Fred’s Big Sister by Julia F. Dean

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 13, 1909

Fred’s Big Sister.

By Julia F. Dean

“DON’T go much on sisters,” Rodney Black was heard to remark, “but I could stand a dozen like Fred’s, she’s O. K. Lucky dog, that Fred Wilkins.”

“Same here,” Tim Welsh added. “She’s better posted on fish bait and baseball than Fred is himself, and as to cookies — O, my!”

Fred Wilkins’ house was the most popular resort for the boys of the neighborhood, but Fred said, good-naturedly, “I’m not chalking up any credit to myself for it; it’s all Sue.”

There never was a girl like her for making mouth-watering tarts and turnovers, doughnuts, and cookies, and she knew enough of a boy’s appetite to make them by the gross and the bushel, instead of paltry dozens and pints. As to skill in bandaging and caring for torn and bruised fingers and toes, even the doctors, so the boys said, had to take a back seat for Sister Sue. Yet, after all, her crowning talent was the wonderful way she had of patching and darning a ragged, jagged tear in coat or trousers, so that even one’s own mother couldn’t discover it.

“Say, she’s going to have a birthday next Wednesday,” confided one of the boys to the other. “Let’s do the handsome thing and get her a present. She’s always loading us up with good things and doing for us generally.”

The group of boys hilariously agreed, and it was decided to ask Fred to learn from Sister Sue what she most desired as a gift. Fred agreed, and promised to report promptly. But two days passed and Fred kept away from the other boys, or gave unsatisfactory answers when approached. Finally the boys cornered him.

“Well, you see,” he said shamefacedly, “Sue ain’t like other girls, always wanting things. If it was Bess, now, she’d tell a dozen things she’d like in one breath.”

“Well, it isn’t Bess, it’s Sue,” cried Will Davis. “What does Sue want?”

Fred took a long breath. “Well, you see,” he began again, “she couldn’t know I was quizzing her for anybody but myself, and she said — pshaw, I ain’t going to tell you,” he broke off impatiently, “it isn’t any of your business, anyway.”

The boys grew indignant. “Well,” said a voice, “I guess it is our business. If you think it is going to cost too much — we’re not a stingy lot. We’re ready to do it up fine. Out with it, Fred!”

Fred straightened up at that, with a “do-or-die” expression on his face. “Maybe you’ll wish I hadn’t. It is something that’ll cost like fun, but I said I’d report, and I’m a man of my word, so here goes. She just said, ‘Frederick Jackson Wilkins, if you want to give me a birthday present that I’d like better than anything else, you take a sheet of blank paper and write on it an iron-clad promise that you’ll stop smoking cigarettes, and sign it.’ And that’s all I could get out of her.”

Fred said afterward, when he told Sue about it, “You could have sliced up the silence that fell over the bunch of boys with my jack-knife.” Every boy of them had known that Fred’s sister Sue had no use for cigarettes, and they had always been careful to keep them out of sight. It was Fred who finally spoke again.

“Well, I didn’t suppose you’d like it a bit better than I did, but you made me tell.”

“Say, are you going to give Sue what she asked for?” spoke up a boy, dryly.

Fred’s face flushed, but his voice had a manly ring, as he promptly answered, “You just better believe I am. She’s too good a sister to disappoint.”

“That’s what I say,” blurted out Tom Folk. “It would please her mightily to have all us boys do the same thing, too. Let’s do it. All in favor say ‘Aye.’”

“Aye, Aye,” was the firm but quiet response from every boy.

“There’s one of the boys wants to see you, Sue, out in the yard,” said Fred Wilkins to his sister on the morning of her birthday. “He won’t come in.”

Sue smilingly accommodated herself to a boy’s whim and hurried out into the yard, where she found Rodney Black. He handed her an envelope, bulky and broad. “From us boys, to just start off your birthday cheerful,” he told her.

Fred lingered around when Sue opened the envelope and read the promises written in many boyish hands to stop smoking, and heard a fervent, girlish, “Bless their hearts. How did they ever know how much I wanted them to do this very thing?”

She wouldn’t have been a girl if she hadn’t been wonderfully pleased at the mammoth box of bonbons that came later, labeled in boyish hand, “Bought with the money we didn’t spend on cigs.” But she always insisted that, delicious as it was, it wasn’t to be mentioned in the same breath with the presents that came in the envelope.