Junior by Robert Abernathy (red white and royal blue hardcover .txt) 📗

through all the nearer part of the colony. Pater and Mater looked around, and froze.

Junior had begun paddling again, but this time in a most peculiar manner—with a rotary twist and sidewise scoop which looked awkward, but which he performed so deftly that he must have practiced it. Fixed upright as he was now on the platform he had built, he looked for all the world as if he were trying to swim sidewise.

"He's gone mad!" squeaked Mater.

"I ..." gulped Pater, "I'm afraid not."

At least, they saw, there was method in Junior's actions. He went on paddling in the same fashion and now he, and his platform with him, were farther away than they had been, and growing more remote as they stared.

Parts of the homesite that was not a homesite revolved in some way incomprehensible to eyes that had never seen the like. And the whole affair trundled along, rocking at bumps in the sandy bottom, and squeaking painfully; nevertheless, it moved.

The polyps watching from the reef swam out and frolicked after Junior, watching his contrivance go and chattering eager questions, while their parents bawled at them to keep away from that.

The three maiden aunts shrieked faintly and swooned in one another's tentacles. The colony was shaken as it had not been since the tidal wave.

"COME BACK!" thundered Pater. "You CAN'T do that!"

"Come back!" shrilled Mater. "You can't do that!"

"Come back!" gabbled the neighbors. "You can't do that!"

But Junior was past listening to reason. Junior was on wheels.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Junior, by Robert Abernathy