Books: Half Past Seven Stories
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Robert Gordon Anderson >> Half Past Seven Stories
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After a while Marmaduke tired of listening to all their talk about
presidents and the new Justice of the Peace, and he looked at the
other stores and all their signs. He noticed a new one that had just
come to town. It stood between Trennery's and Candlemas' Emporium, and
it was even more interesting than the candy store. It had a red sign
above the door with white letters which read:--
"Hop Sing
Laundry."
In the windows were parcels of shirts, tied with white string, with
little slips of paper under the string. These slips of paper were
colored like the petunias in Mother's garden, and on them were funny
black letters that looked like chicken-, and rabbit-, and fox-tracks,
all mixed up.
Inside the store three little men were ironing, ironing away on boards
covered with sheets, and jabbering in a strange language. And they
wore clothes that were as strange as the words they spoke--clothes
that looked like pajamas with dark blue tops and light blue trousers.
And each of the little men had a yellow face, slant eyes, and a black
pigtail.
It was Saturday, and a group of town-boys stood around the door,
gazing in at the three strange little men and mocking them:--
"Ching, ching Chinaman,
Bow, wow, wow!"
Then one of the boys would shout in through the door,--"Bin eatin' any
ole stewed rats, Chinky?" and another would ask,--"Give us a taste of
yer bird's-nest pudding?" They thought they were very smart, and that
wasn't all, for, after calling the Chinamen all the names they could
think of, the boys reached down into the ditch, which some men were
digging for a sewer, and scooped up handfuls of mud and threw it
straight into the laundry and all over the snow-white shirts the
little men were ironing; at which, the Chinamen grew very angry and
came to the door, shaking their flat-irons in their hands and
calling,--
[Illustration]
And the boys ran away, still mocking them. You could hear their shouts
dying away in the distance:--
"Chinky, chinky Chinaman,
Bow, wow, wow!"
Not long after this the Toyman came out from Trennery's and climbed on
the seat; and he and Marmaduke and Old Methusaleh jogged along towards
home. All the way, Marmaduke couldn't help thinking of the three
little men in their blue pajamas and their black pigtails; and he
asked the Toyman a lot of questions, even more than you will find in
his arithmetic, I guess, all about what those letters on the packages
of shirts meant, and if the Chinamen braided their pigtails every
night and morning just like girls, and if they really did eat "ole
rats," and bird's-nest puddings, and all that.
The Toyman could hardly keep up with the questions; and he hadn't
answered them all, either, by the time they reached the White House
with the Green Blinds by the Side of the Road.
On the afternoon of that same day, Marmaduke was sitting like a
hoptoad, watching the Toyman dig post-holes in the brook pasture. The
sun shone so soft and warm, and the cedar posts smelled so nice and
fragrant, that he began to feel drowsy. He didn't sit like a hoptoad
any more, but lay on his elbow, and his head nodded--nodded----nodded.
Rather faintly he heard the Toyman say:
"Well, that's pretty deep. A little more, and I'd reach down into
China."
The little boy rubbed his eyes and looked down into the deep brown
hole.
"If you dug a little more," he asked, "would you really go down
through the earth, all the way to China--where the Chinamen live?"
"Sure," replied the Toyman, who never liked to disappoint little boys.
"Then," said Marmaduke, "please dig a little more--for--I'd like--to
see--where--the Chinamen--live--." His voice sounded very sleepy.
The Toyman dug another shovelful or two, and all the while the little
boy's head kept nodding, nodding in the sun--then--as the last
shovelful fell on the pile at his side, he looked down in the hole
once more and heard voices--strange voices.
Words were coming up out of that hole, and it seemed to Marmaduke that
he could see those words as well as hear them. Now that is a very odd
thing, but it is actually what happened--he could both see and hear
them--and they looked like the funny music on phonograph
advertisements--something like this:
[Illustration]
And, way down at the bottom of the hole, he saw three black heads with
pigtails that curled upward in the hole like smoke coming from a
chimney.
He tried to grab hold of them, but he fell, and Wienerwurst after him,
right plump among the pigtails, landing on the three Chinamen way down
in the hole, and knocking them flat on their backs until their feet
with the funny black slippers kicked in the air.
Then they all got up and rubbed their tummies under the blue pajamas.
"Velly wude little Mellican boy," said the first little Chinaman,
whose name was Ping Pong.
"Velly bad manners," said the second, who was called Sing Song.
"You beggy our pardon," the third, whose name was Ah See.
Now Marmaduke intended to do that very thing--that is, beg their
pardon, for he was very polite for an American boy.
"I'm very sorry--I didn't mean to hurt you," he explained, "I just
fell down that hole."
At this he looked up the sides of the hole. It seemed as if he were at
the bottom of a great round stove-pipe, or a well with brown sides.
Far, far above him was a little circle of light blue, the top of the
hole where he had fallen in.
After he had begged their pardon so nicely, the three little yellow
men said, all together,--
"Little Mellican boy velly politely; he has honorable ancestors."
Marmaduke looked around again and saw that they were standing, not on
the bottom of the hole, but on a little landing like that on a
stairway. Below them the hole kept on descending into the darkness,
curving round and round like a corkscrew or the stairways in old
castles--down, down, down.
"Little Mellican boy like see China?" asked Ping Pong.
"Very much, thank you," replied Marmaduke, trying to be as polite as
they were.
But the Toyman would miss him. He looked way up at the circle of light
at the top of the hole and shouted:
"Say, Toyman, can I go to China--just for a little while?"
The Toyman's face appeared in the circle of light at the top.
"Sure, sonny, have a good time," he shouted back, and his voice coming
way down that hole sounded hollow, as if he were hollering down a
well.
Marmaduke waved to him.
"Goodbye, I won't be long," he called.
Then, turning, he saw that the three Chinamen had flat-irons in their
hands. They were fitting the handles to them. Ah See handed Marmaduke
a fourth iron for himself.
"Mellican boy wide on this--now, velly caleful," said he.
"But how can I ride on such a small iron?" asked Marmaduke.
"Watchee and see,
Allee samee as me."
And at once all the three little Chinamen mounted the irons and curled
their tiny slippered feet under them. And Marmaduke curled up on his
iron just as they did.
"Allee weady!" shouted Ping Pong, and all-of-a-sudden they started
scooting down that curving brown hole, round and round, down through
the deep earth. Wienerwurst had no iron to slide on, but he did pretty
well on his haunches, and how swiftly the brown sides of the earth
slipped by them! How fast the air whistled past!
After a fine ride they saw ahead of them a great red light. It looked
like the sky that time when Apgar's barn was on fire.
They stopped with a bump and a bang. Marmaduke waited until he had
caught his breath, then he looked around. They had stopped on a
gallery, or sort of immense shelf, that extended around a tremendous
pit or hole in the earth. In the centre of it stood a big giant,
shovelling coal in a furnace. The furnace was as high as the Woolworth
Building in New York City, which Marmaduke had seen on picture
post-cards. And the Giant was as big as the furnace himself.
He had a beard, and eyes as large and round as the wheels of a wagon;
and he was naked to the waist. Great streams of sweat, like brooks in
flood-time, poured off his body. When these rivers of sweat struck the
ground, they sizzled mightily and turned into fountains of steam that
rose in the air like the geysers in Yellowstone Park, it was so hot in
the place.
Marmaduke felt pretty warm himself, and he mopped his face with the
handkerchief which he had won in the Jack Horner pie at the church
sociable. It had pictures of pink and blue ducks and geese on it, and
it looked very small beside the handkerchief with which the Giant was
mopping his face. That was as big as a circus tent. Marmaduke himself
looked very small beside the stranger. When the little boy stretched out
his hand, he just reached the nail on the Giant's great toe.
The three little yellow men were exclaiming:--
[Illustration]
Which meant that this was the centre of the Earth.
"But what is he doing that for--shovelling all that coal in the
furnace when it's so hot already we're most roasting!" complained
their little American guest.
His voice was almost lost in the tremendous place. It was strange that
it ever reached the Giant's ear, which was hundreds of feet above
Marmaduke's head, but nevertheless the Giant did hear it, for he
called:--
"Now, you three Chinamen keep your jabbering tongues still," he said,
"and let me have a chance to talk. It's so long since I've seen a boy
from up on the Earth that I'd like to talk a spell myself--to limber
up my old tongue. It's grown pretty stiff all these years."
Then he looked way down at Marmaduke, who was standing there, no
higher than the Giant's great toe.
"Come up," he invited the boy, "and have a seat on my shoulder."
Marmaduke looked up and hesitated, for the distance up to that
shoulder was so great. He might as well have tried to climb a mountain
rising straight up in the air. But the Giant helped him out.
"Don't be scared," he said, "I'll give you a boost."
And he reached down his mighty hand and placed it under the seat of
Marmaduke's trousers. The little boy looked no bigger than the kernel
of a tiny hazelnut rolling around in the big palm. But very gently the
big fingers set him on the tall shoulder, way, way above the bottom of
that pit, but very safe and sound. Marmaduke grabbed tight hold of one
of the hairs of the Giant's beard to keep from falling off. He had
hard work, too, for each hair of that beard was as stout and as thick
as the rope of a ship.
"Kind of cosey perch, ain't it?" asked the Giant.
Now it didn't strike Marmaduke as quite that, when he had such hard
work to hold on, and he was so far from the ground, but nevertheless
he answered,--
"Y-y-yes, s-s-sir."
His lip quivered like the lemon jelly in the spoon, that time he was
so sick. If he had fallen from that shoulder, he would have dropped as
far as if he had been thrown from the top gilt pinnacle of the
Woolworth Building. And so tremendous was the Giant's voice that when
he talked the whole earth seemed to shake, and Marmaduke shook with it
as if he were blown about by a mighty wind.
"Now," the Giant was saying in that great voice like thunder, "you
want to know what I'm heating up this furnace for?"
"Y-y-yes," replied Marmaduke, his lips still trembling like the lemon
jelly.
"You see it's this way," the Giant tried to explain, "my old friend,
Mr. Sun, keeps the outside of the Earth warm, but I keep the inside
nice and comfy."
It seemed strange to hear the Giant use that word, "comfy." It is a
word that always seems to sound small, and the Giant was so huge.
"I haven't seen my chum, Mr. Sun, for quite a spell," the Giant went
on, "let me see--it was the other day when I last saw him."
"What day?" asked Marmaduke, "last Sunday?"
"Oh, no, a little before that. I guess it was about a million years
ago."
"A million! Whew!" Marmaduke whistled. "That was quite a long time."
"Oh, no," responded the Giant, "not as long as you think. No more than
three shakes of a lamb's tail--when you come to look at it right."
"But where do you get all the coal?" was Marmaduke's next question. "I
should think you'd use it all up quick, you put on such big
shovelsful."
"See there," the Giant said, for answer pointing in at the sides of
the pit. Little tunnels ran from the sides into the dark Earth. And in
the tunnels were little gnomes, with stocking caps on their heads, and
they were trundling little wheelbarrows back and forth. The
wheelbarrows were full of coal, and when they had dumped the coal on
the Giant's pile they would hurry back for more. In their foreheads
were little lights, and in the dark tunnels of the Earth these shone
like fireflies or little lost stars.
"Would you like to see a trick?" asked the Giant.
"A card trick?" asked Marmaduke in turn, rather hoping it was.
The Giant laughed and looked down at his fingers. Each one was as big
as a thick flagpole thirty feet long.
"What would these fingers be doing, playing cards?" he said. "Pshaw! I
couldn't play even Old Maid--or Casino."
"I'll show you how," said Marmaduke eagerly, and the Giant put him on
a shelf of the Earth close to his head. Then Marmaduke took from his
pocket a little pack of cards and shuffled them. He explained the
rules very carefully--Old Maid it was--and then dealt them to Ping
Pong, Sing Song and Ah See, for they joined in the game, and to the
Giant. In those thirty-foot fingers the tiny cards looked like little
bits of pink confetti. The Giant seemed to like the game, but
Marmaduke beat the three little Chinamen, and the Giant, too, for all
he was so big.
They had finished the second hand, when the Giant looked at his
furnace.
"There, that's what I get for loafin'," he said, "my furnace is 'most
out."
After he had thrown about a thousand shovelfuls or so on the fire,
which must have taken him all of five minutes, the Giant turned to
Marmaduke.
"I haven't shown you _my_ trick," he said, "how would you like to
see me make a volcano blow up?"
Marmaduke was a little frightened, but it was too good a chance to
miss.
"Yes, thank you," he replied, "that would be rather nice."
"Well, sir, watch then."
And the Giant raised his hands to his mouth and shouted at the little
gnomes:--
"Hurry, more coal now--make it snappy!"
And the gnomes ran back and forth from the coal-piles to the tunnels,
trundling their wheelbarrows, until their legs twinkled under them as
fast as the little lights in their foreheads.
Soon the coal-pile was as high as a black mountain, and the Giant
began to shovel, shovel away, throwing the coal into the mouth of the
furnace which was as high as the Woolworth Tower. Then he closed the
door and watched.
The flames began to leap, and the steam began to hiss, and soon the
great furnace began to shake all over with the steam imprisoned
inside, just like a man with chills and fever. Then all-of-a-sudden,
from somewhere above them on the outside of the Earth, they heard a
great roar.
"There goes old Vesuvius," said the Giant.
There was another great roar.
"And there's Aetna and Cotopaxi," he added, "now for Old Chimborazo!"
Marmaduke remembered enough of his geography to know that the Giant
was calling off the names of the great volcanoes of the world. It was
indeed very thrilling! But he really had hardly time to think, for he
had to hold on so tight to the rope hair of the Giant's beard; and if
the three little Chinamen hadn't kept tight hold, too, of their
flatirons, they would have been blown to the ceiling of the pit, the
furnace and the whole place shook so. As it was they were tossed head
over heels, their feet flying in the air, but their hands held on to
the flatirons like ships to their anchors, and they were saved.
The Giant turned to Marmaduke.
"Have you the time?" he asked, "I've broken the watch my grandfather
gave me."
Marmaduke took out his little Ingersoll with one hand, meanwhile
holding on with the other to the beard.
"It's just twelve," he informed the Giant.
"Noon again--my, how Time does fly!" the Giant exclaimed. "It seems as
if yesterday were the _first_ noon, and yet that was a couple of
million years ago. But we've had only six volcanoes. We must have six
more for a noon whistle, so the little gnomes will know it's time for
lunch."
There were six more gigantic explosions up on the outside of the
earth, then the little gnomes all stopped work, turned up their
wheelbarrows, sat down on them in tailor-fashion, took out their
lunch-pails, and began to eat. Then the three little Chinamen perched
on their irons and took out some bowls and chopsticks. It made the
Giant laugh to see their funny antics.
"Ho! ho!" exclaimed he, but he turned away his head in another
direction before he laughed.
"I'm laughing in _that_ direction," he explained, "because
there's a city full of wicked people up there, on the Earth outside.
When I laugh, it's an Earthquake, you see, and I don't want to shake
up the good people. Now"--he pointed in another direction--"the town
of Five Corners is up about there. You wouldn't want me to try an
Earthquake on _it_, would you?"
Marmaduke thought this was very kind and considerate of the Giant, to
try to spare the people in the town where he went to buy candy and to
see circuses and things. Then he had an idea.
"Couldn't you shake up the ground a mile or two west of that--see," he
pointed his finger at the roof of the pit, "about there. That's where
Fatty lives, over near Wally's Creek, and it would do him good to be
shaken up by a earthquake--just a little one."
"All right," replied the Giant, "I can accommodate you. But you're
running a risk. I might kill your friend Fatty."
"He isn't any friend of mine," Marmaduke interrupted--then he thought
for a moment. After all he didn't really want Fatty killed. He guessed
he'd better not take a chance.
"No," he said, shaking his head, "after all, I 'spose you'd better not
try it."
"All right," the Giant answered, "just as you say. But have you had
any lunch?"
At that question Marmaduke suddenly felt rather faint, and he watched
the Giant hungrily, as he took out of an oven in the furnace a dozen
steers, roasted whole, and ten loaves of bread, each as big as a
house.
It didn't take many gulps for the Giant to swallow the whole lot, but
first he very kindly handed a few crumbs of bread to Marmaduke up on
his shoulder. At least the Giant thought they were crumbs, but they
were really as big as loaves of bread Mother made. And the little
slivers of roasted steer which the Giant reached up to him were as big
as whole steaks. So Marmaduke's hunger was soon satisfied, and, for
once in his life, Wienerwurst's, too.
He wanted to stay a little longer, to talk with the big Giant and ask
him questions, but, looking down, he saw the three little Chinamen
making odd gestures and beckoning to him with their long fingernails.
"We must hully, quickillilly," they said, which, of course, meant, as
you should know, that they had to hurry quickly, or it would be dark
before they reached China.
He told his troubles to the Giant, who said he "didn't see what anyone
wanted to see that heathen land for," but nevertheless he lifted the
little boy down, hundreds of feet to the ground, and Marmaduke curled
up on his iron, and the three little yellow men curled up on theirs,
while Wienerwurst got down on his haunches; and they all said
"goodbye" to the great Giant, and the little gnomes trundling their
wheelbarrows, and the little twinkling lights in their foreheads.
On the other side of the furnace, the hole opened up again, and down
it they scooted on their way to China. It was fortunate that the Giant
had given Marmaduke something to eat, for it was a long trip.
There were many wonderful things there, but as you're all yawning, and
we couldn't make sleepyheads understand, for that you'll have to wait
till another night.
XV
THE PEPPERMINT PAGODA
After Marmaduke and Wienerwurst, Ping Pong, Sing Song, and Ah See, had
scooted down the long hole for a few thousand miles or so, they began
to see light below them, a little circle of blue, just at the other
end, on the other side of the world. When their long journey was over,
they got up from their flatirons and stretched themselves, and
Wienerwurst got up from his haunches and stretched himself. Then one
by one they stuck their heads out of the bottom of the hole to take a
look at China.
A very pretty country it was, yet quite strange. The strangest thing
about it all was that now, though they were on the opposite side of
the world from the White House with the Green Blinds by the Side of
the Road, they weren't standing upside down. They could stand up
straight, with their heads--not their feet--in the air, and look at
the sun, at the bottom of the hole just as they did at the top, on the
farm back home.
When all five had climbed out, they found that they were near a great
wall. It was built of very old stones and was as wide as a road on
top. Several horses could ride abreast on it.
A company of Chinese soldiers with guns and swords guarded the gate,
and the three little Chinamen, Ping Pong, Sing Song, and Ah See, were
afraid to enter with the American boy. The soldiers might have let
Wienerwurst in because he was yellow like themselves, but Marmaduke
was much too white.
Of course, he was disappointed, but his disappointment didn't last
long, for Ping Pong just clapped his hands, and all three crouched
down as boys do when they are playing leapfrog, or like the acrobats
in the circus. Sing Song climbed on the back of Ping Pong, and Ah See
on top of Sing Song. But at that Ah See's head reached only half way
up the great wall.
He leaned down towards Marmaduke.
"Come up, little Mellican boy," said he.
And Marmaduke climbed up on the three backs and stood on the shoulders
of Ah See, who exclaimed in delight to his friends,--
"Why, he not flaidlily at all."
Then he told Marmaduke to catch hold of his pigtail. Which the little
boy did, and Ah See swung his head round and round, and his pigtail
with it, like David's slingshot in the Bible story.
When the little boy was spinning around through the air, fast as fast
as could be, Ping Pong cried,--
"Velly fine--now--one-two-thlee! let him go!"
Marmaduke obeyed instantly, letting go of the pigtail and flying
through the air like a shot. The three little Chinamen all tumbled in
a heap at the foot of the wall, but Marmaduke flew over on the other
side and landed safely on his feet, inside the great country of China.
He was pleased to see little Wienerwurst, whom the soldiers had let in
through the gate, wagging his tail right beside him; and soon the
three little Chinamen came running up, too, and one and all started to
explore this great country of China.
As far as their eyes could see, stretched green valleys and blue hills
under a pale silver sky, and thousands of men and women, as little and
as yellow as Ping Pong, Sing Song and Ah See, worked among the
tea-fields on every side.
"See that bush," said Ping Pong, "some day Mellican boy's mother drink
cup tea from that. Taste velly fine too."
"And this bush," he went on, pointing to another, "make cup for Missee
F-f-f-"--he found it hard to say that name--"for Missee Fizzletlee."
And Marmaduke thought it quite wonderful to see the very tea plants
which his mother and Mrs. Fizzletree would drink up some day, on the
other side of the world, twelve thousand miles away. But there was
something else to think about. Trouble seemed to be in the wind. For a
little way ahead of them, up the zigzaging white road, they saw an
odd-looking group of men. They had swords curved like sickles, hats
like great saucers turned upside down, and fierce eyes, and drooping
mustaches. Their finger nails were six inches long and stuck out, when
they talked, like the claws of wild beasts.
All the people working in the tea-fields hid under the bushes when
they saw those men. Only the tea-bushes didn't help them much, for
they were so frightened that their little pigtails rose straight up in
the air like new shoots growing out of the bushes. There were
thousands of those pigtails sticking up straight in the air all over
the fields. As for the three little friends, Ping Pong, Sing Song, and
Ah See, they trembled like leaves in the wind, then threw themselves
flat on their bellies in the dusty road.
"Who are those fellows?" asked Marmaduke, beginning to be frightened.
"It's Choo Choo Choo and his gang, allee velly bad men," explained
Ping Pong, though he found it very hard to say anything, his teeth
chattered so.
The wild men with hats like saucers turned upside down and the long
mustaches and fingernails, came near. Four of them had big poles laid
over their shoulders. From the poles hung a funny carriage like a
hammock-swing with beautiful green curtains. It was called a
"palanquin." When they reached the place where Marmaduke stood, they
let the palanquin down on the ground, and he heard a terrible swearing
going on behind the green curtains.
[Illustration]
The curtains opened, and out stepped a man, also with a hat like a
saucer turned upside down, only it was made all of gold and had
precious stones in its rim. And his eyes were fiercer, his mustaches
longer than those of the other men. In fact, his mustaches reached
almost to his knees, and he kept pulling and tugging at them with
fingernails that were fully a foot long. My! if those fingernails ever
reached Marmaduke's eyes there wouldn't be much of them left. That's
what Marmaduke was thinking. And they were very much frightened--all
except Wienerwurst, who was smelling the funny slippers of the wild
strangers.
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