The Clockwork Twin Read online

  “But they can’t hear us, and they can’t see us in all these pine needles.”

  “Suppose you break away some branches and try to make a couple of windows in the tree,” said Georgie, “and then you can wave your handkerchief. They’ll see that.”

  So Adoniram got to work, and pretty soon the rooster came back and apologized for being so unpleasant, and helped. Of course he couldn’t break off branches, but he climbed out on the limbs and picked off sprays that Adoniram couldn’t reach. And in a little while they had two good windows, one on each side.

  The river had grown much wider in the night. Even now that it was broad daylight, they could sometimes hardly make out the shore line. Most of the time they were held to the middle of the river by the current, but once in a while it would swing them in toward one bank or the other, and then they could see trees and telephone poles rising from the flood, and even the roofs of submerged barns and houses. Once it swung them in very close to a hill on which stood a farm. Several cows were standing on the shore, looking with mild surprise at the angry, tossing water. Adoniram waved to them, but Georgie gave a frightened whimper and crowded close to him.

  “What’s the matter?” the boy asked.

  “Oh, those—those awful creatures! Why, I’ve seen big dogs before, but never any like that, with horns!”

  “Why, those are nothing but cows,” said Adoniram.

  “Well, I don’t care what you call ’em. I just hope there aren’t many of them in this part of the country, that’s all.”

  “You mean to say you’ve never seen a cow before?” asked the boy. “Why, every farm in the country has some. That’s where the milk comes from. There are thousands and thousands of them.”

  “Oh dear,” said Georgie, “I wish I was back in the city. I always thought the country was nice and safe and peaceful, but if there are a lot of those great, ferocious, horned things around, I guess I’m a gone pup.”

  So Adoniram explained about cows, and by and by Georgie felt better.

  To take their minds off their empty stomachs, Adoniram asked the rooster if he wouldn’t tell them the story of his life. The rooster, whose name was Ronald, was more than willing, like most roosters, to talk about himself, but the story of his life, although he gave it everything he had, didn’t take very long in the telling. It explained one thing, though. That was the funny way he talked. For he was English. He had been sent over to this country as an egg, and had been hatched out on a farm up-river that raised fancy poultry. He had indeed taken several prizes at poultry shows.

  “Well, if you came over as an egg,” said Georgie, “I don’t quite see why you have such a strong English accent.”

  “My dear chap!” said Ronald. “After all, I am English, even if I did come over inside a shell and never saw England. And this English accent is useful at the shows. One could hardly win prizes as an English rooster if one hadn’t an English accent. Of course,” he said, dropping the accent all at once, “I was brought up with American chickens, and I can talk American as well as you guys. You’re darn tootin’, I can. How about it, buddy, isn’t that somethin’?”

  “Sure, that’s American you’re talking now,” said Georgie. “Oh, look; there are some boats.”

  But they had moved out again into the middle of the river, too far from the boats to be noticed.

  As the morning went on they grew hungrier and hungrier and thirstier and thirstier. And then at last the river carried them swiftly round a long curve and they saw before them the closely pressed houses and high towers of a city.

  Almost before they had time to realize it they were surrounded by buildings. But the muddy water was lapping at the second-story windows and it was plain that the buildings were empty. Not a face showed at any window, and, perhaps because the water ran so swiftly, no boats were in sight. The water here, too, was troubled by cross-currents, and the tree whirled and jerked and occasionally bumped heavily, so that the summerhouse swayed and shook and they had to hold on to the railing to keep from being thrown overboard.

  As they got farther into the city the cross-currents got worse. Once an eddy at the corner of a big factory building set them whirling like a merry-go-round for five minutes, and when, released from that, they shot again downstream, a side current caught them and carried them out of the main stream of the river entirely and down a wide street. Here they moved more slowly. It was evidently one of the main shopping streets, for they passed a hotel, and the water splashed muddily against the signs over the doors of shops and stores. And then the tree trunk stopped with a jerk, wedged between a lamp-post and a wall, and the branches swung around and came close up against a large building on which was a big sign: Waterman Dinkelstein & Co.

  The summerhouse was shoved tight up against a window, and Adoniram reached out and tried to open it, but it was locked.

  “We’ll have to smash it in,” said Georgie.

  So Adoniram swung the fishline with the sinker on the end against the window until the glass broke, and then he reached in and undid the fastening. A minute later boy and dog and rooster were standing in a huge room through which ran several rows of pillars. And between the pillars were lines of show-cases. They were in the men’s furnishings department of a big department store.

  Adoniram had never been in a city before. The biggest store he had ever seen was the general store at Snare Forks, near his uncle’s house. “My goodness,” he exclaimed, staring at a showcase full of neckties, “I didn’t suppose there were so many neckties in the world!”

  “We can’t eat neckties,” said Georgie. “Come on, captain. Let’s find some food.”

  So they left the men’s furnishings and went through the shoes and the overcoats and the rugs and the musical instruments, and up a flight of stairs and through the ready-made dresses and the lamps and the underwear and the stationery. They found a drinking fountain, but no water came out of it.

  “I hope the groceries aren’t on the ground floor,” said Georgie, “or we’re sunk. Ha ha, not bad, eh? Sunk, and so are the groceries!”

  They went on through the electrical appliances and the refrigerators and the picture framing and the curtains and up another stairway and through a door and there in front of them was a long counter, and on it was every kind of pie and cake and bun and cookie that you can imagine.

  Georgie grabbed a doughnut, and the rooster fluttered up and perched on the edge of a tray of seed rolls, and Adoniram picked up a crisp brown cinnamon bun. They all took a bite and three chews, and then at the same moment they stopped. They were too thirsty.

  If it hadn’t been for Georgie I don’t know what would have happened to them, for Adoniram didn’t know anything about department stores, and the rooster wasn’t any help. But Georgie said the one word: “Bottles!” and hurried off, and after looking at each other a minute, the other two followed. They passed shelves and shelves of canned things and breakfast foods and crackers and jams and jellies and at last Georgie gave a sharp bark and stopped in front of a sort of bin full of bottles of ginger ale. Luckily there was an opener behind the counter. So they opened three or four bottles and drank. And then they opened some bottles of cream soda and drank that. And then they weren’t thirsty any more.

  But the sad part of it was that they had drunk so much that when they went back to the buns and pies and cakes they couldn’t eat any of them. They were hungry still, but they just didn’t have the room.

  “You might have stopped me!” said the rooster, gazing angrily at the seed rolls. “Let me drink all that slosh! If I was turned inside out, I could swim. I heard a distinct splash when I jumped up on this counter.”

  “Oh, stop complaining about everything,” said Georgie good-naturedly, “or you’ll hear a distincter splash when we throw you back into the river. The ginger ale will settle down after a while and then we can eat. In the meanwhile let’s explore.”

  “Won’t the store people be mad if we eat up all this food?” Adoniram asked as they started up to th
e fifth floor.

  “You couldn’t eat it up in ten years,” said the dog, “and we’re shipwrecked sailors anyway. I guess they wouldn’t—Psst!” he whispered suddenly. “What’s that?”

  They had come out at the head of the stairs on to another huge floor on which stood thousands of chairs and tables and desks and dressers and beds. Nobody was in sight, but from somewhere came a voice. It seemed to be reciting poetry. The voice said:

  “When I set out upon this tour,

  I thought the skies would be much bluer.”

  There was a pause and then it went on:

  “When I set out upon this tramp,

  How could I know ’twould be so damp?

  When I set out on this excursion,

  I did not think it meant submersion.

  When I set out upon this trip

  I should have started in a ship.”

  There was a pause again, and another voice—a quicker and sharper voice—said: “Swell, Freddy. Keep it up. You’ve got twelve now.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing; I could keep it up for hours,” said the other voice modestly. At least the tone was modest, but Adoniram didn’t think the words were, very. “When I set out upon this—”

  “A—a-a-chew!” went the rooster, who had been standing in a draught.

  Two heads suddenly appeared above the back of the largest and softest davenport in the room. One was large and pinkish white and rather pleasing in expression, and that was a pig. And the other was smaller and black, with yellow eyes and rather elegant whiskers, and that was a cat. Both looked startled.

  The cat spoke first. “Hi, folks,” he said breezily. “Well, where’d you come from?”

  “Hello,” said Adoniram, and the dog said: “We came down the river. My name’s Georgie, and this is Adoniram, and—”

  “Adoniram!” said the cat. “Go on!”

  “Yes, it is” said the boy. “That’s my name.”

  “Really?” said the cat. “How do you pronounce it?”

  “Oh, don’t be funny, Jinx,” said the pig. “Adoniram—that’s a good name. But very hard to find a rhyme to. Well, welcome to Waterman Dinkelstein & Co. This is Jinx, and I am Freddy. I think I didn’t catch the name of your friend?”

  The rooster ruffled his feathers and stepped forward importantly. “My name is Ronald,” he said. “You may have heard of me, gentlemen?”

  “Possibly,” said Jinx, the cat, indifferently.

  “I don’t want to make a point of it,” said the rooster, “but I am well known at all the best poultry shows, and have indeed several times won prizes.”

  “Ah,” said Jinx. “A prize rooster, eh? Well, I don’t follow the poultry shows much. I dare say you’d taste the same to me as any little scrub chicken.” And he winked at Adoniram.

  “Come along,” said Freddy, the pig, to Ronald, who had begun to back away from the cat, “sit down and join the party. Jinx doesn’t mean anything. How did you get here?”

  So they sat down and told their story. When they had finished, Freddy said: “I guess we were all pretty lucky to have taken refuge in a place where there is plenty to eat. Jinx and I are rather enjoying it, but of course we’re in no special hurry to get home. We’re on our vacation. That is, partly business and partly vacation.

  “You see,” he went on, “we live on a farm back in New York State. We’re kept pretty busy there most of the time, and so when work slacks off, a few of us always go away for a little trip. One winter a lot of us even went to Florida. Of course we arrange it so our work is taken care of while we’re away. Jinx, for instance, gets a skunk friend of his to look after the mice in his absence. My own work is of a special nature, but my partner, Mrs. Wiggins, looks after it.”

  “You will pardon me,” said Ronald, who had been silent a long time for a rooster, “but I had never supposed that there was anything special about what pigs do on a farm.”

  Jinx gave a snort. “That shows how little you know about pigs, rooster. Freddy here is a poet, he’s an inventor, he’s the best detective in Otesaraga County, he’s a pig in the best sense of the word, a pig with two g’s. Of course we know what you mean. You mean that pigs are supposed to do nothing but eat. Well, what is there to be ashamed of in that? You eat, don’t you? So do I. Sometimes I eat roosters, and what do you know about that?” And he grinned at Ronald, who shrank away from him with drooping tail-feathers.

  But Freddy said: “There, there, Jinx. I’m sure Ronald didn’t mean anything.” And, turning to the rooster: “Don’t let Jinx scare you. He’s rough and noisy, but he’s the tenderest-hearted cat that ever lived. Why, I’ve seen him shed tears over a little chicken that had lost its mother. Yes, sir, genuine tears, rolling right down his whiskers. Why—”

  “Oh, lay off me, will you, Freddy?” said Jinx, looking embarrassed. “Go on with your story.”

  “Well,” said the pig, “as I was saying, we take these trips every year. But one thing has bothered us. We collect things—you know, little souvenirs of our travels, picture postcards and so on—but it’s hard to bring them home. There isn’t any way to carry them. Boys, now, have pockets. But animals have to carry everything in their mouths. So it occurred to me—why not pockets for animals?”

  “Say, that’s a good idea!” exclaimed Georgie.

  “And it works,” said Freddy. “Get one for him, Jinx. I think we’ve got his size.”

  Jinx looked at the dog. “Take about a six, I should say,” he said. Then he jumped down from the davenport and went over to a chair where he rummaged among what seemed to be a pile of rags, then came back with a strange-looking object which he worked over Georgie’s head. When he had straightened it out, they could see that it had two large pockets, woven of string and grass like birds’ nests, which hung down on each side like saddlebags, and a sort of collar that held it in place.

  “Fits as if it was made for him,” said Jinx. “Here, take a look, dog.” And the cat led him over to a mirror, near the elevator, where Georgie stood for several minutes admiring himself, speechless with pleasure.

  Presently he came back and started to take the pockets off again, but Freddy said: “No, no. Keep it on. It’s yours if you want it.”

  “But don’t you sell them?” said Georgie.

  “No. We may work out some way of selling them later, but at present we’re just introducing the idea. That’s what I meant when I said we were taking this trip partly as vacation and partly on business. We got some of the birds to make up a couple dozen pockets of assorted sizes, and we started out with them to see how the public received them. I must say every animal we’ve tried them on seems delighted with them. Freddy’s Fitz-U Animal Pockets, we call them. All styles, all sizes. Patent pending.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Georgie.

  “We don’t know,” said the pig. “But you have to have it on them. Then, as I was saying, we got caught in this flood. We stopped at a deserted farm a few miles above the city three days ago, and when we got up in the morning the water had surrounded us. We rode down here on a barn door and got in just as you did.—But aren’t you fellows hungry?”

  “I guess I could eat something now,” said Adoniram, and Georgie and Ronald said they could too.

  “Come on, then,” said Freddy, getting up. “Let’s go down to the grocery department. I’m glad you’re here, Adoniram. There are a lot of things in cans we wanted to try, but we couldn’t get into them. Plum pudding, for one thing. Boy, I don’t care if the water doesn’t go down for six months!”

  III

  Escape from Snare Forks

  There are lots worse places to be shipwrecked in than a department store. For three days the water stayed at the same level, then it began to drop slowly, an inch or so every hour. But the animals were in no hurry to get away, and neither was Adoniram. He had a grand time. At home he had never had any fun, or anything very good to eat, and he had never had any time to play with the other children he went to school with. But now, with these animals
who laughed and talked and played games and told stories all day long, he was really happy. The first time he laughed out loud Freddy looked at him sharply and said:

  “We’ll have to oil up that laugh of yours, Adoniram. I guess you haven’t used it much. It squeaks like an old rusty hinge.”

  So twice a day Freddy would give him laughing lessons. The pig would sit down and tell jokes until Adoniram laughed good and hard, and then he would laugh with him for as long as they could keep it up. At first it took four or five pretty good jokes to get the boy started. But after a day or two his laugh began to get loosened up, and finally when he laughed ten minutes at a rather poor joke Freddy said he guessed that was enough.

  “You don’t want to be one of these people who laugh too much,” said the pig.

  They lived most of the time in the furniture department. They moved the furniture around so that each one of them had a room with a bed and a table and a radio and two or three big comfortable chairs and anything else he wanted. Freddy had a desk in his, and from the stationery department he brought all sorts of paper and envelopes and pencils and blank books to make notes in and a typewriter. He could use the typewriter, too, unlike most pigs. He used to sit there a good deal, tapping out poetry, and letters to the friends at home. Of course they were never mailed, but, as Freddy said, that didn’t matter, because most of his friends couldn’t read anyway. Jinx’s room was, as you would expect, full of squashy soft cushions, and he had a cupboard full of mechanical mice that he used to wind up and chase for exercise. They fixed up rooms for the newcomers, and in Adoniram’s was a wonderful table that opened up and was full of all kinds of games.

  They had put a bed in Ronald’s room, and although roosters usually sleep on a perch, he thought that because of his cold he had better sleep in the bed, where he could be covered up. But it didn’t work very well because he couldn’t seem to manage the pillow, which kept falling down on top of him and nearly smothering him. So he gave it up and perched on the footboard.