A DISAGREEABLE PERSONAGE.
IT cannot be said that Jimmieboy was entirely happy after his falling out with the corporal. Of course it was very inconsiderate of the corporal to wake up at the most exciting period of his fairy story, and leave his commanding officer in a state of uncertainty as to the fate of little Tom; but as he walked along the road, and thought the matter all over, Jimmieboy reflected that after all he was himself as much to blame as the corporal. In the first place, he had interrupted him in his story at the point where it became most interesting, though warned in advance not to do so, and in the second, he had not fallen back upon his undoubted right as a general to command the corporal to go to sleep again, and to stay so until his little romance was finished to the satisfaction of his superior officer. The latter was without question the thing he should have done, and at first he thought he would go back and tell the corporal he was very sorry he hadn't done so. Indeed, he would have gone back had he not met, as he rounded the turn, a singular-looking little fellow, who, sitting high in an oak-tree at the side of the road, attracted his attention by winking at him. Ordinarily Jimmieboy would not have noticed anybody who winked at him, because his papa had told him that people who would wink would smoke a pipe, which was very wrong, particularly in people who were as small as this droll person in the tree. But the singular-looking little fellow winked aloud, and Jimmieboy could not help noticing him. Like most small boys Jimmieboy delighted in noises, especially noises that went off like pop-guns, which was just the kind of noise the tree dwarf made when he winked.
"Hello, you!" said Jimmieboy, as the sounds first attracted his attention. "What are you doing up there?"
"Sitting on a limb and counting the stars in the sky," answered the dwarf.
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 of twenty-seven or twenty-eight."
"That doesn't prove anything," returned the dwarf, "that is, nothing but what I said. If there are twenty-eight there must be seventeen, so you can'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 the eighteenth star, but I'll drop my telescope and let you see me through that."
"I'll help you count the stars if you come," put in Jimmieboy. "How many stars can you count a day?"
"Oh, about one and a half," said the dwarf. "I could count more than that, only I'm cross-eyed and see double, so that after I've got through counting, I have to divide the whole number by two to get the proper figures, and I never was good at dividing. I've always hated division—particularly division of apples and peaches. There is no meaner sum in any arithmetic in the world than that I used to have to do 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 little man. "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, while it pretended to be division, and was as hard as division, as far as I was concerned it was subtraction too, and I was always the leftest part of the remainder."
"But I don't see why you had to divide your apples every time you got any," 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 happen that they would get the pain and not I. After one or two experiments I fixed it so that I never got the pain part any more—for you know every apple has an ache in it—and they did, so, you see, I kept myself well as could be, and at the same time built up quite a reputation for generosity."
"How did you fix it so as to give them the pain part always?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Why, I located the part of the apple that held the pain. I did not divide one apple I got, but ate the whole thing myself, part by part. I studied each part carefully, and discovered that apples are divided by Nature into three parts, anyhow. Pleasure was one part, pain was another part, 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, and the skin represents the part which isn't anything. When I found that out I said, 'Here! What is a good enough plan for Nature is a good enough plan for me. I'll divide my apples on Nature's plan.' Which I did. To one brother I gave the core; to the other the skin; the rest I ate myself."
"It was very mean of you to make your brothers suffer the pain," said Jimmieboy.
"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 the dwarf.
"It was mean, anyhow!" cried Jimmieboy, who was so fond of his own little brother that he would gladly have borne all his pains for him if it could have been arranged.
"Well, meanness is my business," said the dwarf.
"Your business?" echoed Jimmieboy, opening his eyes wide with astonishment, meanness seemed such a strange business.
"Certainly," returned the dwarf. "Don't you know what I am? I am an unfairy."
"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 doing good."
"That's right. An unfairy is just the opposite," explained the dwarf. "I go 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 paid the bellows man, who works up all these big winds we have, to do it. If I see people having a good time on a picnic, I fly up to the sky and push a rain cloud over where they are and drench them, having first of course either hidden or punched great holes in their umbrellas. Oh, I can tell you, I am the meanest creature that ever was. Why, do you know what I did once in a country school?"
"No, I don't," said Jimmieboy, in tones of disgust. "I don't know anything about mean things."
"Well, you ought to know about this," returned the dwarf, "because it was just the meanest thing anybody ever did. There was a boy who'd studied awfully hard in hopes that he would lead his class when the holidays came, and there was another boy in the school who was equal to him in everything but arithmetic, and who would have been beaten on that one 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 of the first boy and putting others on the slate instead, so that the first boy 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 come down here when I asked you to, for if you had, I think I should now be slapping you just as hard as I could."
"Another time," said the unfairy, ignoring Jimmieboy's remark, "I turned myself into a horse-fly and bothered a lame horse; then I changed into a bull-dog and barked all night under the window of a man who wanted to go to sleep, but my regular trick is going around to hat stores and taking the brushes and brushing all the beaver hats the wrong way. Sometimes when people get lost here in the woods and want to go to Tiddledywinkland, I give them the wrong directions, so that they bring up on the other side of the country, where they don't want to be; and once last winter I put rust on the runners of a little boy's sled so that he couldn't use it, and then when he'd spent three days getting them polished up, I pushed a warm rain cloud over the hill where the snow was and melted it all away. I hide toys I know children will be sure to want; I tear the most exciting pages out of books; I spill salt in the sugar-bowls and plant weeds in the gardens; I upset the ink on love-letters; when I find a man with only one collar I fray it at the edges; I roll collar buttons under bureaus; I—"
"Don't you dare tell me another thing!" cried Jimmieboy, angrily. "I don'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 make you, and I'll tell you why. I am very tired of my business, and I think if I tell you all the horrid things I do, maybe you'll tell me how I can keep from doing them. I have known you for a long time, only you didn't know 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 miles and 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 of your 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 that tree down, and catch you and make you sorry for it."
"I am sorry for it," said the dwarf. "Real sorry. I've never ceased to regret 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 it right. You only ruined your suit and not that beautiful red necktie you had on. Next time I'll be more careful and spoil everything. But let me give you more proof that I've known you. Who do you suppose it was bent your 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 I who chewed up your best shoes and bit your plush dog's head off; it was I who ate up your luncheon one day last March; it was I who pawed up all the geraniums in your flower-bed; and it was I who nipped your friend the postman in the leg on St. Valentine's day so that he lost your valentine."
"I've caught you there," said Jimmieboy. "It wasn't you that did those things at all. It was a horrid little brown dog that used to play around our house did all that."
"You think you are smart," laughed the dwarf. "But you aren't. I was the little brown dog."
"I don't see how you can have any friends if that is the way you behave," said Jimmieboy, after a minute or two of silence. "You don't deserve any."
"No," said the dwarf, his voice trembling a little—for as Jimmieboy peered up into the tree at him he could see that he was crying just a bit—"I haven't any, and I never had. I never had anybody to set me a good example. My father and my mother were unfairies before me, and I just 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 the head, instead of giving him a piece of cake with red pepper on it, as I would have done, that I ever even dreamed that there were kind people in the world. After I'd watched you for a while and had seen how happy you were, and how many friends you had, I began to see how it was that I was so miserable. I was miserable because I was mean, but nobody has ever told me how not to be mean, and I'm just real upset over it."
"Poor fellow!" said Jimmieboy, sympathetically. "I am really very, very sorry 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 peering intently down the road. "Wait a minute. There is a sheep down the road there tangled up in the brambles. Wait until I change myself into a big black 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'd never have thought of that if you hadn't suggested it to me. I think I will. I'll change myself into a good-hearted shepherd's boy, and free that poor animal at once!"
The dwarf was as good as his word, and in a moment he came back, smiling as happily as though he had made a great fortune.
"Why, it's lovely to do a thing like that. Beautiful!" he said. "Do you know, 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 the bliss of helping her out once more."
"I wouldn't do that," said Jimmieboy, with a shake of his head. "I'd just change myself into a good fairy if I were you, and go about doing kind things. When you see people having a picnic, push the rain cloud away from them instead of over them. Do just the opposite from what you've been doing all along, and pretty soon you'll have heaps and heaps of friends."
"You are a wonderful boy," said the dwarf. "Why, you've hit without thinking a minute the plan I've been searching for for years and years and years, and I'll do just what you say. Watch!"
The dwarf pronounced one or two queer words the like of which Jimmieboy had never heard before, and, presto change! quick as a wink the unfairy had disappeared, and there stood at the small general's side the handsomest, sweetest little sprite he had ever even dreamed or read about. The sprite threw his arms about Jimmieboy's neck and kissed him affectionately, 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 am sure I have lost eighteen hundred and seven tons in weight, I feel so light and gay; and—joy! oh, joy! I no longer see double! My eyes must be straight."
"They are," said Jimmieboy. "Straight as—straight as—well, as straight as your hair is curly."
And that was as good an illustration as he could have found, for the sprite's hair was just as curly as it could be.