As we got nearer our house there were lights along the river-bank, and we called and a big boat came up to us, and in it was Mr. Garry, with a very white face, and Mr. Turner and Aunty Edith, and she was crying so hard that she couldn't see me at first.

When Aunty May said, "Don't cry, Edith, he's here," and handed me over, she gave me such a hard squeeze that I couldn't speak for a minute.

Mr. Garry all the time kept saying, "Say, old chap, I'm sorry, but I am such an absent-minded beggar." Aunty May said, "Yes, but you'll never have a chance to get absent-minded with this boy again."

He looked terribly sorry, and begged my pardon again, and I told him, "It was all right, only I didn't care to play Robinson Crusoe so truthfully—at night."

They hurried me up to the house and gave me warm things to eat and drink, and let me stay up longer than usual.

Aunty May wouldn't let Mr. Garry touch me or help her at all, and even Aunty Edith wouldn't hardly speak to him, till they found I was all right and not hurt any, except my blouse, which was left on the Island.

Mr. Garry gave me his own silver pen-knife, before he went away, so that I would "nevermore defenseless be," as he said, and we were quite friendly. But after he had gone, I heard Aunty May say that "Never would that absent-minded beggar take her boy away again"; and Aunty Edith said, "He's Burt's boy, not yours."

Aunty May didn't say anything, so I called out, "I'm your boy, too, Aunty May. Uncle Burt said so, and I'll never, never go out with an absent-minded beggar on the river again."

And I never have.