"Well, child, what is it? Want some gingerbread?"
"Oh no, thank you, dear," said the little voice--a very hoarse little voice it was, and the throat was all wrapped in flannel.
"I wanted to know if you liked my f'ower?"
"See?" Mrs. Bacon pointed to the glorified horseradish bottle.
"I like to call you 'dear.' Don't your little boy call you so?"
"Ally! Ally, child!" called the mother anxiously; "come back, darling; you'll get cold."
"I'll take him up," responded Mrs. Bacon; and taking with unwonted tenderness the three-years-old darling, she landed him safely upstairs.
"It's the croup," explained the mother. "He got cold yesterday, out for dandelions--his favorite flower, ma'am. Calls 'em preserved sunshine; saw me put up fruit last fall--there's where he got the idea; though, as to telling where he gets all his ideas, that beats me. The doctor says he's that kind of a child the croup is likely to go hard with. Scares me to death to hear him cough."
"Goose oil is good for croup," remarked Mrs. Bacon.
"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 advertisement, "No objection to children."
"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 assured 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."