So the Widow Pickle peered closely through her glasses and saw that
there was a name printed in small shining letters on one end of the
boat. "The Gee-Whiz Submarine Express!" cried the Widow. "But, alack!
how small it is. Why, it is not as long as my foot, and I was always
thought in my time to have a very small foot, too!"
The Private Secretary smiled in a knowing manner.
"Perhaps, mamma," said Zuzu, "you have overlooked something in some
other box."
"Zuzu, you have a good mind for one so young," said his mother. "I will
look in the cupboard again." So again she began rummaging around, and at
length she found another box, a square one, covered over with dust,
showing that it had not been opened for a long time. The first box had
held a pale-blue powder, but this one was filled nearly to the lid with
a light-green powder. On the top of this box, written in the hand of
Aurelius Pickle, was the inscription, "Magic Powder of Gee-Whiz." When
the Widow Pickle saw this, she gave an exclamation of joy.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER VI
THE JOURNEY THROUGH THE AIR
"Hurry, hurry, mamma!" cried the Twins. "Let us go."
"But how can we go?" asked the Widow Pickle of the Private Secretary, as
she stood holding the second box of powder in her hand.
"I suggest, madam," said the Private Secretary, "that you might put a
little of the first powder, the blue one, in the engine."
The Widow Pickle placed a pinch of the pale-blue powder upon a certain
portion of the little boat, and, to her great surprise, it began to grow
before her eyes.
It grew and it grew, slowly but steadily, until it was large enough for
either of the Twins to get into. In a moment more it would have been too
large to pass out of the window; and as the Widow Pickle saw this, she
was about to brush off the rest of the powder.
"Stop!" cried the Private Secretary. "The window will not make the
slightest difference in the world. Quick, madam! Get in with the second
box, or it will be too late."
Indeed, the engine inside the boat now began to churn, and a strange,
brilliant sort of blue smoke began to hiss at the spouts near the wheel.
The boat, for such it can be called, began to crawl on its feet across
the floor toward the window. The Private Secretary grasped the Enchanted
Banjo and with a bound sprang into the boat. The Widow, holding on to
the remaining box of powder, and grasping the Twins also with the other
hand, sprang aboard quickly. The Private Secretary then snapped down the
glass all around.
To her great surprise, the Widow Pickle found the boat quite large
enough for all four of them, and even as she settled down comfortably in
her seat the boat rose slowly and, with a slight hissing of the strange
blue steam at the wheel, it passed directly out and through the window,
just as though it were not there, and sailed off across the tops of the
tall buildings toward the sea.
"Oh, Mr. Secretary," cried the Widow Pickle, "how very much startled I
am!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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