Читать книгу Tommy Toddles - Albert Lee - Страница 3

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It was early in the afternoon of a bright autumn day that Tommy Toddles sat by the window in the big playroom at the top of the house, looking wistfully out over the swaying trees toward the distant hills. He was beginning to feel lonely, for he had been left to himself almost an hour since luncheon, and everything in the house was so quiet that it seemed as if every one had gone to sleep. Not even the memory of two large pieces of plum-pudding was sufficient to occupy Tommy’s mind for so long as an hour, and the toys which lay about the floor appeared uninteresting, he had been playing with the curiously colored wooden animals of his Noah’s Ark until they no longer offered any attraction, and then he had climbed up on the window-seat, and had pressed his little nose against the window-pane for what seemed to him a very long period of time. How he wished that his Uncle Dick were there to take him out for a wild romp across the fields! How they would climb fences and jump ditches, and pick up queer-shaped stones and fallen birds’-nests! But Uncle Dick was not there, and there was no use hoping for him, because he had gone away, and would not be back again from the distant city for at least a week. And in the meanwhile no one else would ever think of taking Tommy for a tramp in the woods. He could play in the big garden as much as he wished to, but he must not go beyond the gate; and as he looked out at the hills and the fields and caught a glimpse of the blue ocean far off in the distance, he sighed at the thought of the barrier gate.

“But I suppose there is no use wishing for things,” he thought, almost out loud. “The only thing to do is to wait, and I do get so tired of waiting. I wish I had asked Uncle Dick to send me the sheep instead of waiting to bring it with him. And I do hope it will be a nice, white, woolly sheep, as big as a real one, and strong enough for me to ride on,”

This woolly sheep that Tommy was thinking about had been the subject of a long discussion between him and his Uncle Dick just before the latters departure. Uncle Dick had promised to bring back from the city anything that Tommy might ask for, and the little boy had promptly demanded a goat—a live billy goat! He thought it would be nice to have it on the lawn in front of the big house, and to hitch it to his express-wagon and drive it about. But, unfortunately, when Tommy’s mother heard of this plan, she firmly objected to his having a live goat. She said she would not allow any such animal about the house. Tommy then suggested a sheep—a little woolly sheep, that could have a blue ribbon around its neck with a bell hanging from it. But his mother objected to the sheep, too, and so, after a long talk with Uncle Dick, the little boy compromised on a stuffed sheep which should be very white and very woolly, and should have some sort of interior mechanism that would make it bleat.

Consequently, as Tommy gazed out of the window, he kept picturing to himself what glorious times he would have when his uncle got back with the woolly sheep; but at the thought of all these future joys he grew very drowsy, He turned from the window and wondered what he could do to pass away the long afternoon. There stood the Noah’s Ark on the floor just as he had left it, with the animals walking down the gang-plank, two by two, in the order of their sizes—the giraffes first and the guinea-pigs last. How often he had arranged them that way! Sometimes they seemed to walk up the gang-plank and sometimes they seemed to walk down, but as a matter of fact they always stood still.

“If they could only be alive,” mused Tommy, “and really walk. If they could go in and out like real animals, and have pens and houses and eat things.”

And as he thought of the wonderful outcome of such a possibility, it suddenly seemed to him that the animals actually did begin to move. He looked again, and became sure that they were moving! The long line of wooden animals was actually wobbling along down the gang-plank! And how funny they looked with their stiff wooden legs and their awkward wooden bodies!

Tommy Toddles was so surprised at the behavior of his toys that he just sat stock-still and stared at them. They seemed to be paying no attention whatever to him. They were moving on down the gang-plank and across the floor, the two giraffes leading the way, and all the other animals following in perfect order, just as he had arranged them. They progressed slowly toward the open door which led to the hallway, but every now and then the procession was delayed by the last guinea-pig, which kept getting its toes caught in the threads of the carpet. They passed through the doorway and marched out into the hall, and then actually began going down the stairs. Tommy got up from the window-seat and followed them.

“This is very queer,” thought he, “If Uncle Dick could only see them now!” And then he started down-stairs in the wake of the guinea-pigs. “I do hope we won’t meet the cook,” he continued, mentally, as the procession reached the first landing; “she is so near-sighted she might not see them, and she would be sure to step on those in front and break their legs. Then they would not be able to walk any more.”

By this time the animals had reached the ground-floor, for they were moving along quite rapidly, and the head of the column, led by the giraffes, started straight for the front door. The toys now appeared to Tommy as if they were very much larger than usual. It seemed to him as if they had grown during the trip down the stairs; but in spite of this sudden and unnatural growth none of them was anywhere near tall enough to reach the door-knob, and the little boy wondered how they were going to get out into the garden, for it was evidently their intention to go there. He sat down on the steps to watch.

The procession moved steadily onward, and when the giraffes reached the door they marched right through it as if there had not been any door there at all. The other animals did the same thing. Tommy could see them approach the door and gradually fade away into it, and then he thought he could hear them treading on the gravel path outside.

“Well, that is the most wonderfulest thing I ever saw!” he gasped, quite regardless of grammar. “I have heard of people seeing through a door, and hearing through a door, and smelling through a door”—and here Tommy recollected vividly the odor of pancakes coming through the closed kitchen door—” but I never saw anything go through a door before. These animals must all be like sounds or smells or sights,” concluded the little boy, for that was the only rational explanation he could make to himself for their odd behavior. “But I wonder where they are going?” and he got up from his seat on the steps and ran down to the front door. He did not stop to take his cap or to tell his mother he was going out, as he usually did, but he opened the front door and stood on the porch watching the procession, which by this time had gotten quite a distance down the broad driveway.

The animals passed out through the open gate, and as they got farther and farther away down the road they seemed to grow larger and larger instead of becoming smaller, as, according to all optical laws, they should have done. They still maintained their relative positions in line, with the little guinea-pigs toddling along in the rear, almost running in their breathless endeavors to keep up with the others; but by the time the latter had reached the gate they appeared to be life-size, and as the little boy glanced over the shrubbery which screened the garden from the public highway, he could plainly see the tall heads and long necks of the giraffes moving away in the distance.