In Camp With A Tin Soldier

Breathing which horrible threat, the major mounted his horse and galloped madly down the road, and Jimmieboy, not knowing whether to be sorry or amused, started on a search for the corporal in order that he might hear his report, and gain, if possible, some solution of the major's strange conduct.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CORPORAL'S FAIRY STORY

JIMMIEBOY had not long to search for the corporal. He found that worthy in a very few minutes, lying fast asleep under a tree some twenty or thirty rods down the road, snoring away as if his life depended upon it. It was quite evident that the poor fellow was worn out with his exertions, and Jimmieboy respected his weariness, and restrained his strong impulse to awaken him.

His consideration for the tired soldier was not without its reward, for as Jimmieboy listened the corporal's snores took semblance to words, which, as he remembered them, the snores of his papa in the early morning had never done. Indeed, Jimmieboy and his small brother Russ were agreed on the one point that their father's snores were about the most uninteresting, uncalled for, unmeaning sounds in the world, which, no doubt, was why they made it a point to interrupt them on every possible occasion. The novelty of the present situation was delightful to the little general. To be able to stand there and comprehend what it was the corporal was snoring so vociferously, was most pleasing, and he was still further entertained to note that it was nothing less than a rollicking song that was having its sweetness wasted upon the desert air by the sleeping officer before him.

This is the song that Jimmieboy heard:

"I would not be a man of peace,Oh, no-ho-ho – not I;But give me battles without cease;Give me grim war with no release,Or let me die-hi-hi.I love the frightful things we eatIn times of war-or-or;The biscuit tough, the granite meat,And hard green apples are a treatWhich I adore-dor-dor.I love the sound of roaring gunsUpon my e-e-ears,I love in routs the lengthy runs,I do not mind the stupid punsOf dull-ull grenadiers.I should not weep to lose a limb,An arm, or thumb-bum-bum.I laugh with glee to hear the zimOf shells that make my chance seem slimOf getting safe back hum.Just let me sniff gunpowder inMy nasal fee-a-ture,And I will ever sing and grin.To me sweet music is the dinOf war, you may be sure."

"Well, I declare!" cried Jimmieboy. "If my dear old papa could snore songs like that, wouldn't I let him sleep mornings!"

"He does," snored the corporal. "The only trouble is he doesn't snore as clearly as I do. It takes long practice to become a fluent snorer like myself – that is to say, a snorer who can be understood by any one whatever his age, nation, or position in life. That song I have just snored for you could be understood by a Zulu just as well as you understood it, because a snore is exactly the same in Zuluese as it is in your language or any other – in which respect it resembles a cup of coffee or a canary-bird."

"Are you still snoring, or is this English you are speaking?" asked Jimmieboy.

"Snoring; and that proves just what I said, for you understood me just as plainly as though I had spoken in English," returned the corporal, his eyes still tightly closed in sleep.

"Snore me another poem," said Jimmieboy.

"No, I won't do that; but if you wish me to I'll snore you a fairy tale," answered the corporal.

"That will be lovely," said Jimmieboy. "I love fairy tales."

"Very well," observed the corporal, turning over on his back and throwing his head back into an uncomfortable position so that he could snore more loudly. "Here goes. Once upon a time there was a small boy named Tom whose parents were so poor and so honest that they could not afford to give him money enough to go to the circus when it came to town, which made him very wretched and unhappy, because all the other little boys who lived thereabouts were more fortunately situated, and had bought tickets for the very first performance. Tom cried all night and went about the town moaning all day, for he did want to see the elephant whose picture was on the fences that could hold itself up on its hind tail; the man who could toss five-hundred-pound cannon balls in the air and catch them on top of his head as they came down; the trick horse that could jump over a fence forty feet high without disturbing the two-year-old wonder Pattycake who sat in a rocking-chair on his back. As Tom very well said, these were things one had to see to believe, and now they were coming, and just because he could not get fifty cents he could not see them.

"Then he thought, 'Here! why can't I go out into the world, and by hard work earn the fifty cents I so much need to take me through the doors of the circus tent into the presence of these marvelous creatures?'

"And he went out and called upon a great lawyer and asked him if he did not want a partner in his business for a day, but the lawyer only laughed and told him to go to the doctor and ask him. So Tom went to the doctor, and the doctor said he did not want a partner, but he did want a boy to take medicines for him and tell him what they tasted like, and he promised Tom fifty cents if he would be that boy for a day, and Tom said he would try.

"Then the doctor got out his medicine-chest and gave Tom twelve bottles of medicine, and told him to taste each one of them, and Tom tasted two of them, and decided that he would rather do without the circus than taste the rest, so the doctor bade him farewell, and Tom went to look for something else to do. As he walked disconsolately down the street and saw by the clock that it was nearly eleven o'clock, he made up his mind that he would think no more about the circus, but would go home and study arithmetic instead, the chance of his being able to earn the fifty cents seemed so very slight. So he turned back, and was about to go to his home, when he caught sight of another circus poster, which showed how the fiery, untamed giraffe caught cocoanuts in his mouth – the cocoanuts being fired out of a cannon set off by a clown who looked as if he could make a joke that would make an owl laugh. This was too much for Tom. He couldn't miss that without at least making one further effort to earn the money that would pay for his ticket.

"So off he started again in search of profitable employment. He had not gone far when he came to a crockery shop, and on stopping to look in the large shop window at the beautiful dishes and graceful soup tureens that were to be seen there, he saw a sign on which was written in great golden letters 'BOY WANTED.' Now Tom could not read, but something told him that that sign was a good omen for him, so he went into the shop and asked if they had any work that a boy of his size could do.

"'Yes,' said the owner of the shop. 'We want an errand-boy. Are you an errand-boy?'

"Tom answered bravely that he thought he was, and the man said he would give him a trial anyhow, and sent him off on a sample errand, telling him that if he did that one properly, he would pay him fifty cents a day for as many days as he kept him, giving him a half holiday on all circus-days. Tom was delighted, and started off gleefully to perform the sample errand, which was to take a basketful of china plates to the house of a rich merchant who lived four miles back in the country. Bravely the little fellow plodded along until he came to the gate-way of the rich man's place, when so overcome was he with happiness at getting something to do that he could not wait to get the gate open, but leaped like a deer clear over the topmost pickets. But, alas! his very happiness was his ruin, for as he landed on the other side the china plates flew out of the basket in every direction, and falling on the hard gravel path were broken every one."

"Dear me!" cried Jimmieboy, sympathetically. "Poor little Tom."

"Whereat the cowRemarked, 'Pray how —If what you say is true —How should the child,However mild,Become so wildly blue?'"

snored the corporal.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Jimmieboy, very much surprised at the rhyme, which, so far as he could see, had nothing to do with the fairy story.

"What's the matter with me?" returned the corporal. "Nothing. Why?"

"There wasn't anything about a cow in the fairy story you were telling about Tom," said Jimmieboy.

"Was I telling that story about Tom?" asked the sleeping soldier.

"Certainly," replied Jimmieboy.

"Then you must have interrupted me," snored the corporal. "You must never interrupt a person who is snoring until he gets through, because the chances are nine out of ten that, being asleep, he won't remember what he has been snoring about, and will go off on something else entirely. Where was I when you interrupted?"

"You had got to where Tom jumped over the gate and broke all the china plates," answered Jimmieboy.

"Very well, then. I'll go on, but don't you say another thing until I have finished," said the corporal. Then resuming his story, he snored away as follows: "And falling on the hard gravel path the plates were broken every one, which was awfully sad, as any one could understand who could see how the poor little fellow threw himself down on the grass and wept. Dear me, how he wept! He wept so long and such great tears, that the grass about him for yards and yards looked as fresh and green as though there had been a rain-storm.

"'Oh, dear! what shall I do?' cried Tom, ruefully regarding the shattered plates. 'They'll beat me if I go back to the shop, and I'll never get to see the circus after all.'

"'No,' said a voice. 'They will not beat you, and I will see that you get to the circus.'

"'Who are you?' asked Tom, looking up and seeing before him a beautiful lady, who looked as if she might be a part of the circus herself. 'Are you the lady with the iron jaw or the horseback lady that jumps through hoops of fire?'

"'Neither,' replied the lady. 'I am your Fairy Godmother, and I have come to tell you that if you will gather up the broken plates and take them up to the great house yonder, I will fix it so that you can go to the circus.'

"'Won't they scold me for breaking the plates?' asked Tom, his eyes brightening and his tears drying.

"'Take them and see,' said the Fairy Godmother, and Tom, who was always an obedient lad, did as he was told. He gathered up the broken plates, put them in his basket, and went up to the house.

"'Here are your plates,' he said, all of a tremble as he entered.

"'Let's see if any of them are broken,' said the merchant in a voice so gruff that Tom trembled all the harder. Surely he was now in worse trouble than ever.

"'H'm!' said the rich man taking one out and looking at it. 'That seems to be all right.'

"'Yes,' said Tom, meekly, surprised to note that the plate was as good as ever. 'It has been very neatly mended.'

"'Very what?' roared the rich man, who didn't want mended plates. 'Did you say mended?'

"'Oh, no, sir!' stammered Tom, who saw that he had made a bad mistake. 'That is, I didn't mean to say mended. I meant to say that they'd been very highly recommended.'

"'Oh! Recommended, eh?' returned the rich man more calmly. 'That's different. The rest of them seem to be all right, too. Here, take your basket and go along with you. Good-by!'

"And so Tom left the merchant's house very much pleased to have got out of his scrape so easily, and feeling very grateful to his Fairy Godmother for having helped him.

"'Well,' said she, when he got back to the gate where she was awaiting him, 'was everything all right?'

"'Yes,' said Tom, happily. 'The plates were all right, and now they are all left.'

"The Fairy Godmother laughed and said he was a bright boy, and then she asked him which he would rather do: pay fifty cents to go to the circus once, or wear the coat of invisibility and walk in and out as many times as he wanted to. To this Tom, who was a real boy, and preferred going to the circus six times to going only once, replied that as he was afraid he might lose the fifty cents he thought he would take the coat, though he also thought, he said, if his dear Fairy Godmother could find it in her heart to let him have both the coat and the fifty cents he could find use for them.

"At this the Fairy Godmother laughed again, and said she guessed he could, and, giving him two shining silver quarters and the coat of invisibility, she made a mysterious remark, which he could not understand, and disappeared. Tom kissed his hand toward the spot where she had stood, now vacant, and ran gleefully homeward, happy as a bird, for he had at last succeeded in obtaining the means for his visit to the circus. That night, so excited was he, he hardly slept a wink, and even when he did sleep, he dreamed of such unpleasant things as the bitter medicines of the doctor and the broken plates, so that it was just as well he should spend the greater part of the night awake.

"His excitement continued until the hour for going to the circus arrived, when he put on his coat of invisibility and started. To test the effect of the coat he approached one of his chums, who was standing in the middle of the long line of boys waiting for the doors to open, and tweaked his nose, deciding from the expression on his friend's face – one of astonishment, alarm, and mystification – that he really was invisible, and so, proceeding to the gates, he passed by the ticket-taker into the tent without interference from any one. It was simply lovely; all the seats in the place were unoccupied, and he could have his choice of them. Surely nobody could ask for anything better.

"You may be sure he chose one well down in front, so that he should miss no part of the performance, and then he waited for the beginning of the very wonderful series of things that were to come.

"Alas! poor Tom was again doomed to a very mortifying disappointment. He forgot that his invisibility made his lovely front seat appear to be unoccupied, and while he was looking off in another direction a great, heavy, fat man entered and sat down upon him, squeezing him so hard that he could scarcely breathe, and as for howling, that was altogether out of the question, and there through the whole performance the fat man sat, and the invisible Tom saw not one of the marvelous acts or the wonderful animals, and, what was worse, when a joke was got off he couldn't see whether it was by the clown or the ring-master, and so didn't know when to laugh even if he had wanted to. It was the most dreadful disappointment Tom ever had, and he went home crying, and spent the night groaning and moaning with sorrow.

"It was not until he began to dress for breakfast next morning, and his two beautiful quarters rolled out of his pocket on the floor, that he remembered he still had the means to go again. When he had made this discovery he became happy once more, and started off with his invisible coat hanging over his arm, and paid his way in for the second and last performance like all the other boys. This time he saw all there was to be seen, and was full of happiness, until the lions' cage was brought in, when he thought it would be a fine thing to put on his invisible coat, and enter the cage with the lion-tamer, which he did, having so exciting a time looking at the lions and keeping out of their way that he forgot to watch the tamer when he went out, so that finally when the circus was all over Tom found himself locked in the cage with the lions with nothing but raw meat to eat. This was bad enough, but what was worse, the next city in which the circus was to exhibit was hundreds of miles away from the town in which Tom lived, and no one was expected to open the cage doors again for four weeks.

"When Tom heard this he was frightened to death almost, and rather than spend all that time shut up in a small cage with the kings of the beasts, he threw off the coat of invisibility and shrieked, and then – "

"Yes – then what?" cried Jimmieboy, breathlessly, so excited that he could not help interrupting the corporal, despite the story-teller's warning.

"The bull-dog said he thought it might,But pussy she said 'Nay,'At which the unicorn took fright,And stole a bale of hay,"

snored the corporal with a yawn.

"That can't be it! that can't be it!" cried Jimmieboy, so excited to hear what happened to little Tom in the lions' cage that he began to shake the corporal almost fiercely.

"What can't be what?" asked the corporal, sitting up and opening his eyes. "What are you trying to talk about, general?"

"Tom – and the circus – what happened to him in the lions' cage when he took off his coat?" cried Jimmieboy.

"Tom? And the circus? I don't know anything about any Tom or any circus," replied the corporal, with a sleepy nod.

"But you've just been snoring to me about it," remonstrated Jimmieboy.

"Don't remember it at all," said the corporal. "I must have been asleep and dreamed it, or else you did, or maybe both of us did; but tell me, general, in confidence now, and don't ever tell anybody I asked you, have you such a thing as a – as a gum-drop in your pocket?"

And Jimmieboy was so put out with the corporal for waking up just at the wrong time that he wouldn't answer him, but turned on his heel, and walked away very much concerned in his mind as to the possible fate of poor little Tom.

CHAPTER VII.

A DISAGREEABLE PERSONAGE

IT cannot be said that Jimmieboy was entirely happy after his falling out with the corporal. Of course it was very inconsiderate of the corporal to wake up at the most exciting period of his fairy story, and leave his commanding officer in a state of uncertainty as to the fate of little Tom; but as he walked along the road, and thought the matter all over, Jimmieboy reflected that after all he was himself as much to blame as the corporal. In the first place, he had interrupted him in his story at the point where it became most interesting, though warned in advance not to do so, and in the second, he had not fallen back upon his undoubted right as a general to command the corporal to go to sleep again, and to stay so until his little romance was finished to the satisfaction of his superior officer. The latter was without question the thing he should have done, and at first he thought he would go back and tell the corporal he was very sorry he hadn't done so. Indeed, he would have gone back had he not met, as he rounded the turn, a singular-looking little fellow, who, sitting high in an oak-tree at the side of the road, attracted his attention by winking at him. Ordinarily Jimmieboy would not have noticed anybody who winked at him, because his papa had told him that people who would wink would smoke a pipe, which was very wrong, particularly in people who were as small as this droll person in the tree. But the singular-looking little fellow winked aloud, and Jimmieboy could not help noticing him. Like most small boys Jimmieboy delighted in noises, especially noises that went off like pop-guns, which was just the kind of noise the tree dwarf made when he winked.

"Hello, you!" said Jimmieboy, as the sounds first attracted his attention. "What are you doing up there?"

"Sitting on a limb and counting the stars in the sky," answered the dwarf.

Jimmieboy laughed. This seemed such a curious thing to do.

"How many are there?" he asked.

"Seventeen," replied the dwarf.

"Ho!" jeered Jimmieboy.

"There are, really," said the dwarf. "I counted 'em myself."

"There's more than that," said Jimmieboy. "I've had stories told me of twenty-seven or twenty-eight."

"That doesn't prove anything," returned the dwarf, "that is, nothing but what I said. If there are twenty-eight there must be seventeen, so you can't catch me up on that."

"Come down," said Jimmieboy. "I want to see you."

"I can't come now," returned the dwarf. "I'm too busy counting the eighteenth star, but I'll drop my telescope and let you see me through that."

"I'll help you count the stars if you come," put in Jimmieboy. "How many stars can you count a day?"

"Oh, about one and a half," said the dwarf. "I could count more than that, only I'm cross-eyed and see double, so that after I've got through counting, I have to divide the whole number by two to get the proper figures, and I never was good at dividing. I've always hated division – particularly division of apples and peaches. There is no meaner sum in any arithmetic in the world than that I used to have to do every time I got an apple when I was your age."

"What was the sum?" asked Jimmieboy.

"It was to divide one apple by three boys," returned the queer little man. "Most generally that would be regarded as a case of three into one, but in this instance it was one into three; and, worse than all, while it pretended to be division, and was as hard as division, as far as I was concerned it was subtraction too, and I was always the leftest part of the remainder."

"But I don't see why you had to divide your apples every time you got any," said Jimmieboy.

"That's easy enough to explain," said the dwarf. "If I didn't divide, and did eat the whole apple, I'd have a fearful pain in my heart; whereas if I gave my little brothers each a third, it would often happen that they would get the pain and not I. After one or two experiments I fixed it so that I never got the pain part any more – for you know every apple has an ache in it – and they did, so, you see, I kept myself well as could be, and at the same time built up quite a reputation for generosity."

"How did you fix it so as to give them the pain part always?" queried Jimmieboy.

"Why, I located the part of the apple that held the pain. I did not divide one apple I got, but ate the whole thing myself, part by part. I studied each part carefully, and discovered that apples are divided by Nature into three parts, anyhow. Pleasure was one part, pain was another part, and the third part was just nothing – neither pleasure nor pain. The core is where the ache is, the crisp is where the pleasure is, and the skin represents the part which isn't anything. When I found that out I said, 'Here! What is a good enough plan for Nature is a good enough plan for me. I'll divide my apples on Nature's plan.' Which I did. To one brother I gave the core; to the other the skin; the rest I ate myself."

"It was very mean of you to make your brothers suffer the pain," said Jimmieboy.

"Well, they had their days off. One time one brother'd have the core; another time the other brother'd have it. They took turns," said the dwarf.

"It was mean, anyhow!" cried Jimmieboy, who was so fond of his own little brother that he would gladly have borne all his pains for him if it could have been arranged.

"Well, meanness is my business," said the dwarf.

"Your business?" echoed Jimmieboy, opening his eyes wide with astonishment, meanness seemed such a strange business.

"Certainly," returned the dwarf. "Don't you know what I am? I am an unfairy."

"What's that?" asked Jimmieboy.

"You know what a fairy is, don't you?" said the dwarf.

"Yes. It's a dear lovely creature with wings, that goes about doing good."

"That's right. An unfairy is just the opposite," explained the dwarf. "I go about doing unfair things. I am the fairy that makes things go wrong. When your hat blows off in the street the chances are that I have paid the bellows man, who works up all these big winds we have, to do it. If I see people having a good time on a picnic, I fly up to the sky and push a rain cloud over where they are and drench them, having first of course either hidden or punched great holes in their umbrellas. Oh, I can tell you, I am the meanest creature that ever was. Why, do you know what I did once in a country school?"

"No, I don't," said Jimmieboy, in tones of disgust. "I don't know anything about mean things."

"Well, you ought to know about this," returned the dwarf, "because it was just the meanest thing anybody ever did. There was a boy who'd studied awfully hard in hopes that he would lead his class when the holidays came, and there was another boy in the school who was equal to him in everything but arithmetic, and who would have been beaten on that one point, so that the other boy would have stood where he wanted to, only I helped the second boy by rubbing out all the correct answers of the first boy and putting others on the slate instead, so that the first boy lost first place and had to take second. Wasn't that mean?"

"It was horrid," said Jimmieboy, "and it's a good thing you didn't come down here when I asked you to, for if you had, I think I should now be slapping you just as hard as I could."