CHAPTER VII.
A DISAGREEABLE PERSONAGE.
It cannot be said that Jimmieboy was entirely happy after his fallingout with the corporal. Of course it was very inconsiderate of thecorporal to wake up at the most exciting period of his fairy story, andleave his commanding officer in a state of uncertainty as to the fate oflittle Tom; but as he walked along the road, and thought the matter allover, Jimmieboy reflected that after all he was himself as much to blameas the corporal. In the first place, he had interrupted him in his storyat the point where it became most interesting, though warned in advancenot to do so, and in the second, he had not fallen back upon hisundoubted right as a general to command the corporal to go to sleepagain, and to stay so until his little romance was finished to thesatisfaction of his superior officer. The latter was without questionthe thing he should have done, and at first he thought he would go backand tell the corporal he was very sorry he hadn't done so. Indeed, hewould have gone back had he not met, as he rounded the turn, asingular-looking little fellow, who, sitting high in an oak-tree at theside of the road, attracted his attention by winking at him. OrdinarilyJimmieboy would not have noticed anybody who winked at him, because hispapa had told him that people who would wink would smoke a pipe, whichwas very wrong, particularly in people who were as small as this drollperson in the tree. But the singular-looking little fellow winked aloud,and Jimmieboy could not help noticing him. Like most small boysJimmieboy delighted in noises, especially noises that went off likepop-guns, which was just the kind of noise the tree dwarf made when hewinked.
"Hello, you!" said Jimmieboy, as the sounds first attracted hisattention. "What are you doing up there?"
"Sitting on a limb and counting the stars in the sky," answered thedwarf.
Jimmieboy laughed. This seemed such a curious thing to do.
"How many are there?" he asked.
"Seventeen," replied the dwarf.
"Ho!" jeered Jimmieboy.
"There are, really," said the dwarf. "I counted 'em myself."
"There's more than that," said Jimmieboy. "I've had stories told me oftwenty-seven or twenty-eight."
"That doesn't prove anything," returned the dwarf, "that is, nothing butwhat I said. If there are twenty-eight there must be seventeen, so youcan't catch me up on that."
"Come down," said Jimmieboy. "I want to see you."
"I can't come now," returned the dwarf. "I'm too busy counting theeighteenth star, but I'll drop my telescope and let you see me throughthat."
"I'll help you count the stars if you come," put in Jimmieboy. "How manystars can you count a day?"
"Oh, about one and a half," said the dwarf. "I could count more thanthat, only I'm cross-eyed and see double, so that after I've got throughcounting, I have to divide the whole number by two to get the properfigures, and I never was good at dividing. I've always hateddivision--particularly division of apples and peaches. There is nomeaner sum in any arithmetic in the world than that I used to have todo every time I got an apple when I was your age."
"What was the sum?" asked Jimmieboy.
"It was to divide one apple by three boys," returned the queer littleman. "Most generally that would be regarded as a case of three into one,but in this instance it was one into three; and, worse than all, whileit pretended to be division, and was as hard as division, as far as Iwas concerned it was subtraction too, and I was always the leftest partof the remainder."
"But I don't see why you had to divide your apples every time you gotany," said Jimmieboy.
"That's easy enough to explain," said the dwarf. "If I didn't divide,and did eat the whole apple, I'd have a fearful pain in my heart;whereas if I gave my little brothers each a third, it would often happenthat they would get the pain and not I. After one or two experiments Ifixed it so that I never got the pain part any more--for you know everyapple has an ache in it--and they did, so, you see, I kept myself wellas could be, and at the same time built up quite a reputation forgenerosity."
"How did you fix it so as to give them the pain part always?" queriedJimmieboy.
"Why, I located the part of the apple that held the pain. I did notdivide one apple I got, but ate the whole thing myself, part by part. Istudied each part carefully, and discovered that apples are divided byNature into three parts, anyhow. Pleasure was one part, pain was anotherpart, and the third part was just nothing--neither pleasure nor pain.The core is where the ache is, the crisp is where the pleasure is, andthe skin represents the part which isn't anything. When I found that outI said, 'Here! What is a good enough plan for Nature is a good enoughplan for me. I'll divide my apples on Nature's plan.' Which I did. Toone brother I gave the core; to the other the skin; the rest I atemyself."
"It was very mean of you to make your brothers suffer the pain," saidJimmieboy.
"Well, they had their days off. One time one brother'd have the core;another time the other brother'd have it. They took turns," said thedwarf.
"It was mean, anyhow!" cried Jimmieboy, who was so fond of his ownlittle brother that he would gladly have borne all his pains for him ifit could have been arranged.
"Well, meanness is my business," said the dwarf.
"Your business?" echoed Jimmieboy, opening his eyes wide withastonishment, meanness seemed such a strange business.
"Certainly," returned the dwarf. "Don't you know what I am? I am anunfairy."
"What's that?" asked Jimmieboy.
"You know what a fairy is, don't you?" said the dwarf.
"Yes. It's a dear lovely creature with wings, that goes about doinggood."
"That's right. An unfairy is just the opposite," explained the dwarf. "Igo about doing unfair things. I am the fairy that makes things go wrong.When your hat blows off in the street the chances are that I have paidthe bellows man, who works up all these big winds we have, to do it. IfI see people having a good time on a picnic, I fly up to the sky andpush a rain cloud over where they are and drench them, having first ofcourse either hidden or punched great holes in their umbrellas. Oh, Ican tell you, I am the meanest creature that ever was. Why, do you knowwhat I did once in a country school?"
"No, I don't," said Jimmieboy, in tones of disgust. "I don't knowanything about mean things."
"Well, you ought to know about this," returned the dwarf, "because itwas just the meanest thing anybody ever did. There was a boy who'dstudied awfully hard in hopes that he would lead his class when theholidays came, and there was another boy in the school who was equal tohim in everything but arithmetic, and who would have been beaten on thatone point, so that the other boy would have stood where he wanted to,only I helped the second boy by rubbing out all the correct answers ofthe first boy and putting others on the slate instead, so that the firstboy lost first place and had to take second. Wasn't that mean?"
"It was horrid," said Jimmieboy, "and it's a good thing you didn't comedown here when I asked you to, for if you had, I think I should now beslapping you just as hard as I could."
"Another time," said the unfairy, ignoring Jimmieboy's remark, "I turnedmyself into a horse-fly and bothered a lame horse; then I changed into abull-dog and barked all night under the window of a man who wanted to goto sleep, but my regular trick is going around to hat stores and takingthe brushes and brushing all the beaver hats the wrong way. Sometimeswhen people get lost here in the woods and want to go toTiddledywinkland, I give them the wrong directions, so that they bringup on the other side of the country, where they don't want to be; andonce last winter I put rust on the runners of a little boy's sled sothat he couldn't use it, and then when he'd spent three days gettingthem polished up, I pushed a warm rain cloud over the hill where thesnow was and melted it all away. I hide toys I know children will besure to want; I tear the most exciting pages out of books; I spill saltin the sugar-bowls and plant weeds in the gardens; I upset the ink onlove-letters; when I find a man with only one collar I fray it at theedges; I roll collar buttons under bureaus; I--"
"Don't you dare tell me another thing!" cr
ied Jimmieboy, angrily. "Idon't like you, and I won't listen to you any more."
"Oh, yes, you will," replied the unfairy. "I am just mean enough to makeyou, and I'll tell you why. I am very tired of my business, and I thinkif I tell you all the horrid things I do, maybe you'll tell me how I cankeep from doing them. I have known you for a long time, only you didn'tknow it."
"I don't believe it," said Jimmieboy.
"Well, I have, just the same," returned the dwarf. "And I can prove it.Do you remember, one day you went out walking, how you walked two milesand only met one mud-puddle, and fell into that?"
"Yes, I do," said Jimmieboy, sadly. "I spoiled my new suit when I fell,and I never knew how I came to do it."
"I made you do that!" said the unfairy, triumphantly. "I grabbed hold ofyour foot, and upset you right into it. I waited two hours to do it,too."
"You did, eh?" said Jimmieboy. "Well, I wish I had an axe. I'd chop thattree down, and catch you and make you sorry for it."
"I am sorry for it," said the dwarf. "Real sorry. I've never ceased toregret it."
"Oh, well, I forgive you," said Jimmieboy, "if you are really sorry."
"Yes, I am," said the dwarf; "I'm awfully sorry, because I didn't do itright. You only ruined your suit and not that beautiful red necktie youhad on. Next time I'll be more careful and spoil everything. But let megive you more proof that I've known you. Who do you suppose it was bentyour railway tracks at Christmas so they wouldn't work?"
"You!" ejaculated Jimmieboy.
"Yes, sirree!" roared the dwarf. "I did, and, what is more, it was Iwho chewed up your best shoes and bit your plush dog's head off; it wasI who ate up your luncheon one day last March; it was I who pawed up allthe geraniums in your flower-bed; and it was I who nipped your friendthe postman in the leg on St. Valentine's day so that he lost yourvalentine."
"I've caught you there," said Jimmieboy. "It wasn't you that did thosethings at all. It was a horrid little brown dog that used to play aroundour house did all that."
"You think you are smart," laughed the dwarf. "But you aren't. I was thelittle brown dog."
"I don't see how you can have any friends if that is the way youbehave," said Jimmieboy, after a minute or two of silence. "You don'tdeserve any."
"No," said the dwarf, his voice trembling a little--for as Jimmieboypeered up into the tree at him he could see that he was crying just abit--"I haven't any, and I never had. I never had anybody to set me agood example. My father and my mother were unfairies before me, and Ijust grew to be one like them. I didn't want to be one, but I had to be;and really it wasn't until I saw you pat a hand-organ monkey on thehead, instead of giving him a piece of cake with red pepper on it, as Iwould have done, that I ever even dreamed that there were kind people inthe world. After I'd watched you for a while and had seen how happy youwere, and how many friends you had, I began to see how it was that I wasso miserable. I was miserable because I was mean, but nobody has evertold me how not to be mean, and I'm just real upset over it."
"Poor fellow!" said Jimmieboy, sympathetically. "I am really very, verysorry for you."
"So am I," sobbed the dwarf. "I wish you could help me."
"Perhaps I can," said Jimmieboy.
"Well, wait a minute," said the dwarf, drying his eyes and peeringintently down the road. "Wait a minute. There is a sheep down the roadthere tangled up in the brambles. Wait until I change myself into a bigblack dog and scare her half to death."
"But that will be mean," returned Jimmieboy; "and if you want to change,and be good, and kind, why don't you begin now and help the sheep out?"
"H'm!" said the dwarf. "Now that is an idea, isn't it! Do you know, I'dnever have thought of that if you hadn't suggested it to me. I think Iwill. I'll change myself into a good-hearted shepherd's boy, and freethat poor animal at once!"
The dwarf was as good as his word, and in a moment he came back, smilingas happily as though he had made a great fortune.
"Why, it's lovely to do a thing like that. Beautiful!" he said. "Do youknow, Jimmieboy, I've half a mind to turn mean again for just a minute,and go back and frighten that sheep back into the bushes just for thebliss of helping her out once more."
"I wouldn't do that," said Jimmieboy, with a shake of his head. "I'djust change myself into a good fairy if I were you, and go about doingkind things. When you see people having a picnic, push the rain cloudaway from them instead of over them. Do just the opposite from whatyou've been doing all along, and pretty soon you'll have heaps and heapsof friends."
"You are a wonderful boy," said the dwarf. "Why, you've hit withoutthinking a minute the plan I've been searching for for years and yearsand years, and I'll do just what you say. Watch!"
The dwarf pronounced one or two queer words the like of which Jimmieboyhad never heard before, and, presto change! quick as a wink the unfairyhad disappeared, and there stood at the small general's side thehandsomest, sweetest little sprite he had ever even dreamed or readabout. The sprite threw his arms about Jimmieboy's neck and kissed himaffectionately, wiped a tear of joy from his eye, and then said:
"I am so glad I met you. You have taught me how to be happy, and I amsure I have lost eighteen hundred and seven tons in weight, I feel solight and gay; and--joy! oh, joy! I no longer see double! My eyes mustbe straight."
"They are," said Jimmieboy. "Straight as--straight as--well, as straightas your hair is curly."
And that was as good an illustration as he could have found, for thesprite's hair was just as curly as it could be.