The Jimmyjohns are never happy when their faces are being washed. Perhaps it is no more than right to tell the whole truth of the matter, and confess that they cry aloud at such times, and also drop tears into the wash-basin; which is a foolish thing to do, seeing there is then water enough already in it.

One morning, as little Mr. Tompkins, the lobsterman, came wheeling his wheelbarrow of lobsters up to the back-door of the cottage, he met the Jimmyjohns scampering off quite fast. After them ran Annetta, calling out, “Come back, come back, you little Jimmyjohn Plummers!” Effie, standing in the doorway, shouted, “Turn back, turn back, oo ittle Dimmydon Pummers!” Mrs. Plummer, from the open window, cried, “Boys, boys, come and be washed before you go!” Hiram said nothing; but, by taking a few steps with those long legs of his, he got in front of the runaways, and turned them back, making motions with his hands as if he had been driving two little chickens. Mr. Tompkins took one under each arm, and presented them to Mrs. Plummer. Mrs. Plummer led them into another room. Strange sounds were heard from that room; but, when the ones who made those sounds were led back again, their rosy cheeks were beautiful to see.

Mr. Tompkins sat with a broad smile on his face. He seemed not to be noticing the two little boys, but to be smiling at his own thoughts: and, the while he sat thinking, the smile upon his face grow broader, his eyes twinkled at the corners, his lips parted, his shoulders shook; there came a chuckle, chuckle, chuckle, in his throat; and then he burst out laughing.

“I was thinking,” said he, “of a boy who—thinking of a boy I used to know a long time ago, down in Jersey, who—who tried to get rid of a small wetting, and got a big one. I shall have to tell you about that smart chap: I knew him very well. He was afraid to have his face washed, even when he had grown to be quite a large boy; and also afraid to have his hair cut. Sometimes in the morning, when his mother forgot to shut the windows before she began, people would burst into the house, asking, ‘What’s the matter? Anybody tumbled down stairs, or out the chamber-window, or got scalded, or broken any bones?”

“Why, did he cry as loud as that?” asked Annetta.

“Oh, yes! and pulled back, and twisted his shoulders, and turned his head the wrong way. I can tell you it was hard work getting him ready to go out in the morning. The boys called him ‘Bubby Cryaway.’ They were always watching for chances to wet him. If he passed near a puddle, splash would come a great stone into the water! When he staid out after sunset, they would begin to shout, ‘Better go in, Bubby: the dew’s a-falling!’ Sometimes they called him ‘Dry-Goods.’

“But this is what I was laughing about. One morning he thought he would start out early, before his sisters said any thing about washing his face, or cutting his hair. They had then been coaxing him for a long, long time to have his hair cut. So he crept down the back-stairs, and across the back-yard, and through a back-alley, which took him into the worst-looking street in town. Here he met a fellow named Davy Bangs. Davy Bangs’s mother kept a little shop in that street: I’ve bought fish-hooks of her many’s the time. Davy Bangs asked him if he were going to the circus. He said ‘No:’ he hadn’t any money. Davy Bangs asked him why he didn’t catch frogs, and sell them to the circus-riders. He asked Davy if the circus-riders would buy them.

“‘Yes, and be glad to,’ said Davy. ‘They eat the hind-quarters: that’s what makes ’em jump so high. And if you’ll go over to Dutch Meadows,’ said Davy, ‘to that little swamp they call Duck Swamp, you can dip up frogs with a dip-net; and, if you want a dip-net, I’ll lend you our old one.’

“He went and got Davy Bangs’s old dip-net, and was hurrying along the streets with it, when a ragged country-boy—who had come in to the circus, I suppose—cried out,—

“‘Halloo, little fisherman! The man that keeps the furniture-store wants you.’

“Bubby turned back and found the furniture-store, and went in; and there he stood, waiting, waiting, waiting, till at last a workman ordered him off. As he was walking away, he saw the country-boy grinning at him from around a corner, and shouted,—

“‘The man didn’t want me! Now, what did you say that for?’

“‘I thought he’d want your hair to stuff cushions with!’ cried the boy, and then ran off.”

“Now, I think that was mean enough!” said Annetta.

“Pray, Mr. Tompkins, go on,” said Mrs. Plummer. “I want to hear what happened to the little fisherman.”

“Plenty of things happened to him,” said Mr. Tompkins. “He had to run so fast, to make up for waiting, that he stumbled over cellar-doors, and tumbled down half a dozen times, besides bumping against everybody he met. When he came to Dutch Meadows, he turned down a lane, thinking there might be a short cut that way to Duck Swamp. This lane took him past the house of a Mr. Spleigelspruch.” Here the chuckling sound came into Mr. Tompkins’s throat again; and presently he burst into a hearty laugh.

“Now, do please tell us; then we can laugh; but now we can’t,” said Annetta.

“I will,” said he. “I’ll tell—I’ll tell—he, he, he, he, he!—I’ll tell right away. That Mr. Spleigelspruch was a Dutchman,—a short, fat, near-sighted, cross old Dutchman. His wife took in washing. His wife’s sister, and his wife’s sister’s sister-in-law Winfreda, lived in another part of the same house, and they took in washing too. Winfreda was poor, and the other woman made her do all the hardest jobs of work. Mr. Spleigelspruch got his living by selling eggs, poultry, and garden-stuff, and by raising the uncommon kinds of fowls,—fowls which brought high prices. He was troubled a good deal by boys coming around there, chasing his hens and stealing his eggs, and trampling on the clean clothes spread out on the grass. I suppose that was what made him so cross.”

“And did that old cross man touch that boy?” asked Johnny Plummer.

“I should think he did touch that boy!” said Mr. Tompkins. “Yes, yes, yes!—he, he, he, he!—I’ll tell you how it was. Just as the boy got to Mr. Spleigelspruch’s, a dozen or more people came running down the lane, screaming, ‘Elephant, elephant!—the elephant’s a-coming!’ There wasn’t a word of truth in this story. A few boys in town had shouted, ‘The elephant’s coming!’ meaning he was coming with the circus: and some folks who heard them thought the elephant had got away from his keeper; and they shouted and ran, and this made others shout and run, and this made others, and this made others; so that there was great confusion. Carriages were upset, windows smashed in, children jostled about; and some of the people were so scared, they ran out of town away past Mr. Spleigelspruch’s.

“Now, on this very day,” continued Mr. Tompkins, looking more and more smiling, “Mr. Spleigelspruch had received from his cousin in Germany, Mr. Lockken, a pair of very rare fowls called the ‘eagle-billed robin-fowl.’ They were very uncommon fowls indeed. The rooster was different from common roosters in three ways,—in the tone of its voice, in the hang of its tail-feathers, and in the shape of its bill. Its bill was shaped very much like an eagle’s bill. Mr. Lockken had taken great pains to improve the tone of voice. This kind of thing is something which nobody else ever did; at least, nobody that I ever heard of.

“‘If I can only cause to be sweet the voices of the crowers,’ Mr. Lockken in Germany wrote to his cousin, Mr. Spleigelspruch, ‘it will be then like to having so many monster robins about our door-yards. Then shall I make my fortune.’

“Mr. Lockken began on a kind of fowl called ‘the eagle-billed fowl,’ and tried experiments upon those for a number of years; keeping almost every thing that he did a secret, of course. It was said that he shut up the chicks, as soon as they were hatched, in a large cage of singing-birds. He tried a good many kinds of food, oils especially, mixed in a good many ways; and at last—so he wrote his cousin, Mr. Spleigelspruch—he did get a new kind of crowers. Their voices were not quite as musical as robins’ voices, he said; but they were remarkably fine-toned. He called them the ‘eagle-billed robin-fowl.’ Mr. Spleigelspruch bought the first pair of these fowls which were for sale, and paid fifty dollars for them; and there was the expense of getting them over here besides. They arrived, as I said just now, on the very day I have been speaking of; and, as the place where they were to stay was not quite ready, they were put, for a short time, in a barrel near a board fence, quite a little way from the back-yard. Mr. Lockken said in his letter, that, for the first year, it would be better for them to be kept as far out of hearing of the common kinds of crowers as was possible.

“Now, that chap with his dip-net, when those people yelled so about the elephant, jumped over the board fence in a hurry, and happened to jump right down upon that barrel, and knocked it over. He hit another barrel at the same time, and let out a duck,—some curious kind of South-sea duck, I think; but that wasn’t so much matter. When he came down, why, over went the barrel, and over went he, right into the duck-pond; and out flew the eagle-billed robin-fowls. Mr. Spleigelspruch was busy, some ways off, getting their place ready. The first that he knew of the matter, a woman who lived in the next house screamed to him that somebody was stealing his fowls. He saw a boy running, and gave chase. He didn’t know then that his fowls had got away. The boy tried to get out of sight, and ran so fast he didn’t mind where he was going, and so ran over some clean clothes spread out on the grass. Mr. Spleigelspruch’s wife and his wife’s sister, and his wife’s sister’s sister-in-law Winfreda, came out with their brooms in a terrible rage. The wife’s sister caught hold of him, and the wife held him fast. There was a tub near by, which had some rinsing-water in it; and they dropped him into that, and held him down with their brooms, and sent Winfreda to the pump for more water. They said they would souse him. Mr. Spleigelspruch came up, bawling,—

“‘Stop thief! Police! Hold him! Rub him! Give it to him! Drub him! Scrub him!’

“He caught up Winfreda’s broom, but didn’t use it long; for in a minute that same woman ran into the yard, screaming, ‘They’ve got away!—your new fowls have got away!’ Then they all left the boy, and ran to catch the fowls. When Winfreda came back with the water, she behaved kindly to the boy. Winfreda had lived a hard life, and that made her know how to pity other folks. Bringing the water along, she thought to herself (so she told the boy afterward),—

“‘Suppose I had married in my young days, and suppose I had now a little grandson, and suppose he were treated like that boy,—oh, how badly I should feel!’

“She took him out of the water; she made him go up stairs and get between the blankets of her own bed; she fed him with broth; she hung his clothes on the bushes to dry; she borrowed another suit for him; and she let him out into the street through a place where there was a board loose in the fence. Next day his father took the clothes back, and changed them. The fowls had just been found in a swamp. It was thought that some country-people coming in to circus caught them the day before and carried them off, and that the fowls afterwards got away. They probably staid in the swamp all night, and that might have been the means of their death; though it might have been the sea-voyage, or change of air, or home-sickness: we can’t tell. They didn’t live very long after that.”

“And didn’t he get some more?” Annetta asked.

“No. The cousin in Germany died; and his fowls were not attended to; and a disease got among them, and carried them off. Mr. Spleigelspruch told me the whole story after I grew up.”

“What a pity,” said Hiram, “that those musical fowl couldn’t have spread over the country! ’Twould be a fine affair to have all the roosters singing in the morning, instead of making the kind of noises they do make. ’Twould be like an oratorio.”

“To be sure,” said Mrs. Plummer. “And I wish, for my part, that boy had staid at home. I suppose he has grown up by this time. It is to be hoped that he washes his face, and also that he doesn’t forget poor Winfreda.”

“Oh, no!” said Mr. Tompkins, stepping out, and taking up the arms of his wheelbarrow,—“oh, no! I don’t forget Winfreda. I send her lobsters every spring.”

“You, you! what do you send her lobsters for?” asked Mrs. Plummer and Hiram, both speaking at once.

Mr. Tompkins trundled his wheelbarrow along pretty fast, laughing away to himself; and, when he got beyond the yard, he looked over his shoulder at them as they stood in the doorway, and called out, “I was the boy!”