The Story of Dago by Annie Fellows Johnston

As soon as Elsie was put back to bed, Doctor Tremont came into the room where I was still trying to comfort Phil, for I had skipped back to him when they started up the stairs. Stirring the fire in the grate until it blazed brightly, he turned to look at Phil. There was a long silence; then he said, "Phil, come here, my boy. Come and sit on my knee by the fire. I want to talk to you awhile."

His voice was so kind and gentle that it seemed to me nobody could have been afraid of him then, but Phil climbed out of bed very slowly, as if he did not want to obey. Wrapping him in a warm, fleecy blanket, the doctor drew him over to a big rocking-chair in front of the fire, and sat down with him on his knee. I crawled back to my cushion on the hearth.

For a little while there was nothing said. The old chair crooned a comforting lullaby of _creakity-creak_, _creakity-creak_, as the doctor rocked back and forth, with the boy's curly head on his shoulder. At last he said: "You think that I am unkind, Phil, because I want to send your pet away, and cruel because I punished you for speaking rudely to your Aunt Patricia. Now, I am going to tell you her story, and maybe you will understand her better. The truth is, you do not understand your Aunt Patricia, or why many of the little things you do should annoy her. I want you to put yourself in her place as near as you can, and see how differently you will look at things from her standpoint.

"She was the only child in a houseful of grown people, and growing up among prim elderly persons made her orderly and exact in everything she did. When she was a very little girl she was sent to a strict, old-fashioned school every morning, where she learned to work samplers as well as to read and spell. They used to tell that, at the age of seven, she came home one day with two prizes which she had taken. One was for scholarship, and one was for neatness in her needlework. When she brought them home, her grandmother (that is your great-great-grandmother, you know) praised her for the first; but her grandfather (the one whose portrait Stuart shot) said: 'Nay, it is for the neatness that the little lass should be most commended, for it is ever a pleasing virtue in a woman.' Then he gave her a gold dollar, to encourage her in always being neat and exact. She was so proud of it that nothing could have persuaded her to spend it. She had a hole bored in it so that she could hang it on a ribbon around her neck. For a long, long time she wore it that way. She has often said to me that the sight of it was a daily reminder of what her grandfather wanted her to be, and that it helped her to form those habits of orderliness and neatness in which her family took such pride. Long after she stopped wearing the little coin, the sight of it used to recall the old proverbs that she heard so often, such as "A stitch in time saves nine," Patricia,' or, 'Remember, my dear, "have a place for everything, and everything in its place." It used to remind her of the praise they gave her, too. Her grandfather's 'Well done, my good little lass,' was a reward that made her happy for hours.

"Her room was always in perfect order. Even her toys were never left scattered about the house. She has her old doll packed away now, in lavender, in nearly as good condition as when it was given to her, sixty years ago. You can see how anything would annoy her that would break in on these lifelong habits of hers. She was a child that took great pleasure in her little keepsakes, and the longer she owned them the dearer they became. She kept that little gold coin, that her grandfather gave her, for over half a century; and that is the dollar that Dago lost. Do you wonder that she grieved over the loss of it?

"The old blue china dragon is one of her earliest recollections. It used to sit on a cabinet in her grandmother's room, and there were always sugar-plums in it, as there have been ever since it was given to her. I can remember it myself when I was a boy. One of the pleasures of my visit to the old house was listening in the firelight to grandfather's 'dragon tales,' as we called them. They were about all sorts of wonderful things, and we called them that because, while he told them, the old dragon was always passed around and we sat and munched sugar-plums. That jar has been in the family so long that your great-great-grandfather remembered it when he was a boy, -- and that is the jar that Dago broke.

"There were very few children in the neighbourhood where your Aunt Patricia lived. For a long time she had no playmates except the little boy who lived on the adjoining place, Donald McClain. But he came over nearly every day for four years, and they grew to love each other like brother and sister. It was a lonesome time for the little Patricia when the McClains moved away. Donald brought her a tiny carnelian ring the day he came over for the last time. 'To remember me by,' he said, and she put it on her finger and remembered him always, as the kindest, manliest little playmate any child ever had.

"She grew up after awhile to be a beautiful young girl. I will show you her miniature sometime, with the pearls around it. The little carnelian ring was too small then, and she had to lay it away; but she never forgot her old playmate. When she was nineteen her mother died, and, soon after, her father lost his eyesight, and she gave up all her time to caring for him. She sang to him, read to him, led him around the garden, and amused him constantly. She never went anywhere without him, never thought of her own pleasure, but stayed alone with him in the quiet old house, year after year, until he died.