MOTHER had been helping Billy with his geography lesson,
sitting in the garden on a lovely day early in spring, and showing
Billy how the earth revolves on its axis. To illustrate this
difficult matter and to make it interesting, she had taken a big
yellow orange to represent the Earth and had used a stick of lemon
candy for the Pole. She made the Equator out of a black rubber band
such as you put around fat envelopes.
Then, when Billy said that
he understood, Mother dug a hole in the orange and stuck the lemon
stick in it and, handing it to Billy, said with a droll twinkle in
her blue eyes, which always seemed to be laughing:
“Would you like to eat up the Earth through the North
Pole?”
Now Billy had never before
tasted the joys of an orange eaten through a stick of lemon candy;
so when Mother, who had a trick of remembering nice things from her
own childhood, showed Billy how it was done, he settled down to a
blissful half hour in which he meant to devour the whole
earth.
It tasted so good that he rolled over on the short grass,
under a lilac-bush in full bloom, and only took his lips from the
North Pole long enough to tell his mother that it tasted
“bully.”
“Well,” said his mother, standing up and shaking out her blue
dress, “I must go now. Here is your geography. Don’t forget to
bring it in when you come, and don’t lose the Equator off the
Earth, even if you are eating it. I don’t know what would become of
us if the Equator really should get away!”
Billy laughed aloud. It really was no trouble at all to
understand things when Mother made them appear so funny.
He lay on his back looking up into the sky, which was just the
color of his mother’s blue dress. White clouds, like mountains of
white feathers which must be very soft to sleep on, were over his
head.
A bee was buzzing lazily over the lavender blossoms of the
lilacs. A soft wind was blowing. It was indeed very pleasant.
What if the bee should turn into a fairy!
“Why don’t you?” said Billy aloud.
The bee, being puzzled, scratched his head with his left hindfoot
and answered:
“Why don’t I what?”
“Why don’t you be
one?”
“I am one bee!” answered
the bee, striking a match on Billy’s orange and lighting a
grapevine cigarette.
“Could you be a fairy?” asked Billy.
“I am always beeing things—flowers and honey—so of course I
could bee a fairy. How do you know that I am not one? Look at
me!”
Billy sat up and looked.
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Billy. “A minute ago I thought you
were a bee!”
“I can bee anything I choose,” said the Fairy. “That’s why you
thought I was a bee. Because I can bee!”
“Who are you now?” asked Billy.
“I am the Geography Fairy,” answered the stranger.
He held out his hand and then looked at it.
“It’s not raining yet,” he observed; “still——”
Without finishing his sentence he unfolded a pink parasol and
tossed it into the air. It sailed away, slowly at first, then more
rapidly as the light wind caught it and carried it out of sight
beyond the lilac-bush.
“I won’t need it till it begins to rain,” he explained, “so
they might as well have it.”
“Who?” gasped Billy.
“The sunbeams. If a sunbeam gets wet he’s done for. Haven’t
you ever noticed that?”
Billy thought he had noticed something of the kind. Anyway the
sunbeams all disappeared directly it began to rain. But being just
an ordinary little boy, he was much more interested in the
conversation of the wonderful stranger than he was in sunbeams, and
that is why he asked:
“What is your name, if you please?”
“My name is Nimbus and I live in the clouds with the other
fairies. I was named after one of the clouds.”
“But,” objected Billy, “I don’t believe in fairies.”
“Very well,” said Nimbus briskly, “keep right on don’t
believing. It doesn’t disturb me in the least.”
“And besides,” said Billy, “there couldn’t be such a thing as
a Geography Fairy.”
“How do you know?” demanded Nimbus.
“Because,” said Billy, “I have never seen one.”
“Nonsense!” returned Nimbus. “Did you ever see a noise?”
“No,” Billy admitted, “I don’t think I ever did. At least I
don’t remember ever having seen one.”
“Well, do you believe that there aren’t any noises?”
Billy had no reply that seemed suitable, and so he said
nothing.
Apparently not caring whether he got an answer or not, Nimbus
leaped lightly from the lilac blossom and, picking up an irregular
sunbeam that filtered through the bush, he set it carefully on edge
against the brim of Billy’s hat.
“They get tired lying flat
on their backs so much,” he said. “We’ll take this one with us when
we go. When we’re hungry we’ll eat it.”
“But we’re not going anywhere,” said Billy. “At least I am
not. I’ve got to go into the house and put the toys away in a few
minutes.”
“Tut! tut!” said Nimbus. “Doesn’t the proverb say ‘Never do
anything to-day you can just as well put off until to-morrow’?
Let’s enchant a trolley car and go look after the Equator. I ought
to be there now. That’s my job, looking after the Equator. I’ve
left the Equine Ox there, but he has such a habit of getting
indigestion in one of his four stomachs, and sometimes in all of
them, that he is very inattentive to business.”
“Indigestion in four stomachs must be terribly distressing,”
said Billy. “But what is an Equine Ox?”
“You surely see one twice a year,” said Nimbus. “But they are
always around. They have to be somewhere.”
“I suppose they do,” said Billy, “but what are they?”
“Their names are Vernal and Autumnal. Here’s a poem I wrote
about them once. My friends say I am conceited about my poetry, but
I’m not. I don’t think it is as good as it really is.”
“I never had an Equine Ox
To glad me with its soft brown
eye,
But when I stroked its brindled
locks
It always rudely asked me
why.
“I never whispered fondly in
The creature’s smooth and velvet
ear,
That it did not absurdly
grin
And shed a cadent, mirthful
tear.
“I never clasped its crumpled
horn,
Nor gazed on it with loving
look,
That it did not give moos of
scorn
And sometimes even try to
hook.
“So, though I love the Equine
Ox,
I must admit that, on the
whole,
His conduct very often
shocks
My trusting and confiding
soul.”
“That,” said Nimbus, “will give you an excellent idea of the
Equine Ox. Now let us enchant that trolley car and be off about our
business.”
“Pooh!” said Billy, “you can’t enchant a trolley car.”
“There you go again,” said Nimbus, “never believing in things.
Bring me a trolley car and I’ll show you whether or not I can
enchant it.”
“I can’t bring you a trolley car,” said Billy. “You’ll have to
hail one on the street if you want one. Anyway they don’t go to the
Equator; they only go to town.”
“We’ll see where they go,” returned Nimbus. “If I were going
alone I’d go on a cloud, but I don’t suppose you could sit on a
cloud, could you?”