Andiron Tales - John Kendrick Bangs (inspirational books for students TXT) 📗

when my brother Lefty here said to him, 'Hullo, Weasel,' he didn't like it a bit better than you did when we said you were a Dormouse. He insisted that he was a boy, and for all we could do we couldn't get him to admit that he was a Weasel--"

"He was the most persistent lad
That I have ever seen.
He'd always say that bad was bad,
That blue could not be green.

"We couldn't get him to deny
That white was always white,
And though we'd try and try and try
He'd say that he was right,"

interrupted the Lefthandiron.

"And wasn't he?" asked Tom.

"That isn't a part of the story," snapped the Righthandiron, "and if you don't stop interrupting me I'll never speak to you again."

"I didn't mean to," said Tom apologetically.

"That's just the worst part of it," snapped the Andiron. "You are an interrupter by nature, and that is the most incurable kind. But, as I was telling you, Ebenezer was bound to be a boy, and no amount of talk on our part could convince him that he was a Weasel. Well, Lefty and I were very young then, and up to the time of which I am speaking we had always made our little trips in the Fairy Country or in Giantland all by ourselves, and we had lots of fun together I can warrant. This time, however, we decided to take Ebenezer with us to Giantland, which was a place he had often heard us tell about, and concerning which he was very curious. We told him that it would never do for him to visit Giantland, because the Giants were always very hungry, and liked nothing better to eat than a boy like himself. It would be dangerous for him to go, we said, unless he would promise to obey us in everything we told him to do, and to admit that he was whatever we chose to call him."

"You see, my dear Tom," said the Lefthandiron in explanation, "the Giants had such confidence in us that they accepted as true anything we said, so that if we should happen to meet a hungry ogre and he should want to eat Ebenezer because he was a boy, all that would be necessary for us to do to save Ebenezer was to say, 'Hold on. He is not a boy. He is a Weasel.' Then Ebenezer would be all right, because Giants do not eat Weasels."

"I see," said Tom, nodding his head.

"Ebenezer promised that he would obey us and wouldn't deny that he was a Weasel if we told the Giants he was one, and we took him off with us," resumed the Righthandiron. "We went straight to Giantland and had a perfectly lovely time until about an hour before it was time to return, when we encountered a huge Giant named Skihigh--and my, how hungry he was! He was hungrier than Lefty's friend, who went into a restaurant and ordered

"'Thirty-seven pounds of cake,
Sixty-four lamb chops,
Eighteen portions of beefsteak,
Forty ginger pops;
Seventeen vanilla puffs,
Twenty fresh-caught dabs,
Thirty-eight rich raisin duffs,
Ninety soft-shell crabs.

"'Let those go for course the first;
Let the second be
Shrimps and oysters till I burst,
Thirteen quarts of tea.
Then a dozen sugared hams,
One small cabbage head,
Ninety dozen pinky clams,
Sixty loaves of bread.

"'Seven quarts of French canned pease,
And a pound or two
Of your Gorgonzola cheese
For my lunch will do."
Then the waiter standing by
In the usual way
Asked him: 'Won't you also try
Our hot mince today?'"

"I don't want to interrupt," said Tom, "but it seems to me that man must have been awful rich."

"No, he wasn't," returned Lefty. "He was going to eat the dinner, you know, and then die without paying for it. He wasn't a very good man."

"No," remarked the story-teller. "But he was a very hungry man, in which respect he was just like the Giant I am trying to tell you about. And my, how the Giant roared with glee when he caught sight of Ebenezer.

"'Good!' he cried, 'that's just what I wanted for my lunch. A nice fat boy.'

"Then he reached down," said the Righthandiron, "and grabbed Ebenezer by the arm, and was about to eat him just as he would a piece of asparagus, when Lefty here cried out:

"'Avast there, Skihigh! That isn't a nice fat boy. That is only a miserable Weasel.'

"'Pah!' said Skihigh, with a face such as you put on when you take a horrid tasting medicine. 'Pah! I can't eat Weasels.'

"And with that he put Ebenezer down on the road again and was about to walk along about his business when what did that foolish little Ebenezer do but up and deny that he was a Weasel!

"'I'm not a Weasel,' he yelled. 'And I am a boy--and a fine boy at that!'

"Skihigh stopped short, whirled about and rushed back to where Ebenezer was standing.

"'What's that you say?' he said eagerly.

"'I say I am not a Weasel, but a fine fat boy,' said the vainglorious Ebenezer stoutly.

"'Then my friends, the Andirons have deceived me, have they?' roared the Giant.

"'Yes,' replied Ebenezer. 'But I can't stand being called a Weasel.'

"With that," said the Righthandiron, "Skihigh clapped Ebenezer into his market basket and then turned on Lefty and me. Lefty managed to get away, but I was caught."

"What did he do to you?" asked Tom, trembling with excitement.

"He tried to bite my head off," said Righty, with a laugh. "See those two dents on either side of my neck?"

Tom looked, and sure enough there were the dents--not very deep, but quite large enough to be seen.

"His teeth broke when he got that far," said Righty. "I'm pretty hard--but you see it needn't have happened at all if Ebenezer had only kept quiet about his not being a Weasel."

"Was he eaten by Skihigh?" asked Tom.

"I don't know," replied Righty. "Lefty and I didn't wait to find out, and we have never been back there since. I don't believe he did eat him, for two reasons. One is that after trying to bite my head off Skihigh hadn't teeth enough left to eat anything with, and the other reason is that I saw Ebenezer two years afterwards on his way to school one beautiful spring morning. I noticed him particularly because, although it was a lovely clear morning, he had his umbrella up and positively declined to put it down and carry it closed, because, he said, an umbrella couldn't possibly be a cane, and he wasn't going to try to make anybody suppose it was a cane."

"I don't see anything in that story to make me unhappy, even if I were a chum of Ebenezer's," said Tom, as the Andiron finished.

"You don't? Don't you think it was sad that the Giant couldn't eat a boy who'd behave in that way?" asked Righty, with a scornful glance at Tom.

"It was very sad, Tom," said the Lefthandiron. "So don't deny it--especially if you want to go off on our trip to the stars."

"Are you really going to the stars?" gasped Tom, breathless at the very idea and forgetting all about Ebenezer.

"Perhaps," returned the Andiron.

"And may I go with you?" whispered Tom.

"You may if you will do whatever we tell you, and admit that you are a Dormouse," said Righty.

"All right, I'll obey," said Tom.

"And what did you say your name was?" asked Lefty.

"Sleepyhead Dozy Pate Dormouse," said Tom, with a laugh.

"You'll do," returned the Righthandiron, stepping lightly out of the fireplace. "Now sit astride of my back and take hold of Lefty's right claw."

Tom did as he was told, and in an instant he was flying up through space toward the stars.


CHAPTER III.


Off in the Clouds

"Now the point to be decided," said the Lefthandiron, after he and his companions had been flying through space for some time, "is where we are going. There are two or three things we can do, and Tom can have his choice as to which it shall be."

"Subject, of course, to my advice," said the Righthandiron, with a bow to Tom. "You can go where you please if I please. See?"

"Yes," said Tom. "I see. I can have my way as long as it is your way."

"Precisely," said the Righthandiron, with an approving nod. "And as you may have heard, precisely means exactly so. You can have your way as long as it is my way, which shows how generous I am. Fond of my way as I am, I am willing to divide it with you."

"All right," returned Tom. "I'm very much obliged. What are the two things we can do?"

"Well," said the Lefthandiron, scratching his head softly, "we can fly up a little higher and sit down and watch the world go round; we can take the long jump, or we can visit Saturn."

"What was the first?" asked Tom.

"To fly up a little higher, where we can get a better view; to sit down there and watch the world go round. It is an excellent way to travel. It's awfully easy--in fact, it isn't you that travels at all. It's the world that does the traveling, while all you've got to do is to sit down there and keep an eye on it. It's like a big panorama, only it's real, and any time you see a place going by that you think you'd like to see more of, all you've got to do is to fly down there and see it."

"When you get up higher and sit down," said Tom, "what do you sit on?"

"You sit on me and I sit on my hind legs, of course," said Lefthandiron. "Don't you know anything?"

"Of course I do," said Tom, indignantly. "I know lots of things."

"Then I can't see why you ask such silly questions," retorted the Lefthandiron. "What do we sit on? Why, you might just as well ask a dog what he barks with, or a lion what he eats his breakfast with--and that would be as stupid as the Poker's poem on Sandwiches."

"Did the Poker write a poem on Sandwiches?" asked Tom.

"Eight of 'em," returned the Lefthandiron. "The first of them went this way:

"He sat upon a lofty hill,
And smoked his penny pipe.
'Ha!' quoth a passing whip-poor-will,
'The oranges are ripe.'"

"The other seven went like this," observed the Righthandiron:

"The day was over, and the six-
Teen little darkies then
Found they were in a dreadful fix,