Queer Stories for Boys and Girls | Page 2

boys in pinafores
and ragged jackets. These spirits are not very handsome, and so the
artists do not draw their pictures, and they do not get into gilt-edge
Christmas books. Dear, ugly, good fairies! I hope they will not be
spoiled by my telling you something about them.
Little Bobby Towpate saw some of them; and it's about Bobby, and the
fairies he saw, that I want to speak. Bobby was the thirteenth child in a
rather large family--there were three younger than he. He lived in a log
cabin on the banks of a stream, the right name of which is "Indian
Kentucky Creek." I suppose it was named "Indian Kentucky" because it
is not in Kentucky, but in Indiana; and as for Indians, they have been
gone many a day. The people always call it "The Injun Kaintuck." They
tuck up the name to make it shorter.
Bobby was only four years and three-quarters old, but he had been in
pantaloons for three years and a half, for the people in the Indian
Kaintuck put their little boys into breeches as soon as they can
walk--perhaps a little before. And such breeches! The little
white-headed fellows look like dwarf grandfathers, thirteen hundred
years of age. They go toddling about like old men who have grown
little again, and forgotten everything they ever knew.
But Bobby Towpate was not ugly. Under his white hair, which "looked
every way for Sunday," were blue eyes and ruddy cheeks, and a mouth

as pretty as it was solemn. The comical little fellow wore an
unbleached cotton shirt, and tattered pantaloons, with home-made
suspenders or "gallowses." The pantaloons had always been old, I think,
for they were made out of a pair of his father's--his "daddy's," as he
would have told you--and nobody ever knew his father to have a new
pair, so they must have been old from the beginning. For in the Indian
Kaintuck country nothing ever seems to be new. Bobby Towpate
himself was born looking about a thousand years old, and had aged
some centuries already. As for hat, he wore one of his daddy's old hats
when he wore any, and it would have answered well for an umbrella if
it had not been ragged.
Bobby's play-ground was anywhere along the creek in the woods.
There were so many children that there was nobody to look after him;
so he just kept a careful eye on himself, and that made it all right. As he
was not a very energetic child, there was no danger of his running into
mischief. Indeed, he never ran at all. He was given to sitting down on
the ground and listening to the crazy singing of the loons--birds whose
favorite amusement consists in trying to see which can make the most
hideous noise. Then, too, he would watch the stake-drivers flying along
the creek, with their long, ugly necks sticking out in front of them, and
their long, ugly legs sticking out behind them, and their long, ugly
wings sticking out on each side of them. They never seemed to have
any bodies at all. People call them stake-drivers because their musical
voices sound like the driving of a stake: "Ke-whack! ke-whack!" They
also call them "Fly-up-the-creeks," and plenty of ugly names besides.
It was one sleepy summer afternoon that Bobby sat on the root of a
beech-tree, watching a stake-driver who stood in the water as if looking
for his dinner of tadpoles, when what should the homely bird do but
walk right out on the land and up to Bobby. Bobby then saw that it was
not a stake-driver, but a long-legged, long-necked, short-bodied
gentleman, in a black bob-tail coat. And yet his long, straight nose did
look like a stake-driver's beak, to be sure. He was one of the
stake-driver fairies, who live in the dark and lonesome places along the
creeks in the Hoosier country. They make the noise that you hear,
"Ke-whack! ke-whack!" It may be the driving of stakes for the

protection of the nests of their friends the cat-fish.
"Good-morning, Bobby, ke-whack!" said the long, slim gentleman,
nodding his head. He said ke-whack after his words because that is the
polite thing to do among the stake-driver fairies.
"My name haint Bobby Ke-whack, nur nothin'," answered Bobby. The
people on Indian Kaintuck say "nor nothin'," without meaning anything
by it. "My name haint on'y jeth Bob, an' nothin' elth."
But the slender Mr. Fly-up-the-creek only nodded and said ke-whack
two or three times, by way of clearing his throat.
"Maybe you'd like to see the folks underground, ke-whack," he added
presently. "If you would, I can show you the door and how to unlock it.
It's right under the next cliff, ke-whack! If you get the door