Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells

by William Dean Howells

  “What difference, I should like to know?” says the old hen-turkey, pretty snappishly.

  “People have got souls, and turkeys haven’t,” says the other little girl.

  “I don’t see how that makes it any better,” says the old hen-turkey. “It don’t make it any better for the turkeys. If we haven’t got any souls, we can’t live after we’ve been eaten up, and you can.”

  The other little girl was awfully frightened to have the hen-turkey take that tack.

  “I should think she would ‘a’ been,” said the little girl; and she cuddled snugger into her papa’s arms. “What could she say? Ugh! Go on.”

  Well, she didn’t know what to say, that’s a fact. You see, she never thought of it in that light before. All she could say was, “Well, people have got reason, anyway, and turkeys have only got instinct; so there!”

  “You’d better look out,” says the old hen-turkey; and all the little turkey chicks got so mad they just hopped, and the oldest little he-turkey, that was just beginning to be a gobbler, he dropped his wings and spread his tail just like his father, and walked round the other little girl till it was perfectly frightful.

  “I should think they would ‘a’ been ashamed.”

  Well, perhaps old First Premium was a little; because he stopped them. “My dear,” he says to the old hen-turkey, and chick-chickledren, “you forget yourselves; you should have a little consideration. Perhaps you wouldn’t behave much better yourselves if you were just going to be eaten.”

  And they all began to scream and to cry, “We’ve been eaten, and we’re nothing but turkey ghosts.”

  “There, now, papa,” says the little girl, sitting up straight, so as to argue better, “I knew it wasn’t true, all along. How could turkeys have ghosts if they don’t have souls, I should like to know?”

  “Oh, easily,” said the papa.

  “Tell how,” said the little girl.

  “Now look here,” said the papa, “are you telling this story, or am I?”

  “You are,” said the little girl, and she cuddled down again. “Go on.”

  “Well, then, don’t you interrupt. Where was I? Oh yes.”

  Well, he couldn’t do anything with them, old First Premium couldn’t. They acted perfectly ridiculous, and one little brat of a spiteful little chick piped out, “I speak for a drumstick, ma!” and then they all began: “I want a wing, ma!” and “I’m going to have the wish-bone!” and “I shall have just as much stuffing as ever I please, shan’t I, ma?” till the other little girl was perfectly disgusted with them; she thought they oughtn’t to say it before her, anyway; but she had hardly thought this before they all screamed out, “They used to say it before us,” and then she didn’t know what to say, because she knew how people talked before animals.

  “I don’t believe I ever did,” said the little girl. “Go on.”

  Well, old First Premium tried to quiet them again, and when he couldn’t he apologized to the other little girl so nicely that she began to like him. He said they didn’t mean any harm by it; they were just excited, and chickledren would be chickledren.

  “Yes,” said the other little girl, “but I think you might take some older person to begin with. It’s a perfect shame to begin with a little girl.”

  “Begin!” says old First Premium. “Do you think we’re just beginning? Why, when do you think it is?”

  “The night after Thanksgiving.”

  “What year?”

  “1886.”

  They all gave a perfect screech. “Why, it’s Christmas Eve, 1900, and every one of your friends has been eaten up long ago,” says old First Premium, and he began to cry over her, and the old hen-turkey and the little turkey chicks began to wipe their eyes on the backs of their wings.

  “I don’t think they were very neat,” said the little girl.

  Well, they were kind-hearted, anyway, and they felt sorry for the other little girl. And she began to think she had made some little impression on them, when she noticed the old hen-turkey beginning to untie her bonnet strings, and the turkey chicks began to spread round her in a circle, with the points of their wings touching, so that she couldn’t get out, and they commenced dancing and singing, and after a while that little he-turkey says, “Who’s it?” and the other little girl, she didn’t know why, says, “I’m it,” and old First Premium says, “Do you promise?” and the other little girl says, “Yes, I promise,” and she knew she was promising, if they would let her go, that people should never eat turkeys any more. And the moon began to shine brighter and brighter through the turkeys, and pretty soon it was the sun, and then it was not the turkeys, but the window-curtains — it was one of those old farm-houses where they don’t have blinds — and the other little girl —

  “Woke up!” shouted the little girl. “There now, papa, what did I tell you? I knew it was a dream all along.”

  “No, she didn’t,” said the papa; “and it wasn’t a dream.”

  “What was it, then?”

  “It was a — trance.”

  The little girl turned round, and knelt in her papa’s lap, so as to take him by the shoulders and give him a good shaking. That made him promise to be good, pretty quick, and, “Very well, then,” says the little girl; “if it wasn’t a dream, you’ve got to prove it.”

  “But how can I prove it?” says the papa.

  “By going on with the story,” says the little girl, and she cuddled down again.

  “Oh, well, that’s easy enough.”

  As soon as it was light in the room, the other little girl could see that the place was full of people, crammed and jammed, and they were all awfully excited, and kept yelling, “Down with the traitress!” “Away with the renegade!” “Shame on the little sneak!” till it was worse than the turkeys, ten times.

  She knew that they meant her, and she tried to explain that she just had to promise, and that if they had been in her place they would have promised too; and of course they could do as they pleased about keeping her word, but she was going to keep it, anyway, and never, never, never eat another piece of turkey either at Thanksgiving or at Christmas.

  “Very well, then,” says an old lady, who looked like her grandmother, and then began to have a crown on, and to turn into Queen Victoria, “what can we have?”

  “Well,” says the other little girl, “you can have oyster soup.”

  “What else?”

  “And you can have cranberry sauce.”

  “What else?”

  “You can have mashed potatoes, and Hubbard squash, and celery, and turnip, and cauliflower.”

  “What else?”

  “You can have mince-pie, and pandowdy, and plum-pudding.”

  “And not a thing on the list,” says the Queen, “that doesn’t go with turkey! Now you see.”

  The papa stopped.

  “Go on,” said the little girl.

  “There isn’t any more.”

  The little girl turned round, got up on her knees, took him by the shoulders, and shook him fearfully. “Now, then,” she said, while the papa let his head wag, after the shaking, like a Chinese mandarin’s, and it was a good thing he did not let his tongue stick out. “Now, will you go on? What did the people eat in place of turkey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, you awful papa! Well, then, what did the little girl eat?”

  “She?” The papa freed himself, and made his preparation to escape. “Why she — oh, she ate goose. Goose is tenderer than turkey, anyway, and more digestible; and there isn’t so much of it, and you can’t overeat yourself, and have bad—”

  “Dreams!” cried the little girl.

  “Trances,” said the papa, and she began to chase him all round the room.

  THE PONY ENGINE AND THE PACIFIC EXPRESS.

  Christmas Eve, after the children had hung up their stockings and got all ready for St. Nic, they climbed up on the papa’s lap to kiss him good-night, and when they both got their arms round
his neck, they said they were not going to bed till he told them a Christmas story. Then he saw that he would have to mind, for they were awfully severe with him, and always made him do exactly what they told him; it was the way they had brought him up. He tried his best to get out of it for a while; but after they had shaken him first this side, and then that side, and pulled him backward and forward till he did not know where he was, he began to think perhaps he had better begin. The first thing he said, after he opened his eyes, and made believe he had been asleep, or something, was, “Well, what did I leave off at?” and that made them just perfectly boiling, for they understood his tricks, and they knew he was trying to pretend that he had told part of the story already; and they said he had not left off anywhere because he had not commenced, and he saw it was no use. So he commenced.

  “Once there was a little Pony Engine that used to play round the Fitchburg Depot on the side tracks, and sleep in among the big locomotives in the car-house—”

  The little girl lifted her head from the papa’s shoulder, where she had dropped it. “Is it a sad story, papa?”

  “How is it going to end?” asked the boy.

  “Well, it’s got a moral,” said the papa.

  “Oh, all right, if it’s got a moral,” said the children; they had a good deal of fun with the morals the papa put to his stories. The boy added, “Go on,” and the little girl prompted, “Car-house.”

  The papa said, “Now every time you stop me I shall have to begin all over again.” But he saw that this was not going to spite them any, so he went on: “One of the locomotives was its mother, and she had got hurt once in a big smash-up, so that she couldn’t run long trips any more. She was so weak in the chest you could hear her wheeze as far as you could see her. But she could work round the depot, and pull empty cars in and out, and shunt them off on the side tracks; and she was so anxious to be useful that all the other engines respected her, and they were very kind to the little Pony Engine on her account, though it was always getting in the way, and under their wheels, and everything. They all knew it was an orphan, for before its mother got hurt its father went through a bridge one dark night into an arm of the sea, and was never heard of again; he was supposed to have been drowned. The old mother locomotive used to say that it would never have happened if she had been there; but poor dear No. 236 was always so venturesome, and she had warned him against that very bridge time and again. Then she would whistle so dolefully, and sigh with her air-brakes enough to make anybody cry. You see they used to be a very happy family when they were all together, before the papa locomotive got drowned. He was very fond of the little Pony Engine, and told it stories at night after they got into the car-house, at the end of some of his long runs. It would get up on his cow-catcher, and lean its chimney up against his, and listen till it fell asleep. Then he would put it softly down, and be off again in the morning before it was awake. I tell you, those were happy days for poor No. 236. The little Pony Engine could just remember him; it was awfully proud of its papa.”

  The boy lifted his head and looked at the little girl, who suddenly hid her face in the papa’s other shoulder. “Well, I declare, papa, she was putting up her lip.”

  “I wasn’t, any such thing!” said the little girl. “And I don’t care! So!” and then she sobbed.

  “Now, never you mind,” said the papa to the boy. “You’ll be putting up your lip before I’m through. Well, and then she used to caution the little Pony Engine against getting in the way of the big locomotives, and told it to keep close round after her, and try to do all it could to learn about shifting empty cars. You see, she knew how ambitious the little Pony Engine was, and how it wasn’t contented a bit just to grow up in the pony-engine business, and be tied down to the depot all its days. Once she happened to tell it that if it was good and always did what it was bid, perhaps a cow-catcher would grow on it some day, and then it could be a passenger locomotive. Mammas have to promise all sorts of things, and she was almost distracted when she said that.”

  “I don’t think she ought to have deceived it, papa,” said the boy. “But it ought to have known that if it was a Pony Engine to begin with, it never could have a cow-catcher.”

  “Couldn’t it?” asked the little girl, gently.

  “No; they’re kind of mooley.”

  The little girl asked the papa, “What makes Pony Engines mooley?” for she did not choose to be told by her brother; he was only two years older than she was, anyway.

  “Well; it’s pretty hard to say. You see, when a locomotive is first hatched—”

  “Oh, are they hatched, papa?” asked the boy.

  “Well, we’ll call it hatched,” said the papa; but they knew he was just funning. “They’re about the size of tea-kettles at first; and it’s a chance whether they will have cow-catchers or not. If they keep their spouts, they will; and if their spouts drop off, they won’t.”

  “What makes the spout ever drop off?”

  “Oh, sometimes the pip, or the gapes—”

  The children both began to shake the papa, and he was glad enough to go on sensibly. “Well, anyway, the mother locomotive certainly oughtn’t to have deceived it. Still she had to say something, and perhaps the little Pony Engine was better employed watching its buffers with its head-light, to see whether its cow-catcher had begun to grow, than it would have been in listening to the stories of the old locomotives, and sometimes their swearing.”

  “Do they swear, papa?” asked the little girl, somewhat shocked, and yet pleased.

  “Well, I never heard them, near by. But it sounds a good deal like swearing when you hear them on the up-grade on our hill in the night. Where was I?”

  “Swearing,” said the boy. “And please don’t go back, now, papa.”

  “Well, I won’t. It’ll be as much as I can do to get through this story, without going over any of it again. Well, the thing that the little Pony Engine wanted to be, the most in this world, was the locomotive of the Pacific Express, that starts out every afternoon at three, you know. It intended to apply for the place as soon as its cow-catcher was grown, and it was always trying to attract the locomotive’s attention, backing and filling on the track alongside of the train; and once it raced it a little piece, and beat it, before the Express locomotive was under way, and almost got in front of it on a switch. My, but its mother was scared! She just yelled to it with her whistle; and that night she sent it to sleep without a particle of coal or water in its tender.

  “But the little Pony Engine didn’t care. It had beaten the Pacific Express in a hundred yards, and what was to hinder it from beating it as long as it chose? The little Pony Engine could not get it out of its head. It was just like a boy who thinks he can whip a man.”

  The boy lifted his head. “Well, a boy can, papa, if he goes to do it the right way. Just stoop down before the man knows it, and catch him by the legs and tip him right over.”

  “Ho! I guess you see yourself!” said the little girl, scornfully.

  “Well, I could!” said the boy; “and some day I’ll just show you.”

  “Now, little cock-sparrow, now!” said the papa; and he laughed. “Well, the little Pony Engine thought he could beat the Pacific Express, anyway; and so one dark, snowy, blowy afternoon, when his mother was off pushing some empty coal cars up past the Know-Nothing crossing beyond Charlestown, he got on the track in front of the Express, and when he heard the conductor say ‘All aboard,’ and the starting gong struck, and the brakemen leaned out and waved to the engineer, he darted off like lightning. He had his steam up, and he just scuttled.

  “Well, he was so excited for a while that he couldn’t tell whether the Express was gaining on him or not; but after twenty or thirty miles, he thought he heard it pretty near. Of course the Express locomotive was drawing a heavy train of cars, and it had to make a stop or two — at Charlestown, and at Concord Junction, and at Ayer — so the Pony Engine did really gain on it a little; and when it began to be scared it gained a goo
d deal. But the first place where it began to feel sorry, and to want its mother, was in Hoosac Tunnel. It never was in a tunnel before, and it seemed as if it would never get out. It kept thinking, What if the Pacific Express was to run over it there in the dark, and its mother off there at the Fitchburg Depot, in Boston, looking for it among the side-tracks? It gave a perfect shriek; and just then it shot out of the tunnel. There were a lot of locomotives loafing around there at North Adams, and one of them shouted out to it as it flew by, ‘What’s your hurry, little one?’ and it just screamed back, ‘Pacific Express!’ and never stopped to explain. They talked in locomotive language—”

  “Oh, what did it sound like?” the boy asked.

  “Well, pretty queer; I’ll tell you some day. It knew it had no time to fool away, and all through the long, dark night, whenever, a locomotive hailed it, it just screamed, ‘Pacific Express!’ and kept on. And the Express kept gaining on it. Some of the locomotives wanted to stop it, but they decided they had better not get in its way, and so it whizzed along across New York State and Ohio and Indiana, till it got to Chicago. And the Express kept gaining on it. By that time it was so hoarse it could hardly whisper, but it kept saying, ‘Pacific Express! Pacific Express!’ and it kept right on till it reached the Mississippi River. There it found a long train of freight cars before it on the bridge. It couldn’t wait, and so it slipped down from the track to the edge of the river and jumped across, and then scrambled up the embankment to the track again.”

  “Papa!” said the little girl, warningly.

  “Truly it did,” said the papa.

  “Ho! that’s nothing,” said the boy. “A whole train of cars did it in that Jules Verne book.”

  “Well,” the papa went on, “after that it had a little rest, for the Express had to wait for the freight train to get off the bridge, and the Pony Engine stopped at the first station for a drink of water and a mouthful of coal, and then it flew ahead. There was a kind old locomotive at Omaha that tried to find out where it belonged, and what its mother’s name was, but the Pony Engine was so bewildered it couldn’t tell. And the Express kept gaining on it. On the plains it was chased by a pack of prairie wolves, but it left them far behind; and the antelopes were scared half to death. But the worst of it was when the nightmare got after it.”