"Did you ever try it?" asked the new neighbor, innocently.
"Me? No use for it. Got a bottle, though. Have it if you like."
Alas! the doctor"s prophecy was true. The fatal disease developed that very night.
Little boots are still and starry eyes shine afar off now. As he lay in his beautiful last sleep, a flower amid the white flowers, a woman"s brown hand slipped a few dandelions tenderly--oh, so tenderly!--into the dainty cold fingers.
"That is right, Mrs. Bacon, dear," said the poor mother. ""Preserved sunshine!" That"s what he is to us."
The new tenants have moved into the country, and No. 21, upper tenement, is again to let.
Mrs. Bacon hopes the landlord will add to his advertis.e.m.e.nt, "No objection to children."
BANFORD"S BURGLAR-ALARM.
"Another Daring Burglary!" read Mrs. Banford, as she picked up the morning: paper. "Lucullus," she said, turning to her husband, "this is the fourth outrage of the kind in this town within a week, and if you don"t procure a burglar-alarm, or adopt some other means of security, I shall not remain in this house another night. Some morning we"ll get up and find ourselves murdered and the house robbed if we have to depend on the police for protection."
Banford a.s.sured his wife that he would have the matter attended to at once.
Then he left the house and didn"t return until evening. When Mrs. B. asked him if he had given a second thought to the subject which she had broached in the morning, he drew a newspaper from his pocket, and said: "See here, Mirandy! There"s no use o" foolin" away money on one o" those new-fangled burglar-alarms. Economy is wealth. Here"s a capital idea suggested in this paper--cheap, simple and effective."
And then he read the suggestion about hanging a tin pan on the chamber-door.
"I tell you, Mirandy! the man who conceived that brilliant notion is a heaven-born genius--a boon to mankind; and his name should go ringing down the corridors of time with those of such brilliant intellect as Watt, Morse, Edison, and other successful scientific investigators. You see, the least jar of the door will dislodge the pan, and the noise occasioned thereby will not only awaken the occupants of the room, but will also scare the burglar half to death, and perhaps the pan will strike him on the head and fracture his skull. It is a glorious scheme, and the fact that it was not utilized years ago is the most remarkable thing about it."
"Well," a.s.sented Mrs. B. in less sanguine tones, "it may be better than nothing, and it won"t cost anything; and as Susan has gone out to spend the night with her sick sister, and we"ll be all alone, I"ll hunt up the pans now."
Accordingly, each inside door was crowned with a tin pan and left slightly ajar. Banford also thoughtfully placed a six-shooter under his pillow and stood a base-ball bat within easy reach.
"Now, Mirandy," he courageously observed, as they were preparing to retire, "if you are awakened by a noise during the night, don"t scream and jump out of bed. Just lie still, or some o" the bullets I fire at the burglar may go through you and kill you. Let me wrestle with the intruder, and I"ll soon make him regret that he had not postponed being born for a few centuries!"
Then they turned down the gas with a feeling of increased security, and were soon asleep. About half-past midnight they were awakened by a noise that sounded like a sharp clap of thunder, followed by a wail that almost chilled the marrow in their bones.
"Goodness!" screamed Mrs. B., in a voice swollen with terror, as she dived under the bed-clothes. "We"ll be murdered in a minute. Shoot him, Lucullus!
Quick--shoot him!"
Banford, after considerable nervous fumbling under the pillow, grasped his revolver with an unsteady hand and discharged its six barrels in rapid succession, but not with very gratifying results. One bullet shattered the mirror in the bureau; another plowed a furrow along the ceiling; another splintered the bed-post; a fourth perforated a portrait of his wife"s mother; and the other two left their imprint on the walls.
"D-d-don"t be fuf-fuf-frightened, M-mirandy," said Banford, encouragingly, his articulation sounding as if it had "collided" with an Arctic wave: "I gug-guess I"ve kik-kik-killed him. He"ll not kik-kik-come here--"
At this juncture there was a noise in an adjoining room, as if a two-ton meteorite had crashed through a boiler-foundry, and Mrs. B. uttered a series of ear-piercing shrieks that would have scared the life out of any burglar.
"M-mirandy," stammered the frightened and demoralized Banford, grasping the base-ball bat and swinging it around with such reckless promiscuousness that he struck his terror-stricken wife on the head, "Mum-mirandy, the house is fuf-full of midnight mum-marauders, and we"ll be bub-bub-butchered in cold bub-bub-blood! Save yourself and don"t mum-mind about me!" And leaping out of bed, he sprang through a window on to the roof of a back building, and accidentally rolled off into the yard, fifteen feet below, just as another burglar-alarm went off with a clamor almost as deafening and harrowing as an amateur orchestra. Mrs. B., thinking she had been hit by the burglar, emitted a fresh outburst of shrieks, while her husband lay groaning in the back yard, with a sprained ankle and a frightful gash in his head.
A policeman had now been awakened by the uproar, and boldly mounting the front stoop, he pulled the door-bell out by the roots without evoking a response. Then he hesitated.
"If a foul murder has been committed," he mused, "the a.s.sa.s.sin has already made good his escape."
This thought gave him courage, and he forced an entrance. In the entry he collided with a hat-rack, which he mistook for the outlaw, and almost demolished it with several whacks of his club. Then he made a careful reconnaissance, and dislodged one of the burglar-alarms.
"Spare my life," he yelled to his imaginary a.s.sailant, "and I"ll let you escape!"
He thought he had been stabbed with a frying-pan. He rushed out of the house and secured the a.s.sistance of four of his fellow-officers, and a search of the building was resumed. Mrs. Banford was found in bed unconscious. Her husband was found in the yard in nearly a similar condition; and the burglar was found under the sofa, shivering with fear, and with his tail clasped tightly between his legs.
The cause of the panic was soon explained. Mrs. Banford had overlooked the presence of her pet dog in the house, and this innocent animal, in running from one room to another, had dislodged the "cheap and effective"
burglar-alarms.