Bikey the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmieboy Part 18

The Dude Brownie smiled gratefully.

"You're a very kind little man," he said. "This time I'll talk the other way, but some day when I get it written I'll send you my book of poetry to make up for it. You like our animals, do you?"

"Very much," said Jimmieboy. "I'd like to see a Brownie zoo some time."

"I'll attend to that," said the Dude Brownie. "I'll make a note of it on the wall so that we won't forget it."

Here he seized a huge pencil, almost as big as himself, and wrote something on the wall which Jimmieboy could not read, but which he supposed was the Brownie's memorandum.

"Won't you spoil your wall doing that?" queried the little visitor.

"Oh no," said the Brownie. "All these walls are made of slate and we use 'em to write on. It saves littering the house all up with paper, and every Tuesday we have a house-cleaning bee and rub all the writing off.

It's a very good scheme and I wonder your grown-up people don't have it, particularly in your nurseries. I've noticed children writing things on nursery walls lots of times and then they've been scolded for doing it because their nurses said it spoiled the paper. I can't understand why they don't have slate walls instead that can't be spoiled. It's such a temptation to write on a wall, but it does spoil paper. But to come back to our animals, they're really lovely, and have such wonderfully sweet dispositions. There is the Brownie Elephant, for instance--he's the most light hearted creature you ever saw, and he has holes bored through his trunk like a flute and at night he plays the most beautiful music on it, while we Brownies sit around and listen to him."

"What does he wear so many pairs of spectacles for?" asked Jimmieboy.

"He has weak eyes," said the Brownie. "That is, he has at night. He can't see his notes to play tunes by when it is dark, and so we've provided him with those spectacles to help him out. Then the Bear is very self-sacrificing. If anyone of us wants to go out anywhere in the cold he'll let us have his robe just for the asking. The Pug-dog isn't much use but he's playful and intelligent. If you tell him to go to the post-office for your mail he'll rush out of the front door, down the road to the grocer's and bring you back an apple or an orange, because he always knows that there isn't any mail. One of your hired men wouldn't know that, but would waste his time going to the post-office to find it out if you told him to."

Jimmieboy expressed his admiration of the intelligence of the Brownie Dog and the good nature of the other animals, and then asked if he mightn't go upstairs he was so curious to see the rest of the house.

"Certainly," said the Dude Brownie, "only you'll have to slide up the banisters. We haven't any stairs."

"Don't think I know how," said Jimmieboy. "I can slide down banisters, but I never learned to slide up 'em."

"You don't have to learn it," returned the Brownie. "All you have to do is to get aboard and slide. It's a poor banister that won't work both ways. The trouble with your banisters is that they are poor ones. Climb aboard and let yourself go."

The boy did as he was told, and pop! the first thing he knew he was in the midst of the Brownies on the second floor. Much to his surprise, while they were unquestionably snoring, they were all reading, or writing, or engaged in some other occupation.

"Well this beats everything!" said Jimmieboy. "I thought you said they were asleep?"

"They are," said the Dude Brownie. "So am I, for that matter, but we don't waste our time just because we happen to be asleep. Some of us do our best work while we are resting. The Chinese Brownie washes all our clothes while he's asleep, and the Dutch Brownie does his practising on his cornet at the same time. If people like you did the same thing you'd get twice as much work done. It's all very well and very necessary too to get eight hours of sleep every day, but what's the use of wasting that time? Take your sleep, but don't loaf while you're taking it. When I was only a boy Brownie I used to play all day and go to school after I'd gone to bed. In that way I learned a great deal and never got tired of school. You don't get tired while you are asleep."

"It's a wonderful plan," said Jimmieboy, "and I wish I knew how to work it. I'm not very fond of school myself and I'd a great deal rather play than go there in the daytime. Can't you tell me how it's done so that I can tell my papa all about it? Maybe he'd let me do it that way if I asked him."

"Of course I'll tell you," said the Dude Brownie. "It's just this way.

You go to bed, pull the covers up over you, shut your eyes, fall asleep, and then--"

Alas! The sentence was never finished, for as the Brownie spoke a gong in the hallway below began to clang fearfully, and in an instant the whole Brownie troupe sprang to the banisters, slid down into the hall and rushed out into the yard. Their play time had come, and their manager had summoned them back to it. Jimmieboy followed, but he slid so fast that it made him dizzy. He thought he would never stop. Down the banisters he slid, out through the hall to the yard, over the heads of the Brownies he whizzed and landed with a thud in the soft embrace of the armchair once more, and just in time too, for hardly had he realized where he was when in walked his father and mother, and following in their train were his two baby brothers, their mouths and hands full of sweetmeats.

"Hullo," said Jimmieboy's father. "Where have you been, Jimmieboy?"

"In the Brown----" began the boy, but he stopped short. It seemed to him as if the Dude Brownie in the book tipped him a wink to be silent, and he returned the wink.

"I've been here, looking at my Brownie book," he said.

"Indeed?" said his father. "And do you never get tired of it?"

"No," said Jimmieboy quietly, "it seems to me I see something new in it every time I open it," and then in spite of the Brownie's wink he climbed out of the chair into his papa's lap and told him all that occurred, and his papa said it was truly wonderful, especially that part which told about how much could be done by an intelligent creature when fast asleep.

JIMMIEBOY--and SOMETHING

_JIMMIEBOY--and SOMETHING_

It was a warm, summer afternoon--just the sort of an afternoon for a drowse, and when the weather was just right for it Jimmieboy was a great drowser. In fact, a little golden-haired fairy with a silver wand had just whispered to a b.u.t.terfly that when it came to drowsing in an interesting way there was n.o.body in the world who could excel Jimmieboy in that accomplishment. Jimmieboy had overheard this much himself, but he had never told anybody about it, because he found drowsing so very easy, and the pleasures of it so great, that he was a little afraid somebody else might try it and make him divide up his fun with him. It was somewhat selfish of him to behave this way, perhaps, but then no one ever pretended that Jimmieboy was absolutely perfect, not even the boy himself.

It so happened, that upon this particular afternoon, Jimmieboy was swinging idly in the hammock under the trees. On one side of him babbled a little mountain stream, while on the other lay a garden full of beautiful flowers, where the bees hummed the whole day through, and whence when day was done and the night shadows were coming over all even the sun's rays seemed sorry to go. In the house, a hundred feet away, Jimmieboy's mamma was playing softly on a zithern, and the music, floating out through the flower-scented air, set the boy to thinking, which with him is always the preliminary to a doze. His right eye struggled hard to keep awake, long after the left eye had given up the fight, and it was due possibly to this that Jimmieboy was wide enough awake at the time to hear a quaint little voice up in the tree calling to the tiger lilies over near the house.

"Say, Tige," the little voice cried, "what time is it?"

"I can't see the clock," returned the lily. "But," it added, dropping into verse:

"I judge from sundry tinkles Of the bell upon the cow That if it isn't later, It is pretty nearly now."

"Thank you," said the voice up the tree, "I was afraid I'd miss my train."

"So! You are going away?" said another voice, which, if his ears did not deceive Jimmieboy, came this time from the rose bush.

"Yes," said the voice up in the tree. "Yes, I'm going away. I don't know where exactly, because I haven't bought my ticket yet. I may be going to the North Pole, or I may only be coming here. In fact, if my ticket turns out to be a return ticket, it will amount to that, which makes me wonder what's the use of going any way."

"But when does your train go?" asked the voice in the rose bush.

"A week from next Thursday," said the tree voice. "I didn't know but that it was then now. You see I always get mixed up as to what time it is or what day it is. This isn't a date tree, and I haven't any calendar."

"I guess you've got plenty of time," chuckled the tiger lily, nodding its head gleefully at the holly-hock. "It won't be a week from next Thursday for several days yet."

"Heigho," sighed the voice up in the tree. "Several days to wait, eh?

I'm sure I don't know what I shall do to pa.s.s the time away."

"Oh, as for that," observed the holly-hock; "I know an easy scheme for pa.s.sing time. I learned it from a fairy I met once.

"'Sit still and never raise your hands,'

Advised the little elf, 'Pay no attention to the clock, And time will pa.s.s itself.'

"You have nothing to do with it doing it that way," the holly-hock added.

"That's a good idea," said the voice up in the tree. "It's queer I never thought of it, and I've been thinking and thinking ever so many years, trying to get up a scheme to pa.s.s the time."

"You're not very deep, I'm afraid," said the rose bush. "You can't think very valuable thoughts, can you?"

"I'm sure I don't know," the voice up the tree replied. "I've never tried to sell them, so of course I can't tell whether they are valuable or not. Do you sell what you think?"

"Certainly I do," returned the rose bush. "I suggested the idea of making honey to the bees. Wasn't that a great thing to do?"