Part 92

"No, dear, I think not," said Mrs. Fisher. "Run along, dear."

"I am so glad she isn't sick," said Phronsie, as she went slowly off. Yet she carried a troubled face.

"I ought to go and see how Sinbad is," she decided, as she went downstairs. This visit was an everyday performance, to be carefully gone through with. So she passed out of the big side doorway, to the veranda.

"There is Michael now," she cried joyfully, espying that individual raking up the west lawn. So skipping off, she flew over to him. This caught the attention of little Dick from the nursery window.

"Hurry up there!" he cried crossly to Battles, who was having a hard time anyway getting him into a fresh sailor suit.

"Oh, Dicky--Dicky!" called mamma softly from her room.

"I can't help it, mamma; Battles is slow and poky," he fumed.

"Oh, no, dear," said his mother; "Battles always gets you ready very swiftly, as well as nicely."

Battles, a comfortable person, turned her round face with a smile toward the door. "And if you was more like your mamma, Master Dick, you'd be through with dressing, and make everything more pleasant to yourself and to every one else."

"Well, I'm not in the least like mamma, Battles; I can't be."

"No, indeed, you ain't. But you can try," said Battles encouragingly.

"Why, Battles Whitney!" exclaimed Dick, whirling around on her. In astonishment, or any excitement, Dicky invariably gave her the whole name that he felt she ought to possess; "Mrs. Mara Battles" not being at all within his comprehension. "What an awful story!"

"Dicky--Dicky!" reproved Mrs. Whitney.

"Well, I can't help it, mamma." Dick now escaped from Battles' hands altogether, and fled into the other room, the comfortable person following. "She said"--plunging up to her chair in great excitement--"that I could be like you."

"I said you could try to be," corrected Battles, smoothing down her apron.

"And she knows I can't ever be, in all this world," declared Dick, shaking his short curls in decision, and glancing back to see the effect, "for you're a woman, and I'm always going to be a man. Why, see how big I am now!" He squared off, and strutted up and down the little boudoir.

"And you'd be bigger if you'd let me fix your blouse and button it up," declared Battles, laughing, and bearing down on him to fasten the band and tuck in the vest. "And if you were more like your mother in disposition--that's what I mean--'twould be a sight comfortabler for you and every one else. Now, says I, your hair's got to be brushed." And she led him back into the nursery, laughing all the way.

"What makes you shake so when you laugh, Battles?" asked Dick suddenly, and ignoring all references to his disposition.

"Can't help it," said Battles, beginning work on the curls; "that's because there's so much of me, I suppose," and she laughed more than ever.

"There's so very much of you, Battles," observed Dick with a critical look all over her rotund figure. "What makes it?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Battles. "Stand still, Dicky, and I'll be through all the sooner. Some folks is big and round, and some folks is little and scrawny."

"What's scrawny?" asked Dick, who always got as many alleviations by conversation as possible out of the detested hair-brushing.

"Why, thin and lean."

"Oh, well, go on, Battles."

"And I'm one of the big and round ones," said Battles, seeing no occasion in that statement to abate her cheerfulness. So she laughed again.

"I like you big and round, Battles," cried little Dick affectionately, and whirling about so suddenly as to endanger his eye with the comb doing good execution. And he essayed to put his arms around her waist, which he was always hoping to be able to accomplish.

"That's good," said Battles, laughing, well pleased. "But you mustn't jump around so. There now, in a minute you shall be off." And she took up the brush.

"I must," declared Dick, remembering his sight of Phronsie running across the lawn; "do hurry, Battles," he pleaded, which so won her heart that she abridged part of the brushing, and let him scamper off.