“So it’s only the mumps!” sighed Cricket, with much relief, after papa’s visit to their respective bedsides the next morning. “Papa, do you know I was dreadfully afraid that I had lumbago in my throat all day yesterday, when it was all swelly-feeling and hurt so to swallow. That would have killed me, wouldn’t it?”
Papa laughed hard.
“It might be a serious matter if you had it in your throat, but you are in no more danger of its getting there than you are of having toothache in your toes, my Lady Jane. Will you take a look at yourself this morning?” and papa held up a hand mirror.
All resemblance to Cricket had totally disappeared from the swollen-faced little maid on the bed, and the child stared in blank astonishment.
“Is that me?” she gasped.
“It is you, grammar and all,” laughed papa, turning to Eunice, who lay in her cot on the other side of the room. “Admire each other to your heart’s content, for you are just alike, my blooming little beauties.”
“It’s bad enough to be sick without being such frights,” said Eunice dolefully. “Cricket, you look so funny. I want to laugh at you all the time, and I can’t laugh for my face is so stiff that I can’t seem to manage it.”
“I’ve been wanting to laugh at you ever since we woke up, but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” said Cricket, politely. “I didn’t know I looked just as worse.”
“You look ‘just as worser,’ if anything, little Lindley Murray,” said papa, rising to go.
“But I don’t feel so very sick to-day, excepting my head. Couldn’t I get up by-and-by, papa? My legs feel so kicky.”
“Yes, you may get up, but don’t leave this room, remember. Here comes mamma now. Have you given Eliza directions about the children, dear?”
“Yes, she will keep them on the nursery floor. So these two can get up? That’s nice. Mumps may not be very comfortable, my chickens, but it is nothing dangerous, if you don’t take cold. Think of you two going to the party last night in that condition!”
“I guess it was the mumpfulest party there ever was,” said Cricket musingly. “I don’t believe there was a single unmumpful child there. Good-by papa; be sure and stop and see if Emily has the mumps—and if she hasn’t, I’ll send her some.”
“It might be a good plan to have an auction sale of them,” laughed papa, as he left the room.
The day was a long and weary one, and in spite of mamma’s company and of many amusements, Eunice and Cricket were glad to creep back into bed again early in the afternoon. Cricket was much the sicker of the two children, for she had taken a little cold from her unexpected plunge the morning before.
Just before dinner Donald came in, and went directly to his father’s office.
“Father, I feel confoundedly queer,” he said. “I wish you’d give me something. My throat is thick and I can scarcely swallow, and I’ve a splitting headache, and a toothache around my entire jaw. Please patch me up, for I have to go to a society meeting to-night.”
Doctor Ward lay back in his office-chair and looked up at his tall son with a quizzical smile.
“H’m! lumbago in your throat too, eh? Sit down here, old boy, and let me have a look at you.”
Donald sat down, while his father asked him a question or two. Then Doctor Ward burst out laughing. Donald looked injured.
“I presume it is nothing serious then,” he said, with so precisely the same air of dignity that the younger children often assumed when he teased them, that his father laughed harder.
“It’s serious or not, as you take it,” he said. “For my part, I think it’s decidedly serious. My dear fellow, you have the mumps.”
Donald jumped about two feet.
“Mumps!” he ejaculated. “That baby-disease at my age! Great Cæsar’s ghost! how the fellows will guy me!” He dropped down in a chair, with his feet straight out in front of him—a comical picture of despair.
“It was considerate of you to come home to have them,” said Doctor Ward comfortingly. “Eunice and Cricket are just down with them. We’ll quarantine you all together, and then you can amuse each other.”
“The kids, too?” groaned Donald. “See here! Did they give ’em to me? I’ll wallop them!”
Doctor Ward laughed harder.
“I don’t know where they came from, yet. I’ve had twenty cases to-day. Most of the children at the Drayton party are down. ‘A mumpful affair,’ as Cricket says. You may have picked them up on the street-cars. You could not have gotten them from our children.”
“Then I’ll stay home till the confounded things are over,” said Donald, rising. “I suppose I mustn’t go to dinner? Are the kidlets down? No? Well, I’ll go to my room and stay there. Since Eunice and Cricket are next door to it, that’s all right. Is mother with the kids? I’ll look in on them.”
So, just as mamma was cudgelling her distracted brain for more stories to tell her two forlorn children, a knock was heard at the door, and Donald’s curly head poked itself in.
“Hollo, Lady Greasewrister, and Madame Van Twister, her ladyship’s sister! How are your noble mumpships?”
“Go ’way, Don,” called Cricket dolefully. “We’re all mumpy in here. You’ll get them.”
But Donald boldly advanced. “Your humble servant, Madame Van Twister. Your gracious majesty was pleased to smile on me last night, and your native generosity shares even your ailments with me. Behold, thy servant also is mumpy.”
“You, too, Donald,” shrieked Eunice delightedly. “Oh, don’t make me laugh,” holding her hands to her throat. “Isn’t it funny, mamma? I didn’t know Freshmen ever had mumps and things.”
“Are you going to stay here with us, Don, really?” said Cricket interestedly.
“Yes, Miss Scricket, I am. Any objections? That is, in my cell next door. And as we are jointly quarantined from the rest of the family, I foresee we’ll have some high old times. Oh, how they’ll wish they had the mumps!”
“Poor boy!” said Mrs. Ward, sympathetically. “What a nuisance for you!”
For a week the mumps held high carnival at the Ward’s. Imagine, if you can, the effect of all those swollen faces in a group. If Eunice and Cricket looked funny, they were nothing to lordly Donald, whose face was extended to the funniest possible proportions, for he had the affliction only on one side.
“We’ve a regular fat man’s picnic,” said Cricket the day that Zaidie joined the up-stairs party. For by the usual law of contraries, Zaidie, who was always strong and well, succumbed after two days, and delicate little Helen, as well as Kenneth, entirely escaped.
After Zaidie was promoted to the third floor, the original occupants had all the delights of a bear-garden. It was fortunate for her long-suffering family that Zaidie was seldom ill, for she was the hardest possible child to take care of when she was. When she was well, she was sunny-tempered, like the rest. She was harder now than she would have been otherwise, for really the poor little thing was dismally homesick for her little twin, her other self, from whom she had scarcely ever been separated an hour in her life.
After two days of Zaidie’s confinement up-stairs, Eunice and Cricket were in such a state of exasperation and excitement over the poor little thing’s constant wailing and fretting for Helen, her refusing to be comforted or amused, that it was plain she must have a room to herself. Marjorie was detailed to look after her especially.
Marjorie, it fortunately chanced, had had the mumps when she was small. Moreover, Zaidie was passionately attached to this eldest sister of hers. When the little twins were born, Marjorie, aged nine, had eagerly begged that, since mamma had two babies now, she might have one of these to “call hers.” Mamma let her choose, and her selection instantly fell upon the big, black-eyed baby, which appealed to her childish heart much more than the tiny, violet-eyed one, that was so delicate that for a year it was scarcely out of its mother’s or its nurse’s arms.
Marjorie had always petted Zaidie after that, and made much of her and called her “her baby,” and the strong-willed little maid obeyed Marjorie better than any one but her father and mother. Marjorie delighted in her, because she was such a fine, noble-looking child, with her erect, firmly-knit little figure, her short, silky black hair, her great, dark eyes, and peachy complexion. She loved to take her to walk, for strangers would turn and look after her, or perhaps stop and ask whose child she was.
Helen, with her dainty beauty, her fluffy golden hair, and tiny figure, was not nearly so striking-looking, though, after all, her caressing, lovable little ways made her rather the family pet and baby, even more than Kenneth, with his sturdy boy-ways. It is very apt to be the case, however, in a large family, that each one of the older ones takes a younger one under his or her special charge. Thus, as Marjorie had adopted Zaidie, Eunice laid claim to Helen as her baby. In this same way, Cricket felt that Kenneth was her particular property.
Therefore, it came about that Marjorie was quite willing to undertake Zaidie’s amusement, but she soon discovered that a “mumpy” Zaidie tried her resources to the uttermost. Mamma was with her also, all she could be, but with the other girls needing her also, and with Helen down with an unusually bad attack of the croup and fretting for Zaidie quite as much as her little twin did for her, poor mamma said that she needed to be three people, in order to satisfy all the demands upon her. Donald, in spite of his own mumps, came bravely to the rescue, but Zaidie managed to keep them all busy.