In Camp With A Tin Soldier Part 13

"I am ready for you at any time," said the sprite, calmly. "Only as the challenged party I have the choice of weapons, and inasmuch as this is a hot day, I choose the jawbone."

"Not a talking match, I hope?" said the major, with a gesture of impatience.

"Not at all," replied the sprite. "A story-telling contest. We will withdraw to that moss-covered rock underneath the trees in there, gather enough huckleberries and birch bark for our luncheon, and catch a mess of trout from the brook to go with them, and then we can fight our duel all the rest of the afternoon."

"But how's that going to satisfy my wounded honor?" asked the major.

"I'll tell one story," said the sprite, "and you'll tell another, and when we are through, the one that Jimmieboy says has told the best story will be the victor. That is better than trying to hurt each other, I think."

"I think so too," put in Jimmieboy. "I'm ready for it."

"Well, it isn't a bad scheme," agreed the major. "Particularly the luncheon part of it; so you may count on me. I've got a story that will lift your hair right off your head."

So Jimmieboy and his two strange friends retired into the wood, gathered the huckleberries and birch bark, caught, cooked, and ate the trout, and then sat down together on the moss-covered rock to fight the duel. The two fighters drew lots to find out which should tell the first story, and as the sprite was the winner, he began.

And the story he told was as follows.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SPRITE'S STORY.

"When I was not more than a thousand years old--" said the sprite.

"Excuse me," interrupted the major. "But what was the figure?"

"One thousand," returned the sprite. "That was nine thousand years ago--before this world was made. I celebrated my ten-thousand-and-sixteenth birthday last Friday--but that has nothing to do with my story. When I was not more than a thousand years of age, my parents, who occupied a small star about forty million miles from here, finding that my father could earn a better living if he were located nearer the moon, moved away from my birthplace and rented a good-sized, four-p.r.o.nged star in the suburbs of the great orb of night. In the old star we were too far away from the markets for my father to sell the products of his farm for anything like what they cost him; freight charges were very heavy, and often the stage-coach that ran between Twinkleville and the moon would not stop at Twinkleville at all, and then all the stuff that we had raised that week would get stale, lose its fizz, and have to be thrown away."

"Let me beg your pardon again," put in the major. "But what did you raise on your farm? I never heard of farm products having fizz to lose."

"We raised soda-water chiefly," returned the sprite, amiably.

"Soda-water and suspender b.u.t.tons. The soda-water was cultivated and the suspender b.u.t.tons seemed to grow wild. We never knew exactly how; though from what I have learned since about them, I think I begin to understand the science of it; and I wish now that I could find a way to return to Twinkleville, because I am certain it must be a perfect treasure-house of suspender b.u.t.tons by this time. Even in my day they used to lie about by the million--metallic b.u.t.tons every one of them. They must be worth to-day at least a dollar a thousand."

"What is your idea about the way they happened to come there, based on what you have learned since?" asked the major.

"Well, it is a very simple idea," returned the sprite. "You know when a suspender b.u.t.ton comes off it always disappears. Of course it must go somewhere, but the question is, where? No one has ever yet been known to recover the suspender b.u.t.ton he has once really lost; and my notion of it is simply that the minute a metal suspender b.u.t.ton comes off the clothes of anybody in all the whole universe, it immediately flies up through the air and s.p.a.ce to Twinkleville, which is nothing more than a huge magnet, and lies there until somebody picks it up and tries to sell it. I remember as a boy sweeping our back yard clear of them one evening, and waking the next morning to find the whole place covered with them again; but we never could make money on them, because the moon was our sole market, and only the best people of the moon ever used suspenders, and as these were unfortunately relatives of ours, we had to give them all the b.u.t.tons they wanted for nothing, so that the b.u.t.ton crops became rather an expense to us than otherwise. But with soda-water it was different. Everybody, it doesn't make any difference where he lives, likes soda-water, and it was an especially popular thing in the moon, where the plain water is always so full of fish that n.o.body can drink it. But as I said before, often the stage-coach wouldn't or couldn't stop, and we found ourselves getting poorer every day. Finally my father made up his mind to lease, and move into this new star, sink a half-dozen soda-water wells there, and by means of a patent he owned, which enabled him to give each well a separate and distinct flavor, drive everybody else out of the business."

"You don't happen to remember how that patent your father owned worked, do you?" asked the major, noticing that Jimmieboy seemed particularly interested when the sprite mentioned this. "If you do, I'd like to buy the plan of it from you and give it to Jimmieboy for a Christmas present, so that he can have soda-water wells in his own back yard at home."

"No, I can't remember anything about it," said the sprite. "Nine thousand years is a long time to remember things of that kind, though I don't think the scheme was a very hard one to work. For vanilla cream, it only required a well with plain soda-water in it with a quart of vanilla beans and three pints of cream poured into it four times a week; same way with other flavors--a quart of strawberries for strawberry, sarsaparilla for sarsaparilla, and so forth; but the secret was in the pouring; there was something in the way papa did the pouring; I never knew just what it was. He always insisted on doing the pouring himself.

But if you don't stop asking questions I'll never finish my story."

"You shouldn't make it so interesting if you don't want us to have our curiosity excited by it," said Jimmieboy. "I'd have asked those questions if the major hadn't. But go ahead. What happened?"

"Well, we moved, and in a very short time were comfortably settled in the suburban star I have mentioned," continued the sprite. "As we expected, my father grew very, very rich. He was referred to in the moon newspapers as 'The Soda-water King,' and once an article about him said that he owned the finest suspender-b.u.t.ton mine in the universe, which was more or less true, but which, as it turned out, was unfortunate in its results. Some moon people hearing of his owners.h.i.+p of the Twinkleville b.u.t.ton Mines came to him and tried to persuade him that they ought to be worked. Father said he didn't see any use of it, because the common people didn't wear suspenders, and so didn't need the b.u.t.tons.

"'True,' said they, 'but we can compel them to need them, by making a law requiring that everybody over sixteen shall wear suspenders.'

"'That's a good idea,' said my father, and he tried to have it made a law that every one should wear suspenders, high or low, and as a result he got everybody mad at him. The best people were angry, because up to that time the wearing of suspenders had been regarded as a sign of n.o.ble birth, and if everybody, including the common people, were to have them they would cease to be so. The common people themselves were angry, because to have to buy suspenders would simply be an addition to the cost of living, and they hadn't any money to spare. In consequence we were cut off by the best people of the moon. n.o.body ever came to see us except the very commonest kind of common people, and they came at night, and then only to drop pailfuls of cod-liver oil, squills, ipecac, and other unpopular things into our soda-water wells, so that in a very short time my poor father's soda-water business was utterly ruined.

People don't like to order ten quarts of vanilla cream soda-water for Sunday dinner, and find it flavored with cod-liver oil, you know."

"Yes, I do know," said Jimmieboy, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his face up in an endeavor to give the major and the sprite some idea of how little he liked the taste of cod-liver oil. "I think cod-liver oil is worse than measles or mumps, because you can't have measles or mumps more than once, and there isn't any end to the times you can have cod-liver oil."

"I'm with you there," said the major, emphasizing his remark by slapping Jimmieboy on the back. "In fact, sir, on page 29 of my book called 'Musings on Medicines' you will find--if it is ever published--these lines:

"The oils of cod!

The oils of cod!

They make me feel tremendous odd, Nor hesitate I here to state I wildly hate the oils of cod."

"Bravo!" cried the sprite. "When I start my autograph alb.u.m I want you to write those lines on the first page."

"With pleasure," returned the major. "When shall you start the alb.u.m?"

"Never, I hope," replied the sprite, with a chuckle. "And now suppose you don't interrupt my story again."

Clouds began to gather on the major's face again. The sprite's rebuke had evidently made him very angry.

"Sir," said he, as soon as his feelings permitted him to speak. "If you make any more such remarks as that, another duel may be necessary after this one is fought--which I should very much regret, for duels of this sort consume a great deal of time, and unless I am much mistaken it will shortly rain cats and dogs."

"It looks that way," said the sprite, "and it is for that very reason that I do not wish to be interrupted again. Of course ruin stared father in the face."

"How rude of ruin!" whispered the major to Jimmieboy, who immediately silenced him.

"Trade having fallen away," continued the sprite, "we had to draw upon our savings for our bread and b.u.t.ter, and finally, when the last penny was spent, we made up our minds to leave the moon district entirely and try life on the dog-star, where, we were informed, people only had one eye apiece, and every man had so much to do that it took all of his one eye's time looking after his own business so that there wasn't any left for him to spend on other people's business. It seemed to my father that in a place like this there was a splendid opening for him."

"In what line?" queried the major.

"Renting out his extra eye to blind men," roared the sprite.

Jimmieboy fell off the rock with laughter, and the major, angry at being so neatly caught, rose up and walked away but immediately returned.

"If this wasn't a duel I wouldn't stay here another minute," he said.

"But you can't put me to flight that way. Go on and finish."

"The question now came up as to how we should get to the dog-star,"

resumed the sprite. "Our money was all gone. n.o.body would lend us any.

n.o.body would help us at all."

"I should think they'd have been so glad you were leaving they'd have paid your fare," said the major, but the sprite paid no attention.

"There was no regular stage line between the moon and the dog-star,"

said he, "and we had only two chances of really getting there, and they were both so slim you could count their ribs. One was by getting aboard the first comet that was going that way, and the other was by jumping.

The trouble with the first chance was that as far as any one knew there wasn't a comet expected to go in the direction of the dog-star for eight million years--which was rather a long time for a starving family to wait, and besides we had read of so many accidents in the moon papers about people being injured while trying to board comets in motion that we were a little timid about it. My father and I could have managed very well; but mother might not have--ladies can't even get on horse cars in motion without getting hurt, you know.

"Then the other scheme was equally dangerous. It's a pretty big jump from the moon to the dog-star, and if you don't aim yourself right you are apt to miss it, and either fall into s.p.a.ce or land somewhere else where you don't want to go. For instance, a cousin of mine who lived on Mars wanted to visit us when we lived at Twinkleville, but he was too mean to pay his fare, thinking he could jump it cheaper.

Well, he jumped and where do you suppose he landed?"