Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy Part 4

He waited there a good while, and the longer he waited the prouder he became.

"I'll bet mine's the hardest place of all," he said to himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Bob heard a great deal of noise and shouting after the big girl came out from her corner and began finding the others, and he also heard a bang above his head, but he did not know that it was some one shutting the cellar-door. After that all was quiet.

Bob listened, but could not hear a step. He had not the slightest idea, of course, that they had stopped playing and were telling stories by the kitchen fire. The big girl had found them all so easily that Hide-and-Seek had been voted down.

Bob had his own ideas in regard to this silence. "I know," he whispered to himself, "they're all found, and they're after me, and keeping quiet to hear me breathe!"

And, to prevent their finding his hiding-place by the sound of his breathing, Bob held his breath until he was red in the face. He had heard often enough of that trick of keeping quiet and listening to breathing. You couldn't catch him that way!

When he was at last obliged to take a breath, you might have supposed he would have swallowed half the air in the cellar. He thought he had never tasted anything so good as that long draught of fresh air.

"Can't hold my breath all the time!" Bob thought. "If I could, maybe they'd never find me at all," which reflection was much nearer the truth than the little fellow imagined.

I don't know how long Bob had been sitting under the steps--it may have been five minutes, or it may have been a quarter of an hour, and he was beginning to feel a little cold--when he heard the cellar-door open, and some one put their foot upon the steps.

"There they are!" he thought, and he cuddled himself up in the smallest s.p.a.ce possible.

Some one was coming down, sure enough, but it was not the children, as Bob expected. It was his Aunt Alice and her cousin Tom Green. They had come down to get some cider and apples for the company, and had no thought of Bob. In fact, when Bob was missed it was supposed that he had got tired and had gone up-stairs, where old Aunt Hannah was putting some of the smaller children to bed.

So, of course, Alice and Tom Green did not try to find him, but Bob, who could not see them, thought it was certainly some of the children come down to look for him.

In this picture of the scene in the cellar, little Bob is behind those two barrels in the right-hand upper corner, but of course you can't see him. He knows how to hide too well for that.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

But when Tom and Alice spoke, Bob knew their voices and peeped out.

"Oh!" he thought, "it's only Aunt Alice and he. They've come down for cider and things. I've got to hide safe now, or they'll tell when they go up-stairs."

"I didn't know _all_ them barrels had apples in! I thought some were potatoes. I wish they would just go up-stairs again and leave that candle on the floor! I wonder if they will forget it! If they do, I'll just eat a whole hat-full of those big red apples, and some of the streakedy ones in the other barrel too; and then I'll put my mouth to the spigot of that cider-barrel, and turn it, and drink and drink and drink--and if there isn't enough left in that barrel, I'll go to another one and turn that. I never did have enough cider in all my life. I wish they'd hurry and go up.

"Kissin'! what's the good of kissin'! A cellar ain't no place for that. I expect they won't remember to forget the candle if they don't look out!

"Oh, pshaw! just look at 'em! They're a-going up again, and taking the candle along! The mean things!"

Poor little Bob!

There he sat in his corner, all alone again in the darkness and silence, for Tom and Alice had shut the cellar-door after them when they had gone up-stairs. He sat quietly for a minute or two, and then he said to himself:

"I b'lieve I'd just as lieve they'd find me as not."

And to help them a little in their search he began to kick very gently against one of the barrels.

Poor Bob! If you were to kick with all your force and even upset the barrel they would not hear you. And what is more, they are not even thinking of you, for the apples are now being distributed.

"I wonder," said the little fellow to himself, "if I could find that red-apple barrel in the dark. But then I couldn't tell the red ones from the streakedy ones. But either of 'em would do. I guess I won't try, though, for I might put my hand on a rat. They run about when it's dark. I hope they won't come in this corner. But there's nothin'

for 'em to eat in this corner but me, and they ain't lions. I wonder if they'll come down after more cider when that's all drunk up. If they do, I guess I'll come out and let Aunt Alice tell them all where I am. I don't like playin' this game when it's too long."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

And so he sat and waited and listened, and his eye-lids began to grow heavy and his head began to nod, and directly little Bob was fast asleep in the dark corner behind the barrels.

By ten o'clock the children were all put to bed, and soon after the old folks went up-stairs, leaving only Tom Green, Alice, and some of the young men and women down in the big sitting-room.

Bob's mother went up into the room where several of the children were sleeping, and after looking around, she said to the old colored nurse:

"Hannah, what have you done with Bob?"

"I didn't put him to bed, mum. I spect Miss Alice has took him to her bed. She knowed how crowded the chil'un all was, up here."

"But Alice has not gone to bed," said Bob's mother.

"Don't spect she has, mum," said Hannah. "But I reckon she put him in her bed till she come."

"I'll go and see," said Bob's mother.

She went, and she saw, but she didn't see Bob! And he wasn't in the next room, or in any bed in the house, or under any bed, or anywhere at all, as far as she could see; and so, pretty soon, there was a nice hubbub in that house!

Bob's mother and father, and his grandfather, and Hannah, and the young folks in the parlor, and nearly all the rest of the visitors, ransacked the house from top to bottom. Then they looked out of doors, and some of them went around the yard, where they could see very plainly, as it was bright moonlight. But though they searched and called, there was no Bob.

The house-doors being open, Snag the dog came in, and he joined in the search, you may be sure, although I do not know that he exactly understood what they were looking for.

Some one now opened the cellar-door, but it seemed preposterous to look down in the cellar for the little fellow.

But nothing was preposterous to Snag.

The moment the cellar-door was opened he shuffled down the steps as fast as he could go. He knew there was somebody down there.

And when those who followed him with a candle reached the cellar-floor, there was Snag, with his head between the barrels, wagging his tail as if he was trying to jerk it off, and whining with joy as he tried to stick his cold nose into the rosy face of little sleeping Bob.

It was Tom Green who carried Bob up-stairs, and very soon indeed, all the folks were gathered in the kitchen, and Bob sleepily told his story.

"But Tom and I were down in the cellar," said his Aunt Alice, "and we didn't see you."

"I guess you didn't," said Bob, rubbing his eyes. "I was a-hidin' and you was a-kissin'."

What a shout of laughter arose in the kitchen at this speech!

Everybody laughed so much that Bob got wide awake and wanted some apples and cake.

The little fellow certainly made a sensation that night; but it was afterwards noticed that he ceased to care much for the game of Hide-and-Seek. He played it too well, you see.