stuart was an early riser: he was almost always the first person up in the morning. he liked the feeling of being the first one stirring; he enjoyed the quiet rooms with the books standing still on the shelves, the pale light coming in through the windows, and the fresh smell of day. in wintertime it would be quite dark when he climbed from his bed made out of the cigarette box, and he sometimes shivered with cold as he stood in his nightgown doing his exercises. (stuart touched his toes ten times every morning to keep himself in good condition. he had seen his brother george do it, and george had explained that it kept the stomach muscles firm and was a fine abdominal thing to do.)
after exercising, stuart would slip on his handsome wool wrapper, tie the cord tightly around his waist, and start for the bathroom, creeping silently through the long dark hall past his mother’s and father’s room, past the hall closet where the carpet sweeper was kept, past george’s room, and along by the head of the stairs till he got to the bathroom.
of course, the bathroom would be dark, too, but stuart’s father had thoughtfully tied a long string to the pull-chain of the light. the string reached clear to the floor. by grasping it as high up as he could and throwing his whole weight on it, stuart was able to turn on the light. swinging on the string this way, with his long bathrobe trailing around his ankles, he looked like a little old friar pulling the bellrope in an abbey.
to get to the washbasin, stuart had to climb a tiny rope ladder which his father had fixed for him.
george had promised to build stuart a small special washbasin only one inch high andwitha little rubber tube through which water would flow; but george was always saying that he was going to build something and then forgetting about it. stuart just went ahead and climbed the rope ladder to the family washbasin every morning to wash his face and hands and brush his teeth. mrs. little had provided him with a doll’s size toothbrush, a doll’s size cake of soap, a doll’s size washcloth, and a doll’s comb—which he used for combing his whiskers. he carried these things in his bathrobe pocket, and when he reached the top of the ladder he took them out, laid them neatly in a row, and set about the task of turning the water on. for such a small fellow, turning the water on was quite a problem.
he had discussed it with his father one day after making several unsuccessful attempts.
“i can get up onto the faucet all right,” he explained, “but i can’t seem to turn it on, because i have nothing to brace my feet against.”
“yes, i know,” his father replied, “that’s the whole trouble.”
george, who always listened to conversations whenever he could, said that in his opinion they ought to construct a brace for stuart; and with that he got out some boards, a saw, a hammer, a screw driver, a brad-awl, and some nails, and started to make a terrific fuss in the bathroom, building what he said was going to be a brace for stuart. but he soon became interested in something else and disappeared, leaving the tools lying around all over the bathroom floor.
stuart, after examining this mess, turned to his father again. “maybe i could pound the faucet with something and turn it on that way,” he said.
so stuart’s father provided him with a very small, light hammer made of wood; and stuart found that by swinging it three times around his head and letting it come down with a crash against the handle of the faucet, he could start a thin stream of water flowing—enough to brush his teeth in, anyway, and moisten his washcloth. so every morning, after climbing to the basin, he would seize his hammer and pound the faucet, and the other members of the household, dozing in their beds, would hear the bright sharp plink plink plink of stuart’s hammer, like a faraway blacksmith, telling them that day had come and that stuart was trying to brush his teeth.
