CHAPTER II.

What Dago said to the mirror-monkey on Tuesday.

Ring-tail, what do you think of Miss Patricia?  I’m afraid of her.  The night we came home she met us in the hall, looking so tall and severe in her black gown, with those prim little bunches of gray curls on each side of her face, that I went under a chair.  Then I thought I must have misjudged her, for there were tears in her eyes when she kissed the children, and I heard her whisper as she turned away, “poor little motherless lambs!” Still I have seen so many people in the course of my travels that I rarely make a mistake in reading character.  As soon as she caught sight of me I knew that my first thought had been right.  Her thin Roman nose went up in the air, and her sharp eyes glared at me so savagely that I could think of nothing else but an old war eagle, with arrows in its talons.  You may have seen them on silver dollars.

“Tom Tremont,” she exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say that you have brought home a monkey!” I wish you could have heard the disgust in her voice.  “Of all the little pests in the world, they are certainly the worst!”

“Yes, Aunt Patricia,” he answered.  “They’ve been a great pleasure to the boys.”

“They!” she gasped.  “You don’t mean to say that there are two!” Then she saw Matches climbing up on Phil’s shoulder, and words failed her.

“Yes; their grandfather gave each of the boys one of his pets.  He said that they would be company for them on the way home, and would help divert their thoughts from their great loss.  They grieved so, poor little lads.”

That softened Miss Patricia again, and she said nothing more about our being pests.  But when she passed me she drew her skirts aside as if she could not bear to so much as brush against me, and from that hour it has been war to the knife between us.

Matches and I were given a little room up in the attic under the eaves, but at first we were rarely there during the day.  The boys took us with them wherever they went.  We had been there some time before we were left alone long enough for me to do any exploring.

It was almost dark when that first chance came.  I prowled around the attic awhile.  Then I climbed out of the window and swung down by the vines that covered that side of the house, to the shutters of the room below.  It happened to be Miss Patricia’s room.  As I perched on the top of the shutters, leaning over and craning my neck, I could see Miss Patricia sitting there in the dusk beside her open window.  Her hands were folded in her lap, and she was rocking gently back and forth in a high-backed rocking-chair, with her eyes closed.