Bikey the Skicycle and Other Tales of Jimmieboy

Arrived in the library Jimmieboy seated himself before his book-case, and after gloating over his possessions for a few moments, selected one of the Brownie books, curled himself up in a comfortable armchair before the fire, and opened the book.

"Why!" he cried as his eye fell upon one of the picture pages. "That's funny. I never saw that picture before. There isn't a Brownie in it; nothing but an empty house and a yard in front of it. Where can the Brownies have gone?"

He hadn't long to wait for an answer. He had hardly spoken when the little door of the house opened and the Dude Brownie poked his head out and said softly:

"'Tis not an empty house, my dear.The Brownies all have come in here.We've played so long to make you smileWe thought we'd like to rest awhile.We're every one of us in bedWith night-caps on each little head,And if you'll list you'll hear the roarWith which the sleeping Brownies snore."

Jimmieboy raised the book to his ear and listened, and sure enough, there came a most extraordinary noise out of the windows of the house. It sounded like a carpenter at work with a saw in a menagerie full of roaring lions.

"Well, that is funny," said Jimmieboy as he listened. "I never knew before that Brownies ever got tired. I thought they simply played and played and played all the time."

The Dude Brownie laughed.

"Now there, my boy, is where you makeA really elegant mistake,"

he said, and then he added,

"If you will open wide the bookWe'll let you come inside and look.No other boy has e'er done that.Come in and never mind your hat."

"I wouldn't wear my hat in the house anyhow," said Jimmieboy. "But I say, Mr. Brownie, I don't see how I can get in there. I'm too big."

"Your statement makes me fancy thatYou really don't know where you're at;For, though you're big and tall and wide,Already, sir, you've come inside,"

replied the Dude Brownie, and Jimmieboy, rubbing his eyes as if he couldn't believe it, looked about him and discovered that even as the Dude Brownie had said, he had without knowing it already accepted the invitation and stood in the hall of the Brownie mansion. And O! such a mansion! It was just such a house as you would expect Brownies to have. There were no stairs in it, though it was three stories high. On the walls were all sorts of funny pictures, pictures of the most remarkable animals in the world or out of it, in fact most of the pictures were of animals that Jimmieboy had never heard of before, or even imagined. There was the Brownie Elephant, for instance, the cunningest little animal you ever saw, with forty pairs of spectacles running all the way down its trunk; and a Brownie Pug-dog with its tail curled so tightly that it lifted the little creature's hind legs off the floor; and most interesting of all, a Brownie Bear that could take its fur off in hot weather and put on a light flannel robe instead. Jimmieboy gazed with eyes and mouth wide open at these pictures.

"What queer animals," he said. "Do you really have such animals as those?"

"Excuse me," said the Dude Brownie anxiously, "but before I answer, must I answer in poetry or in prose? I'll do whichever you wish me to, but I'm a little tired this afternoon, and poetry is such an effort!"

"I'm very fond of poetry," said Jimmieboy, "especially your kind, but if you are tired and would rather speak the other way, you can."

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

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 butterfly that when it came to drowsing in an interesting way there was nobody 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 tinklesOf the bell upon the cowThat 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 pass the time away."

"Oh, as for that," observed the holly-hock; "I know an easy scheme for passing 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 pass 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 pass 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?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the voice. "It was splendid. I've never had any honey, but I'm told it's fine. It's very sticky, isn't it?"

"Very," said the rose bush. "I guess honey is about as sticky as anything can be."

"And very useful for that reason," said the voice up in the tree, kindly. "Very useful. I suppose, really, if it wasn't for honey, people couldn't make postage stamps stay on letters. You ought to be very happy to think that one of your thoughts has given people the idea of mucilage. Do they ever use honey for anything else but its stickiness?"

"Hoh!" jeered the rose bush. "Don't you know anything?"

"Not much," said the tree voice. "I know you, and me, and several other things, but that's not much, is it? It's really queer how little I know. Why, would you believe it, a sparrow asked me the other day what was the difference between a robin's egg and a red blackberry, and I didn't know."

"What did you tell him?" asked the holly-hock.

"I told him I couldn't tell until I had eaten them."

"And what did he say?" put in the tiger lily, with a grin.

"He said that wasn't the answer; that one was blue and the other was green, but how a red blackberry can be green I can't see," replied the voice up in the tree.

Jimmieboy smiled quietly at this, and the voice up the tree continued:

"Then he asked me what color blueberries were, and I told him they were blue; then he said he'd bet a mosquito I couldn't tell him what color huckleberries were, and when I said they were of a delicate huckle he laughed, and said I owed him a mosquito. I may owe him a mosquito, but I haven't an idea what he was laughing at."

"That's easy," said the holly-hock. "He was laughing because there isn't any such color as huckle."

"I don't think that's funny, though," said the voice in the tree. "Indeed, I think it's sad, because it seems to me that a very pretty color could be made out of huckle. Why do you suppose there isn't any such color?"

The lily and the rose and holly-hock bushes were silent for a moment, and then they said they didn't know.

"I'm glad you don't," said the tree voice. "I'm glad to find that there are some things you don't know. Just think how dreadful it would be if you knew everything. Why, if you knew everything, nobody could tell you anything, and then there'd never be any news in the world, and when you heard a joke you couldn't ever laugh because you'd have known it before."

Here Jimmieboy, impressed by the real good sense of this remark, leaned out of the hammock and peered up into the tree to see if possible who or what it was that was speaking.

"Don't," cried the voice. "Don't try to see me, Jimmieboy, I haven't got my company clothes on, and you make me nervous."

"But I want to see who you are," said Jimmieboy.

"Well you needn't want that any more," said the voice. "I'll tell you why. Nobody knows what I am. I don't even know myself."

"But what do you look like?" asked Jimmieboy.

"I don't know that, either. I never saw myself," replied the voice. "I'm something, of course, but just what I don't know. It may be that I am a horse and wagon, only I don't think I am, because horses, and wagons don't get up in trees. I saw a horse sitting on a whiffletree once, but that was down on the ground and not up here, so, of course, you see the chances are that I'm not that."

"What do you think you are?" asked Jimmieboy.

"I haven't thought much about it. But I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll tell you what, perhaps, I am, and maybe that will help you to find out, and if you do find out I beg that you will tell me, because I've some curiosity on the subject myself."

"Go ahead," said Jimmieboy. "You give me the perhapses and I'll try to guess."

"Well," began the voice, slowly, as if, whatever it was, the thing was trying to think. Let me see.

"Perhaps I am a house and lot,Perhaps I am a pussy cat,Perhaps I am a schooner yacht,Or possibly an inky spot,Perhaps a beaver hat."

"I've never seen any of those up a tree," said Jimmieboy. "I guess you aren't any of those."

"Very likely not," said the voice, "but I can try a few more.

"Perhaps I am a picture book,It maybe I'm a candy box,Perhaps I am a trolling-hook,A tennis bat, or fancy cook,Perhaps a pair of socks."Perchance I am a pair of shears,Perhaps a piece of kindling-wood,Perhaps I am a herd of deers,Perhaps two crystal chandeliers,Or some old lady's hood."No man can say I'm not a padOn which a poet scribbles verse,It may be I'm a nice fresh shad,Or something else not quite as bad,Or maybe something worse."

"But none of these things ever go up trees," protested Jimmieboy. "Can't you tell me some of the things that perhaps you are that are found up in trees?"

"No," said the voice, sadly. "I can't. I don't know what kind of things go up trees – unless it's pollywogs or Noah's arks."

"They don't go up trees," said Jimmieboy, scornfully.

"Well I was afraid they didn't, and that's why I didn't mention them before. But you see," the voice added with a mournful little tremor, "you see how useless it is to try to guess what I am. Why, if you really guessed, I wouldn't know if you'd guessed right – so what's the use?"

"I guess there isn't any use," said Jimmieboy. "If I could only see you once, though, maybe I could tell."

Here he leaned far out of the hammock, in a vain effort to see the creature he was talking to. He leaned so far out, in fact, that he lost his balance and fell head over heels on to the soft green turf.

The mountain brook seemed to laugh at this mishap, and went babbling on to the great river that bore its waters to the sea, while Jimmieboy, somewhat dazed by his afternoon's experience, walked wonderingly back to the house to make ready for supper. He was filled with regret that he had not been able to catch a glimpse of the strange little being in the tree, for he very much wished to know what manner of creature it was, so stupid and yet so kindly – as, indeed, would I, for really I haven't any more idea as to who or what it was than he. What do you think it was?

JIMMIEBOY'S FIREWORKS

It was a very great misfortune indeed that Jimmieboy should make the acquaintance of the bumblebee at that particular time – that is to say, everybody thought it was. The bumblebee, as a rule, was one of the jolliest bees in the hive, and passed most of his days humming away as if he were the happiest of mortals; but at the particular moment when Jimmieboy, who wasn't looking where he was going, ran into him, the bee was mad about something, and he settled down on Jimmieboy's cheek and stung him. He was a very thorough bee, too, unhappily, and he never did anything by halves, which is why it was that the sting was about as bad a one and as painful as any bee ever stang. I use the word "stang" here to please Jimmieboy, by the way. It is one of his favorites in describing the incident.

Now, it is bad enough, I have found, to be stung by a bee at any time, but when it happens on the night of July Fourth, and is so painful that the person stung has to go to bed with a poultice over his cheek and eye, and so cannot see the fireworks he has been looking forward to for weeks and weeks, it is about the worst affliction that a small boy can have overtake him – at least it seems so at the time – and that was exactly poor Jimmieboy's case. He had thought and thought and thought about those fireworks for days and days and days, and here, on Fourth of July night, he found himself lying in bed in his room, with one side of his face covered with a bandage, and his poor little other blue eye gazing at the ceiling, while his ears listened to the sizzling of the rockets and pin wheels and the thunderous booming of the bombs.

"Mean old bee!" he said, drowsily, as his other blue eye tried to peer out of the window in the hope of seeing at least one rocket burst into stars. "I didn't mean to upset him."

"I know you didn't," sobbed a little voice at his side. "And I didn't mean to sting you, only I didn't know it was you, and I was mad because somebody's picked a rose I'd had my eye on for a week, and you ran into me and spilled all the honey I'd gug – gathered, and then I – I was so irritated I stuck my stingers out and stang you. Can't you forgive me?"

Jimmieboy withdrew his other blue eye from the window in wonderment. He was used to queer things, but this seemed the queerest yet. The idea of a bumblebee coming to apologize to a boy for stinging him made him smile in spite of his disappointment and his pain.

"Who are you?" he said, looking toward the foot of the bed, whence the voice had come.

"I used to be a bumblebee," sobbed the little voice, "but I've changed my first letter from 'b' to 'h.' I'm only an humble-bee now, and all because I've treated you so badly. I really didn't mean to, and I've come to help you have a good time to-night, so that you won't miss the fireworks because of my misbehavior."

"Don't mention it," said Jimmieboy, kindly. "It was my fault, after all. I hadn't ought to have run into you."

"Yes, you had ought to have, too," moaned the little bee. "You were just right in running into me. I hadn't ought to have got in your way."

"Well, anyhow, it's all right," said Jimmieboy. "You're forgiven – though you did hurt me like everything."

"I know it," sobbed the bee. "I almost wish you'd get a pin and stick it into me once, so as to sort of just even things up. It would hurt me, I know, but then I'd feel better after I got well."

"Indeed I won't," said Jimmieboy, with a determined shake of his head. "That won't do any good, and what's the use anyhow, as long as you didn't mean it?"

"I'm sure I don't know," the bee answered. "I'm only a bug, after all, you know, and so I don't understand things that human beings which has got brains can understand. I've noticed, though, that sometimes when a boy gets hurt it sort of makes him feel better if he hurts back."

"I wouldn't mind a bit if I could see the fireworks," said Jimmieboy. "That's what hurts the most."

"Well, I'll tell you what you do," said the bee; "if that's all you feel bad about, we can fix it up in a jiffy. Do you know what a jiffy is?"

"No, I don't," said Jimmieboy.

"Well, I'll tell you," said the bee, "but don't you ever tell:

"Sixty seconds make a minute,Sixty minutes make an hour;But a second has within itSixty jiffies full of power.

"In other words, a jiffy is just the same thing to a second as the second is to the minute or the minute to the hour; and, dear me, what billions of things can happen in a jiffy! Why, they're simply enormous."

"They must be," said Jimmieboy, "if, as you say, you can fix me up in regard to the fireworks in a jiffy."

"There isn't any if about it," returned the bee. "Just turn over and put your face into the pillow, and see what you can see."

"I can't see anything with both eyes in my pillow, much less with one," said Jimmieboy.