FUN IN THE ATTIC
With whoops of delight that made the old farmhouse ring, the Curlytops
and Trouble hurried after Mrs. Pitney. She smiled and laughed with them.
“I’m afraid they’ll make you a lot of work,” said Mrs. Martin.
“Oh, I love children,” was the answer. “I have raised a family of them
myself. They won’t do any harm. There’s nothing in the attic that can
be damaged. And if the older ones will look after their little brother,
there will be no trouble.”
“That’s his name,” said Janet, with a laugh.
“Whose name?” asked Mrs. Pitney.
“His,” and Janet pointed to William. “He’ll get into trouble if there’s
any way at all.”
“He chained the auto fast and went to sleep on the hay wagon,” added
Ted, as they climbed the attic stairs.
“Maybe--now--maybe I did,” admitted Trouble, who always got his words
a little mixed when he was excited. “But now I didn’t--I--er--now--I
didn’t lost ma’s diamond locket like you did, Jan!” he cried.
“Oh, dear!” sighed Janet, for that was an unhappy memory.
“Did your mother lose something on this trip?” asked Mrs. Pitney.
“Not on this trip,” explained Ted. “It was before we started. My sister
and I were playing house, and Janet borrowed mother’s small diamond
locket to dress up with. But there was an auto accident out in front
and we ran to see that, and afterward we couldn’t find the locket.”
“It must have dropped down a crack. But we looked everywhere,” said
Janet. “Oh, I feel so bad about it.”
“Never mind,” consoled Mrs. Pitney. “Maybe it will be found some day.”
But Janet did not believe it would.
“And Jim is lost, too,” added Trouble.
“Who is Jim? Your dog?” asked the farmer’s wife.
“No. He is a tame crow that does tricks, and he’s worth more than a
hundred dollars,” explained Ted. “He can stand on one leg and make a
pop like a cork coming from a bottle.”
“It’s too bad you lost a crow like that,” said Mrs. Pitney, as she
arranged the lamp in a safe place in the attic, where it would not be
knocked over if the children raced about as they were sure to do. “One
of our neighbors had a tame crow once,” she went on. “It could say a
few words, but I never heard it pull corks.”
“Jim wasn’t our crow,” Janet hastened to explain. “He belongs to Mr.
Jenk, the man who lives next door. But he’ll give us ten dollars if we
find Jim.”
“Then I hope you’ll find him soon,” said Mrs. Pitney. “Now you may play
with anything you find up here,” she went on, “but I am going to ask
you to put everything back just where you found it.”
“Oh, we’ll do that,” promised Ted.
“And we’ll put back anything that Trouble leaves out, for sometimes he
forgets,” said Janet.
“No, I put back t’ings myself!” insisted Trouble.
“All right,” laughed Ted. “See that you do.”
As Mrs. Pitney had said, there were many old-fashioned things in the
attic for the children to have fun with. There were moulds for making
candles, which were burned before we had kerosene lamps or electric
lights. These candle moulds were a number of tin tubes fastened to a
frame, and Mrs. Pitney remained up in the attic long enough to tell the
children how candles used to be made.
“My grandmother used to make them,” she said. “She would set this
mould, which made a dozen candles at once, down in a tub of water to
keep it cool. Then she would pour the melted tallow into each tin tube
where, before that, some cotton wicks had been hung. The melted tallow
flowed around the wick, which was hung just in the centre, by a little
stick across the top of the mould. Then when the tallow was cold the
candles could be lifted out.”
“Did they make wax candles the same way?” asked Janet.
“Yes, only they used melted beeswax instead of tallow,” said Mrs.
Pitney. “Of course the wax candles were a little nicer than those made
of tallow, and they didn’t smell up the room so. But I don’t know that
the wax ones gave any better light.”
“It must have been fun to use candles,” said Janet.
“Not as much fun as it sounds,” answered the farmer’s wife. “They
didn’t give half as good light as a kerosene lamp.”
“We have lickerish lights at our house,” said Trouble.
“Lickerish lights?” exclaimed Mrs. Pitney.
“He means electric lights,” explained Janet. “Oh, what’s that big wheel
over there?” she asked, pointing to one in a corner of the attic.
“That’s a spinning wheel,” was the reply. “In the olden days my
grandmother spun the woolen yarn that was woven into cloth or knit into
socks.”
“May we play with it?” asked Ted.
“Yes. It isn’t all there,” said Mrs. Pitney. “Only the big wheel is
left, but you can turn it and have fun, I suppose.”
“We’ll play engine,” decided Ted, as he helped Mrs. Pitney move the
old-fashioned spinning wheel out into the middle of the attic.
Then Janet saw a smaller wheel somewhat like the larger.
“Was that for little girls to spin yarn on when their mothers spun on
the big wheel?” she asked.
“No,” was the answer. “The little wheel is for spinning flax, which is
different from wool. Flax is a plant that grows. It has blue flowers.
In the olden days our grandmothers took the stalks of the flax plant,
wet them, pounded them, and pulled the fine fibers into threads. These
very fine threads were then spun together by the spindle on the small
flax wheel, and from the threads linen cloth was woven at the mill.”
“If we could take the big spinning wheel and the flax wheel I could put
them together and have a dandy engine!” said Ted, with sparkling eyes.
“You may take them,” said Mrs. Pitney.
With Janet’s help Ted set the two old-fashioned spinning wheels
together. The larger one had a rim around it over an inch wide, and the
smaller, or flax wheel, had two grooves around its rim.
“They used to put two belts of string on the small wheel,” said Mrs.
Pitney, “and then the string belts ran to two different parts of the
spindle,” and she showed them about it. In this way one spindle went
faster than the other, for they were of different sizes.
“My daddy--he has a fan belt on his auto--but it busted!” broke out
Trouble.
“Yes, I heard about that,” laughed Mrs. Pitney. “Well, now you may play
with the spinning wheels,” she told Teddy.
He found some string for a belt and ran it from the large wheel to the
smaller. Then when Ted turned the large wheel with his hand the flax
wheel also went around, one on one side of the attic and one on the
other side.
“We’ll play steamboat,” decided Ted. “I’ll be the engineer.”
“I’ll be the captain!” cried Janet.
“What I goin’ to be?” Trouble wanted to know.
“You can be a passenger,” said Ted. “You can ride.”
“Don’t want to wide! I wants to be a cap’n!” protested Trouble.
“Oh, it’s lots of fun to be a passenger,” soothed Janet. “Passengers
can eat whenever they want to, but the captain and engineer have to
wait until the whistle blows.”
“You got suffin for me to eat?” asked Trouble.
“I’ll get you cookies,” offered Janet, for she felt sure Mrs. Pitney
would give her some.
“Get some for us, too,” suggested Ted to his sister, as he tried the
string belt of his “engine” and found that it revolved the wheels in
fine fashion.
“I’ll get cookies for all of us,” offered Janet.
“No! No!” cried Trouble. “Only passjars eat cookies.”
“Well, we won’t eat until the whistle blows,” agreed Ted. But he made
up his mind that he would himself blow a make-believe whistle as soon
as Janet came back with the cookies.
The little Curlytop girl had no trouble in getting Mrs. Pitney to give
her some cookies, and with these Janet went back to the attic. Ted had
placed two chairs in the middle of the attic floor between the two
old-fashioned spinning wheels. One of the chairs was a “cabin” for
Passenger Trouble. The other was the pilot house where Janet stood to
steer the boat.
“All aboard!” cried Engineer Teddy, as he stood with one hand on the
spokes of the big wheel, ready to turn it. Ted soon found that if he
turned the big wheel, the small flax wheel would spin much faster than
the one he turned. This was because of the difference in size. If Ted
had turned the flax wheel by hand the larger wheel would have moved
more slowly.
“All aboard!” cried Teddy again.
“You mustn’t say that,” objected Janet. “That’s for the captain to say.”
“All right--say it,” agreed Teddy.
“All a-board!” yelled Janet.
“You don’t say it as good as I do, but I guess it will be good enough,”
said Ted. “Did you hear it, Trouble?” he asked.
“Yep. I heard her,” was the answer.
“Then why don’t you get on board--in your cabin?” Ted wanted to know.
“Got to have cookie first so I can eat,” said William. “Passjars eats
all time!” And not until Janet gave him a cookie would he get on the
make-believe steamboat.
Teddy made noises like steam puffing out. He turned slowly at first
the big wheel, and the one on the flax spinner began to go around and
around. Faster and faster it went, while Janet turned an old peck
measure she had found for the steering wheel.
Trouble did not pay much attention to anything except eating his
cookie. He sat in the chair, which was his “cabin,” picking up even the
crumbs that fell. He seemed to be very hungry.
“Toot! Toot!” suddenly called Ted.
“Dis for me to get off?” asked William.
“No, that’s the whistle for me and Janet to eat our cookies,” Teddy
answered. “Don’t you s’pose we get hungry same as you?”
“All right,” calmly agreed Trouble. “I eat again, too,” and he pulled a
second cookie from his pocket. “I eat when whistle blows,” he announced.
“Don’t bother him--let him eat when he wants to,” whispered Janet to
Ted.
After a while Trouble became tired of sitting in a chair, even if he
could eat cookies whenever he wished, and he decided he did not want
to play steamboat any more. Teddy wouldn’t let him spin either of the
wheels for fear he might break them.
But the Curlytops played together, and finally Janet got Ted to let her
be “engineer.”
“For,” she said, “if women can vote, and I’m going to when I grow up,
they can be engineers on a steamboat.”
“Not real they can’t!” declared Ted.
“Well, they can make believe, so there!”
“Maybe make believe,” Ted conceded, and he let Janet take his place
while he took hers.
For a time they forgot about Trouble, so interested were they in
watching the spinning wheels revolve, one turning the other. Then, all
at once, through the attic resounded a jingle of bells.
“Santa Claus! Santa Claus!” cried a voice they knew to be that of
Trouble. “I found Santa Claus bells!”
He came staggering out from a dark corner of the attic with a leather
strap of sleigh bells dragging after him.
“Where did you get them?” asked Janet.
“Back under the roof,” answered Trouble. “Aren’t they Santa Claus
bells?”
“They sound like them, anyhow,” admitted Ted, for the bells gave a
merry jingle.
But afterward Mrs. Pitney said the bells were those her husband’s
father used when he went sleighriding in the winter. The bells were
strapped around the horse and jingled when he trotted over the white
snow, pulling the cutter after him.
It was all right for Trouble to believe they were the bells of Santa
Claus, and really they sounded just like Christmas chimes.
Trouble played with the bells awhile, and then wandered off to look for
something else. Janet, too, tired of the spinning wheels, though Ted
did not, and Janet wandered into another corner of the attic.
It was not until Ted thought of something new to play with the big and
little wheels that he looked for his sister.
“Janet! Janet!” he called. “Where are you?” The attic was cut up by
many gables and all of it could not be seen from any one point. “Where
are you, Jan?” cried Ted.
A banging sound answered him and then the voice of his sister cried:
“Oh, I’m locked in! I’m locked in! Help me out, Ted!”