Queer Stories for Boys and Girls Part 13

"Does you need your fingers to tell stories wid, like the dumbers that we heard talk without saying anything?"

Chicken Small had been to an exhibition of Professor Gillett's deaf and dumb pupils.

"Well, no," I said; "but you see, Chicken, I never could make my tongue and my fingers go at the same time."

"I should think you had never done much with your fingers, then," said Aunt Cheerie; "for I never knew your tongue to be still, except when you were asleep."

I felt a little anxious to change the subject, and so began the story at once.

"Little Sukey Gray----"

"What a funny name!" cried the Fairy.

Yes, and a funny girl was Sukey Gray. She had yellow hair that was tied up in an old-fashioned knot, behind, though she was only eleven years old; for you must know that Sukey lived in a part of the country where chignons and top-knots of the latest style were unknown. Now Sukey's way of doing up her hair in a great knot, behind, with an old-fashioned tuck comb, was not pretty. But Susan Gray lived in what was called the "White-Oak Flats;" a region sometimes called the "Hoop-Pole Country." It was not the most enlightened place in the world, for there was no school, except for a short time in winter, and the people were very superst.i.tious, believing that if they carried a hoe through the house, or broke a looking-gla.s.s, somebody "would die before long," and thinking that a screech-owl's scream and the howling of a dog were warnings; and that potatoes must be planted in the "dark of the moon," because they grew underground, and corn in the "light of the moon," because it grew above ground; and that hogs must be killed in the increase of the moon, to keep the pork from frying away to gravy!

As Sukey had always lived in the White-Oak Flats, she did not know that they were dreary, for she was always happy, doing her work cheerfully.

But one of Susan's cousins, who lived a hundred miles away, had made her a visit. This cousin, like Sukey, lived in the country, but she had plenty of books and had read many curious and wonderful things, with which she was accustomed to delight Sukey.

But when Cousin Annie was gone, Sukey found the Flats a dreary place. She wished there were some paG.o.das, such as they have in India, or that there were some cannibals living near her. She thought if she were rich, she would buy an omnibus, with four "blaze-faced" sorrel horses, to drive for her own amus.e.m.e.nt. She got tired of the pumpkins and cabbages, and longed for grizzly bears and red Indians. She hated to wash dishes and feed the chickens, but thought she would like to be a slave on a coffee plantation in Ceylon.

"Oh, dear!" she sighed, "I wish I was out of the Hoop-Pole Country. There is nothing beautiful or curious in these flats. I am tired of great yellow sunflowers and hollyhocks and pumpkin blossoms. I wish I could see something curious or beautiful."

Now, isn't it strange that any little girl should talk so, with plenty of birds and trees and sunshine? But so it is with most of us. We generally refuse to enjoy what is in our reach, and long for something that we cannot get. Just as Chicken Little, here, always wants milk when there is none, and always asks for tea when you offer her milk.

"Well, 'cause I'm firsty, that's the reason," said the Chicken.

Now, when Sukey said this, she was up in the loft, or second story, if you could call it story, of her father's house. She sat on a bench, looking out of the gable window at the old stick chimney, made by building a square _cob-house_ arrangement of sticks of wood, tapering toward the top, and plastering it with clay. The top of the chimney was surrounded by a barrel with both ends open, through which the smoke climbed lazily up into the air. Near by stood an oak-tree, in which a jay-bird was screaming and dancing in a jerky way. Sukey then looked away into the blue sky, and the clouds seemed to become paG.o.das, and palm-trees, and golden ships floating drowsily away. All at once she heard somebody say, in a queer, birdlike voice--

"Pray, look this way, little Sukey Gray. May I make bold to say you are looking grum to-day? You neither laugh nor play; now what's the reason, pray?"

Sukey started up to see where this funny jingle came from. There, in the oak-tree, where the jay-bird had stood a few minutes before, was a queer-looking little chap, in blue coat and pants, with a top-knot cap and a rather sharp nose. He looked a little like a jay-bird, but had a most comical face and blinky eyes, and brought his words out in short jerks, making them rhyme in an odd sort of jingle. And all the time he was dancing and laughing and turning rapid somersaults, as if the little blue coat could hardly hold so much fun.

"Well, now," broke out Sukey, "you are the only curious thing in all the Hoop Pole Country. I've been wishing for something odd or strange, and I am glad you have come, for there is nothing beautiful or curious in all the White-Oak Flats."

"Why, Sukey Gray! What's that you say? You must be blind as a pumpkin rind, or a leather-winged bat; this White-Oak Flat is just the place to look the beautiful right in the face. Now come with me, and we will see that the little bee, or this great oak tree, or the bright, blue skies, are beautiful things, if we open our eyes."

All the while the little fellow was getting off this queer speech, he was swinging and tumbling along up the great limb that reached out toward the window at which Sukey sat. By the time he had finished it, he was standing on the window-sill, where he had alighted after a giddy somersault. He laughed heartily--so heartily that Sukey laughed, too, though she could not tell why. Then he took off his cap, and said,

"A pickaninny, at your service, Sukey Gray! Will you take a walk with me to-day? Now jump, while you may!" and he took hold of her two hands and jumped, and she jumped after him, feeling as light as a feather.

They alighted on the branch of the oak-tree. He immediately began to pull lichens off the bark, and show Sukey how curious they were. He showed her how curiously one kind of lichen grew upon another, omitting its own stalk and leaves, and making use of those of the other. Then he laughed at her, because he had found curious things within ten feet of her window.

Next he took her to her own rosebush, and showed her how the limbs were swelled in some places. Then breaking off the twig, he placed it against a tree, and began to pound it with his fist. But his little arm was not strong, and he had to strike it several times before he could break it open. When it did fly open, Sukey started back at seeing it full of plant-lice, or aphides.

"Now," said the pickaninny, "in this little house what curious things!

These little aphides have no wings. But their great-great-grandfathers, and their great-great-grandmothers had. Their mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers had none, and their children will have none, and their grandchildren will have none, and their great-grandchildren will have none; but their great-great-grandchildren will have wings again, for every ninth generation can fly."

"How curious!" said Sukey.

Then the pickaninny found a swamp blackbird's nest, and showed her how strangely it was made; then they climbed down the chimney of the school-house, and he showed her how the chimney swallow glued her nest together; and he coaxed a katydid to fiddle with his wings, that she might see that. At last they entered the pumpkin patch.

"Well," said Sukey, "there's nothing curious here. I know all about pumpkins."

With that the pickaninny commenced to jump up and down on one, but he was so light that he could not break it. He kept jumping higher and higher; now he was bouncing up ten feet in the air, then fifteen, then twenty, until at last he leaped up as high as the top of the oak-tree, and coming down, he struck his heels through the pumpkin. Sukey laughed till the tears ran off her chin. The pickaninny thrust his arm in and took out a seed. Then breaking that open, he showed Susan that the inside of a pumpkin seed was two white leaves, the first leaves of the young pumpkin vine. And so an hour pa.s.sed while the pickaninny showed her many curious things, of which I have not time to tell you.

At last he said, "Now, Sukey Gray, pray let me fly away!"

"I shall not keep you if you want to go," said Susan.

"Then pluck the mistletoe, and let me go."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"I cannot go until you pluck the mistletoe."

Sukey pulled a piece of mistletoe from the limb where they were standing, and he bowed and said,

"Now, Sukey Gray, good-day. Don't waste your sighs, but use your eyes."

With that he leaped into the air. Susy looked up, but there was only the bluejay, crying, "Jay! jay! jay!" in a peevish way, and herself looking out the window.

"What a wonderful country the White-Oak Flats must be," she said. And the more she used her eyes, the more she was satisfied that the Hoop-Pole Country was the most wonderful in the world.

THE GREAT PANJANDRUM HIMSELF.

Chicken Little was a picture, sitting on the floor by the window, with a stereoscope--"the thing 'at you look fru," she calls it--in her hand, and the pictures scattered about her.

Now some of the children think that I have been "making up" Chicken Little, and that there is no such a being. A few weeks ago, after I had been talking to a great church full of people, there came up to me a very sweet little girl.

"Do you write stories in _The Little Corporal_?" she asked.

When I told her I did, she looked up, and asked, earnestly, "Well, is there any real, live Chicken Little?"

Now there may be others of the great army of _The Little Corporal_ that want to know whether there is any "real, live Chicken Little." I tell you there is. If you could see her merry mischievous face; if you could see her when she stands up on my shoulders like a monkey; if you had heard her, yesterday, explain that G.o.d could see in the stove when all the doors were shut; if you could see how she always manages to do what you don't want her to do, and then find a good excuse for it afterward; you would think there was a live, real "Chicken Little." If you could have seen the old, funny twinkle in her eye, when I found her with the stereoscope, you would have thought she was a real, live Chicken, sure enough.

"Now, then, you've got to tell me a story," she said.

"'_Got to_' don't tell stories."

"Well, p'ease tell me one, then."

"Yes," said Sunbeam, peeping in, "about the Great Panjandrum himself."

"Ah! you little mink," I said, "how did you get hold of my secret?"