"It must be lovely to know so much," said Jimmieboy.
"It is," said the Bird; "that is, it is lovely when you don"t have to keep it all to yourself. It"s very nice to tell things. That"s really the best part of secrets, I think. It is such fun telling them. Now, why does the sun rise in the morning?"
"I don"t know. Why?"
"For the same reason that you do," returned the sage Bird. "Because it is time to get up."
"Well, here"s a thing I don"t know about," said Jimmieboy. "What is "to alarm?""
"To frighten--to scare--to dis...o...b..bulate," replied the Bird. "Why?"
"Well, I don"t see why an alarm-clock is called an alarm-clock, because it doesn"t ever alarm anybody," said Jimmieboy.
"Oh, it doesn"t, eh?" cried the Bird. "Well, that"s just where you are mistaken. It alarms the people or the animals you dream about when you are asleep, and they make such a noise getting away that they wake you up. Why, an alarm-clock saved my life once. I dreamed that I fell asleep on board a steamboat that went so fast hardly anybody could stay on board of her--she just regularly slipped out from under their feet, and unless a pa.s.senger could run fast enough to keep up with her, or was chained fast enough to keep aboard of her, he"d get dropped astern every single time. I dreamed I was aboard of her one day, and that to keep on deck I chained myself to the smoke-stack, and then dozed off. Just as I was dozing, a Misinformation Bird, who was jealous of me, sneaked up and cut the chain. As he expected, the minute I was cut loose the boat rushed from under me, and the first thing I knew I was struggling in the water. While I was struggling there, I was attacked by a Catfish. Cats are death to birds, you know, and I really had given myself up for lost, when "_ling-a-ling-a-ling-a-ling_" went the alarm-clock in the corner of my cage; the fish turned blue with fear, swished his tail about in his fright, and the splashing of the water waked me up, and there I was standing on one wheel on my perch, safe and sound. If that clock hadn"t gone off and alarmed that Catfish, I am afraid I should have been forever lost to the world."
"I see now; but I never knew before why it was called an alarm-clock, and I"ve wondered about it a good deal," said Jimmieboy. "Now, here"s another thing I"ve bothered over many a time: What"s the use of weeds?"
"Oh, that"s easy," said the Bird, with a laugh. "To make lawns look prettier next year than they do this."
"I don"t see how that is," said Jimmieboy.
"Clear as window-gla.s.s. This year you have weeds on your lawn, don"t you?"
"Yes," returned Jimmieboy.
"And you make them get out, don"t you?" said the Bird.
"Yes," a.s.sented Jimmieboy.
"Well, there you are. By getting out they make your lawns prettier.
That"s one of the simplest things in the world. But here"s a thing I should think you"d wonder at. Why do houses have shutters on their windows?" asked the Bird.
"I know why," said Jimmieboy. "It"s to keep the sun out."
"That"s nonsense, because the sun is so much larger than any house that was ever built it couldn"t get in if it tried," returned the feathered sage.
"Then I don"t know why. Why?" asked Jimmieboy.
"So as to wake people up by banging about on windy nights, and they are a mighty useful invention too," said the Bird. "I knew of a whole family that got blown away once just because they hadn"t any shutters to bang about and warn them of their danger. It was out in the West, where they have cyclones, which are things that pick up houses and toss them about just as you would pebbles. A Mr. and Mrs. Podlington had built a house in the middle of a big field for themselves and their seventeen children. Mr. Podlington was very rich, but awful mean, and when the house was finished, all except the shutters, he said he wasn"t going to have any shutters because they cost too much, and so they hadn"t a shutter on the house. One night after they had lived where they were about six months they all went to bed about nine o"clock, and by ten they were sound asleep, every one of them. At eleven o"clock a breeze sprang up. This grew very shortly into a gale. Then it became a hurricane, and by two o"clock it was a cyclone. One cyclone wouldn"t have hurt much, but at three o"clock two more came along, and the first thing the Podlington family knew their house was blown off its foundations, lifted high up in the air, and at breakfast-time was out of sight, and, what is worse, it has never come down anywhere, and all this happened ten years ago."
"But where did it go?" asked Jimmieboy.
"n.o.body knows. Maybe it landed in the moon. Maybe it"s being blown about on the wings of those cyclones yet. I don"t believe we"ll ever know,"
answered the Bird. "But you can see just why that all happened. It was Mr. Podlington"s meanness about the shutters, and nothing else. If he had had shutters on that house, at least one of them would have flopped bangety-bang against the house all night, and the chances are that they would all have been waked up by it before the cyclone came, and in plenty of time to save themselves. In fact, I think very likely they could have fastened the house more securely to the ground, and saved it too, if they had waked up and seen what was going on."
[Ill.u.s.tration: "I"LL NEVER BUILD A HOUSE WITHOUT SHUTTERS."]
"I"ll never build a house without shutters," said Jimmieboy, as he tried to fancy the condition of the Podlingtons whisking about in the air for ten long years--nearly five years longer than he himself had lived. If they had landed in the moon it wouldn"t have been so bad, but this other possible and even more likely fate of mounting on the wind ever higher and higher and not landing anywhere was simply dreadful to think about.
"I wouldn"t, especially in the cyclone country," returned the voice in the bush. "But I"ll tell you of one thing that would save you if you really did have to build a house without shutters; build it with wings.
You"ve heard of houses with wings, of course?"
"Yes, indeed," said Jimmieboy. "Why, our house has three wings. One of "em was put on it last summer, so that we could have a bigger kitchen."
"I remember," said the Bird. "I wondered a good deal about that wing until I found out it was for a kitchen, and not to fly with. The house had enough wings to fly with without the new one. In fact, the new one for flying purposes would be as useless as a third wheel to a bicycle."
"What do you mean by to fly with?" asked Jimmieboy, puzzled at this absurd remark of the Bird.
"Exactly what I say. Wings are meant to fly with, aren"t they? I hope you knew that!" said the Bird. "So if the Podlingtons" house had had wings it might have got back all right. It could have worked its way slowly out of the cyclone, and then sort of rested on its wings a little until it was prepared to swoop down on to its old foundations, alighting just where it was before. A trip through the air under such circ.u.mstances would have been rather pleasant, I think--much pleasanter than going off into the air forever, without any means of getting back."
"But," asked Jimmieboy, "even if Mr. Podlington"s house had had wings, how could he have made them work?"
"Why, how stupid of you!" cried the Bird. "Don"t you know that he could have taken hold of the----"
"Ting-a-ling-a-ling a-ling-a-ling!" rang the alarm-clock up in the cook"s room, which had been set for six o"clock in the afternoon instead of for six in the morning by some odd mistake of Mary Ann"s.
"The alarm! The alarm!" shrieked the Bird, in terror.
And then the invisible creature, if Jimmieboy could judge by the noise in the bush, seemed to make off as fast as he could go, his cries of fear growing fainter and fainter as the wise Bird got farther and farther away, until finally they died away in the distance altogether.
Jimmieboy sprang to his feet, looked down the road along which his strange friend had fled, and then walked into the house, wishing that the alarm-clock had held off just a little longer, so that he might have learned how the wings of a house should be managed to make the house fly off into the air. He really felt as if he would like to try the experiment with his own house.
VIII.
GIANT THE JACK KILLER.
Jimmieboy was turning over the pages of his fairy book the other night, trying to refresh his memory concerning the marvelous doings of the fairy-land people by looking at the pictures. His papa was too tired to read to him, and as no one else in the house was willing to undertake the task, the boy was doing his best to entertain himself, and as it happened he got more out of his own efforts than he ever derived from the efforts of others. He had dallied long over the weird experiences of Cinderella, and had just turned over the pages which lead up to the story of Jack the Giant Killer, when something in the picture of the Giant"s castle seemed to move.
Looking a little more closely at the picture in a startled sort of way, Jimmieboy saw that the moving thing was the k.n.o.b of the castle door, and in a jiffy the door itself opened, and a huge homely creature whom Jimmieboy recognized at once as an ogre stuck his head out. For a moment the little fellow felt disposed to cry for help. Surely if the Giant could open the door in the picture there was no reason why he should not step out of the book entirely and make a speedy meal of Jimmieboy, who, realizing that he was entirely unarmed, was inclined to run and hide behind his papa"s back. His fast oozing courage was quickly restored, however, by the Giant himself, who winked at him in a genial sort of fashion as much as to say: "Nonsense, boy, I wouldn"t eat you, if I could." The wink he followed up at once with a smile, and then he said:
"That you, Jimmieboy?"
"Yes, sir," said Jimmieboy, very civilly indeed. "I"m me. Are you you?"
The Giant laughed.
"Yes," he replied, "and so, of course, we are ourselves. Are you very busy?"
"Not very," said Jimmieboy. "Why?"
"I want a little advice from you," the Giant answered. "I think it"s about time the tables were turned on that miserable little ruffian Jack. The idea of a big thing like me being killed every day of his life by a mosquito like Jack is very tiresome, and I want to know if you don"t think it would be fair if I should kill him just once for the sake of variety. It won"t hurt him. He"ll come to life again right away just as we Giants do----"
"Don"t you stay dead when Jack kills you?" asked Jimmieboy.