The day had not yet dawned, but Jimmieboy was awake--wide awake. So wide
awake was he, indeed, that the small bed in which he had passed the
night was not broad enough by some ten or twelve feet to accommodate the
breadth of his wakefulness, and he had in consequence crawled over into
his father's bed, seated himself as nearly upon his father's neck as was
possible, and was vociferously demanding a story.
"Oh, wait a little while, Jimmieboy," said his father, wearily. "I'm
sound asleep--can't you see?"
"Tell a story," said Jimmieboy, poking his thumbs into his father's half
closed eyes.
The answer was a snore--not a real one, but one of those imitation
snores that fathers of boys like Jimmieboy make use of on occasions of
this sort, prompted no doubt by the maker's desire to convince a
persistent enemy to sleep that his cause is hopeless, and of which the
enemy is never to be convinced.
"Tell a story about a Giant," insisted Jimmieboy, a suggestion of tears
in his voice.
"Oh, well," returned the sleepy father, sitting up and, rubbing his eyes
vigorously in a vain effort to get all the sleepiness out of them. "If
you must have it, you must have it, so here goes. Let's see--a story of
a Giant or of a Dwarf?"
"Both," said Jimmieboy, placidly.
"Dear me!" cried his father. "I wish I'd kept quiet about the Dwarf.
Well, once upon a time there was a Giant."
"And a Dwarf, too," put in Jimmieboy, who did not intend to be cheated
out of a half of the story.
"Yes. And a Dwarf, too," said the other with a nod. "The Giant was a
Dude Giant, who cared more for his hats than he did for anything else in
the world. It was quite natural, too, that he should, for he had a finer
chance to show them off than most people have, because he had no less
than four heads, which is very remarkable for a Dude Giant, because
dudes who are not giants very rarely have even one head worth
mentioning. Hats were about the only things the Dude Giant cared for at
all. He used to buy every style of head-gear he could find, and it took
almost all of the salary he received at the Museum where he was on
exhibition to pay for them; but he was particularly fond of silk hats.
Of these he had twenty-eight; four for each day of the week, those for
Sunday being especially handsome and costly.
"Now it happened that in the same exhibition with the Dude Giant there
was a Dwarf named Tiny W. Littlejohn--W standing for Wee, which was his
middle name. He was a very good-natured fellow, Tiny was, and as far as
he knew he hadn't an enemy in the world. He was so very nice that
everybody who came to the exhibition brought him cream cakes, and
picture books, and roller skates, and other beautiful things, and nobody
ever thought of going away without buying his photograph, paying him
twenty-five cents extra for the ones with his autograph on, which his
mother wrote for him. In this way the Dwarf soon grew to be a
millionaire, while the Dude Giant squandered all he had on riotous hats,
and so remained as poor as when he started. For a long time everything
went smoothly at the Exhibition. There were no jealousies or quarrels of
any sort, except between the Glass Eater and the man who made Glass
Steamboats, and that was smoothed over in a very short time by the Glass
Eater saying that the Glass-blower made the finest crystal pies he had
ever tasted. But contentment and peace could not last forever in an
establishment where one attraction was growing richer and richer every
day as the Dwarf was, while another, the Dude Giant, was no better off
than the day he joined the show, and when finally the Dwarf began to
come every morning in a cab of his own, drawn by a magnificent gray
horse with a banged tail, and to dress better even than the proprietor
of the Museum himself, the Dude Giant became very envious, and when the
Dude Giant gets envious he is a very disagreeable person. For instance,
when no one was looking he would make horrible faces at Tiny, contorting
his four mouths and noses and eight cheeks all at once in a very
terrifying manner, and when he'd look cross-eyed at the Dwarf with all
eight of his eyes poor Tiny would get so nervous that he would try to
eat the roller skates and picture books, instead of the cream cakes
people brought him, and on one occasion he broke two of his prettiest
teeth doing it, which marred his personal appearance very much.
"Tiny stood it as long as he could, and then he complained to his
friend, the Whirlwind, about it, and the Whirlwind, who was a very
sensible sort of a fellow, advised him not to mind it. It was only
jealousy, he said, that led the Dude Giant to behave that way, and if
Tiny had not been more successful than Forepate--as the Dude Giant was
called--Forepate wouldn't have been jealous, so that his very jealousy
was an acknowledgment of inferiority. So Tiny made up his mind he
wouldn't pay any attention to the Dude Giant at all, but would go right
ahead minding his own business and making all the money he could.
"This made Forepate all the more angry, and finally he resolved to get
even with the Dwarf in some other way than by making grimaces at him.
Now, it happened that Forepate's place was over by a window directly
opposite to where the Dwarf sat, and so, to get near enough to Tiny to
put his scheme against him into execution, he complained to the manager
that there was a terrible draft from the window, and added that unless
he could sit on the other side of the room he was certain he'd catch
cold in three of his heads anyhow, if not in all of them.
"'Very well,' said the manager. 'Where do you wish to sit?'
"'You might put me next to Littlejohn, over there,' said the head with
red hair.
"'But,' said the manager, 'what shall we do with that stuffed owl with
the unicorn's horns?'
"'Put him by the window,' said another of the Dude Giant's heads.
"'Yes,' said the third head. 'No draft in all the world could give a
stuffed owl a cold.'
"'That's so,' replied the manager. 'We'll make the change right off.'
"And then the change was made, though Tiny did not like it very much.
"To disarm all suspicion, the Dude Giant was very affable to the Dwarf
for a whole week, and to see him talking to Tiny no one would have
suspected that he hated him so, which shows how horribly crafty he was.
Finally the hour for his revenge arrived. It was Monday morning, and
Forepate and Tiny had taken their places as usual, when, observing that
no one was looking, Forepate took his biggest beaver hat and put it over
Tiny, completely hiding him from view. Poor Tiny was speechless with
rage, and so could not cry out. Forepate kept him under his hat all
day, and whenever any one asked where Littlejohn was, one of his heads
would say, 'Alas! Poor Tiny, he has mysteriously disappeared!' And
another head would shake itself and say 'Somebody must have left the
door open and the wind must have whisked the dear little fellow out into
the cold, cold world.' Then the other two heads would blubber, at which
the Dude Giant would take out his handkerchiefs and wipe his eight eyes
and shake all over as if he were inconsolable, and Tiny, overhearing it
all, grew more and more speechless with indignation.
"That night, of course, Forepate had to release him, and Tiny hurried
away fairly howling with anger. When he arrived at home he told his
mother how he had been treated and how he had been done out of a whole
day's cream cakes and picture books and roller skates, and she advised
him to go at once to the Whirlwind and confide his woe to him, which he
did.
"'Forepate ought to be ashamed of himself,' said the Whirlwind, when
Tiny had told his story.
"'But he never does what he ought to do unless somebody makes him,' said
Tiny, ruefully. 'Can't we do something to make him ashamed of himself?'
"'Well, I'll see,' said the Whirlwind, with a shake of his head that
meant that he intended to do something. 'What does the Dude Giant do
with himself on Sundays?'
"'Shows off his best hats on Fifth avenue," returned the Dwarf.
"'Very well then, I have it,' said the Whirlwind. 'Next Sunday, Tiny,
we'll have our revenge on Forepate. You stand on one of the stoops at
the corner of Fifth avenue and Thirty-fourth street at midday, and
you'll see a sight that will make you happy for the rest of your days.'
"So, on the following Sunday the Dwarf climbed up on one of the front
stoops on Fifth avenue, near Thirty-fourth street, and waited. He hadn't
been there long when he saw Forepate striding down the avenue dressed in
his best clothes, and wearing upon his heads four truly magnificent
beavers, which he had just received from London, and of which he was
justly proud.
"'I wonder where the Whirlwind is,' thought the Dwarf, looking anxiously
up and down the avenue for his avenger. 'I do hope he won't fail.'
"Hardly were the words out of his mouth when Forepate reached the
crossing of Thirty-fourth street, and just as he stepped from the walk
into the street, bzoo! along came the Whirlwind, and off went Forepate's
treasured hats. One hat flew madly up Fifth avenue. A second rolled
swiftly down Fifth avenue. A third tripped merrily along East
Thirty-fourth street, while the fourth sailed joyously into the air,
struck a lamp-post, and then plunged along West Thirty-fourth street.
And then! Dear me! What a terrible thing happened! It was perfectly
awful--simply dreadful!"
"Hurry up and tell it," said Jimmieboy, jumping up and down with anxiety
to hear what happened next.
"Then," said his papa, "when the Dude Giant saw his beloved hats flying
in every direction he howled aloud with every one of his four voices,
and craned each of his necks in the direction in which it's hat had
flown.
"Then the head with the auburn hair demanded that the Giant should
immediately run up Fifth avenue to recover its lost beaver, and the
giant started, but hardly had he gone a step when the head with the
black hair cried out:
"'No! Down Fifth avenue after my hat.'
"'Not at all!' shrieked the head without any hair. 'Go east after mine.'
"'Well, I guess not!' roared the head that had curly hair. 'He's going
west after mine.'
"Meanwhile the Giant had come to a stand-still. He couldn't run in any
direction until his heads had agreed as to which way he should go, and
all this time the beautiful hats were getting farther and farther away,
and the heads more frantic than ever. For five full minutes they
quarreled thus among themselves, turning now and then to peer weepingly
after their beloved silk hats, and finally, with a supreme effort, each
endeavored to force the Giant in the direction it wished him to go, with
the result that poor Forepate was torn to pieces, and fell dead in the
middle of the street."
Here papa paused and closed his eyes for a minute.
"Is that all?" queried Jimmieboy.
"Yes--I believe that's all. The Dude Giant was dead and the Dwarf was
avenged."
"And what became of Tiny?" asked Jimmieboy.
"Oh, Tiny," said his father, "Tiny--he--he laughed so heartily at the
Dude Giant's mishap that he loosened the impediment to his growth,--"
"The what?" asked Jimmieboy, to whom words like impediment were rather
strange.
"Why, the bone that kept him from growing," explained the story teller.
"He loosened that and began to grow again, and inside of two weeks he
was as handsome a six-footer as you ever saw, and as he had made a
million and a half of dollars he resigned from the Exhibition and
settled down in Europe for a number of years, had himself made a Grand
Duke, and then came back to New York and got married, and lived happy
ever after."
And then, as the getting-up bell rang down stairs, Jimmieboy thanked his
father for the story and went into the nursery to dress for breakfast.