Half a Dozen Boys/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
THE DISADVANTAGES OF SCIENCE.
“I am sorry, Miss Bess. I was sorry the minute I’d said so, but Ted’s bragging about his lessons always makes me mad.”
“He didn’t ‘brag,’ dear. I had asked him about school, and you were telling what your class did. You can’t blame him for standing up for his own class, can you?”
“No,” admitted Fred, “but he needn’t go to crowing over ours.”
“True. But you needn’t have resented it as quickly as you did. If you could have seen Teddy’s face, Fred, and how hard he tried to keep from answering you sharply, I don’t think you would have been so angry for a little inconsiderate word.”
“That’s just it!” said the boy forlornly. “Things seem so different now from what they used to, and I never know just how they are going. ’Tisn’t much use for me to try to be good, Miss Bess! I go along well enough for a little while, and then all of a sudden I spoil it all.” And Fred gave the carpet an impatient kick, as he sat on the floor at Bessie’s feet. Then, reaching up for her hand, he pulled it down and laid his cheek against it.
“You see,” he went on in the comically wise, old-mannish tone of explanation that his voice took on at times, “I believe I wish I’d had some brothers and sisters. Till I came here, I didn’t see so much of the boys, except at school, for mother didn’t like to have them round the house, and I guess, being the only one, I did get sort of cranky, and now I’m here, even, I don’t get over it.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then Fred continued confidentially,—
“Do you know. Miss Bessie, I don’t think my father and mother care for me just the same way Rob’s and Ted’s do for them.”
“Why, Fred!” said Bess, with a start of surprise. “What can have given you such an idea?”
“Well, lots of things; their going off and leaving me—but I’m awfully glad they did that, because it’s more fun to be here than at home, and they don’t write often, nor care to hear from me, only once a month. I’ve thought it all out, and it’s reasonable enough. You see, I can’t do things much now, or by and by when I am a man, and they want somebody that can. Father used to say that he hoped I would study to go into his office; and mother wanted me to take dancing lessons, so I could go to parties and things; but of course I can’t do that, and I s’pose they are sorry. I don’t wonder a bit. I don’t mean that they don’t care anything about me. Mother said to me one day not long before she went, ‘I love you just as well, Fred, as if you weren’t blind.’ That was the first I’d thought much about it, and then I began to think it over. I don’t suppose she does, quite; do you. Miss Bessie?” And he turned his face wistfully up to hers.
“Why, of course, Fred. If anything, my boy, we all love you more than ever, and it is just because we care for you so much that we want you to be a man we can feel proud of.”
“Do you honestly like me just as well?” persisted the boy. “I am sure mother doesn’t, for she doesn’t like to have me round very much, and she never pets me the way she used to do. I heard her tell father once that she used to wish I’d hurry and grow up, but now she never did, because she couldn’t see what they’d do with me. It’s horrid to feel you’re in the way, Miss Bessie!”
“I wish I could keep you always, Fred,” said Bess seriously, for she felt the pain in the child’s voice and face, as he spoke of his absent mother.
“I just wish you could! You are as good as a mother and sister and brother, all at once. But you said that night, ever so long ago, that I mustn’t wish I was dead, or out of the way, or anything, because that’s cowardly; but what can I do, when I know I’m going to be in everybody’s way?”
“But you aren’t, Fred. We all need you and want you with us. You help fill up this house now and make it brighter for us, so we couldn’t get along at all without you. And, wherever you go and whatever you do in the future, I want you always to remember that you have this one friend who is looking for the time when her Fred will be a good and true man, and she knows that it will come some day. And always, Fred, when things go wrong, come straight to me, and we will talk it all over together, and see if we can’t find the right of it. But don’t for a moment think that just because you can’t see, we care for you any less, instead of a great deal more than ever.”
“More than before I went to Boston?” asked Fred wonderingly. “And you aren’t ashamed to take me round with you?”
“Fred!” exclaimed Bess, shocked at the idea. “What could ever suggest such a thing to you?”
“Nothing, only I know mother was. She never took me anywhere with her, and I heard her say so one day, when she didn’t know I was there; and so I just thought I’d ask you about it. I’m glad you don’t mind. And I’ll tell Ted to-morrow night that I’m sorry. Good-night.”
As was her usual habit, Bess went up-stairs a little later to say good-night, and see that the boy needed nothing. When she came down-stairs again, tempted by the warm June moonlight, she went out to the piazza and dropped into a hammock. The tall trees on the lawn threw dark patches of shade on the grass, that came and went as the evening wind moved the leafy branches, or vanished in one dull, uniform shadow as the full moon went behind some fleecy bit of cloud. A distant whippoorwill, singing his sad night song, was the only sound that broke the stillness. Bess swung there with her hands clasped above her head, and one toe resting on the floor, enjoying the quiet beauty of the night.
“How lovely it all is!” she thought. “And Fred has none of it to enjoy. Poor child! And with such a mother!”
The next evening was Saturday, and with it came the boys, all in high glee, for their school had closed the day before, and the endless vista of the long vacation and its prospective good times was stretching before their eyes, and even the trial of a rainy Saturday was not as hard to bear, when thirteen weeks of continual Saturday lay in the near future.
“Phil and I had a fine scheme coming up here,” said Bert, as he took off his dripping rubber coat; “Phil had a bag of peanuts, and we just stuck the umbrella handle down my neck to hold it, so we could both eat, all the way.”
“Yes,” put in Phil, as he furtively swallowed the last of his feast. “But I didn’t get much of the umbrella, just the same, and my legs got awfully wet, for they hung out behind it, too. Any boys here yet?”
“Nobody but me,” said Fred, strolling into the hall. “There come Rob and Sam,” he added, as a step was heard.
“I don’t see how you tell so quick,” said Phil admiringly. “They all sound just alike to me; don’t they to you, Bert?”
“Yes, they do to me,” said Bert gently, as he passed his arm through Fred’s and started for the library; “but if I just had to listen all the time, I think I should know you all apart. But I don’t suppose I care to try; do I, Fred?”
Teddy was the last arrival.
“I stopped to get these,” he explained, tossing a huge bunch of many-colored roses into Bessie’s lap. “And here’s an extra smelly one for you, Fred.” And he put into his hand a great pink blossom whose stem was carefully divested of every thorn.
The subject of the evening was, by Rob’s choice, the shell-fish found along the shore; and the boys entered into it with an enthusiasm that moved Bess to suggest,—
“You boys seem so interested in animals and things of that kind, why don’t you start a museum of specimens?”
“What should we get to put in it?” asked Phil, as, with both hands behind him, he endeavored to crack a nut without being caught in the act. A click of the shell betrayed him, and he blushed furiously, as Bess raised her eyebrows at him, while Rob answered promptly,—
“Oh, bugs and butterflies.”
And Sam added,—
“Stones and shells.”
“Want any snakes?” asked Ted wickedly.
“Never!” replied Bess with fervor. “I don’t want anything alive. I only meant moths and butterflies, or perhaps pressed flowers and curious stones and shells, that would help us understand the world we live in, and teach us all to keep our eyes open for fresh discoveries.”
“What should we do with them?” inquired Ted, who had been meditatively sticking out his tongue, as he pondered the subject of the museum.
“Which, discoveries or specimens? We can decide when we get them,” answered Bess, laughing, while another crack from Phil’s direction showed that that youth’s hunger was not yet appeased.
“Let’s put in Phil,” suggested Rob. “He’s as fond of peanuts as a monkey at a circus, and if we caged him up, he’d make a splendid animal to start with.”
“We’ll put you in for a hyena,” retorted Phil good-naturedly. “You howled like one at rehearsal last night.”
“We might start a menagerie among ourselves,” said Bert. “Ted could be the elephant, and Sam a”—
“Bear?” inquired Sam. “No, thank you; I’d rather get up a collection of smaller game. Now vacation has come, we’d have plenty of time”—
“Speaking of vacation reminds me,” said Bert, interrupting him; “I made a mistake the other day about my history mark. Miss Witherspoon found another mistake afterwards, and that made it lower than I told you. I just thought I’d speak about it. Miss Bessie, as long as I’d told you too high before.”
Bess was about to say that Bert’s honor in telling her this was far better than the mere getting a high mark, when Teddy, the irrepressible, suddenly broke in,—
“I’ve a conundrum for you young lads. What’s Phil’s favorite slang?”
Phil looked up curiously, while the boys ventured various suggestions.
“Give it up?” queried Ted. “Why, how stupid you all are! Cracky, of course!” And there was a shout at Phil’s expense.
The talk ran on, and no further mention of the collection was made. Bess thought nothing more about it, until the next Monday afternoon, when she sat sewing on the piazza, hurrying to finish some bit of work. Suddenly Fred, who was swinging idly in the hammock, announced,—
“Here come the boys.”
“I don’t hear them,” said Bess, after listening for a moment.
“I do, then. They are coming, but not very near. You wait and see.”
“I never saw such ears, Fred!” said Bess, laughing. “They are so long, I shall call you my rabbit.”
Fred rubbed his ears reflectively.
“Yes, they are good size, but I have to see and hear with them both. But what do you think about the boys now?” he added, as Rob, Ted, Sam, and Phil, a noisy quartette, turned in at the gate.
“I think your ears were better than my eyes,” answered Bess, as she rose to receive her guests.
“Oh, cousin Bess, we’ve got lots of specimens!” shouted Rob from afar, and Ted added,—
“A good start for our museum, sure enough!” while the boys settled themselves on the piazza rail, and pulled various boxes from their pockets.
“Here are five moth-millers and a hornbug,” announced Sam, producing some rather dilapidated specimens, for the hornbug had lost three legs, and of the moths, one was minus both antennæ, and another had a great slit in one wing.
“I’ve got eight moths,” said Phil. “I picked them up under the electric light. They’re real good ones, only they are singed a little. I s’pose that’s what killed them. And here,” diving into his trousers pocket, “is a bumblebee my father killed yesterday. Oh, dear! His head’s come off. Can’t we stick it on?”
Ted had also brought his share of mangled veterans, and Rob showed three or four moths, quite well prepared, and a pair of golden yellow June bugs.
It was with some difficulty that Bessie preserved her gravity as she saw the ruins spread out before her. But, always mindful that much of her influence over her boys lay in her hearty sympathy in all their hobbies, she looked them over with an air of deep interest, and then sent Rob into the library for a certain book that not only had fine pictures of all sorts and conditions of insects, but also gave full instructions for their capture and preservation.
“If you are going to do anything about it, my boys,” said she, “you would much better start in the right way at the very first, so we can have a really good collection; and then we can try to have a full one, of all the insects in the region. If you must collect, this is better than the barbarous, cruel habit so many boys have of stealing birds’ eggs, too often nest and all. The eggs themselves won’t teach you anything about the birds; while from these, you can get some idea of the life and habits of these little creatures.”
“Just look at this one!” exclaimed Ted, pouncing on one of the two perfect specimens, a pale green lunar moth. “Oh, dear! There goes one of his wings. What are these fellows so brittle for?”
“That is another thing. You mustn’t handle these specimens or they will break. Now, let us see what we can find out about them.”
And the next hour was spent in a pleasant talk about the form and habits of these tiny creatures, a talk that the boys never forgot, for it taught them, for the first time, the great plan of creation, that develops in each living creature the bodily form which will help it most to live its little life, an explanation so clearly and vividly given that even Fred felt no need of the pictures to understand the mechanism of their small bodies.
The collecting fever spread, and the boys were often seen skipping about the fields, or plunging headlong over fences, net in hand, in pursuit of some gaudy butterfly. Bessie tried faithfully to make the boys feel that the main object was not the catching and killing the insects; but that this was only to help them to a fuller understanding of the nature and varieties of their prey. Their whole energy was directed in the line of insects, and boxes of specimens so rapidly collected, that the prospect was that the whole Carter family would soon have to move out of the house, to make room for the army of moths and beetles, cocoons and butterflies, that speedily accumulated. Even long-suffering Mrs. Carter protested when, one day, on the piazza, she chanced to knock down a box containing a huge green worm that Rob had carefully provided with food and air-holes, and shut up, in the hope that he would spin himself into a chrysalis; for, as the cover of the box fell off, out dropped, not only the captive worm, now dead, but also a multitude of little yellow wrigglers, that quickly squirmed away.
“The worst of it all is,” said Bess ruefully, when her mother brought up the subject, “people seem to think that I am having this done for my own especial pleasure and profit. I don’t see what they think I want of them, unless I collect them, as the Chinese do the bones of their ancestors and friends, to bury them in some particular, consecrated spot. I was writing the other day, in a great hurry to finish my letter to Mr. Allen in time for the steamer, when Bridget came up to my room, and said some little girls wanted to see me. I went down to the back door, and there stood the five Tracy children, in a row. As soon as I appeared, the oldest, who acted as spokeswoman, came forward and solemnly presented me with three tattered butterflies. I had such hard work to be just grateful enough to satisfy them, and yet not encourage them to bring me any more. And the last time Mrs. Walsh called, that day you were out, she produced a small box that held a common little white moth, and told me Bert said that I wanted all those I could get, so she had brought me that one. Well, laddie, what now?” she added, as Fred came into Mrs. Carter’s room, where they were sitting.
“There’s a boy down-stairs,” he replied, “that wants to see you. I don’t know who he is. He saw me on the piazza, and went round there to me.”
“I wonder who he is,” said Bess, as she laid down her work and went out of the room.
She soon came up again, looking both amused and disgusted.
“Another!” she exclaimed, as she took up her sewing.
“What is it now?” asked her mother, laughing.
“It was that little red-haired Irish boy that lives in behind the church. I don’t know what his name is, but alas! he knows me. He came to bring me some twigs, apple, I should think, and on each one was a horrid great worm”—and Bess shivered at the recollection—“covered with red and yellow bristles. I told 
“He came to bring me some twigs.”—Page 216,