Our young travellers were twin-brothers, and were named—the one, Jimmy Plummer; the other, Johnny Plummer. They were dressed exactly alike, and they looked exactly alike. Both had chubby cheeks, twinkling eyes, small noses, and dark, curly hair. Both wore gray frocks belted round with leather belts, and both belts were clasped with shining buckles. Their collars were white as snow. Their trousers were short, leaving off at the knee, where they were fastened with three gilt buttons. Their stockings were striped, pink and gray; the gray stripe being much wider than the pink. Their boots were button-boots. Their hats were of speckled straw; and in the hat-band of each was stuck a long, narrow, greenish feather, which looked exactly like a rooster’s feather. Their whip-handles were light blue, wound round with strips of silver tinsel; and at the end of each lash was a snapper. Their bridles were pieces of clothes-line.
The travellers were bound to Boston, so they said, to buy oranges. It was hard work to make those horses of theirs go over the ground. There isn’t very much go in that kind of horse: they are sure-footed, but not swift. But there was a great deal of make go in the two travellers. They jerked that span of horses, they pushed them, they pulled them, they made them rear up, they tumbled off behind, they tumbled off the sides, they pitched headforemost, but still did not give up; and at last came to Boston, which was, so they made believe, on the outside cellar-door.
And, as they were playing on the cellar-door, the funny man came along, and began to feel in his pockets to see what he could find.
“Halloo, Jimmyjohns!” he cried. “Don’t you want something?”
Jimmy and Johnny Plummer were best known in the neighborhood as “the Jimmyjohns.” And it seemed very proper their being called by one name; for they looked, if not just like one boy, like the same boy twice over, so that some members of their own family could hardly tell them apart. They were always together: what one did the other did, and what one had the other had. If one asked for pudding four times, the other asked for pudding four times; and when one would have another spoonful of sauce, so would the other. And it was quite wonderful, everybody said, that, in playing together, they were never known to quarrel. People often tried to guess which was Jimmy, and which was Johnny; but very few guessed rightly.
The funny man felt in every one of his pockets, and found—a piece of chalk. The Jimmyjohns laughed. They had seen him feel in every one of his pockets before, and knew that nothing better than chalk, or buttons, or tack-nails, would come out of them.
“Now,” said the funny man, “I’m going to guess which is Jimmy, and which is Johnny. No, I can’t guess. But I’ll tell you what I will do. I’ll turn up a cent. There it goes. See here: if it turns up head, this sitting-down boy’s Jimmy; tail, he’s Johnny. Now then. Pick it up out of the grass. Head? Yes, head. Then this sitting-down boy’s Jimmy. Right? Are you sitting-down boy Jimmy?”
“No, sir. Johnny.”
“Johnny? How do you know you are Johnny?”
Johnny laughed, looked down, turned up the corner of his frock, and showed there a bit of red flannel, about the size of a red peppermint, stitched on the wrong side. Mrs. Plummer, it seems, had put red flannel peppermints on Johnny’s clothes, and blue flannel peppermints on Jimmy’s, so that each could tell his own.