Kitabı oku: «Bikey the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmieboy», sayfa 8
HIGH JINKS IN THE BARN
It was unquestionably a hot day; so hot, indeed, that John, the hired man, said the thermometer had had to climb a tree to get high enough to record the degree of the heat. Jimmieboy had been playing out under the apple-trees for two or three hours, and now, "just for greens," as the saying went, he had climbed into the old barouche in the barn, where it was tolerably cool and there was a soft cushion to lie off on. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then a strange thing happened.
The Wheelbarrow over by the barn door unmistakably spoke. "Say," it said to the Farm Wagon, "there's one thing I like about you."
"What's that?" said the Wagon.
"You have such a long tongue, and yet you never say an unkind word about anybody," replied the Barrow, with a creak of its wheel that sounded very much like a laugh.
"That may be so," said the big gray Horse that was used with the fat old bay to pull the farm wagon. "It may be just as you say, but that tongue has come between me and one of my best friends many a time, I tell you."
"I couldn't help that," retorted the Wagon. "The hired man made me do it; besides, I have a grudge against you."
"What's the grudge?" queried the Horse.
"You kicked me and my friend the Whiffletree that day you ran away down in the hay field," replied the Wagon. "I was dreadfully upset that day."
"I should say you were," put in the Rake. "And when you were upset you fell on me and knocked out five of my teeth. I never had such a time."
"You needed to have something done to those teeth, anyhow," said the Sickle. "They were nearly all gone when that happened."
"Oh, were they?" retorted the Rake. "And why were they nearly all gone? Do you know that?"
"I do not. I suppose you had been trying to crack chestnuts with them. Was that it?"
"No, it wasn't," retorted the Rake. "They were worn out cleaning up the lawns after you pretended to have finished them off."
"You think you're bright, don't you?" replied the Sickle, with a sneer.
"Well, if I was as dull as you are," returned the Rake, angrily, "I'd visit the Grindstone and get him to put a little more edge on me."
"Come, come; don't be so quarrelsome," said the Hose. "If you don't stop, I'll drown the whole lot of you."
"Tut!" retorted the Rake. "You look for all the world like a snake."
"He is a snake," put in the Curry-comb. "He's a water-snake. Aren't you, Hosey?"
"I'd show you whether I am or not if the faucet hadn't run dry."
"Dear me!" laughed the Sled. "Hear Hosey talk! The idea of a faucet running! It hasn't moved an inch since it came here. Why, I've got two runners that'll beat it out of sight on the side of a hill."
"Yes, the down side," said the Pony. "Anything can run down hill. Even a stupid old millstone can do that. But when it comes to running up hill, I'm ahead of you all. Why, the biggest river or avalanche in the world couldn't run up hill beside me."
"That's so," put in the Riding-Whip. "And you and I know who makes you do it – eh?"
"I didn't say anything about that," said the Pony. "But I'll tell you one thing: if you'll come down here where I can reach you with one of my hind legs, I'll show you what nice shoes I wear."
"Much obliged," said the Whip. "I don't wear shoes myself, and am not interested in the subject. But if any man who is interested in bugs wants to know how to make a horse fly, I can show him."
"You are a whipper-snapper," said the Pony angrily.
"Ho! ho!" jeered the Whip.
"Anybody call me?" queried the Hoe, from the corner where he had been asleep while all this conversation was going on.
Then they all burst out laughing, and peace was restored.
"They say the Fence is worn out," put in the Sickle.
"I should think it would be," replied the Rake. "It's been running all around this place night and day without ever stopping for the last twenty years."
"How many miles is that?" queried the Wagon.
"Well, once around is half a mile, but if it has gone around every night and every day for twenty years," said the Grindstone, "that's one mile every twenty-four hours – 365 miles a year – 3,650 miles in ten years, and 7,300 miles in twenty years. Quite a record, eh?"
"That's a good way for a Picket-fence to go," said the Wheelbarrow. "It would kill me to go half that distance."
"Well, if you live until you do go half that distance," put in the Hose, "you'll never die."
"Ho! ho!" jeered the Barrow.
"Somebody did call me that time!" cried the Hoe, waking up again. "I'm sure I heard my name."
"Yes, you did," said the Rake. "We waked you up to tell you that breakfast would be ready in about a month, and to say that if you wanted any you'd do well to go down to the river and see if you can't buy its mouth, because if you don't, nobody knows how you can eat it."
Here the loud and prolonged laugh caused Jimmieboy once more to open his eyes, and as his papa was standing by the side of the carriage holding out his hands to help him down and take him into the house to supper, the little fellow left the quarrelsome tools and horses and other things to themselves.
JIMMIEBOY'S VALENTINE
Jimmieboy had been watching for the postman all day and he was getting just a little tired of it. It was Valentine's Day, and he was very naturally expecting that some of his many friends would remember that fact and send him a valentine. Still the postman, strange to say, didn't come.
"He'll be later than usual," said Jimmieboy's mamma. "The postman always is late on Valentine's Day. He has so many valentines to leave at people's houses."
"Well, I wish he'd hurry," said Jimmieboy, "because I want to see what my valentimes look like."
Jimmieboy always called valentines valentimes, so nobody paid any attention to that mistake – and then the front door bell rang.
"I guess, maybe, perhaps that's the postman – though I didn't hear his whistle," said Jimmieboy, rushing to the head of the stairs and listening intently, but no one went to the door and Jimmieboy became so impatient that he fairly tumbled down the stairs to open it himself.
"Howdy do," he said, as he opened the door, and then he stopped short in amazement. There was no one there and yet his salutation was returned.
"Howdy do!" something said. "I'm glad you came to the door, because I mightn't have got in if the maid had opened it. People who don't understand queer things don't understand me, and I rather think if the girl had opened that door and had been spoken to by something she couldn't see she'd have started to run and hide, shrieking Lawk, meanwhile."
"I've half a mind to shriek Lawk, myself," said Jimmieboy, a little fearfully, for he wasn't quite easy about this invisible something he was talking to. "Who are you, anyhow?"
"I'm not a who, I'm a what," said the queer thing. "I'm not a person, I'm a thing – just a plain, homely, queer thing. I couldn't hurt a fly, so there's no reason why you should cry Lawk."
"Well, what kind of a queer thing are you?" asked Jimmieboy. "Are you the kind of a queer thing I can invite into the house or would it be better for me to shut the door and make you stay outside."
"I don't like to say," said the queer thing, with a pathetic little sigh. "I think I'm very nice and that anybody ought to be glad to have me in the house, but that's only my opinion of myself. Somebody else might think differently. In fact somebody else has thought differently. You know rhinoceroses and crocodiles think themselves very handsome, and that's why they sit and gaze at themselves in the water all the time. Everybody else though knows that they are very ugly. Now that's the way with me. As I have said, I'm sure in my own mind that I am perfectly splendid, and yet your Uncle Periwinkle, who thought of me, wouldn't write me and send me to you."
"You must be very wise if you know what you mean," said Jimmieboy. "I don't."
"Oh, no – I'm not so wise – I'm only splendid, that's all," said the other. "You see I'm a valentine, only I never was made. I was only thought of. Your Uncle Periwinkle thought of me and was going to send me to you and then he changed his mind and thought you'd rather have a box of candy; so he didn't write me and sent you a box of chocolate creams instead. The postman's got 'em and if he doesn't find out what they are and eat 'm all up you'll receive them this afternoon. Won't you let me come in and tell you about myself and see if you don't like me? I want to be liked – oh ever so much, and I was awfully disappointed when your uncle decided not to send me. I cried for eight minutes and then resolved to come here myself and see if after all he wasn't wrong. Let me come in and if you don't like me I'll go right out again and never come back."
"I like you already, without knowing what kind of a valentime you are," said Jimmieboy, kindly. "Of course you can come in, and you can stay as long as you want to. I don't believe you'll be in anybody's way."
"Thank you very much," said the valentine, gratefully, as it moved into the house, and, to judge from where its voice next came, settled down on the big sofa cushion. "I hoped you'd say that."
"What kind of a valentime are you?" asked Jimmieboy in a moment. "Are you a funny one or a solemn one, with paper frills all over it in a box and a little cupid peeping out from behind a tree?"
"I am almost afraid to tell you," said the valentine, timidly. "I am so afraid you won't like me."
"Oh, yes I will," said Jimmieboy, hastily. "I like all kinds of valentimes."
"Well, that's a relief," said the other. "I'm comic."
"Hooray!" cried Jimmieboy, "I just love comic valentimes with red and blue pictures in 'em and funny verses."
"Do you really?" returned the valentine, cheerfully. "Then I can say hooray, too, because that's what I was to be. I was to be a picture of a boy with red trousers on, sitting crosswise on a great yellow broomstick, galloping through a blue sky, toward a pink moon. How do you like that?"
"It is splendid, just as you said," returned Jimmieboy, with a broad smile. "Those are my favorite colors."
"You like those colors better than you do chocolate cream color?" asked the valentine.
"Oh, my yes," said Jimmieboy. "Probably you wouldn't be so good to eat as a chocolate cream, but for a valentime, you're much better. I don't want to eat valentimes, I want to keep 'em."
"You don't know how glad you make me," said the pathetic little valentine, its voice trembling with happiness. "Now, if you like my verses as well as you do my picture, I will be perfectly content."
"I guess I'll like 'em," said Jimmieboy. "Can you recite yourself to me?"
"I'm not written – didn't I tell you?" returned the valentine. "That's the good part of it. I can tell you what I might have been and you can take your choice."
"That's good," said Jimmieboy. "Then I'm sure to be satisfied."
"Just so," said the valentine. "Now let me think what I might have been! Hum! Well, what do you think of this:
"If I had a cat with a bright red tail,
And a parrot whose voice was soft and low
I'd put 'em away in a water pail,
And send 'em to where the glowworm's glow.
"And then I would sit on an old whisk broom
And sail through the great, soft starlit sky,
To where the bright moonbeams gaily froom
Their songs to the parboiled Gemini.
"And I'd say to the frooming moonbeams that,
I'd come from the home of the sweet woodbine,
Deserting my parrot and red-tailed cat,
To ask if they'd be my valentine."
"I guess that's good," said Jimmieboy. "Only I don't know what frooming is."
"Neither do I," said the valentine, "but that needn't make any difference. You see, it's a nonsense rhyme any how, and I couldn't remember any word that rhymed with broom. Froom isn't a bad word, and inasmuch as it's new to us we can make it mean anything we want to."
"That's true," said Jimmieboy. "But why do you send the cat and the parrot off?"
"They aren't in the picture," said the valentine, "and so of course we have to get rid of them before we have the boy start off on the broomstick. It would be very awkward to go sailing off through the sky on a broomstick with a parrot and cat in tow. Then to show the moonbeams how much the boy thinks of them you have to have him leave something behind that he thinks a great deal of, and that something might just as well be a parrot and a cat as anything else."
"And what does it all mean?" asked Jimmieboy. "Is the boy supposed to be me?"
"No," explained the valentine. "The boy is supposed to be Uncle Periwinkle, and you are the moonbeams. In putting the poem the way I've told you it's just another and nonsense way of saying that he'll be your valentine and will take a great deal of trouble and make sacrifices to do it if necessary."
"I see," said Jimmieboy. "And I think it very nice indeed – though I might like some other verse better."
"Of course you might," said the valentine. "That's the way with everything. No matter how fine a thing may be, there may be something else that might be better, and the thing to do always is to look about and try to find that better thing. How's this:
"'The broom went around to Jimmieboy's,
And cried, 'Oh, Jimmieboy B.,
Come forth in the night, desert your toys,
And take a fine ride with me.
"I'll take you off through the starlit sky,
We'll visit the moon so fine,
If you will come with alacrity,
And be my valentine.'"
"That isn't so bad, either," said Jimmieboy. "I sort of wish a broomstick would come after me that way and take me sailing off to the moon. I'd be its valentime in a minute if it would do that. I'd like to take a trip through all the stars and see why they twinkle and – "
"Why they twinkle?" interrupted the valentine. "Why they twinkle? Hoh! Why, I can tell you that – for as a secret just between you and me, I know a broomstick that has been up to the stars and he told me all about them. The stars twinkle because from where they are, they are so high up, they can see all that is going on in the world, and they see so many amusing things that it keeps 'em laughing all the time and they have to twinkle just as your eyes do when they see anything funny."
"That's it, is it?" said Jimmieboy.
"Yes, sir!" said the valentine, "and it's fine, too, to watch 'em when you are feeling sad. You know how it is when you're feeling sort of unhappy and somebody comes along who feels just the other way, who laughs and sings, how you get to feel better yourself right off? Well, remember the stars when you don't feel good. How they're always twinkling – watch 'em, and by and by you'll begin to twinkle yourself. You can't help it – and further, Jimmieboy," added this altogether strange valentine, "when anybody tries to make you think that this world has got more bad things than good things in it, look at the stars again. They wouldn't twinkle if that was so and until the stars stop twinkling and begin to frown, don't you ever think badly of the world."
"I won't," said Jimmieboy. "I always did like the world. As long as I've been in it I've thought it was a pretty fine place."
"It is," said the valentine. "Nobody can spoil it either – unless you do it yourself – but, I say, if you'd like to have me I'll introduce you to my broomstick friend sometime and maybe some day he'll give you that ride."
"Will you?" cried Jimmieboy with delight. "That will be fine. You are the dearest old valentime that ever was."
Saying which, forgetting in his happiness that the valentine was not to be seen and so could not be touched, Jimmieboy leaned over to hug him affectionately as he sat on the sofa cushion.
Which may account for the fact that when Jimmieboy's papa came home he found Jimmieboy clasping the sofa cushion in his arms, asleep and unconscious of the fact that the postman had come and gone, leaving behind him six comic valentines, four "solemn ones," and a package of chocolate creams from Uncle Periwinkle.
When he waked he was rejoiced to find them, but he has often told me since that the finest valentine he ever got was the one Uncle Periwinkle thought he wouldn't like as well as the candy; and I believe he still has hopes that the invisible valentine may turn up again some day, bringing with him his friend the broomstick who will take Jimmieboy off for a visit to the twinkling stars.
THE MAGIC SLED
When Jimmieboy waked up the other morning the ground was white with snow and his heart was rejoiced. Like many another small youth Jimmieboy has very little use for green winters. He likes them white. Somehow or other they do not seem like winters if they haven't plenty of snow and he had been much afraid that the season was going to pass away without bringing to him an opportunity to use the beautiful sled Santa Claus had brought him at Christmas.
It was a fine sled, one of the finest he had ever seen. It had a red back, yellow runners and two swan heads standing erect in front of it to tell it which way it should go. On the red surface of the back was painted its name in very artistic blue letters, and that name was nothing more nor less than "Magic."
"Hooray," he cried as he rushed to the window and saw the dazzling silver coating on the lawn and street. "Snow at last! Now I can see if Magic can slide."
He dressed hastily – so hastily in fact that he had to undress again, because it was discovered by his mother, who came to see how he was getting along, that he had put on his stocking wrong side out, and that his left shoe was making his right foot uncomfortable.
"Don't be in such a hurry," said his Mamma. "There was a man once who was always in such a hurry that he forgot to take his head down town with him one day, and when lunch time came he hadn't anything with him to eat his lunch with."
"But I want to slide," said Jimmieboy, "and I'm afraid there'll be a slaw come along and melt the snow."
Jimmieboy always called thaws slaws, so his mother wasn't surprised at this remark, and in a few minutes the boy was ready to coast.
"Come along, Magic!" he said, gleefully catching up the rope. "We'll see now if Uncle Periwinkle was right when he said he didn't think you'd go more'n a mile a minute, unless you had a roller-skate on both your runners."
And then, though Jimmieboy did not notice it, the left-hand swan-head winked its eye at the other swan-head and whispered, "Humph! It's plain Uncle Periwinkle doesn't know that we are a magic sled."
"Well, why should he?" returned the other swan-head, with a laugh. "He never slode on us."
"I'm glad I'm not an uncle," said the left-hand head. "Uncles don't know half as much as we do."
"And why should they!" put in the other. "They haven't had the importunities we have for gaining knowledge. A man who has lived all his days in one country and which has never slad around the world like us has, don't see things the way us would."
And still Jimmieboy did not notice that the swan-heads were talking together, though I can hardly blame him for that, because, now that he was out of doors he had to keep his eyes wide open to keep from bumping his head into the snow balls the hired man was throwing at him. In a few minutes, however, he did notice the peculiar fact and he was so surprised that he sat plump down on the red back of the sled and was off for – well, where the sled took him, and of all the slides that ever were slid, that was indeed the strangest. No sooner had he sat down than with a leap that nearly threw him off his balance, the swans started. The steel runners crackled merrily over the snow, and the wind itself was soon left behind.
"C-can you sus-swans tut-talk?" Jimmieboy cried, in amazement, as soon as he could get his breath.
"Oh, no, of course not," said the right-hand swan. "We can't talk, can we Swanny?"
"No, indeed, Swayny," returned the other with a laugh. "You may think we talk, you may even hear words from our lips, we might even recite a poem, but that wouldn't be talk – oh, no, indeed. Certainly not."
"It's a queer question for him to ask, eh Swanny?" said the right-hand head.
"Extraordinary, Swayny," said the one on the left. "Might as well ask a locomotive if it smokes."
"Well, I only wanted to know," said Jimmieboy.
"He only wanted to know, Swanny," said Swayny.
"I presume that was why he asked – as though we didn't know that," said Swanny. "He'd ask a pie-man with a tray full of pies, if he had any pies, I believe."
"Yes, or a cat if he could miaou. Queer boy," returned Swayny. And then he added:
"I think a boy, who'd waste his time
In asking questions such as that,
Would ask a man, who dealt in rhyme
If he'd a head inside his hat."
Jimmieboy laughed.
"You know poetry, don't you," he said.
"Well, rather," said Swayny. "That is to say, I can tell it from a church steeple."
"Which reminds me," put in Swanny, as strange to say, this wonderful sled began to slide up a very steep hill, "of a conundrum I never heard before. What's the difference between writing poetry the way some people do and building a steeple as all people do?"
"I can't say," said Swayny, "though if you'll tell me the answer now next time you ask that conundrum I'll be able to inform you."
"Some people who write poetry run it into the ground," said Swanny, "and all people who build steeples, run 'em up into the air."
"That's not bad," said Jimmieboy, with a smile.
"No," said Swanny, "it is not – but you don't know why."
"I don't indeed," observed Jimmieboy. "Why?"
"Because my conundrums never are," said Swanny.
"Europe!" cried Swayny. "Five minutes for refreshments."
"What do you mean?" said Jimmieboy, as the sled came to a standstill.
"What does any conductor mean when he calls out the name of a station?" said Swayny scornfully. "He means that's where you are at of course. Which is what I mean. We've arrived at Europe. That's the kind of a fast mail sled we are. In three minutes we've carried you up hill and down dale, over the sea to Europe."
"Really?" cried Jimmieboy, dumfounded.
"Certainly," said Swanny. "You are now in Europe. That blue place you see over on the right is Germany, off to the left is France and that little pink speck is Switzerland. See that glistening thing just on the edge of the pink speck?"
"Yes," said Jimmieboy.
"That's an Alp," said Swanny. "It's too bad we've got to get you home in time for breakfast. If we weren't in such a hurry, we'd let you off so that you could buy an Alp to take home to your brother. You could have snow-balls all through the summer if you had an Alp in your nursery, but we can't stop now to get it. We've got to runaway immediately. Ready Swayny?"
"Yes," said Swayny. "All Aboard for England. Passengers will please keep their seats until the sled comes to a standstill in the station."
And then they were off again.
"How did you like Europe?" asked Swanny, as they sped along through a beautiful country, which Swayny said was France.
"Very nice what I saw of it," said Jimmieboy. "But, of course I couldn't see very much in five minutes."
"Hoh! Hear that, Swayny?" said Swanny. "Couldn't see much in five minutes. Why you could see all Europe in five minutes, if you only looked fast enough. You kept your eye glued on that Alp, I guess."
"That's what he did," said Swayny. "And that's why it was so hard to get the sled started. I had to hump three times before I could get my runner off and it was all because he'd glued his eye on the Alp! Don't do it again, Jimmieboy. We haven't time to unglue your eye every time we start."
"I don't blame him," said Swanny. "Those Alps are simply great, and I sometimes feel myself as if I'd like to look at 'em as much as forty minutes. I'd hate to be a hired man on an Alp, though."
"So would I," said Swayny. "It would be awful if the owner of the Alp made the hired man shovel the snow off it every morning."
"I wasn't thinking of that so much as I was of getting up every morning, early, to push the clouds away," said Swanny. "People are very careless about their clouds on the Alps, and they wander here and there, straying from one man's lawn onto another's, just like cows where Jimmieboy lives. I knew a man once who bought the top of an Alp just for the view, and one of his neighbor's clouds came along and squatted down on his place and simply killed the view entirely, and I tell you he made his hired man's life miserable. Scolded him from morning until night, and fed him on cracked ice for a week, just because he didn't scare the cloud off when he saw it coming."
"I don't see how a man could scare a cloud off," said Jimmieboy.
"Easy as eating chocolate creams," said Swayny. "You can do it with a fan, if you have one big enough – but, I say, Swanny, put on the brakes there quick, or we'll run slam-bang into – "
"LONDON!" cried Swanny, putting on the brakes, and sure enough that's where they were. Jimmieboy knew it in a minute, because there was a lady coming out of a shop preceded by a band of music, and wearing a big crown on her head, whom he recognized at once as the great and good Queen, whose pictures he had often seen in his story books.
"Howdy do, little boy," said the Queen, as her eye rested on Jimmieboy.
"I'm very well, thank you, Ma'am," said Jimmieboy, holding out his hand for Her Majesty to shake.
"What are you doing here?" she asked.
"I'm sliding until breakfast is ready," he replied.
"Until breakfast is ready?" she cried. "Why, what time do you have breakfast?"
"Eight o'clock, so's papa can catch the 8:30 train, Ma'am," said Jimmieboy.
"But – it is now nearly one o'clock!" said the Queen.
"That's all right, Your Roily Highnishness," said Swanny. "This is an American boy and he breakfasts on the American plan. It isn't eight o'clock yet where he lives."
"Oh, yes – so it isn't," said the Queen. "I remember now. The sun rises earlier here than it does in America."
"Yes, Ma'am," put in Swayny. "It has to in order to get to America on time. America is some distance from here as you may have heard."
And before the Queen could say another word, the sled was sliding merrily along at such a rapid pace that Jimmieboy had to throw his arms about Swayny's neck to keep from falling overboard.
"W-where are we g-g gug-going to now?" he stammered.
"China," said Swanny.
"Egypt," said Swayny.
"I said China," cried Swanny, turning his eyes full upon Swayny and glaring at him.
"I know you did," said Swayny. "I may not show 'em, but I have ears. I, on the other hand said Egypt, and Egypt is where we are going. I want to show Jimmieboy the Pyramids. He's never seen a Pyramid and he has seen Chinamen."
"No doubt," said Swanny. "But this time he's not going to Egypt. I'm going to show him a Mandarin. He can build a Pyramid with his blocks, but he never in his life could build a Mandarin. Therefore, Ho for China."
"You mean Bah! for China," said Swayny, angrily. "I'm not going to China, Mr. William G. Swanny and that's all there is about that. Last time I was there a Chinaman captured me and tied me to his pig-tail and I vowed I'd never go again."
"And when I was in Egypt last time, I was stolen by a mummy, who wanted to broil and eat me because he hadn't had anything to eat for two thousand years. So I'm not going to Egypt."
Whereupon the two strange birds became involved in a dreadful quarrel, one trying to run the sled off toward China, the other trying, with equal vim, to steer it over to Egypt. The runners creaked; the red back groaned and finally, there came a most dreadful crash. Swanny flew off with his runner to the land of Flowers, and Swayny, freed from his partner, forgetting Jimmieboy completely, sped on to Egypt.
And Jimmieboy.
Well, Jimmieboy, fell in between and by some great good fortune, for which I am not at all prepared to account, landed in a heap immediately beside his little bed in the nursery, not dressed in his furs at all but in his night gown, while out of doors not a speck of snow was to be seen, and strangest of all, when he was really dressed and had gone down stairs, there stood Magic and the two swan heads, as spick and span as you please, still waiting to be tried.
