"Well, it"s good you don"t," said Santa Claus, turning a somersault backward. "It"s werry good you don"t, for should you had have you"d have been disappointed. But, I say, was that what you wanted, or were you after one of my new patent typewriters that you wind up? Don"t keep me waiting all night----"
"I never heard of your new patent typewriters that you wind up,"
Jimmieboy answered.
"That isn"t the question," interrupted Santa Claus nervously, "though I suppose it"s the answer, for if you had heard of my windable writer it would have been the thing you wanted. It"s a grand invention, that machine. You take a key, wind the thing up, having first loaded it with paper, and what do you suppose it does?"
"Writes?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Exactly," replied Santa Claus. "It writes stories and poems and jokes.
There are five keys goes with each machine--one poetry key, one joke key, one fairy tale key, a story of adventure key, and a solemn Sunday school story key that writes morals and makes you wonder whether you"re as good as you ought to be."
"Well," said Jimmieboy, "now that I know about that, that"s what I want, though as a matter of fact I rang you up for a gla.s.s of ice water."
"What!" cried Santa Claus, indignantly, bounding about the room like a tennis ball again. "Me? Do you mean to say you"ve summoned me away from my work at this season of the year just to bring you a gla.s.s of ice water?"
"I--I didn"t mean for you to bring it," said Jimmieboy, meekly. "I--I must have made a mistake----"
"It"s outrageous," said Santa Claus, stamping his foot, "You hadn"t oughter make mistakes. I won"t bring you anything on Christmas--no, not a thing. You----"
A knock at the door interrupted the little old man, and Jimmieboy, on going to see who was there, discovered the hall boy with the pitcher of water.
"What"s that?" asked Santa, as Jimmieboy returned.
"It"s the water," replied the little fellow. "So I couldn"t have made a mistake after all."
"Hum!" said Santa, stroking his beard slowly and thoughtfully. "I guess--I guess the wires must be crossed--so it wasn"t your fault--and I will bring you something, but the man who ought to have looked after those wires and didn"t won"t find anything in his stocking but a big hole in the toe on Christmas."
The old fellow then shook hands good-by with the boy, and walked to the chimney.
"Let"s see--what shall I bring you?" he asked, pausing.
"The windable writer," said Jimmieboy.
"All right," returned Santa, starting up the chimney. "You can have one if I get it finished in time, but I am afraid this annoying delay will compel me to put off the distribution of those machines until some other year."
And with that he was gone.
Meanwhile Jimmieboy is anxiously waiting for Christmas to see if it will bring him the windable writer. I don"t myself believe that it will, for the last I heard Santa had not returned to his workshop, but whether he got stuck in the hotel chimney or not n.o.body seems to know.
IN THE BROWNIES" HOUSE
_IN THE BROWNIES" HOUSE_
Jimmieboy, like every other right-minded youth, was a great admirer of the Brownies. They never paid any attention to him, but went about their business in the books as solemnly as ever no matter what jokes he might crack at their expense. Nor did it seem to make any difference to them how much noise was being made in the nursery, they swam, threw snow-b.a.l.l.s, climbed trees, floated over Niagara, and built houses as unconcernedly as ever. Nevertheless Jimmieboy liked them. He didn"t need to have any attention paid to him by the little folk in pictures. He didn"t expect it, and so it made no difference to him whatever whether they noticed him or not.
The other day, however, just before the Christmas vacation had come to an end Jimmieboy had a very queer experience with his little picture book acquaintances. He was feeling a trifle lonesome. His brothers had gone to a party which was given by one of the neighbors for the babies, and Jimmieboy at the last moment had decided that he would not go. He wasn"t a baby any more, but a small man. He had pockets in his trousers and wore suspenders exactly like his father"s, only smaller, and of course a proper regard for his own dignity would not permit him to take part in a mere baby party.
"I"ll spend my afternoon reading," he said in a lordly way. "I don"t feel like playing "Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush" now that I wear suspenders."
So he went down into his father"s library where his mother had put a book-case for him, on the shelves of which he kept his treasured books.
They were the most beautiful fairy books you ever saw; Brownie books and true story books by the dozen; books of funny poetry ill.u.s.trated by still funnier pictures, and, what I fancy he liked best of all, a half dozen or more big blank books that his father had given him, in which Jimmieboy wrote poems of his own in great capital letters, some of which stood on their heads and others on their sides, but all of which anybody who could read at all could make out at the rate of one letter every ten minutes. I never read much of Jimmieboy"s poetry myself and so cannot say how good it was, but his father told me that the boy never had the slightest difficulty in making Ma.s.sachusetts rhyme with Potato, or Jacksonville with Lemonade, so that I presume they were remarkable in their way.
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 smile We thought we"d like to rest awhile.
We"re every one of us in bed With night-caps on each little head, And if you"ll list you"ll hear the roar With 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 make A really elegant mistake,"
he said, and then he added,
"If you will open wide the book We"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 that You 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."