CHAPTER XVII
THE NEW ELECTRIC WASHER
ANY one who has ever lived in the country and kept turkeys and peacocks knows the moment a stranger drives by, those fowls give the alarm as surely as a good watchdog barks, only they set up a terrible clatter, the peacock by jumping on something high and screeching out his discordant call that carries a long way, it is so penetrating, and old Mr. Turkey Gobbler spreading his tail and wings so wide they drag on the ground as he puffs himself out with pride until he looks as if he would surely burst.
Consequently when Hiram, the hired man on the Watson farm, heard the racket in the barnyard, he walked to the door to see who was coming. There turning in the drive was a delivery wagon bringing the new electric washing machine Mr. Watson had bought. Hiram put down his pitchfork and went to help the men unload it and set it up. Of course, Billy Whiskers, that old Curiosity Shop, had to go too, for it would never do to have anything new come to the farm and Billy not know about it. Neither would it do to have Billy do or see anything Stubby and Button missed. And of course when the Twins saw their grandfather and their Uncle Stubby and Uncle Button going any place, they had to go along. So when Hiram thought he heard footsteps behind him and turned his head to look, what should he see but quite a procession tagging behind him.
“Well, I declare to goodness if that old Billy isn’t the most curious animal I ever ran across! He tags me from morning until night, so I almost feel I had a tail tied to me!”
“Oh, Hiram!” called Mr. Watson, “come and help us put up the washing machine!”
“Coming! Coming!” answered Hiram.
After an hour of pulling, hauling and lifting, with everyone bossing everyone else and stepping on one another’s fingers and toes, to say nothing of Billy Whiskers adding to the confusion by being under their feet, the necessary electric wiring was completed and the washing machine was in place.
Button had climbed on top of a cupboard in the laundry, thinking this would be a fine place from which to see all that went on and still escape being kicked or put out. Stubby had run under the table and jumped into a clothes basket where he would be out of the way and still could watch every move made. As for Billy, he was here, there and everywhere, under everyone’s feet and running across their paths and getting in the way generally, being put out of the laundry one minute and returning the next when they were busy over the machine.
At last it was set up and ready to start, and the man who had brought it from town walked over to the wall and touched a black button. The water began to churn round and round a piece of clothing the man had put in the washer to show them how quickly it would be washed clean.
Billy was so interested that he walked straight up to it and stuck his nose against the glass case, for what puzzled him most was how the water got in the tub when he had seen no one pour it in, and he knew the water nearest at hand was away down in the pond at the foot of the hill.
As for Button, he stretched his neck so far over the top of the cupboard that he nearly toppled off, and Stubby barked in his surprise and kept jumping in and out of the basket. In fact, he was so nervous he did not know what he was doing.
Swish! Swish! Swish! went the water, becoming all foamy and white.
As Button gazed, the machine stopped and the water grew still. Then all of a sudden it began to swish around again, though no person was near it. The person nearest the machine was a man standing by the wall, his finger on a little black button in the wall, while next him stood Hilda, clapping her hands in delight. You see, she did the washing.
“Now it will be only child’s play to do the washing, even though we do have big tablecloths and sheets,” she said.
They were all leaving the laundry and Billy was about to go too, when he found himself all tangled up with the tube that let the water into the tub and the electric wires that furnished the power to run the machine. The first thing he knew he felt prickles running all over him, and then a queer, jerky feeling as if someone were pulling all the muscles in his body the wrong way,—and that is the last he knew for a long time. Billy had suffered a shock that knocked him over and made him unconscious!
When Mr. Watson turned to see why Billy did not come, and discovered him stretched on the floor as if dead, he knew not what to think until he saw the detached wires. Then he knew Billy had suffered a shock of electricity. The men jumped off the wagon and with the help they gave, Mr. Watson and Hiram soon had Billy all right once more.
“Mr. Watson, you need not worry. He is not killed for the current in these machines is not strong enough to hurt anyone, much less kill them,” said one of the men.
That very evening when Billy, his family, Stubby and Button and a few friends were resting by the straw stack, they wished to hear from Billy’s own lips how a shock of electricity felt. He told them: “You haven’t any idea what a peculiar sensation it is. At first I felt all prickly, as if someone was sticking me full of needles and pins. Then all my muscles began to double up, and that is the last I knew about until I found myself on the grass outside the laundry with Mr. Watson and the men working over me. Not a pleasant sensation at all. I hope, I assure you, that Hilda never has one. It would almost kill her if she did.”
Just before luncheon that day Stubby and Button had had a very exciting experience. They had been coming home from Mr. Jones’ farm when they heard a child crying. They looked everywhere, but still they could not see any child, and when they tried to follow the sound, it first led them in one direction and then in another.
Presently Stubby said, “It seems to me the cry comes from the stone quarry. Let’s go and look.”
So the two ran up the steep side of the quarry and looked down into the deep pit half-filled with water. At first they saw nothing. Then they thought they distinguished something white floating on the water close to the opposite side of the pit.
“Look, Button! You have sharper eyes than I. What do you make out that white thing to be over there?”
“Heavens! It is a child’s face. Did you ever see anything so white in all your life?”
At that moment the child saw Stubby and Button, and began to cry anew.
“Do you hear, Button? From the sound of that cry the child is almost exhausted from calling for help and from fright at being in the water.”
MR. WATSON’S HIRED MAN SOON HAD A ROPE AROUND BILLY’S NECK.
“I should think it would be. What are we to do to get it out? It is a little boy. I know by his coat, for he raised his arms to signal to us.”
“Here comes a farmer. Let us run down and bark just as he is opposite the quarry. I’ll bark and you meow and we will run in front of his horse and make such a fuss he will know there must be something the matter in the quarry pit and perhaps he will stop and go to see. Let’s hope so, at any rate.”
The minute they disappeared, the child began to cry more pitifully than ever, for of course he thought they had run away and left him to his fate.
Nearer and nearer came the old rattling wagon, the driver whistling as hard as ever he could.
“You see,” said Stubby, “his wagon is making such a rumble he would never have heard the child crying.”
“He is almost here. Now let us start,” said Button.
Down the steep side of the quarry they plunged pell-mell, and jumped out before the horses so suddenly they leaped to one side of the road and stopped short. It was done so quickly it nearly threw the man off the seat.
“Say, Stub and Button, what did you do that fool thing for?”
You see the man knew the two very well, for he was Mr. Watson’s hired man.
“You nearly scared the life out of the horses and came near upsetting me in the bargain. Well, well, will you look at those fool animals chasing each other up the steep side of the quarry? Here they come down again! And they stand and look at me as if they were trying to tell me something. Heigho, if they aren’t going up again and looking down into the pit and barking and meowing like mad. Hark! Did I hear a child cry?” He put his hand to his ear and turned his head in that direction. Sure enough, the cry was repeated. “Jehoshaphat, I bet a child has fallen into the quarry and that is what those smart animals are trying to let me know about.”
With one bound he was out of the wagon and climbing up the side of the quarry as fast as he could go, loose stones and dirt flying in a shower behind him as he was in such a hurry to reach the top. The second he got there, he discovered the pale face of the child as it showed so plainly against the wet, black stones. He ran around the pit until he was directly over where the child lay.
“Uncle Hiram, come quick! Come quick! I can’t hang on much longer. My fingers are getting numb!”
You see the man was no other than the little child’s own Uncle. Down the steep side of the quarry he started, but found he must go further along the top and then down, as the stones were soft and broke under his feet and he feared they might injure the child as they rolled.
When the little fellow saw the man start to go down to him again he cried out in fright and dismay: “Oh, Uncle Hiram, don’t! Don’t go away and leave me!”
“Don’t worry, Eddie. Indeed I won’t leave you. I am just going over here a little way to find a better and safer place to climb down.”
In fact, he was soon down and walking along a rocky ledge that led straight to where the little fellow lay, and in a jiffy he had him in his arms and was climbing the steep ascent, the child clasped in a close embrace. When they were safely on the wagon, he asked the boy how he happened to fall in the pit and he said he was coming home from doing an errand and was walking near the edge of the quarry when he saw a beautiful blue flower on the very edge and while trying to get it the bank gave way and fell into the water in the quarry pit, carrying him down with it.
“How long had you been there?”
“Oh, ever and ever so long, Uncle! Seemed most like a year!”
“I’ll wager it does seem like a year and more to you, and I never would have found you if it had not been for Stubby and Button. The old wagon was making such a racket and I was whistling so loudly I never would have heard you cry above all that noise.”
Looking down the road he saw a woman who seemed much excited running in their direction and when they drew near enough to distinguish who it was, they found it was Eddie’s mother, looking for him. He had not come back from the errand on which she had sent him, telling him to hurry home. As he was an obedient son, she feared some ill had befallen him and was searching for him. How she cried for joy when she had him in her arms and knew he was safe! She declared she wanted to see Stubby and Button and pet them and give them the biggest chicken dinner they had ever had to show her appreciation.
“They are such smart animals, I know they will understand everything you say to them, and enjoy and thank you for the dinner,” said Mr. Watson’s hired man. “I’ll bring them over with me to-morrow when I pass your house on my way to the mill.”
Thus another good deed was added to the long list of those done by Stubby and Button as the years went by.