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CHAPTER IV

The Poker Tells His Story

"I suppose," said the Poker, after the Andirons had passed out of hearing distance, "I suppose you think it a very extraordinary thing that I, who am nothing but a Poker, should be satisfied with my lot. Eh?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Tom, snuggling down on the cloud which he found to be deliciously soft and comfortable. "If you were a Poker who could only poke it might seem queer. But you can talk and sing and travel about. You don't have to do any work in summer time, and in winter you have a nice warm spot to stay in all the day long. I don't think it's very strange."

"But I'm not different from any other Poker," said Tom's companion, "They all do pretty much what I do except that most of them are always growling at their hard lot, while I do very little but sing and rejoice that I am what I am, and the story I was going to tell you was how I came to be so well satisfied to be a Poker. Would you like to have me do that, Dormy?"

"Yes," said Tom. "Very much. Were you always a Poker?"

"Not I," said the Poker, with a shake of his head. "I've been a Poker only two years. Before that I had been a little of everything. What do you suppose I began life as?"

"A railroad track," said Tom, bound to have a guess at the right answer, though he really hadn't the slightest notion that he was correct.

"You came pretty near it," said the Poker, with a smile. "I began life as a boy."

"I don't see how a boy is pretty near a railroad track," said Tom.

"The boy I began life as lived right next door to a railroad," explained the Poker. "See now?"

"Yes," said Tom. "But why didn't you stay a boy?"

"Because I wasn't contented," said the Poker, with a sigh. "I ought to have been, though. I had everything in the world that a boy could want. My parents were as good to me as they could possibly be. I had all the toys I wanted. All I could eat—plenty of pudding and other good things as often as they were to be had. I had two little sisters, who used to do everything in the world for me. Plenty of boy friends to play with, and, as I said before, a railroad right next door—and oh, the trains, and trains, and trains I used to see! It was great fun. I can see, now that I look back on it, and yet I never was satisfied. I used to cry my eyes out sometimes because I hadn't wings like a bird, so that I could fly. At other times I'd get discontented that I couldn't run as fast as a dog—I never went to bed without feeling envious of somebody or something.

"Finally one night I'd gone to bed feeling particularly unhappy because a big eagle I had seen flying about in the sky could do things I couldn't. My nurse, thinking I had fallen asleep, went out of the night nursery and left me alone. Just as she went out of one door the other door opened and a very beautiful lady came in.

"'Is that you, mama?' I asked.

"'No,' said she. 'I am not your mother. I am a Fairy.'

"I had been crying pretty hard, I can tell you," said the Poker, with a shake of his head, "but as soon as I heard the lady say she was a Fairy my tears dried up as quick as lightning.

"'I am a Fairy,' she repeated, coming to the side of my little bed and stroking my forehead kindly. 'My duty is to seek out one discontented person each year and see if I can't do something to help him. I have come to help you if I can. Don't you like being a boy?'

"'Not very much,' said I. 'It's awfully hard work. I have to go to school every day and learn lots of things I don't care to know about, and most of the time I'm kept in an hour or two just because I can't remember how much seven times two are, or whether c-a-t spells dog or horse, and I don't like it.'

"'But you are strong and well. Your father and mother are very good to you and you have more good times than unhappy ones, don't you?'

"'I never counted,' said I. 'I don't believe I do, though. I'm strong and well, but so is that eagle I saw today, and he can fly, and I can't. Then there's my little dog—he's as well as can be, and my father and mother are kind to him just as they are kind to me. He doesn't have to bother with school. He's allowed to go anywhere he wants to, and never gets scolded for it. Besides, he doesn't have to be dressed up all the time and live in a bathtub the way I do.'

"'Then you think you would be happier as Rollo than you are as yourself?' said she.

"'Very much,' said I.

"'Then it shall be so,' said she. 'Good-by!'

"She went out as quietly as she had come, and I turned over and after thinking over what she had said I fell asleep. Then the queerest thing happened. I slept right through until the morning, dreaming the strangest dream you ever heard of. I dreamed that I had been changed into Rollo—and oh, the fun I had! Life was nothing but play and liberty, and then I waked. I tried to call my father and tell him I was ready for the morning story, but what do you suppose I did instead?"

"Give it up," said Tom. "What?"

"I barked," said the Poker, "and when I barked I looked down at my feet. Sure enough I was Rollo, and Rollo was I lying asleep in my bed. I was on the floor at the foot of the bed. Then the nurse came in and slapped me for barking and I had the pleasure of being sent down stairs to the cellar, while Rollo himself, who had been changed into me went into my father's room and got the story."

"Mercy!" said Tom. "I guess you were sorry about that."

"I was, a little," said the Poker. "But after I had been down in the cellar an hour or two I saw a beautiful piece of steak in the ice-box and I ate it all up. It wasn't cooked at all, but being a little dog I liked it all the better for that. Then I drank up a panful of milk and had a lovely time teasing the cat, until the cook came down, when my troubles began. I never knew when I was a boy that Rollo had troubles, but I found out that day that he had. The cook gave me a terrible whipping because I had eaten the steak, and I had hardly recovered from that when Rollo, who was now what I had been, took me up into the nursery and played with me just as I had always played with him. He held me up by the tail; he flicked me with his handkerchief; he harnessed me up to a small cart and made me drag his sisters' doll babies about the room for one whole hour, and then when lunch time came the waitress forgot me and I had to go hungry all the afternoon. Every time I'd try to go into the kitchen the cook would drive me out with a stick for fear I would eat the other things in the cellar—and oh, dear, I had a miserable time of it.

"The worst of it came two or three days later," continued the Poker. "It was Rollo's bath day, and as I was Rollo of course I had to take Rollo's bath, and my, wasn't it awful! I'd rather take a hundred such baths as I had when I was a boy than one like Rollo's. The soap got into my eyes and I couldn't say a word. Then it got into my mouth, and bah! how fearful it was. After that I was grabbed by all four of my legs and soused into the water until I thought I should drown, and rubbed until my fur nearly came off.

"I wished then that I had asked the Fairy to leave her address so that I could send for her and have her come back and let me be a boy again. All the fun of being Rollo was spoiled by the woes that were his to bear—woes I had never dreamed of his having until I took his place.

"I must have been Rollo a month when the Fairy came back one night to see how I was getting along. Rollo lay asleep in my crib, while I was curled up in a dog basket at the foot of it.

"'Well,' said the Fairy as she entered the room, 'how do you both do?'

"'I like it first-rate,' said Rollo. 'Being a boy is ever so much nicer than being a dog.'

"'I think so, too," said I. 'And if you don't mind I'd like to be a boy again.'

"'What boy do you want to be?' she asked.

"'What boy?' said I. 'Why, myself, of course. Who else?'

"'What has Rollo to say about that?' said the Fairy, turning to him—and I tell you, Dormy, it made my heart sick to hear that Rollo had anything to say about it, for there couldn't be much doubt as to how he would decide."

CHAPTER V

The Poker Concludes His Story

"It was just as I feared," said the Poker. "Rollo knew a good thing when he had it."

"'I'm satisfied, the way things are now,' said he. 'I wouldn't change back and be a Scotch terrier for all the world.'

"Then the Fairy turned to me and said, 'I'm sorry, my dear, but if Rollo won't consent to the change you'll have to be contented to remain as you are—unless you'd like to try being an eagle for a while.'

"'I'll never consent,' said Rollo, selfishly, though I couldn't really blame him for it.

"'Then make me an eagle,' I said. 'Make me anything but what I am.'

"'Very well,' said the Fairy. 'Good-night.'

"Next morning," continued the Poker, "when I waked up I was cold and stiff, and when I opened my eyes to look about me I found myself seated on a great ledge of rock on the side of a mountain. Far below me were tops of the trees in a forest I never remembered to have seen before, while above me a hard black wall of rock rose straight up for a thousand feet. To climb upward was impossible; to climb down, equally so.

"'What on earth does this mean?' thought I; and then, in attempting to walk, I found that I had but two legs, where the night before I had fallen asleep with four.

"'Am I a boy again?' I cried with delight.

"'No,' said a voice from way below me in the trees. 'You are now an eagle and I hope you will be happy.'

"You never were an eagle, were you, Dormy?" said the Poker, gazing earnestly into Tom's face.

"No," said Tom, "never. I've never been any kind of bird."

"Well, don't you ever be one," said the Poker, with a knowing shake of the head. "It's all very beautiful to think about, but being an eagle is entirely different from what thinking about it is. I was that eagle for one whole month, and the life of a Scotch terrier is bliss alongside of it. In the first place it was fight, fight, fight for food. It was lots of fun at first jumping off the crag down a thousand feet into the valley, but flying back there to get out of the way of the huntsmen was worse than pulling a sled with rusty runners up a hill a mile long. Then, when storms came up I had to sit up there on that mountain side and take 'em all as they came. I hadn't any umbrella—eagles never have—to keep off the rain; and no walls except on one side, to keep off the wind, and no shutters to close up so that I couldn't see the lightning. It was terrible. All I got to eat in the whole month was a small goat and a chicken hawk, and those I had to swallow wool, feathers and all. Then I got into fights with other eagles, and finally while I was looking for lunch in the forest I fell into a trap and was caught by some men who put me in a cage so that people could come to see me."

"Ever been shut up in a cage?" queried the Poker at this point.

"No," said Tom, "only in a dark closet."

"Never had to stay shut up, though, more than ten minutes, did you?"

"No," answered Tom, "never."

"Well, think of me cooped up in an old cage for two weeks!" said the Poker. "That was woe enough for a lifetime, but it wasn't half what I had altogether. The other creatures in the Zoo growled and shrieked all night long; none of us ever got a quarter enough to eat, and several times the monkey in the cage next to me would reach his long arm into my prison and yank out half a dozen of my feathers at once. In fact, I had nothing but mishaps all the time. As the poet says:

 
"Talk about your troubles,
Talk about your woes,
Yours are only bubbles,
Sir, compared with those.
 

"At the end of two weeks I was nearly frantic. I don't think I could have stood it another week—but fortunately at the end of the month back came the Fairy again.

"'How do you like being an eagle?' she said.

"'I'd rather be a tree rooted to the ground in the midst of a dense forest than all the eagles in the world,' said I.

"'Very well,' said she. 'It shall be so. Good-night.'

"In the morning I was a tree—and if there is anything worse than being a dog or an eagle it's being a tree," said the Poker. "I could hear processions going by with fine bands of music in the distance, but I couldn't stir a step to see them. Boys would come along and climb up into my branches and shake me nearly to pieces. Cows came and chewed up my leaves, and one day the wood-cutters came and were just about to cut me down when the Fairy appeared again and sent them away.

"'They will be back again tomorrow,' she said. 'Do you wish to remain a tree?'

"'No, no, no,' I cried. 'I'll be content to be anything you choose if you will save me from them.'

"'There,' she said. 'That's the point. If you will keep that promise you will finally be happy. If you will only look on the bright side of things, remembering the pleasant and forgetting the unpleasant, you will be happy. If you will be satisfied with what you are and have and not go about swelling up with envy whenever you see anyone or anything that has or can do things that you have not or cannot do, you will be happy in spite of yourself. Will you promise me this?'

"'Indeed I will,' I said.

"'Even if I change you into so poor a thing as a Poker?'

"'Yes,' said I.

"'Very well,' said she. 'It shall be so. Good-night.'

"Next morning I waked up to find myself as you see—nothing more than a Poker, but contented to be one. I have kept my promise with the Fairy, and I am simply the happiest thing in the world. I don't sit down and groan because I have to poke the fire. On the contrary, when I am doing that I'm always thinking how nice it will be when I get done and I lean up against the rack and gaze on all the beautiful things in the room. I always think about the pleasant things, and if you don't know it, Dormy, let me tell you that that's the way to be happy and to make others happy. Sometimes people think me vain. The Fender told me one night I was the vainest creature he ever knew. I'm not really so. I only will not admit that there is anything or anybody in the world who is more favored than I am. That is all. If I didn't do that I might sometime grow a little envious in spite of myself. As it is I never do and haven't had an unhappy hour since I became a contented Poker."

Tom was silent for a few minutes after the Poker had completed his story, and then he said:

"Don't you sometimes feel unhappy because you are not the boy you used to be?"

"No," said the Poker. "I am not because Rollo makes a better boy than I was. He is a contented boy and I was not."

"But don't you miss your father and mother?" queried Tom.

"Of course not," said the Poker, "because the Fairy was good enough to have me made into the Poker used in their new house. My parents moved away from the railroad just after Rollo became me, and built themselves a new house, and of course they had to have a new Poker to go with it—so I really live home, you see, with them."

A curious light came into Tom's eyes.

"Mr. Poker," said he. "Who was this boy you used to be?"

"Tom," said the Poker.

"I'm not Rollo," roared Tom, starting up.

"Nobody said you were," retorted the Poker. "You are Dormy. Tom is Rollo—but, I say, here come the Andirons and the Bellows."

Tom looked down from the cloud, and sure enough the three were coming up as fast as the wind, and in the excitement of the moment the little traveler forgot all about the Poker's story, in which he seemed himself to have figured without knowing it.