Abby Diaz - The William Henry Letters

"Why, yes," said her mother, "no use keeping boots for a growing boy."

This and other remarks brought us back to William Henry again, and grandmother seemed glad of it. She liked to keep talking about her boy.

"I shall feel very anxious," she said. "I hope he will write soon as he gets there. I told him he'd better write every day, so I could be sure just how he was. For if well one day, he mightn't be the next."

"O grandmother, that's too bad!" said Lucy Maria. "'T is cruel to ask a boy to write every day!"

"I wouldn't worry, mother," said Aunt Phebe. "Billy's always been a well child."

"These strong constitutions," said grandmother, "when they do take anything, 't is apt to go hard with 'em."

"He's taken pretty much everything that can be given to him already," said Aunt Phebe.

"I suppose they'll put clothes enough on his bed," said grandmother. "I can't bear to think of his sleeping cold nights."

"Perhaps they have blankets in that part of the country," said Uncle Jacob.

"But people are not always thoughtful about it," said grandmother. "I really hope he'll take care of himself, and not be climbing up everywhere. Houses and trees were bad enough; but now they have gymnastic poles and everything else, to tempt boys off the ground. O dear! when we think of everything that might happen to boys, 't is a wonder one of them ever lives to grow up. Isn't there a pond near by?"

"O yes," said Lucy Maria, "Crooked Pond. That's what gives the name to the school, – Crooked Pond School."

"I hope he won't be whipped," said his little sister.

"Whipped!" cried Aunt Phebe, "I should like to see anybody whipping our Billy!"

"O mother, I shouldn't," said Matilda.

"'T isn't an impossible thing," said grandmother. "He's quick. Billy's good-hearted, but he's quick. He might speak up. I gave him a charge how to behave. But then, what's a boy's memory? I don't suppose he'll remember one half the things I told him. I meant to have charged him over again, the last thing, not to stay out in the rain and get wet, where there's nobody to see to his clothes being dried."

"Well," said Uncle Jacob, "if a boy doesn't know enough to go into the house when it rains, he better come home?"

"What I hope is," said Aunt Phebe, "that he'll keep himself looking decent."

"If he does," said Lucy Maria, "then 'twill be the first time. The poor child never seemed to have much luck about keeping spruced up. If anybody here ever saw William Henry with no buttons off and both shoes tied, and no rip anywhere, let 'em raise their hands!"

Everybody laughed. I thought grandmother's eye wandered round the circle, as if half taking it all in earnest, and half hoping some hand would go up. But no hand went up.

"Billy always was hard on his clothes," she said, with a sigh. "If he only keeps well I won't say a word; but there's always danger of boys eating unwholesome things, where there's nobody to deny them."

"Billy's stomach's his own, and he must learn to have the care of it," said Mr. Carver.

Mr. Carver seemed a very quiet, thoughtful man, and of quite a different turn from his brother.

I suggested that boarding-house diet was apt to be plain; and then told grandmother about a nephew of mine, a nice boy, who was rather older than her grandson, who was named after me, and of whom I thought everything. I told her he had been away at school a year, and that he enjoyed himself, and went ahead in his studies, and never had a sick day, and came home with better manners than he had when he went away. As this pleased her, I said everything I could think of about my nephew, including some anecdotes of little Silas, when he was quite small; and she told a few about William Henry, the others helping her out, now and then, with some missing items.

Uncle Jacob said he shouldn't dare to say how many times she'd been frightened almost to death about Billy. Many and many a time she was sure he was lost, or drowned, or run over, or carried off, and would never come back alive; but he always managed to come out straight at last. Uncle Jacob said that if all the worry that was worried in this world were piled up together, 't would make a mountain; but if all of it that needn't be worried were knocked off, what was left wouldn't be bigger than a huckleberry hill.

Mr. Carver said there was one thing which made him entirely willing to trust William Henry away, and that was, he had always been a boy of principle. "I have watched him pretty closely," said Mr. Carver, "and have noticed that he has a kind of pride about him that will not permit him to lie, or equivocate in any way.

"That's true!" cried Aunt Phebe. "True enough! Billy don't always look fit to be seen, but he isn't deceitful. I'll say that for him!"

"When he went to our school," said Matilda, "and was in the class below me, and there was a fuss among the boys, and all of 'em told it a different way, the teacher used to say she would ask William Henry, and then she could tell just how it happened."

"He couldn't have a better name than that," said Mr. Carver.

Grandmother wiped her eyes, she seemed so gratified that her boy's good qualities were remembered at last.

I am almost certain that an editor should not be so long in telling his story. But I should like to say a little more about that first night, – just a very little more.

Grandmother wouldn't hear of my going to a hotel. Anybody that had been a soldier, and was doing good, should never go from her house to find a night's lodging. And she might as well have said, particularly anybody that had a little Silas away at school, for I saw she felt it.

It required very little urging to make me stay; for in all my travels I had never met with a pleasanter set of people. My choice was offered me, whether to lodge in the front chamber, or in the little back chamber where Billy slept. Of course I chose the last; for people's best, front, spare chambers never suit me very well.

Billy's room was a snug little room, low in the walls, and papered with flowery paper. There were two windows, the curtains to which were made of paper like that on the walls. You had to roll them up with your hands, and tie them with a string that went over the top. The room was over the sink-room, and in going into it we stepped one step down. There was no carpet on the floor, excepting a strip by the bedside and a mat before the table. Grandmother said the table Billy and she made together, so the legs didn't stand quite true. It was covered with calico, and more calico was puckered on round the edge and came down to the floor. That was done, she said, to make a place for his boots and shoes. She thought 't was well for a boy to have a place for his things, even if he did always leave them somewhere else. There was nothing under the table but one rubber boot, with the rubber mostly cut off, and some pieces of new pine, easy to whittle, that Billy had picked up and stowed away there. A narrow looking-glass hung over the table. It had a queer picture at the top, of two Japanese figures. The glass had a little crack in one corner, – cracked by his ball bouncing up when he was trying it. Some green tissue-paper hung around this fracture with a very innocent, ornamental air. Not far from the glass I observed a rusty jack-knife stuck in the wall, close to the window-frame; and on its handle was hanging a string of birds'-eggs. In stepping up to examine these I stumbled against an old hair-covered trunk, quite a large one. The cover seemed a little askew, and not inclined to shut. This trunk was the color of a red cow, and for aught I know was covered with the skin of a red cow. In the middle of the cover the letters W. C. were printed in brass nails, which led me to guess that the trunk had belonged to William Henry's father. Grandmother raised the cover, to see what kept it from shutting, and found 't was a great scraggly piece of sassafras (saxifax) root, which lay on top.