The Last of the Peterkins Part 15

"But I meant 'chock full,'" insisted Carrie.

"I did not mean quite up to the ceiling. I didn't suppose that was what 'chock' meant. Now we know."

A great shouting was heard. All the boys of the town were gathering, and quite a crowd of people seemed coming near.

Mrs. Fraser was a widow, and there was no man in the house. Jimmy was the nearest approach to a man that she could depend upon; and here he was, leading a band of boys! She sent one of the boys she knew the best for Mr. Stetson, the neighboring policeman, who came quickly, having already seen the crowd of boys flocking to the house.

Carrie was trying to sell off her boxes for fifteen, ten, even five cents; but the crowd could not be easily appeased, for the boys could see across the windows the chocolate creams closely packed. "The room is chock full!" they exclaimed.

Mr. Stetson examined the premises. "You'll find it hard work to get them chocolates out in a week, even if you set all the boys on them. I'd advise letting them in one by one to fill their pockets, each to pay a cent."

Even Carrie a.s.sented to this, and a line was formed, and boys let in through the window. They ate a way to the door that led into the entry, so that it could be opened and the room could be entered that way. The boys now went in at the window and came out at the door, eating as they went and filling their pockets. Carrie could not but sigh at thought of the Boston chocolates, more than a cent apiece! But the boys ate, and then the girls came and ate; but with night all had to leave, at last.

It was possible to shut the window and lock it, and shut the door for the night, after they had gone.

"I don't see why the chocolates should not stay on there weeks and weeks," said Carrie to her mother. "Of course, they won't be so fresh, day after day; but they will be fresher than some in the shops. I'm awfully tired of eating them now, and feel as if I never wanted to see a chocolate cream again; but I suppose I shall feel different after a night's sleep, and I think Mr. Stetson is wrong in advising us to sell them so low."

Mrs. Fraser suggested she should like to go in the parlor to sit.

"But to-morrow is the day of the picnic," said Carrie, "and we shall be out-of-doors anyhow. I will take chocolate creams for my share. But, dear me! my dress is on the sofa,--my best dress. You were putting the ruffles in!"

"I told you, my dear, one of the last things, to take it upstairs," said Mrs. Fraser.

"And there it is, in the furthest corner of the room," exclaimed Carrie, "with all those chocolates scrouching on it. I'll tell you. I'll get Ben Sykes in early. He eats faster than any of the other boys, and he shall eat up toward my dress. He made a great hole in the chocolates this afternoon. I will have him come in early, and we don't go to the picnic till after twelve o'clock."

"And at twelve o'clock you have your second wish," said Mrs. Fraser.

"Yes, Mamma," said Carrie; "and I have already decided what it shall be,--a chariot and four. It will come just in time to take me to the picnic."

"Oh, my dear Carrie," said her mother, "do think what you are planning!

Where would you keep your chariot and the four horses?"

"Oh! there will be a man to take care of them," said Carrie; "but I will think about it all night carefully----"

At that very moment she went to sleep.

The next morning early, Carrie was downstairs. She found she could eat a few more chocolate creams, and Jimmy was in the same condition. She proposed to him her plan of keeping the chocolates still for sale, but eating a way to the sofa in the corner, to her best dress.

Ben Sykes came early, and a few of the other boys. The rest were kept at home, because it turned out they had eaten too many and their parents would not let them come.

A good many of the older people came with baskets and boxes, and bought some to carry away, they were so delicious and fresh.

Meanwhile Ben Sykes was eating his way toward the corner. It was very hard making any pa.s.sage, for as fast as he ate out a place others came tumbling in from the top. Carrie and Jimmy invented "a kind of a tunnel"

of chairs and ironing-boards, to keep open the pa.s.sage; and other boys helped eat, as they were not expected to pay.

But the morning pa.s.sed on. Mrs. Fraser tried to persuade Carrie to wear another dress; but she had set her mind on this. She had a broad blue sash to wear with it, and the sash would not go with any other dress.

She watched the clock, she watched Ben; she went in under the ironing-boards, to help him eat, although she had begun to loathe the taste of the chocolate creams.

Ben was splendid. He seemed to enjoy more the more he ate. Carrie watched him, as he licked them and ate with glowing eyes.

"Oh, Ben," Carrie suddenly exclaimed, "you can't seem to eat them fast enough. I wish your throat were as long as from one end of this room to the other."

At this moment the clock was striking.

Carrie was ready to scream out her second wish; but she felt herself pushed in a strange way. Ben was on all fours in front of her, and now he pushed her back, back. His neck was so long that while his head was still among the chocolates, at the far corner of the room, his feet were now out of the door.

Carrie stood speechless. She had lost her wish by her foolish exclamation. The faithful Ben, meanwhile, was flinging something through the opening. It was her dress, and she hurried away to put it on.

When she came down, everybody was looking at Ben. At first he enjoyed his long neck very much. He could stand on the doorstep and put his head far out up in the cherry trees and nip off cherries, which pleased both the boys and himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He enjoyed his long neck very much.]

Instead of a chariot and four, Carrie went off in an open wagon, with the rest of the girls. It made her feel so to see Ben, with his long neck, that she got her mother's permission to spend the night with the friend in whose grounds the picnic was to be held.

She carried baskets of chocolate creams, and she found numbers of the girls, who had not eaten any, who were delighted with them, and promised to come the next day, to buy and carry away any amount of them. She began to grow more cheerful, though she felt no appet.i.te, and instead of eating everything, as she always did at picnics, she could not even touch Mattie Somers's cream-pie nor Julia Dale's doughnuts. She stayed as late as she could at her friend Mattie's; but she felt she must get home in time for her third wish, at twelve o'clock.

Would it be necessary for her to wish that Ben Sykes's neck should be made shorter? She hoped she might find that it had grown shorter in the night; then she could do as she pleased about her third wish.

She still clung to the desire for the chariot and four. If she had it, she and her mother and Jimmy could get into it and drive far away from everybody,--from Ben Sykes and his long neck, if he still had it,--and never see any of them any more. Still, she would like to show the chariot and four to her friends; and perhaps Ben Sykes would not mind his long neck, and would be glad to keep it and earn money by showing himself at a circus.

So she reached home in the middle of the morning, and found the whole Sykes family there, and Ben, still with his long neck. It seems it had given him great trouble in the night. He had to sleep with his head in the opposite house, because there was not room enough on one floor at home. Mrs. Sykes had not slept a wink, and her husband had been up watching, to see that n.o.body stepped on Ben's neck. Ben himself appeared in good spirits; but was glad to sit in a high room, where he could support his head.

Carrie suggested her plan that Ben should exhibit himself. He, no doubt, could earn a large sum. But his mother broke out against this. He never could earn enough to pay for what he ate, now his throat was so long.

Even before this he could swallow more oatmeal than all the rest of the family put together, and she was sure that now even Mr. Barnum himself could not supply him with food enough. Then she burst into a flood of tears, and said she had always hoped Ben would be her stay and support; and now he could never sleep at home, and everybody looking after him when he went out, and the breakfast he had eaten that very morning was enough for six peoples' dinners.

They were all in the parlor, where the chocolate creams were partially cleared away. They were in a serried ma.s.s on two sides of the room, meeting near the centre, with the underground pa.s.sage, through which Ben had worked his way to Carrie's dress. Mrs. Fraser had organized a band to fill pasteboard boxes, which she had obtained from the village, and she and her friends were filling them, to send away to be sold, as all the inhabitants of the town were now glutted with chocolate creams.

At this moment Carrie heard a click in the clock. She looked at her mother, and as the clock struck she said steadily, "I wish that Ben's neck was all right again."

n.o.body heard her, for at that moment Ben Sykes started up, saying: "I'm all right, and I have had enough. Come along home!" And he dragged his family away with him.

Carrie fell into her mother's arms. "I'll never say 'chock full' again!"

she cried; "and I'll always be satisfied with what I have got, for I can never forget what I suffered in seeing Ben's long neck!"

XII.

"WHERE CAN THOSE BOYS BE?"

This was the cry in the Wilson family as they sat down to dinner.

"It is odd," said Aunt Harriet. "I have noticed they are usually ready for their dinner. They may be out of the way at other times, but they always turn up at their meals."

"They were here at breakfast," said Jane, the eldest daughter.

"I helped Jack about his Latin before he went to school," said the mother of the family.