"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?"