Half-Hours With Jimmieboy Part 5

"Maybe you can tell me how," said Jimmieboy.

"Certainly, I can," said the shepherd boy. "The part of you that can come in is your eye, and your ear, and your voice. All the rest of you must stay out."

"But how do I get 'em in?" asked Jimmieboy.

"They are in now," said the other. "You can see me, you can hear me, and I can hear you."

"But I can't see what's beyond that door."

"Oh, we'll fix that," said the little shepherd. "I'll knock on the door, and when it is opened you can tell the goblin that you want to see what he's got, and he'll show it all to you if you tell him that your father is the man who didn't blast the rock out."

The shepherd boy then went softly down the stairs, knocked on the door, and before it was opened had flown back to his duties in the picture.

Then, as he had intimated, the goblin opened the door again, and poking his head out as before, cried:

"Is that you, milk broker?"

"No," answered Jimmieboy. "I am the son of the man who didn't blast away the flat rock, and my eye and my ear and my voice want to come in."

"Why, certainly," said the goblin, throwing the door wide open. "I didn't know you were you. Let 'em walk right in."

Jimmieboy was about to say that he didn't know how his eye or his ear or his voice could walk anywhere, but he was prevented from so doing by the sudden disappearance of the staircase, and the subst.i.tution therefor of a huge room, the splendor of which was so great that it for a moment dazzled his eyes.

"Who comes here?" said a voice in the corner of the room.

"The eye and the ear and the voice of the son of the man who did not blast the flat stone," observed the goblin, and then Jimmieboy perceived, seated upon a l.u.s.trous golden throne, a shriveled-up dwarf, who looked as if he might be a thousand years old, but who, to judge from the crown he wore upon his head, was a king.

The dwarf was clad in garments of the richest texture, and his person was luminous with jewels of the rarest sort. As the goblin announced the visitor the king rose up, and descending from the throne, made a courtly bow to Jimmieboy.

"Thrice welcome, O son of the man who did not blast the flat rock," he said. "It is only fitting that one who owes so much to the father should welcome the eye and the ear and the voice of the son, for know, O boy, that I am the lord of the Undergroundies whose kingdom would have been shattered but for your father's kindly act in sparing it."

"I suppose that blasting the rock would have spoiled all this," said Jimmieboy's voice, as his eye took in the royal magnificence of the place, while to his ears came strains of soft and sweet music. "It would have been dreadful!"

"Much more dreadful than you imagine," replied the little king. "It would have worked damage that a life-time could not have repaired."

Then the king turned to a tall, pale creature in black who sat writing at a mahogany table in one corner of the throne room, and commanded him to recite into Jimmieboy's ear how dreadful it would have been.

"Compose, O laureate," he said to the tall, pale creature, "compose a song in which the dire effects of such a blast are fully set forth."

The laureate rose from his seat, and bowing low before the king and Jimmieboy's eye, began his song, which ran in this wise:

"A half a pound of dynamite Set in that smooth, flat stone.

Our palace would quite out of sight Most certainly have blown.

"It would have blown our window-panes To high Gibraltar's ledge, And all our streets and country lanes It would have set on edge.

"It would have knocked our royal king As far up as the moon; Beyond the reach of anything-- Beyond the best balloon.

"It would have taken all our pears, Our candy and our toys, And hurled them where the polar bears Indulge in horrid noise.

"It would have spoiled the music-box, And ruined all our books-- Knocked holes in all our woolen socks, And ruined thus their looks.

"'T would have destroyed our chandeliers, To dough turned all our pie; And, worst of all, my little dears, It would have injured I."

"Is that dreadful enough?" asked the laureate, turning to the king.

"It suits me," said the king. "But perhaps our friend Jimmieboy would like to have it made a little more dreadful."

"In that case," said the laureate, "I can compose a few more verses in which the blast makes the tennis-court over us cave in and bury all the cake and jam we have in the larder, or if he thinks that too much to sacrifice, and would like a little pleasure mixed in with the terribleness, the cod-liver oil bottle might be destroyed."

"I wouldn't spoil the cake and jam," said Jimmieboy's voice, in reply to this. "But the cod-liver oil might go."

"Very well," said the laureate, and then he bowed low again and sang:

"But there is balm for our annoy, For next the blast doth spoil Six hundred quarts--O joy! O joy!-- Of vile cod-liver oil."

"I should think you would have liked that," said Jimmieboy's voice.

"I would have," said the king, "because you know the law of this country requires the king to consume a bottle of cod-liver oil every day, and if the bottles were all broken, perhaps the law, too, would have been crushed out of existence. But, after all, I'd rather be king with cod-liver oil than have my kingdom ruined and do without it. How would you like to see our gardens?"

"Very much," said Jimmieboy. "I'm fond of flowers."

The king laughed.

"What a droll idea," he said, turning to the laureate. "The idea of flowers growing in gardens! Write me a rhyme on the drollness of the idea."

The laureate sighed. It was evident that he was getting tired of composing verses to order.

"I hear and obey," he replied, shortly, and then he recited as follows:

"To think of wasting: any time In raising flowers, I think, Is worse than writing nonsense-rhyme, Or frying purple ink.

"It's queerer really than the act Of painting sword-fish green; Or sailing down a cataract To please a magazine.

"Indeed, it really seems to me, Who now am very old, The drollest bit of drollery That ever has been drolled."

"But what do you raise in your gardens?" asked Jimmieboy, as the laureate completed his composition.

"Nothing, of course," said the king. "What's a garden for, anyhow?

Pleasure, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Jimmieboy's voice, "but----"

"There isn't any but about it," said the king. "If a garden is for pleasure it must not be worked in. Business and pleasure are two very different things, and you cannot raise flowers without working."

"But how do you get pleasure out of a garden when you don't raise anything in it?"

"Aren't you dull!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the king. "Write me a quatrain on his dullness, O laureate."