"Yes, stupid," said a high-private. "Of course he has; but it"s one of those stories that take a long time to begin, and never finish until the very end."
"Oh yes, I know," said another. "It"s a story like one I heard of the other day. You can lay it down whenever you want to, and be glad to have the chance."
"That"s it," said the high-private.
"I wish you fellows would keep still," said the soldier who was reciting. "I ought to have been a quarter of the way through the first half of that poem by this time, and instead of that I"m only a sixteenth of the way through the first eighth."
"You can"t expect to go more than eight miles an hour," said the corporal, "even in poetry like that. It can"t be done."
"But what happened?" asked Jimmieboy, who was quite interested to hear the rest of the poem.
"I"ll have to tell you some other time, general," replied the soldier.
"These tin warriors here haven"t any manners. Some day, when you have time to spare, I"ll tell you the rest of it, because I know you"ll be glad to hear it."
"Yes, general," put in the corporal, with a laugh. "Some day when you have a year to spare get him to tell you the first twenty-seventh of the next ninety-sixth of it. It won"t take him more than eleven months and thirty-two days to do it."
"Bah!" said the poetic soldier, mounting his horse and riding off with an angry flush on his cheek. "Some day, when I get promoted to the ranks, I"ll get even with you."
"Who is he, anyhow?" asked Jimmieboy, as the soldier rode off.
"He"s Major Blueface, and he has to look after the luggage," replied the corporal. "And as for that poem of his, Jimmieboy, I want to warn you.
He has a printed copy of it that takes seven trunks to carry. He says it was written by High-private Tinsel, but that"s all nonsense. He wrote it himself."
"Then I like it all the better," said Jimmieboy. "I always like what people I like write."
"There"s no accounting for tastes," returned the corporal. "We don"t any of us like the major. That"s why we made him major. Looking after luggage is such awfully hard work, we didn"t want to make any one else do it, and so we elected him."
"Why don"t you like him?" asked Jimmieboy. "He seems to me to be a very nice soldier."
"That"s just it," returned the corporal. "He"s just the kind of soldier to please little boys like you, and he"d look perfectly splendid in a white and gold parlor like your mamma"s, but in camp he"s a terror.
Keeps his boots shined up like a looking-gla.s.s; wears his Sunday uniform all the time; in fact, he has seven Sunday uniforms--one for each day of the week; and altogether he makes the rest of us feel so mean and cheap that we can"t like him. He offered a prize once to the soldier who"d like him the best, and who do you think won it?"
"I don"t know," said Jimmieboy. "Who?"
"He won it himself," retorted the corporal. "n.o.body else tried. But you"d better go over to the colonel"s quarters right away, Jimmieboy.
You know he wants you."
"He hasn"t sent for me, has he?" asked the boy.
"Of course he has. That"s what the major came to tell you," answered the corporal.
"But he didn"t say so," returned Jimmieboy.
"No, he never does what he is sent to do," explained the corporal.
"That"s how we know. If he had told you the colonel wanted you, we"d all know the colonel didn"t want you. He"s a queer bird, that major. He"s so anxious to read his poem to somebody that he always forgets his orders, and when he does half remember what he is sent to do, we can tell what the orders are by what he doesn"t say."
"I shouldn"t think he"d be a good man to look after the luggage if he forgets everything that way," said Jimmieboy.
"That"s just where he"s great," returned the corporal. "For, don"t you see, every man in the regiment wants to carry about three times as much luggage as he ought to, and the major makes it all right by forgetting two-thirds of it. Oh, there"s no denying that he"s one of the greatest luggage men there ever was; but you run along now, or the colonel may lose his temper, and that always delays things."
"I"m not afraid of the colonel," said Jimmieboy, bravely.
"Neither are we," said the corporal, in reply to this, "but we don"t like to have our campaign delayed, and when the colonel loses his temper we have to wait and wait until he finds it again. Sometimes it takes him a whole week."
So Jimmieboy, wondering more and more at the singular habits of the tin soldiers, ran off in search of the colonel, whom he found sitting by the brook-side fishing, and surrounded by his staff.
"h.e.l.lo!" said Jimmieboy, as he caught sight of the colonel. "Having any luck?"
"Lots," said the colonel. "Been here only five minutes, and I"ve caught three hickory twigs, a piece of wire, and one of the finest colds in my head I ever had."
"Good," said Jimmieboy, with a laugh. "But aren"t there any fish there?"
"Plenty of "em," answered the colonel. "But they"re all so small I"d have to throw "em back if I caught "em. They know that well enough, and so save me trouble by not biting. But I say, I suppose you know we can"t start this expedition without ammunition?"
"What"s that?" queried Jimmieboy, to whom the word ammunition was entirely new.
"Ammunition? Why, that"s stuff to load our guns with," returned the colonel. "You must be a great general not to know that."
"You must excuse me," said Jimmieboy, with a blush. "There is a great deal that I don"t know. I"m only five years old, and papa hasn"t had time to tell me everything yet."
"Well, it"s all right, anyhow," replied the colonel. "You"ll learn a great deal in the next hundred years, so we won"t criticise; but of course, you know, we can"t go off without ammunition any more than a gun can. Now, as general of the forces, it is your duty to look about you and lay in the necessary supplies. For the guns we shall need about fourteen thousand rounds of preserved cherries, seventeen thousand rounds of pickled peaches for the cannon, and a hundred and sixty-two dozen cans of strawberry jam for me."
Jimmieboy"s eyes grew so round and large as he listened to these words that the major turned pale.
"Then," continued the colonel, "we have to have powder and sh.e.l.l, of course. Perhaps four hundred and sixteen pounds of powdered sugar and ninety-seven barrels of sh.e.l.ls with almonds in "em would do for our purposes."
"But--but what are we to do with all these things, and where am I to get them?" gasped Jimmieboy, beginning to be very sorry that he had accepted so important a position as that of general.
"Do with "em?" cried the colonel. "What"ll we do with "em? Why, capture the Parallelopipedon, of course. What did you suppose we"d do with "em--throw them at canary-birds?"
"You don"t load guns with preserved cherries, do you?" asked the boy.
"We don"t, eh? Well, I just guess we do," returned the colonel. "And we load the cannon with pickled peaches, and to keep me from deserting and going over to the enemy, they keep me loaded to the muzzle with strawberry jam from the time I start until we get back."
"You can"t kill a Parawelopipedon with cherries and peaches, can you?"
asked Jimmieboy.
"Not quite, but nearly," said the colonel. "We never hit him with enough of them to kill him, but just try to coax him with "em, don"t you see?
We don"t do as you do in your country. We don"t shoot the enemy with lead bullets, and try to kill him and make him unhappy. We try to coax him back by shooting sweetmeats at him, and if he won"t be coaxed, we bombard him with pickled peaches until they make him sick, and then he has to surrender."
"It must be pretty fine to be an enemy," said Jimmieboy, smacking his lips as he thought of being bombarded with sweetmeats.
"It is," exclaimed the colonel, with enthusiasm. "It"s so nice, that they have to do the right thing by me in the matter of jam to keep me from being an enemy myself."
"But what do I get?" returned Jimmieboy, who couldn"t see why it would not be pleasant for him to be an enemy, and get all these delightful things.
"You? Why, you get the almonds and the powdered sugar and all the mince-pie you can eat--what more do you want?" said the colonel.
"Nothing," gasped Jimmieboy, overcome by the prospect. "I wouldn"t mind being a general for a million years at that rate."