“I’ll just try you with a little one,” Mr. Thimblefinger declared. “I’ll tell you one I heard when I was younger. I want to see whether Mr. Rabbit will keep awake, and I want to see whether there’s a moral in the tale.”
So he took off his little hat, which was shaped like a thimble, and run his hand over the feather ornament to straighten it out. Then he began:—
“A long time ago, when there was a great deal more room in the country next door than there is now, there lived a man who had a wife, one son, a horse, a cow, and a calf. He was a hard-working man, so much so that he had little or no time to devote to his family. He worked hard in the field all day, and when night came he was too tired to trouble much about his son. His wife, too, having no servant, was always busy about the house, sewing, washing, cooking, cleaning, patching, milking, and sweeping. Day in and day out it was always the same. The man was always working, and the woman was always working. They had no rest except on Sunday, and then they were too tired to pay much attention to their son.
“The consequence was, that while the boy was a very bright lad, he was full of mischief, up to all sorts of tricks and pranks that some people call meanness. By hook or by crook—or maybe by book—he had learned how to spell and read. But the only book he had to read was one with big pictures of men dressed in red clothes, and armed with yellow cutlasses. The book was called ‘The Pirooters of Peruvia.’”
“Maybe the name was ‘The Pirates of Peru,’” suggested Buster John.
“Oh, no,” replied Mr. Thimblefinger. “I don’t suppose any such country as Peru had been found on the map when that book was written. But never mind about that. The boy read only that book, and he became rather wild in his mind. He wanted to be a pirooter, whatever that was, and so he armed himself with old hoe helves and called them pikes, and he tied a shingle to his side and called it a cutlass, and he got him a broom-handle and called it a horse.
“This boy’s name was Johnny, but sometimes they called him Jack for short. Some people said he was mean as he could be; but I don’t say that. He was fonder of scampering over the country than he was of helping his mother. Maybe he didn’t know any better because he wasn’t taught any better. But one morning his mother was so tired that she couldn’t get out of bed. She had worn herself out with work. The next morning she couldn’t get up, nor the next; and then the neighbors, who had come in to see what the matter was, said that she would never get up any more. So one day Johnny found everything very still in the house, and the neighbors who were there were kinder to him than they ever had been, and then he knew that his mother would never get tired any more.
“He felt so bad that he wandered off into the woods, crying as he went. His eyes were so full of tears that he couldn’t see where he was going, and he didn’t care. He went on and on, until, finally, when he took heart to look around, he found himself in a part of the country that was new to him. This caused him to dry his eyes, for he was perfectly sure that he had traveled neither fast nor far enough to be beyond the limits of the numberless journeys he had made in all directions from his father’s house; and yet, here he was, suddenly and without knowing how he got there, in a country that was altogether new to him.
“It was just like when you came down through our spring gate,” said Mr. Thimblefinger. “The grass was different and the trees were different, and even the sand and the gravel were of a color that Johnny had never seen before. Suddenly, while he was wondering how he could have missed seeing all these strange things when he had journeyed this way before, a lady, richly dressed, came out of the woods and stood before him. She neither smiled nor looked severe, but pity seemed to shine in her face.
“‘What now?’ she said, raising her hand to her head. ‘You have come fast and come far. You are in trouble. Go back. When you want me, go to the Whispering Poplar that stands on the hill and call my name.’