THE SPRITE'S STORY.
WHEN I was not more than a thousand years old—" said the sprite.
"Excuse me," interrupted the major. "But what was the figure?"
"One thousand," returned the sprite. "That was nine thousand years ago—before this world was made. I celebrated my ten-thousand-and-sixteenth birthday last Friday—but that has nothing to do with my story. When I was not more than a thousand years of age, my parents, who occupied a small star about forty million miles from here, finding that my father could earn a better living if he were located nearer the moon, moved away from my birthplace and rented a good-sized, four-pronged star in the suburbs of the great orb of night. In the old star we were too far away from the markets for my father to sell the products of his farm for anything like what they cost him; freight charges were very heavy, and often the stage-coach that ran between Twinkleville and the moon would not stop at Twinkleville at all, and then all the stuff that we had raised that week would get stale, lose its fizz, and have to be thrown away."
"Let me beg your pardon again," put in the major. "But what did you raise on your farm? I never heard of farm products having fizz to lose."
"We raised soda-water chiefly," returned the sprite, amiably. "Soda-water and suspender buttons. The soda-water was cultivated and the suspender buttons seemed to grow wild. We never knew exactly how; though from what I have learned since about them, I think I begin to understand the science of it; and I wish now that I could find a way to return to Twinkleville, because I am certain it must be a perfect treasure-house of suspender buttons by this time. Even in my day they used to lie about by the million—metallic buttons every one of them. They must be worth to-day at least a dollar a thousand."
"What is your idea about the way they happened to come there, based on what you have learned since?" asked the major.
"Well, it is a very simple idea," returned the sprite. "You know when a suspender button comes off it always disappears. Of course it must go somewhere, but the question is, where? No one has ever yet been known to recover the suspender button he has once really lost; and my notion of it is simply that the minute a metal suspender button comes off the clothes of anybody in all the whole universe, it immediately flies up through the air and space to Twinkleville, which is nothing more than a huge magnet, and lies there until somebody picks it up and tries to sell it. I remember as a boy sweeping our back yard clear of them one evening, and waking the next morning to find the whole place covered with them again; but we never could make money on them, because the moon was our sole market, and only the best people of the moon ever used suspenders, and as these were unfortunately relatives of ours, we had to give them all the buttons they wanted for nothing, so that the button crops became rather an expense to us than otherwise. But with soda-water it was different. Everybody, it doesn't make any difference where he lives, likes soda-water, and it was an especially popular thing in the moon, where the plain water is always so full of fish that nobody can drink it. But as I said before, often the stage-coach wouldn't or couldn't stop, and we found ourselves getting poorer every day. Finally my father made up his mind to lease, and move into this new star, sink a half-dozen soda-water wells there, and by means of a patent he owned, which enabled him to give each well a separate and distinct flavor, drive everybody else out of the business."
"You don't happen to remember how that patent your father owned worked, do you?" asked the major, noticing that Jimmieboy seemed particularly interested when the sprite mentioned this. "If you do, I'd like to buy the plan of it from you and give it to Jimmieboy for a Christmas present, so that he can have soda-water wells in his own back yard at home."
"No, I can't remember anything about it," said the sprite. "Nine thousand years is a long time to remember things of that kind, though I don't think the scheme was a very hard one to work. For vanilla cream, it only required a well with plain soda-water in it with a quart of vanilla beans and three pints of cream poured into it four times a week; same way with other flavors—a quart of strawberries for strawberry, sarsaparilla for sarsaparilla, and so forth; but the secret was in the pouring; there was something in the way papa did the pouring; I never knew just what it was. He always insisted on doing the pouring himself. But if you don't stop asking questions I'll never finish my story."
"You shouldn't make it so interesting if you don't want us to have our curiosity excited by it," said Jimmieboy. "I'd have asked those questions if the major hadn't. But go ahead. What happened?"
"Well, we moved, and in a very short time were comfortably settled in the suburban star I have mentioned," continued the sprite. "As we expected, my father grew very, very rich. He was referred to in the moon newspapers as 'The Soda-water King,' and once an article about him said that he owned the finest suspender-button mine in the universe, which was more or less true, but which, as it turned out, was unfortunate in its results. Some moon people hearing of his ownership of the Twinkleville Button Mines came to him and tried to persuade him that they ought to be worked. Father said he didn't see any use of it, because the common people didn't wear suspenders, and so didn't need the buttons.
"'True,' said they, 'but we can compel them to need them, by making a law requiring that everybody over sixteen shall wear suspenders.'
"'That's a good idea,' said my father, and he tried to have it made a law that every one should wear suspenders, high or low, and as a result he got everybody mad at him. The best people were angry, because up to that time the wearing of suspenders had been regarded as a sign of noble birth, and if everybody, including the common people, were to have them they would cease to be so. The common people themselves were angry, because to have to buy suspenders would simply be an addition to the cost of living, and they hadn't any money to spare. In consequence we were cut off by the best people of the moon. Nobody ever came to see us except the very commonest kind of common people, and they came at night, and then only to drop pailfuls of cod-liver oil, squills, ipecac, and other unpopular things into our soda-water wells, so that in a very short time my poor father's soda-water business was utterly ruined. People don't like to order ten quarts of vanilla cream soda-water for Sunday dinner, and find it flavored with cod-liver oil, you know."
"Yes, I do know," said Jimmieboy, screwing his face up in an endeavor to give the major and the sprite some idea of how little he liked the taste of cod-liver oil. "I think cod-liver oil is worse than measles or mumps, because you can't have measles or mumps more than once, and there isn't any end to the times you can have cod-liver oil."
"I'm with you there," said the major, emphasizing his remark by slapping Jimmieboy on the back. "In fact, sir, on page 29 of my book called 'Musings on Medicines' you will find—if it is ever published—these lines:
"The oils of cod!
The oils of cod!
They make me feel tremendous odd,
Nor hesitate
I here to state
I wildly hate the oils of cod."
"Bravo!" cried the sprite. "When I start my autograph album I want you to write those lines on the first page."
"With pleasure," returned the major. "When shall you start the album?"
"Never, I hope," replied the sprite, with a chuckle. "And now suppose you don't interrupt my story again."
Clouds began to gather on the major's face again. The sprite's rebuke had evidently made him very angry.
"Sir," said he, as soon as his feelings permitted him to speak. "If you make any more such remarks as that, another duel may be necessary after this one is fought—which I should very much regret, for duels of this sort consume a great deal of time, and unless I am much mistaken it will shortly rain cats and dogs."
"It looks that way," said the sprite, "and it is for that very reason that I do not wish to be interrupted again. Of course ruin stared father in the face."
"How rude of ruin!" whispered the major to Jimmieboy, who immediately silenced him.
"Trade having fallen away," continued the sprite, "we had to draw upon our savings for our bread and butter, and finally, when the last penny was spent, we made up our minds to leave the moon district entirely and try life on the dog-star, where, we were informed, people only had one eye apiece, and every man had so much to do that it took all of his one eye's time looking after his own business so that there wasn't any left for him to spend on other people's business. It seemed to my father that in a place like this there was a splendid opening for him."
"In what line?" queried the major.
"Renting out his extra eye to blind men," roared the sprite.
Jimmieboy fell off the rock with laughter, and the major, angry at being so neatly caught, rose up and walked away but immediately returned.
"If this wasn't a duel I wouldn't stay here another minute," he said. "But you can't put me to flight that way. Go on and finish."
"The question now came up as to how we should get to the dog-star," resumed the sprite. "Our money was all gone. Nobody would lend us any. Nobody would help us at all."
"I should think they'd have been so glad you were leaving they'd have paid your fare," said the major, but the sprite paid no attention.
"There was no regular stage line between the moon and the dog-star," said he, "and we had only two chances of really getting there, and they were both so slim you could count their ribs. One was by getting aboard the first comet that was going that way, and the other was by jumping. The trouble with the first chance was that as far as any one knew there wasn't a comet expected to go in the direction of the dog-star for eight million years—which was rather a long time for a starving family to wait, and besides we had read of so many accidents in the moon papers about people being injured while trying to board comets in motion that we were a little timid about it. My father and I could have managed very well; but mother might not have—ladies can't even get on horse cars in motion without getting hurt, you know.
"Then the other scheme was equally dangerous. It's a pretty big jump from the moon to the dog-star, and if you don't aim yourself right you are apt to miss it, and either fall into space or land somewhere else where you don't want to go. For instance, a cousin of mine who lived on Mars wanted to visit us when we lived at Twinkleville, but he was too mean to pay his fare, thinking he could jump it cheaper. Well, he jumped and where do you suppose he landed?"
"In the sun!" cried the major, in horror.
"No. Nowhere!" returned the sprite. "He's jumping yet. He didn't come anywhere near Twinkleville, although he supposed that he was aimed in the right direction."
"Will you tell me how you know he's falling yet?" asked the major, who didn't seem to believe this part of the sprite's story.
"Certainly. I saw him yesterday through a telescope," replied the sprite.
The major began to whistle.
"And he looked very tired, too," said the sprite. "Though as a matter of fact he doesn't have to exert himself any. All he has to do is fall, and, once you get started, falling is the easiest thing in the world. But of course with the remembrance of my cousin's mistake in our minds, we didn't care so much about making the jump, and we kept putting it off and putting it off until finally some wretched people had a law made abolishing us from the moon entirely, which meant that we had to leave inside of twenty-four hours; so we packed up our trunks with the few possessions we had left and threw them off toward the dog-star; then mother and father took hold of hands and jumped and I was to come along after them with some of the baggage that we hadn't got ready in time.
"According to my father's instructions I watched him carefully as he sped through space to see whether he had started right, and to my great joy I observed that he had—that very shortly both he and mother would arrive safely on the dog-star—but alas! My joy was soon turned to grief, for a terrible thing happened. Our great heavy family trunk that had been dispatched first, and with truest aim, landed on the head of the King of the dog-star, stove his crown in and nearly killed him. Hardly had the king risen up from the ground when he was again knocked down by my poor father, who, utterly powerless to slow up or switch himself to one side, landed precisely as the trunk had landed on the monarch's head, doing quite as much more damage as the trunk had done in the beginning. When added to these mishaps a shower of hat-boxes and hand-bags, marked with our family name, fell upon the Lord Chief Justice, the Prime Minister and the Heir Apparent, my parents were arrested and thrown into prison and I decided that the dog-star was no place for me. Wild with grief, and without looking to see where I was going, nor in fact caring much, I gave a running leap out into space and finally through some good fortune landed here on this earth which I have found quite good enough for me ever since."
Here the sprite paused and looked at Jimmieboy as much as to say, "How is that for a tale of adventure?"
"Is that all?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Mercy!" cried the major, "Isn't it enough?"
"No," said Jimmieboy. "Not quite. I don't see how he could have jumped so many years before the world was made and yet land on the world."
"I was five thousand years on the jump," explained the sprite.
"It was leap-year when you started, wasn't it?" asked the major, with a sarcastic smile.
"And your parents? What finally became of them?" asked Jimmieboy, signaling the major to be quiet.
"I hadn't the heart to inquire. I am afraid they got into serious trouble. It's a very serious thing to knock a king down with a trunk and land on his head yourself the minute he gets up again," sighed the sprite.
"But didn't you tell me your parents were unfairies?" put in Jimmieboy, eying the sprite distrustfully.
"Yes; but they were only my adopted parents," explained the sprite. "They were a very rich old couple with lots of money and no children, so I adopted them not knowing that they were unfairies. When they died they left me all their bad habits, and their money went to found a storeroom for worn out lawn-mowers. That was a sample of their meanness."
"Well that's a pretty good story," said Jimmieboy.
"Yes," said the sprite, with a pleased smile. "And the best part of it is it's all true."
"Tut!" ejaculated the major, scornfully. "Wait until you hear mine."