CHAPTER VI.

The Literary Bellows

"What kept you so long?" asked the Poker, as the Andiron and Bellows came up. "Was our friend Bellows out of breath, or what?"

"No, I wasn't out of breath," said the Bellows. "I never am out of breath. You might as well expect a groceryman to be out of groceries as a bellows to be out of breath. I wasn't long, either—at least, no longer than usual, which is two foot three. A longer bellows than that would be useless for our purpose. I simply didn't want to come, that's all. I was very busy writing when they interrupted me."

"It was very kind of you to come when you didn't want to," said Tom.

"No, it wasn't," said the Bellows. "I didn't want to come then, I don't want to be here now, and I wouldn't blow the cloud an inch for you if I didn't have to."

"But why do you have to?" asked Tom.

"I'm outvoted, that's all," replied the Bellows. "You see, my dear Weasel"—

"Dormouse," whispered the Poker.

"I mean Dormouse," said the Bellows, correcting himself. "You see, I believe in everybody having a say in regard to everything. I always have everything I can put to a vote. Consequently, when Righty here came down and asked me to help blow the cloud over and I said that I wouldn't do it he called Lefty in, and we put it to a vote as to whether I'd have to or not. They voted that I must and I voted that I needn't, and, of course, that beat me; so here I am."

"Well, it's very good of you, just the same," said the Poker. "You aren't quite as good-natured as I am, but you come pretty near it. Most people would have left a matter of that kind entirely to themselves and then voted the way they felt like voting. You aren't selfish, anyhow."

"Yes, I am," said the Bellows. "I'm awfully selfish."

"You're not, either," said the Poker.

"Oh, goodness!" ejaculated the Bellows. "What's the use of fighting? I say I am."

"Let's have a vote on it," said Righty. "I vote he isn't."

"So do I," said Tom.

"Me, too," said Lefty.

"Those are my sentiments likewise," put in the Poker.

"Oh, very well, then, I'm not," said the Bellows, with a deep drawn sigh; "but I do wish you'd let me have my own way about some things. I want to be selfish, even if I'm not."

"Well, we are very sorry," said the Poker, "but we can't let you be; we need you too much to permit you to be selfish. Besides, you're too good a fellow to be selfish. I knew a boy who was selfish once, and he got into all sorts of trouble. Nobody liked him, and once when he gave a big dinner to a lot of other boys not one of them would come, and he had to eat all the dinner himself. The result was that he overate himself, ruined his digestion, and all the rest of his life had to do without pies and cake and other good things. It served him right, too. Do you think we are going to let you be like that, Mr. Bellows?"

"I suppose not," said the Bellows, "but stories about selfish boys don't frighten me. I'm a bellows, not a boy. I don't give dinners and I don't eat pie and cake. Plain air is good enough for me, and I wouldn't give a cent for all the other good eatables in the world except doughnuts. I like doughnuts because, after all, they are only bellows cakes. But come, let's hurry up with the cloud. I want to get back to my desk. I have a poem to finish before breakfast."

This statement interested Tom hugely. He had read many a book, but never before had he met a real author, and even if the Bellows had been a man, so long as he was a writer, Tom would have looked upon him with awe.

"Excuse me," he said hesitatingly, as the Bellows began to wheeze away at the cloud, "do you really write?"

"Well, no," said the Bellows. "No, I don't write, but I blow a story or two now and then. You see, I can't write because I haven't any hands, but I can wheeze out a tale to a stenographer once in a while which any magazine would be glad to publish if it could get hold of it. One of my stories called Sparks blew into a powder magazine once and it made a tremendous noise in the world when it came out."

"I wish you would tell me one," said Tom.

"Are you a stenographer?" asked the Bellows.

"No," said Tom, "but I like stories just the same."

"Well," said the Bellows, "I'll tell you one about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple."

"Hurrah!" cried Tom. "I love red apples."

"So did Jimmie Tompkins," said the Bellows, "and that's why he died. He ate a red apple while it was green and it killed him."

There was a pause for an instant, and the Bellows redoubled his efforts to move the cloud, which for some reason or other did not stir easily.

"Go ahead," said Tom, when he thought he had waited long enough for the Bellows to resume.

"What on?" asked the Bellows.

"On your story about Jimmie Tompkins and the red apple," Tom answered.

"Why, I've told you that story," retorted the Bellows. "Jimmie ate the red apple and died. What more do you want? That's all there is to it."

"It isn't a very long story," suggested Tom, ruefully, for he was much disappointed.

"Well, why should it be?" demanded the Bellows. "A story doesn't have to be long to be good, and as long as it is all there—"

"I know," said Tom; "but in most stories there's a lot of things put in that help to make it interesting."

"All padding!" sneered the Bellows, "and that I will never do. If a story can be told in five words what's the use of padding it out to five thousand?"

"None," said Tom, "except that you can't make a book out of a story of five words."

"Oh, yes, you can," said the Bellows, airily. "It isn't any trouble at all if you only know how, and in the end you have a much more useful book than if you made it a million words long. You can print the five words on the first page and leave the other five hundred pages blank, so that after you get through with the volume as a story book you can use it for a blank book or a diary. Most books nowadays are so full of story that when you get through with them there isn't anything else you can do with the book."

"It's a new idea," said Tom, with a laugh.

"And all my own invention, too," said the Bellows proudly.

"He's the most inventive Bellows that ever was," put in the Poker, "that is, in a literary way. How many copies of your book of 'Unwritten Poems' did you sell, Wheezy?" he added.

"Eight million," returned the Bellows. "That was probably my greatest literary achievement."

"'Unwritten Poems,' eh?" said Tom, to whom the title seemed curious.

"Yes," said the Bellows. "The book had three hundred pages, all nicely bound—twenty-six lines to a page—and each beginning with a capital letter, just as poetry should. Then, so as to be quite fair to all the letters, I began with A and went right straight through the alphabet to Z."

"But the poems?" demanded Tom.

"They were unwritten just as the title said," returned the Bellows. "You see that left everything to the imagination, which is a great thing in poetry."

"Didn't people complain?" Tom asked.

"Everybody did," replied the Bellows, "but that was just what I wanted. I agreed to answer every complaint accompanied by ten cents in postage stamps. Eight million complaints alone brought me in $480,000 over and above all expenses, which were four cents per complaint."

"But what was your answer?" demanded Tom.

"I merely told them that my book stood upon its own merits, and that if they didn't like my unwritten poems they could write some of their own on the blank pages of the book. It was a perfectly fair proposition," the Bellows replied.

"I think I like written poetry best, though," said Tom.

"That's entirely a matter of taste," said the Bellows, "and I shan't find fault with you for that. The only thing is that Unwritten Poems are apt to have fewer faults than the written ones, and every great poet will tell you that nobody ever detected any mistakes in his poems until he had put them down on paper. If he had left them unwritten nobody would ever have known how bad they were."

Tom scratched his head in a puzzled mood. He could not quite grasp the Bellows' meaning.

"What do you think about it, Righty?" he demanded of the Andiron.

"Oh, I don't think anything about it," replied Righty. "I haven't watched poetry much. You see, Lefty and I don't see much of it. People light fires nowadays more with newspapers than with poetry."

"What I've seen burns well," observed the Lefthandiron, "and don't make much ashes to get into your eyes; but, say, Wheezy, if you'll do your blowing about this cloud rather than about your poetry we may get somewhere."

"Very well," said the Bellows; "fasten your hats on tight and turn up your collars. I'm going to give you a regular tornado."

And he was as good as his word, for, expanding himself to the utmost limit, he gave a tremendous wheeze, which nearly blew Tom from his perch, sent his cap flying off into space and smashed the cloud into four separate pieces, one of which, bearing the Poker, floated rapidly off to the north, while the other three sped south, east and west, respectively.

"Hi, there," cried Righty, as he perceived the damage done to their fleecy chariot. "What are you up to? We don't want to be blown to the four corners of the earth. Pull in—pull in, for goodness sake, or we'll never get together again!"

"There's no satisfying you fellows," growled the Bellows. "First I don't blow enough, and then I blow too much."

"Stop growling and haul us back again!" cried the Poker.

The Bellows began to haul in his breath rapidly, and by a process of suction soon had the four parts of the burst cloud back together once more.

"By jingo!" panted Lefty. "That was a narrow escape. Two seconds more and this party would have been a goner. Even as it is, you've twisted my neck so I'll never get it back in shape again," said the Righthandiron.

"Well, I'm sorry," said the Bellows, "but it's all your own fault. You asked me to blow the cloud, and I blew it. You didn't say where you wanted it blown."

"You needn't have blown it to smithereens, just the same!" retorted the Poker. "It doesn't cost anything to ask a question now and then."

"Where, then?" demanded the Bellows.

"I'd like to find my hat," said Tom.

"Very well," said the Bellows. "I see it speeding off toward the moon, and we'll chase after it, but we'll never catch it if it misses the moon and falls past it into space."

The Poker rose to his full height and peered after the cap, which, even as the Bellows had said, was sailing rapidly off in the direction of the crescent moon, which lay to the west and below them.

"Hurrah!" he cried. "It's all right."

"Can you see it still?" asked Tom, anxiously, for his cap was made of sealskin and he didn't wish to lose it.

"Yes, it's all right," said the Poker. "It nearly missed, but not quite. If you will look through these glasses you will see it."

The Poker handed Tom a pair of strong field glasses and the lad, gazing anxiously through them, was delighted to see his wandering cap hanging, as if on a great golden hook in the sky beneath them, and which was nothing more than the last appearance of the moon itself.

"Good!" cried the Righthandiron. "That settles the question for us of where we shall go next. There is no choice left. We'll go to the moon. Heave ahead, Wheezy."

Whereupon the Bellows began to blow, at first gently, then stronger and stronger, and yet more strongly still, until the cloud was moving rapidly in the direction they desired.