Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories, American; Fantasy literature; Short stories, American
Then he peered down through it, and saw a beautiful marble staircase
running down into the earth, at the foot of which was a great door that
looked as though it was made of silver, and the key was of gold. At the
sides of the staircase, hanging upon the walls, were pictures of strange
little men and women, but unlike the men and women in other pictures,
they moved about, and talked, and romped, and seemed to enjoy themselves
hugely. Great pictures were they indeed to Jimmieboy's mind, because
they were constantly changing, like the designs in his kaleidoscope.
"I must get down there," he said, softly, to himself. "But how?"
As he spoke the door at the foot of the steps opened, and a small
creature, for all the world like the goblin in Jimmieboy's fairy book,
poked his head out. The goblin looked all about him, and then turning
his eyes upward until they met those of the boy, he cried out:
"Hullo! Are you the toy peddler?"
"No," replied Jimmieboy.
"Then you are the milk broker, or the potato merchant, and we don't want
any milk or any potatoes."
The goblin slammed the door when he had said this, and with such a bang
that all the little people in the pictures ran to the edge of the frame
and peered out to see what was the matter. One poor little fellow, who
had been tending sheep in a picture half-way up the stairs, leaned out
so far that he lost his balance and tumbled out head over heels. The
sheep scampered over the hill and disappeared in the background of the
painting.
"Poor little shepherd boy!" said Jimmieboy. "I hope you are not hurt!"
The shepherd boy looked up gratefully at the speaker, and said he
wasn't, except in his feelings.
"Is there any way for me to get in there?" asked Jimmieboy.
"No, sir," said the shepherd boy. "That is, not all of you. Part of you
can come in."
"Ho!" said Jimmieboy. "I can't divide myself up."
"Yes, you can," returned the shepherd boy. "It's easy enough, when you
know how, but I suppose you don't know how, not having studied
arithmetic. You can't even add, much less divide."
"Maybe you can tell me how," said Jimmieboy.
"Certainly, I can," said the shepherd boy. "The part of you that can
come in is your eye, and your ear, and your voice. All the rest of you
must stay out."
"But how do I get 'em in?" asked Jimmieboy.
"They are in now," said the other. "You can see me, you can hear me, and
I can hear you."
"But I can't see what's beyond that door."
"Oh, we'll fix that," said the little shepherd. "I'll knock on the door,
and when it is opened you can tell the goblin that you want to see what
he's got, and he'll show it all to you if you tell him that your father
is the man who didn't blast the rock out."
The shepherd boy then went softly down the stairs, knocked on the door,
and before it was opened had flown back to his duties in the picture.
Then, as he had intimated, the goblin opened the door again, and poking
his head out as before, cried:
"Is that you, milk broker?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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