The Mislaid Uncle — Edition Insights

Three people were together in a very pleasant little parlor, in a land where the sun shines nearly all the time. They were Doctor Mack, whose long, full name was Alexander MacDonald; mamma, who was Mrs. John Smith; and Josephine, who was Mrs. Smith’s little girl with a pretty big name of her own.

Doctor Mack called Mrs. Smith “Cousin Helen,” and was very good to her. Indeed, ever since papa John Smith had had to go away and leave his wife and child to house-keep by themselves the busy doctor-cousin had done many things for them, and mamma was accustomed to go to him for advice about all little business matters. It was because she needed his advice once more that she had summoned him to the cottage now; even though he was busier than ever, since he was making ready to leave San Diego that very day for the long voyage to the Philippine Islands.

Evidently the advice that had so promptly been given was not agreeable; for when Josephine looked up from the floor where she was dressing Rudanthy, mamma was crying softly, and Doctor Mack was saying in his gravest take-your-medicine-right-away kind of a voice that there was “nothing else to do.”

“Oh, my poor darling! She is so young, so innocent. I cannot, I cannot!” wailed the mother.

“She is the most self-reliant, independent young lady of her age that I ever knew,” returned the doctor.

Josephine realized that they were talking about her, but didn’t see why that should make her mother sad. It must be all the cousin-doctor’s fault. She had never liked him since he had come a few weeks before, and scratched her arm and made it sore. “Vaccinated” it, mamma had said, to keep her from being ill sometime. Which had been very puzzling to the little girl, because “sometime” might never come, while the arm-scratching had made her miserable for the present. She now asked, in fresh perplexity:

“Am I ‘poor,’ mamma?”

“At this moment I feel that you are very poor indeed, my baby,” answered the lady.

Josephine glanced about the familiar room, in which nothing seemed changed except her mother’s face. That had suddenly grown pale and sad, and even wrinkled, for there was a deep, deep crease between its brows.

“That’s funny. Where are my rags?” asked the child.

Mamma smiled; but the doctor laughed outright, and said:

“There is more than one way of being poor, little missy. Come and show me your arm.”

Josephine shivered as she obeyed. However, there was nothing to fear now, for the arm was well healed, and the gentleman patted it approvingly, adding:

“You are a good little girl, Josephine.”

“Yes, Doctor Mack, I try to be.”

“Yet you don’t love me, do you?”

“Not--not so--so very much,” answered the truthful child, painfully conscious of her own rudeness.

“Not so well as Rudanthy,” he persisted.

“Josephine,” reproved mamma; then caught her daughter in her arms, and began to lament over her. “My darling! my darling! How can I part from you?”

Before any reply could be made to this strange question, the door-bell rang, and there came in another of those blue-coated messenger boys, who had been coming at intervals all that day and yesterday. He brought a telegram which mamma opened with trembling fingers. When she had read it, she passed it to Doctor Mack, who also read it; after which he folded and returned it to the lady, saying:

“Well, Cousin Helen, you must make your decision at once. The steamer starts this afternoon. If you sail by her there’s no time to be lost. If you go, I will delay my own preparations to help you off.”

For one moment more Mrs. Smith stood silent, pressing her hands to her throbbing temples, and gazing at Josephine as if she could not take her eyes from the sweet, childish face. Then she turned toward the kind doctor and said, quite calmly:

“Yes, Cousin Aleck, I will go.”

He went away quickly, and mamma rang the bell for big Bridget, who came reluctantly, wiping her eyes on her apron. But her mistress was not crying now, and announced:

“Bridget, I am starting for Chili by this afternoon’s steamer. Josephine is going to Baltimore by the six o’clock overland. There isn’t a moment to waste. Please bring the empty trunks from the storeroom and pack them while I attend to other matters, though I will help you as I can. Put my clothes into the large trunk and Josephine’s into the small one. There, there, good soul, don’t begin to cry again. I need all my own will to get through this awful day; and please make haste.”

During the busy hours which followed both mamma and Bridget seemed to have forgotten the little girl, save, now and then, to answer her questions; and one of these was:

“What’s Chili, Bridget?”

“Sure, it’s a kind of pickle-sauce, darlin’.”

“Haven’t we got some of it in the cupboard?”

“Slathers, my colleen.”

“Chili is a country, my daughter,” corrected mamma, looking up from the letter she was writing so hurriedly that her pen went scratch, scratch.

“Hush, little one. Don’t be botherin’ the mistress the now. Here’s Rudanthy’s best clothes. Put ’em on, and have her ready for the start.”

“Is Rudanthy going a journey, too, Bridget?”

“‘Over the seas and far away’--or over the land; what differ?”

When the doll had been arrayed in its finery mamma had finished her writing, and, rising from her desk, called the child to her. Then she took her on her lap and said, very earnestly:

“Josephine, you are eight years old.”

“Yes, mamma. This very last birthday that ever was.”

“That is old enough to be brave and helpful.”

“Oh, quite, mamma. I didn’t cry when Doctor Mack vaccinated me, and I sewed a button on my apron all myself.”

“For a time I am obliged to go away from you, my--my precious!”

Josephine put up her hand and stroked her mother’s cheek, begging:

“Don’t cry, mamma, and please, please don’t go away.”

The lady’s answer was a question:

“Do you love papa, darling?”

“Why, mamma! How funny to ask! Course I do, dearly, dearly.”

“Poor papa is ill. Very ill, I fear. He is alone in a far, strange country. He needs me to take care of him. He has sent for me, and I am going to him. But I cannot take you. For many reasons--the climate, the uncertainty--I am going to send you East to your Uncle Joe’s; the uncle for whom you were named, your father’s twin brother. Do you understand me, dear?”

“Yes, mamma. You are going to papa, and I am going to Uncle Joe. Who is going with me there?”

“Nobody, darling. There is nobody who can go. We have no relatives here, except our doctor-cousin, and he is too busy. So we are going to send you by express. It is a safe way, though a lonely one, and-- Oh, my darling, my darling; how can I! how can I!”

Ever since papa had gone, so long ago, Josephine had had to comfort mamma. She did so now, smoothing the tear-wet cheek with her fat little hand, and chattering away about the things Bridget had put in her trunk.

“But she mustn’t pack Rudanthy. I can’t have her all smothered up. I will take Rudanthy in my arms. She is so little and so sweet.”

“So little and so sweet!” echoed the mother’s heart, sadly; and it was well for all that Doctor Mack returned just then. For he was so brisk and business-like, he had so many directions to give, he was so cheerful and even gay, that, despite her own forebodings, Mrs. Smith caught something of his spirit, and completed her preparations for departure calmly and promptly.

Toward nightfall it was all over: the parting that had been so bitter to the mother and so little understood by the child. Mamma was standing on the deck of the outward moving steamer, straining her eyes backward over the blue Pacific toward the pretty harbor of San Diego, almost believing she could still see a little scarlet-clad figure waving a cheerful farewell from the vanishing wharf. But Josephine, duly ticketed and labelled, was already curled up on the cushions of her section in the sleeper, and staring out of window at the sights which sped by.

“The same old ocean, but so big, so big! Mamma says it is peacock-blue, like the wadded kimono she bought at the Japanese store. Isn’t it queer that the world should fly past us like this! That’s what it means in the jogaphy about the earth turning round, I suppose. If it doesn’t stop pretty soon I shall get dreadful dizzy and, maybe, go to sleep. But how could I? I’m an express parcel now. Cousin-Doctor Mack said so, and dear mamma. Parcels don’t go to sleep ever, do they, Rudanthy?”

But Rudanthy herself, lying flat in her mistress’ lap, had closed her own waxen lids and made no answer. The only one she could have made, indeed, would have been “Papa,” or “Mamma,” and that wouldn’t have been a “truly” answer, anyway.

Besides, just then a big man, shining with brass buttons and a brass-banded cap, came along and demanded:

Josephine clutched Rudanthy and woke that indolent creature rather suddenly.

“Dolly, dolly, sit up! The shiny-blue man is hollering at the people dreadful loud. Maybe it’s wrong for dolls to go to sleep in these railway things.”

The shiny-blue man stopped right at Josephine’s seat, and demanded fiercely, or it sounded fierce to the little girl:

“Sissy, where’s your folks?”

“Please, I haven’t got any,” she answered politely.

“Who do you belong to, then?” asked he.

“I’m Mrs. John Smith’s little girl, Josephine,” she explained.

“Hmm. Well, where’s Mrs. John Smith?” he persisted.

“She’s gone away,” said she, wishing he, too, would go away.

“Indeed. Tell me where to find her. You’re small enough, but there should be somebody else in this section.”

“I guess you can’t find her. She’s sailing and sailing on a steamer to my papa, who’s sick and needs her more ’n I do.”

“Hello! this is odd!” said the conductor, and passed on. But not before he added the caution:

“You stay right exactly where you are, sissy, till I come back. I’ll find out your party and have you looked after.”

Josephine tried to obey to the very letter. She did not even lay aside the doll she had clasped to her breast, nor turn her head to look out of the window. The enchanting, fairy-like landscape might fly by and by her in its bewildering way; she dared gaze upon it no more.

After a while there were lights in the coach, and these made Josephine’s eyes blink faster and faster. They blinked so fast, in fact, that she never knew when they ceased doing so, or anything that went on about her, till she felt herself lifted in somebody’s arms, and raised her heavy lids, to see the shiny-blue man’s face close above her own, and to hear his voice saying:

“Poor little kid! Make her berth up with double blankets, Bob, and keep an eye on it through the night. My! Think of a baby like this making a three-thousand-mile journey alone. My own little ones--Pshaw! What made me remember them just now?”

Then Josephine felt a scratchy mustache upon her check, and a hard thing which might have been a brass button jam itself into her temple. Next she was put down into the softest little bed in the world, the wheels went to singing “Chug-chug-chug,” in the drowsiest sort of lullaby, and that was all she knew for a long time.

But something roused her, suddenly, and she stretched out her hand to clasp, yet failed to find, her own familiar bed-fellow. Missing this she sat up in her berth and shrieked aloud:

“Rudanthy! Ru-dan-thy! RUDANTHY!”

A HUMAN EXPRESS PARCEL.

“Hush, sissy! Don’t make such a noise. You’re disturbing a whole car full of people,” said somebody near her.

Josephine suppressed her cries, but could not stifle the mighty sob which shook her. She looked up into the face of the black porter, Bob, studied it attentively, found it not unkind, and regained her self-possession.

“My name is not sissy. It’s Josephine Smith. I want my dolly. I cannot go to sleep without her. Her name is Rudanthy. Fetch me Rudanthy, boy.”

Bob was the most familiar object she had yet seen. He might have come from the big hotel where she and mamma had taken their meals. Her mother’s cottage had been close by, and sometimes of a morning a waiter had brought their breakfast across to them. That waiter was a favorite, and in this dimness she fancied he had appeared before her.

“Do you live at the ‘Florence,’ boy?” she asked.

“No, missy, but my brother does,” he answered.

“Ah! Fetch me Rudanthy, please.”

After much rummaging, and some annoyance to a lady who now occupied the upper berth, the doll was found and restored. But by this time Josephine was wide awake and disposed to ask questions.

“What’s all the curtains hung in a row for, Bob?”

“To hide the berths, missy. I guess you’d better not talk now.”

“No, I won’t. What you doing now, Bob?” she continued.

“Making up the section across from yours, missy. Best go to sleep,” advised the man.

“Oh, I’m not a bit sleepy. Are you?” was her next demand.

“Umm,” came the unsatisfactory response.

“What you say? You mustn’t mumble. Mamma never allows me to mumble. I always speak outright,” was Josephine’s next comment.

“Reckon that’s true enough,” murmured the porter, under his breath.

“What, Bob? I didn’t hear,” from the little girl.

“No matter, I’ll tell you in the morning,” he whispered.

“I’d rather know now.”

No response coming to this, she went on:

“Bob! Please to mind me, boy. I--want--to--hear--now,” very distinctly and emphatically. Josephine had been accustomed to having her wishes attended to immediately. That was about all mamma and big Bridget seemed to live for.

The lady in the berth above leaned over the edge and said, in a shrill whisper:

“Little girl, keep still.”

Bob finished the opposite section, and a woman in a red kimono came from the dressing-room and slipped behind the curtain. Josephine knew a red kimono. It belonged to Mrs. Dutton, the minister’s wife, and Mrs. Dutton often stayed at mamma’s cottage. Could this be Mrs. Dutton?

The child was out of bed, across the narrow aisle, swaying with the motion of the car, pulling the curtains apart, and clutching wildly at a figure in the lower berth.

“Mrs. Dutton. Oh! Mrs. Dutton! Here’s Josephine.”

“Ugh! Ouch! Eh! What?”

“Oh! ’Xcuse me. I thought you were Mrs. Dutton.”

“Well, I’m not. Go away. Draw that curtain again. Go back to your folks. Your mother should know better than to let you roam about the sleeper at night.”

“My mother knows--everything!” said Josephine, loyally. “I’m dreadful sorry you’re not Mrs. Dutton, ’cause she’d have tooken off my coat and things. My coat is new. My mamma wouldn’t like me to sleep in it. But the buttons stick. I can’t undo it.”

“Go to your mother, child. I don’t wish to be annoyed.”

“I can’t, ’cause she’s over seas, big Bridget says, to that red-pickle country. I s’pose I’ll have to, then. Good-night. I hope you’ll rest well.”

The lady in the red kimono did not feel as if she would. She was always nervous in a sleeping-car, anyway; and what did the child mean by “over seas in the red-pickle country”? Was it possible she was travelling alone? Were there people in the world so foolish as to allow such a thing?

After a few moments of much thinking, the lady rose, carefully adjusted her kimono, and stepped to Josephine’s berth. The child lay holding the curtains apart, much to the disgust of the person overhead, and gazing at the lamp above. Her cheeks were wet, her free hand clutched Rudanthy, and the expression of her face was one that no woman could see and not pity.

“My dear little girl, don’t cry. I’ve come to take off your cloak. Please sit up a minute.”

“Oh, that’s nice! Thank you. I--I--if mamma”--

“I’ll try to do what mamma would. There. It’s unfastened. Such a pretty coat it is, too. Haven’t you a little gown of some sort to put on?”

“All my things are in the satchel. Big Bridget put them there. She told me--I forget what she did tell me. Bob tucked the satchel away.”

By this time the upper berth lady was again looking over its edge and airing her views on the subject:

“The idea! If I’d known I was going to be pushed off up here and that chit of a child put in below I’d have made a row.”

“I believe you,” said Red Kimono, calmly. “Yet I suppose this lower bed must have been taken and paid for in the little one’s name.”

“’Xcuse me, Mrs. Kimono. I’m not a little one. I’m quite, quite big. I’m Josephine.”

“And is there nobody on this train belonging to you, Miss Josie?” asked Mrs. Red Kimono.

“Josephine. My mamma doesn’t like nicknames. There’s nobody but the expressman. And everybody. Doctor Mack said to my mamma that everybody would take care of me. I heard him. It is the truth. Doctor Mack is a grown-up gentleman. Gentlemen never tell wrong stories. Do they?” asked the little girl.

“They ought not, surely. And we ought not to be talking now. It is in the middle of the night, and all the tired people want to sleep. Are you comfortable? Then curl down here with Rudanthy and shut your eyes. If you happen to wake again, and feel lonely, just come across to my berth and creep in with me. There’s room in it for two when one of the two is so small. Good-night. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Red Kimono ceased whispering, pressed a kiss on the round cheek, and disappeared. She was also travelling alone, but felt not half so lonely since she had comforted the little child, who was again asleep, but smiling this time, and who awoke only when a lady in a plain gray costume pulled the curtains apart and touched her lightly on the shoulder. This was “Red Kimono” in her day attire.

“Time to get up, Josephine. Breakfast is ready and your section-mate will want the place fixed up. May I take you to the dressing-room?”

“Our colleen’s one of them good-natured kind that wakes up wide to-once and laughin’,” had been big Bridget’s boast even when her charge was but an infant, nor had the little girl outgrown her very sensible babyish custom. She responded to the stranger’s greeting with a merry smile and “Good morning!” and was instantly ready for whatever was to come.

She was full of wonder over the cramped little apartment which all the women travellers used in succession as a lavatory, and it may be that this wonder made her submit without hindrance to the rather clumsy brushing of her curls which Red Kimono attempted.

“’Xcuse me, that isn’t the way mamma or big Bridget does. They put me in the bath, first off; then my hair, and then my clothes. Haven’t you got any little girls to your house, Red Kimono?” inquired the young traveller.

“No, dear, I haven’t even a house;” answered the lady, rather sadly. “But your own dear mamma would have to forego the bath on a railway sleeper, so let’s make haste and give the other people their rightful use of this place.”

By this time several women had collected in the narrow passage leading to the dressing-room, and were watching through the crack of its door till Josephine’s toilet should be completed and their own chance could come.

“What makes all them folks out there look so cross, dear Red Kimono?”

“Selfishness, dearie. And hunger. First come best fed, on a railway dining-car, I fancy. There. You look quite fresh and nice. Let us go at once.”