"One I made up myself," said the Comet, gleefully. "And it"s simply fine. I call it the Cometoo language. n.o.body knows anything about it except myself, and I haven"t mastered it yet--but my! It"s the easiest language in the world to write poetry in. All you have to do is to go right ahead and make up words to suit yourself, and finding rhyme is no trouble at all when you do that."
"But what"s the good of it?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, it has plenty of advantages," said the Comet, shaking his head wisely. "In the first place if you have a language all your own, that n.o.body else knows, n.o.body else can write a poem in it. You have the whole field to yourself. Just think how great a man would be if he was the only one to understand English and write poetry in it. He"d get all the money that ever was paid for English poetry, which would be a fortune. It would come to at least $800, which is a good deal of money, considering."
"Considering what?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Considering what it would bring if wisely invested," said the Comet.
"Did you ever think of what $800 was worth in peanuts, for instance."
Jimmieboy laughed at the idea of spending $800 in peanuts, and then he said: "No, I never thought anything about it. What is it worth in peanuts?"
"Well," said the Comet, scratching his head with his tail, "it"s a very hard bit of arithmetic, but, I"ll try to write it out for you. Peanuts, you know, cost ten cents a quart."
"Do they?" said Jimmieboy. "I never bought a whole quart at once. I"ve only paid five cents a pint."
"Well, five cents a pint is English for ten cents a quart," said the Comet, "and in $800 there are eight thousand ten centses, so that you could get eight thousand quarts of peanuts for $800. Now every quart of peanuts holds about fifty peanut sh.e.l.lfuls, so that eight thousand quarts of peanuts equal four hundred thousand peanuts sh.e.l.lfuls. Each peanut sh.e.l.l holds two small nuts so that in four hundred thousand of them there are eight hundred thousand nuts."
"Phe-e-ew!" whistled Jimmieboy. "What a feast."
"Yes," said the Comet, "but just you wait. Suppose you ate one of these nuts a minute, do you know how long it would take you, eating eight hours a day, to eat up the whole lot?"
"No," said Jimmieboy, beginning to feel a little awed at the wondrous possibilities of $800 in peanuts.
"Four years, six months, three weeks and six days, and you"d have to eat Sundays to get through it in that time," said the Comet. "In soda water it would be quite as awful and in peppermint sticks at two cents a foot it would bring you a stick forty thousand feet, or more than seven miles long."
"Isn"t $800 wonderful," said Jimmieboy, overcome by the mere thought of so much peppermint candy.
"Yes--but really I am much more wonderful when you think of me. You haven"t been on my back more than ten minutes and yet in that time I have taken you all around the world," said the Comet.
"All the way!" said Jimmieboy.
"Yes," said the Comet, stopping suddenly. "Here we are back at your window again."
"But I didn"t see China, and I wanted to," said the boy.
"Can"t help it," said the Comet. "You had your chance, but you preferred to talk about poetry and peanuts. It isn"t my fault. Off with you, now."
And then the Comet bucked like a wild Western Broncho, and as Jimmieboy went over his head through the window and landed plump in his papa"s lap, the queer creature with the fiery tail flew off into s.p.a.ce.
CHAPTER XIII.
JIMMIEBOY AND JACK FROST--IN WHICH JACK GIVES OFFENCE.
Jimmieboy is the proud possessor of a small brother, who, to use one of Jimmieboy"s own expressions, is getting to be a good deal of a man. That is to say, he is old enough to go out driving all by himself, being eleven months of age, and quite capable of managing the fiery untamed nurse that pushes his carriage along the street. Of course, if the nurse had not been warranted kind and gentle when the baby"s mamma went to find her in the beginning, little Russ would have had to have somebody go along with him when he went driving--somebody like Jimmieboy, for instance, to frighten off big dogs and policemen, and to see that the nurse didn"t shy or run away--but as it was, the baby had developed force of character and self-reliance enough to go out unattended, and, except on one occasion, he got back again safe and sound.
This one occasion was early in December, when Nature, having observed that the great big boys had got through playing football and were beginning to think of snow-b.a.l.l.s, sent word to the Arctic Cold Weather Company that she desired to have delivered at once five days of low temperature for general distribution among her friends, which days were sent through by special messenger, arriving late on the night of December 1st, giving great satisfaction to everybody, particularly to those who deal in ice, ear-tabs, and skates. At first Jimmieboy"s mamma thought that Nature was perhaps a little too generous with her frosty weather, and for two days she kept her two sons, Jimmieboy and Russ, cooped up in the house, laying in a supply of furnace and log-fire heat sufficiently large to keep them warm until the third day, when she thought that they might safely go out.
[Ill.u.s.tration: JIMMIEBOY PREPARED FOR COLD WEATHER.]
Upon the third day Jimmieboy"s papa said that he imagined the boys were warm enough to venture out-of-doors, so they were bundled up in leggings, fur-lined coats, flannel bands, scarfs, silk handkerchiefs, lamb"s-wool rugs, and "arctics," the door was opened, and out they went. Jimmieboy staid out seven minutes, and then came in again to see if he could find out why his nose had suddenly changed its color, first from pink to red, and then from red to blue. He also wished to come in, he said, because the solid iron driver of his red express wagon had been "freezed stiff," and he was afraid if he staid out much longer he"d never thaw out again. Little Russ, on the contrary, lying luxuriously in his carriage, with no part of him visible save the tip end of his chin, which was so fat that the coverings would slip off, no matter how hard mamma and the nurse tried to make them stay on, remained out-of-doors for two hours, apparently very comfortable. His great blue eyes shone mirthfully when he came in, and until six o"clock that evening all went well with him, and then he began to whimper.
"What"s the matter with my baby?" asked Jimmieboy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LITTLE RUSS.]
Little Russ made no reply other than a grimace, which made Jimmieboy laugh, at which the baby opened his mouth as wide as he could and shrieked with wrath.
"I"m inclined to think," said the nurse, as she sought vainly to find where a possible pin might be creating a disturbance to the baby"s discomfiture--"I"m inclined to think that perhaps he"s got a pain somewhere."
And then the youthful Russ blinked his eyes, gave another shriek, and attempted to pout. Now it is a singular way little Russ has of pouting.
He gets it from his mamma, who used to pout in just the same way when she was a little girl--so grandma says--and it consists entirely of sticking his chin out as far as he can, while concealing his lower lip as much as possible beneath the cherry-colored Cupid"s bow that acts as his upper lip. A proceeding of this sort always results in making that chin the most conspicuous thing in the room, so that it is not surprising that when little Russ pouted every one in the room should at once notice that there was a great red spot upon it.
"Why, the poor little soul has been frost-bitten!" cried mamma, running for the cold cream--queer thing that, by-the-way, Jimmieboy thought. He would have put warm cream on a cold sore like that.
"So he is!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed papa, with an indignant glance at the chin, which only caused that fat little feature to pout the more. "Hadn"t I better send for the doctor?"
"Does dogs frost-bite?" queried Jimmieboy, looking around the room for a stick with which to beat the dog that had done the biting, if perchance it was a dog that was responsible.
"No, indeed," said papa. "It wasn"t a dog; it was Jack Frost, and n.o.body else. He ought to be muzzled."
"Who is Jack Frost, papa?" Jimmieboy asked, so much interested in Jack that he for a moment forgot his suffering small brother.
"Jack? Why, Jack is a man named Frost, who deals in cold, and he goes around in winter biting people. He"s a sort of ice-man, only he"s retired from trade, and gives things away, to people who don"t want "em.
It would be better if he"d go into business, and sell his favors to people who do want "em."
"Well, he"s a naughty man," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes, indeed, he is," said papa. "Why, he"s the man who withered all your mamma"s plants, and painted our nice green lawn white; and then, when we wanted to dig holes for the fence posts, he came along and made the ground so hard it took all the edge off the spade, and made the hired man so tired that he overslept himself that night and let the furnace go out."
"Can"t somebody catch him, and put him into prism?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, he"s been in prism lots of times," said papa, with a laugh at Jimmieboy"s droll word; "but he manages to get out again."
"Where does he live, papa?" asked the boy.
"All around in winter. In summer he goes north for his health."
"And can"t anybody ever get rid of him?"
"No. The only way to do that successfully would be to burn him out, and so far n.o.body has ever been able to do it entirely. You can put him out of your own house; but, if he wants to, he"ll stay around the place and nip your plants, and freeze up your wells, and put a web of ice on your gra.s.s and sidewalks in spite of anything you can do."
By this time little Russ had quieted down and gone to sleep. The cold cream, aided by a huge bottleful of the food he liked best, which warmed up his little heart and various other parts of his being, to which the world had for a little while seemed bleak and drear, had put him in a contented frame of mind, and if the smile on his lips meant anything he had forgotten his woes in dreams of sweet and lovely things.