The Happy Adventurers — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Happy Adventurers
John Stuart Mill · en
Mollie pondered a little, and then sighed again: "It will be rather
hard. He doesn't want anything frightfully except football, and there
isn't any just now. Perhaps we could make him want to come; couldn't
Hugh invent some way? It was only one chance in a hundred--in a
thousand, perhaps, that made me talk to your photograph. Let us ask
Hugh."
"We can ask," Prudence agreed, "but his head is going to be packed full
of telephone now, and he won't think or speak of anything else for
days. That's the way he is; we get rather tired of it sometimes,
especially when we have to help. Grizzel collected four hundred corks
for his raft. She grubbed in the ashpit, and among the empty
beer-bottles--" Prudence sighed in her turn.
The two girls met Hugh at the white gate on his return from school, and
Mollie seized the first opportunity to make her request.
"I don't know," Hugh answered thoughtfully; "there ought to be a way. I
believe there is a way _somewhere_ to do everything, if you can only
find it. It's mostly a question of looking long enough. And a thing is
always in the last place you look for it--naturally. I am going to make
a telephone; if I could make one long enough--" he paused.
They were strolling up the wide, cypress-bordered path as they talked,
and Mollie's wandering gaze fell upon a low mound at the foot of one of
the cypress trees.
"What's that?" she asked, coming to a standstill. "It looks like a
cat's grave."
It was a grave sure enough, and crowned with a bunch of pansies. A
small headstone had been made from the lid of an old soapbox, on which
was printed the following inscription:
HERE LITH
THE
LONGEST
DANDY LION CHANE
IN
THE WURLD
"It's Grizzel," said Prudence; "why on earth has she gone and buried
her beautiful chain?"
Grizzel joined the group and answered for herself:
"Mollie said the poor flowers would be forgotten. I should hate to be
forgotten, so I lifted them all up and buried them. I bought a yard of
lovely yellow muslin when I was out yesterday and made a beautiful
shroud. That cypress tree is rather big for such a little grave, but
it's the littlest in the garden."
No one smiled. "It was a wonderful chain," Mollie said, remembering her
view from the Look-out, "I wish I could make something that would reach
from here to my brother Dick. I wish we had wireless. I wonder if
'willing' would be any good. Have you ever played willing? We join
hands and will with all our might that Dick would come here."
"It sounds easy," said Hugh, always ready for a new experiment, "much
easier than making a telephone; we might as well try."
So they joined hands and wished. As they loosened hands again a shrill
cry above their heads made them all look up--it was a parrot flying low
across the garden, its brilliant plumage shining in the evening
sunlight like jewels. "It's my parrot!" Mollie exclaimed, "it met me by
the gate yesterday."