THE LUCKY-BUG

After all my waiting and watching I never saw the ship that fetched my velocipede. It came—during the night, I fancy—shortly after we got home from the beach.

But I had the velocipede,—that was the main thing. It was built mostly of wood, and painted red. On it, I spent four happy days, riding up and down the sidewalks of Oak Street.

Then, somehow, it got broken, and had to be sent away to be mended. This was distressing enough of itself. But it turned out to be the first of a veritable series of misfortunes.

On the same day that I broke the velocipede, the cat made an attempt on the life of my sole surviving goldfish. She had been unsuccessful, I am glad to say, and she now had to disappear over the fence with more than her usual speed whenever I came out of the house. But in her efforts she had dislodged a pail of minnows that stood beside the goldfish's residence, and a quart or more of pond-water, with fifteen unfortunate minnows, had been deposited on my bed. I was not there to distress my eyes with their dying struggles, but the household authorities had made much of the incident, dwelling quite irrelevantly on the state of the bedclothes, rather than the fate of the minnows.

Consequently I was led to believe that any more minnows would be received into the house with a coolness bordering upon absolute inhospitality.

The shocking unreasonableness of this attitude was perfectly plain to me, as I think it will be to any fair-minded person. I pointed out that neither I, nor the goldfish, nor the deceased minnows were in any degree to blame. Not the most biassed tribunal in the world, save one composed of feminine housekeepers, would ever think of finding guilty any party to the accident except the cat.

But did they so much as reprove her?

Not they.

She was a moth of peace, rusting in idleness under the kitchen stove or on the back fence, fat, lazy, and full of sin. Like all of her kind, she tempered a career of sloth with occasional deeds of cruelty and blood by day and with diabolical yells at night. Yet she was maintained, a favored pensioner, in the household, under the superstitious delusion that she caught mice, and she would have gone over to the neighbors any day if it had struck her that they were more generous with rations than we were.

My estimate of her was formed the night I heard the screams of a nest of young robins in the apple tree, up which she had dragged her fat body, like an overfed snake, bent on slaughter. And nothing in the vast amount of misleading literature lauding her race has ever succeeded in whitewashing the character of the old reprobate.

The velocipede went away to be repaired, and the minnows departed this life on Monday. On Tuesday I broke the large blade of my jack-knife, and on Wednesday fell in with three boys from the parochial school, who still recalled with animosity their captivity in Peter Bailey's stable.

It was three against one, and I emerged from the encounter with very little glory, a good deal of dust on my clothes, and two or three rather lame spots on my person.

Beyond argument, I had somehow got into disgrace with fortune and men's eyes. At this rate, unless the gods were propitiated, it seemed unlikely that I should survive until the end of the week.

What could I do to win fortune back? Some great stroke was evidently necessary. Ever since Monday, the day of the first catastrophes, I had carefully dropped stones down the culvert under the railway track every time I passed.

Nothing at all had come of it.

Yet it is, as every one knows, a very potent charm indeed. To all who doubt I have only to say that Charley Carter, after dropping stones in the culvert three or four times a week for two years, had, one day, only an hour and a half after dropping a stone, found eleven cents (two nickels and a copper) down in Market Square. But it did not work with me.

Billy Mason, an unquestioned authority in all such matters, advised the capture of a Lucky-bug. That was his recipe, delivered when the shades of Wednesday evening were drawing in. And now behold me, in the bright sunlight of Thursday morning, anxiously following the movements of a large Lucky-bug, who was sliding merrily over the surface of the frog pond.

He darted swiftly about on the water, making two little ripples that broadened to the right and left behind him. His neat, dark, gentleman-like coat was slightly glossy, catching the sunshine in one tiny bright spot on his back. Ten or a dozen inches he would slide in one direction, looking always like the tip of an arrow-head whose sides were formed by the ripples he made.

Then he would shoot off abruptly at right angles, halt again, and change his course once more. There was no method in his actions; no vulgar pursuit of food.

The swallows, who in ceaseless parabolas soared, swept, and fluttered over that end of the pond, had a very practical purpose, however charming their flight might appear. They were gathering a comfortable meal of gnats and mosquitoes.

But the Lucky-bug, so far as I could see, was in it merely for the fun of the thing. Why toil and fuss about breakfast on a fine morning of summer? Much pleasanter to skim over the water, mindful only of the waving branches of the great elms overhead and the grassy bankings dotted with the yellow blossoms of the arnica.

That was his philosophy, I thought, and I sympathized with it. But I realized that it was not for me. The grinding cares of life oppressed me, and left no time for idle amusement. My needs had driven me forth with a glass fruit-jar filled with water, and I must capture that Lucky-bug. He might continue his antics, but it must be in the narrow, circumscribed limits of the fruit-jar; not on the surface of the frog pond.

That good luck would attend me if I could catch him, I had no manner of doubt. Billy Mason had cited specific instances of the extreme felicity of those who caught and held these small black water-beetles, and Jimmy Toppan reËnforced Billy's thesis by relating that it was only four months after he had caught a Lucky-bug that his father had bought him a Shetland pony.

The possession of a pony was beyond my utmost hopes, but I did pray, at least, that when I had attained a Lucky-bug the misfortunes which had assailed me during the last three days might come to an end. Indeed, at that moment of desperation, fresh from my unhappy meeting with the parochial school boys, I would have gladly foregone any future pony for the mere privilege of being let alone by whatever malign deity it was that seemed bent on pestering me.

The Lucky-bug sailed warily about, never coming within easy reach. Evidently he had noticed me and my fruit-jar. If I had brought a net, his capture would have been easy, but the authorities held that he ought to be seized with the hand. Otherwise, the charm might fail.

I observed him in silence, and at last was glad to see that his motions were bringing him nearer the shore. He darted in and out, but, on the whole, came gradually within reach.

I leaned forward over the water, my hand outstretched.

Another swift movement brought him nearer me. Evidently he had decided that I was not a hostile object. His trustfulness was going to get him into trouble. Still another slide toward me, and I made a quick grab at him.

But he was quicker. He seized a tiny bubble—where he got it, I could not see—and dived like a flash, carrying the bubble with him. It was evidently his air supply, or else for illuminating purposes,—I could not be sure which, but he looked like a diver carrying an electric searchlight.

Once he reached the bottom—it was only about six inches distant there at the edge of the pond—he became invisible among the pebbles and bits of wood. I groped about, but could not dislodge him.

So I drew back and waited. In a few moments he came to the surface again, a yard or two to the left. I made ready to snatch at him once more, but he was plainly cautious now, for he went below with his bubble before I had any chance of getting him.

I decided to look for another Lucky-bug with less suspicion in his character, and I set out to stroll around the pond.

A little farther along I found two or three toads,—meditating, apparently, near the edge of the water. I reflected on the unfairness of calling that pond after the gay and handsome frog when it was almost exclusively occupied by that more sedate and useful citizen, the toad. That was the way of the world as it seemed to me on that morning. The frog had a smart coat, his carriage was jaunty, and his movements nimble. Also was he an expert swimmer. When you had said that about him you had said all.

Nobody liked the toad's appearance; his progress on land was lumbering, to say the least, and no one thought of going to him for swimming lessons. With him swimming was a duty during certain weeks of the year. With the frog it was an art and a joy forever. But did the frog ever contribute to the happiness of the world as the toad had been doing but a few weeks earlier?

I think not.

The toad had not only the nightingale's eyes; he had, during those early spring months, the other gift of the nightingale as well. Had not all heard him on the mild evenings when, with his throat swelled out, he trilled love songs that made the whole pond musical? And did any one give him credit?

No; they said, "Hear the frogs singing!"

Musing thus on the black injustice of things, I circled the pond and came again to the haunt of the original Lucky-bug. There he was, or his twin, skimming about as before. I approached, stooped over, reached out my hand, and grabbed.

I had him!

He was instantly in the fruit-jar, where he seemed perfectly contented, sailing and diving as if he were on the pond.

I walked home triumphant. Did my luck change? Can you ask the question? I do not want to make the case too strong, for my attitude is that of the scientific investigator. So I will mention only two of the events that followed the capture of that Lucky-bug.

And mind, please, that both of them occurred on that same Thursday.

On my way home, I found the works of an old alarm clock which somebody had abandoned. The cover, face, and bell were gone; but you could still wind it up and make a delightful whirring sound, calculated to distract all grown-ups.

That was not all.

When I got home, I found that there was to be blueberry pudding for dinner—and my brother was gone for the day!