Delphi Complete Works of Thorne Smith (Illustrated), page 314
“I don’t know that, either,” answered Albert.
“Neither do I,” agreed Rudolph. “It’s all too confusing.”
“And I don’t like chickens,” put in Albert. “They have sharp, painful-looking beaks that peck.”
“Then let’s go,” suggested Rudolph, scraping up the coin with his long red tongue.
With a wistful look back at the house, Albert rose and crept across the lawn after his brother. Already he was wishing that they had not run away. When they slipped into the dusty road and left the house behind he kept wishing even more wishfully that they had not run away.
“This is coming to no good end,” declared Albert.
Rudolph was unable to speak because of the coin on his tongue. He merely made queer noises which sounded quite shocking to Albert.
“I hope he isn’t saying rude things,” Albert thought to himself as he paddled down the road.
CHAPTER 15. The Adventures of Albert and Rudy
THE TWINS HAD not proceeded very far down the road before they met a boy. But the meeting was not for long. No sooner did the boy lay eyes on the two lions than he tried earnestly to be somewhere else. With a wild cry he jumped up in the air, spun around three times, and dropped back to the road with his feet already running. In almost less than no time at all that boy was not there any more, but you may be sure that wherever he was he was still running as fast as his bare brown legs could get in front of one another.
“A most peculiar way for a boy to act,” observed Albert, looking down the road after the flying speck of a boy.
“Not necessarily,” replied Rudolph. “Perhaps he just remembered something.”
“Then it must have been a very important something,” said his brother. “I hope he doesn’t forget it on the way. He gave me a fair start, he did.”
They padded down the road and next met a jackass who was looking at them with large, horrified eyes over the top of a wire fence. The poor little creature’s long ears were trembling with excitement.
“Who are you?” asked Albert, with a gasp of fear.
“I’m an ass,” chattered the frightened animal.
“We can see that at a glance,” replied Albert, “but what sort of an ass are you?”
“I — I — I — I’m a jackass,” stammered the other, no longer able to hold up his ears, which flopped down over his forehead and made him look, if possible, more foolish than before.
“Are you sure you’re not a silly ass?” asked Rudolph, who had dropped his golden coin to the road when he had first answered Albert.
“No,” replied the little fellow, “I’m not at all sure of that. But whatever I may or may not be I’m not quite so silly as to stay here any longer. What mugs!”
And with that he kicked his small, neat heels high in the air and dashed off across the field.
“Rather slangy, that last bit,” commented Albert.
“Crude, I’d call it,” replied Rudy.
At this moment an automobile came toward them down the road. When it drew near and the driver saw the Twins his hair flew straight up on its ends and pushed his hat clear off his head. Then the automobile made the queerest noises and began to go backwards much faster than it had gone forward. Soon it disappeared from sight, but the chattering of its engine could still be heard.
“Don’t tell me he just remembered something, too,” said Albert, with a thoughtful pause.
“I don’t know,” answered Rudolph. “Something seemed to have occurred to him quite suddenly.”
“Has it occurred to you, Rudy,” asked Albert, “that people might possibly be trying to avoid us?”
“That impression is being forced on me,” admitted Rudy.
“Yes,” continued Albert, “instead of our running away from people it looks as if people were running away from us.”
“I was beginning to wonder myself,” replied Rudy, “just whose runaway this is — whether it is ours or everyone else’s.”
It was then that Rudolph just became aware of the fact that someone or something was breathing heavily on his left ear. He turned his head and looked into the nearsighted eyes of a mean-looking old man.
“Rur-rur-rur-eruff!” gasped Rudolph, relapsing into his native speech.
“Give me that golden coin, you bad dog,” croaked the old man, who just happened to be about the meanest miser that had ever put tooth to a kopeck.
“I don’t see it any more,” said Rudy huskily.
Rudy did not see it for the simple reason that Albert, too shocked with terror to stand, was sitting on the coin.
“Then that other bad dog has it,” grunted the mean, nearsighted old man. “Give me that coin, dog.”
And with that he began to claw and scrabble with his skinny fingers at Albert’s tail. Albert found the miser’s conduct too offensive to be borne in silence. In spite of his overtaxed nerves he was forced to protest.
“My dear sir,” he murmured, “I wish you would stop doing that. It’s not quite nice and besides it’s not the sort of thing I’m accustomed to — not at all the sort of thing one would expect from a total stranger.”
“Then get up, you dog,” cried the miser. “You’re sitting on the golden coin.”
“I can’t get up,” said Albert with great dignity. “I’m much too frightened, and let me once more remind you that you are taking liberties I would not permit of a close friend. A lion’s tail is not to be twisted lightly. Ask any Englishman.”
“Lion,” grumbled the old man, “who’s talking about lions, you foolish dog?”
“Nobody is talking about lions,” replied Albert. “I was talking about a lion’s tail. I was talking about my tail, to be specific. And I’ll have you to know that I am neither foolish nor a dog.”
“Go on and get up,” coaxed the miser in a pleading voice. “What does a dog want with a golden coin? I’ll give you a nice bone instead.”
Albert shuddered at the coarseness of the man’s mind.
“Don’t get up, Albert,” said his brother.
“Have no fear of that, Rudy,” replied Albert. “I can’t get up. It’s the knees. You know how I am.”
The miser in his eagerness to find the coin was peering into Rudolph’s mouth, which Rudy most accommodatingly opened to its full width. The nearsighted old man paused and blinked rapidly several times. Something seemed to be telling him that no mere dog could be carrying around with him a mouth of such generous proportions. It looked more like a cave to the miser, a cave lined with red plush and furnished with white, pointed stools. The Twins had lovely teeth — but not to look at. They gave one an uncomfortable feeling. With trembling fingers the old miser took his spectacles from his pocket and set them on the end of his long, thin nose. Then he looked at the Twins and closed his eyes. The miserable old man felt quite convinced that at last his sins had found him out.
“I don’t want that coin,” he shouted so suddenly that both Rudy and Albert fell all in a heap and thought they were going to die right there on the spot. “You can keep your golden coin,” shouted the old miser. “All I want is this,” and he straight away showed them what he wanted, which was as much of the road as he could put between himself and the Twins. With arms flapping and legs pumping and lungs puffing, he flew down the road so fast that soon he became only an unpleasant memory to the lions wallowing in the dust and trying to hide their heads in each other’s neck.
“This running-away idea of yours has its drawbacks, Rudy,” said Albeit. “How about giving it up and returning home? We’ve gone quite far enough to show them we’ll stand for no nonsense. My honor feels much better already. As a matter of fact it’s more than satisfied.”
“Mine doesn’t seem to be so seriously involved as it was before,” replied Rudolph, “but still we should be able to do a little better than this. Let’s try again.”
So they slowly got to their feet and Rudolph scooped up the golden coin, together with a lot of dust which made him cough and sneeze until it turned into mud pies on his tongue, which did not make him feel any better — if anything, worse.
And after walking for a long, long time they presently came to the village. Here all the people seemed so busy that they did not notice the lions at first. One man did notice them, but he refused to believe his eyes, although, just to take no chances, he quietly withdrew into his house, locked and bolted his door, hurried upstairs, and got into bed, where he stayed for a whole week with his head covered up and refused to say even so much as “good-morning” or “good-night” to any member of his family. He was thinking.
All unconscious of what the mere sight of them had done to this man, the lions walked down the street and stopped in front of an ice cream soda shop. They looked through the window and admired the lovely pink and brown colored sodas that men, women, and children were drinking through long straws as if their lives depended on what they were doing. The Twins looked at the lollipops and other candies separated from them only by the thickness of the window against which their noses were pressed, and their mouths watered — that is, Albert’s mouth watered while poor Rudolph’s, because of the pies on his tongue, merely muddied and felt untidy.
“I’ve never had a soda through a straw,” said Albert wistfully. “Do you imagine it would be difficult?”
“I could manage a harder trick than that if it would only get the horrid taste of a public highway out of my mouth,” Rudolph complained thickly.
The sight of so many sodas being sucked up by so many straws and swallowed down so many bobbing necks greatly excited the Twins. They were standing now with their front paws against the window and their noses flattened against the glass. Their general appearance was not improved thereby.
“It’s a hot day,” murmured Albert.
“And we have come far,” said Rudolph.
“Running away on hot days is thirsty work,” went on Albert.
“Righto, brother,” replied Rudolph. “How true that is!”
“I wonder—” began Albert, but he never finished.
A lady seated next to the window lifted her eyes for a moment from her rapidly vanishing soda and met the envious glances of the two lions. The lady was at first so surprised that she sucked up the straw instead of the soda. It disappeared down her throat with an unpleasant swish, like an arrow shot from a bow only not quite so fast. After that the lady was so frightened that all she could say was, “Oh, look at the big lions. We will all be murdered in our beds.”
This was not much to say, but it was quite enough to make everyone stop sucking sodas and look up at the lions. At this moment the glass broke with an enormous crash and the Twins tumbled through the window. Now the people in that shop would not have felt at all happy had the lions entered in the usual way through the door, but to see them come flying wild-eyed through the window to the accompaniment of falling glass made them feel even less happy. It made them feel simply awful. They did not even stop to finish their sodas. Some were left almost untouched. Where all of those people went to so quickly remained a mystery to Albert and Rudolph, who were feeling none too happy themselves. Some of the people went through one window and some went through another. Some of them hid behind the counter, while others climbed up the electric light fixtures. However they did it, they all managed to get out of the way with amazing promptness. The Twins had the shop to themselves as well as everything in it. Luckily they had not been cut by the falling glass, but as they lay among the ruins they had created you would have thought that their accident had killed them a thousand times over.
“This will teach me never to be thirsty again,” declared Albert, wiping a bar of chocolate out of his left eye.
Rudolph, looking quite frosty about the eyes and mouth, withdrew his head from a large cocoanut cake and looked miserably at his brother.
“This is really too bad,” he said very slowly. “A terrible thing has happened. I think I swallowed the coin.”
“Easy come, easy go,” replied Albert, who, in spite of the shock he had received, could not help being amused by Rudolph’s cake-smeared face. “I wonder where everyone’s got to. Let’s look.”
Daintily shaking off the glass from their bodies, the Twins arose and stepped onto the floor of the shop. But instead of looking for the vanished soda suckers, the Twins climbed up on the two high stools and became soda suckers themselves. They parted their lips with cultured delicacy, then closed them over the straws.
“Do you blow out or blow in?” asked Rudolph.
“In,” answered Albert through the side of his mouth.
“I thought not,” said Rudy indistinctly. “It gets into your eyes the other way.”
At first they sucked quietly and slowly, but as the sodas seemed to get better and better and because the day was really very warm indeed they began to suck louder and faster until the air was filled with a liquid sound.
“Do you hear a noise?” asked Rudolph.
“What sort of noise?” asked Albert.
“Like something gurgling,” said Rudolph.
“That’s us,” said Albert, then added, “I regret to say.”
“Why?” asked Rudy innocently.
“It’s not refined,” said his brother. “Not in company.”
“Oh,” replied Rudolph. “It doesn’t matter then. We’re just a family here — just twins, you know.”
They moved over to two other stools and wrapped their lips around two more straws. The sucking began again, but this time they made even better and bigger noises.
“S’good,” breathed Rudy.
“Very,” replied Albert.
“S’very good,” repeated Rudolph.
“Very, very good,” agreed Albeit.
Once more they moved to two fresh stools and began to gargle down two more sodas.
“The brown’s best,” gasped Rudolph.
“I like the pink,” declared Albert.
All in all, those two lions consumed twenty-four sodas, twelve banana splits, eight nut sundaes, and six malted milks. That’s the way lions carry on when they get real thirsty after running away from home. When they waddled out of the soda shop they were splashing about inside like a couple of friendly waves.
A few minutes later they were peering through the window of a fish and meat store.
“Here’s our chance for a spot of steak,” suggested Rudolph.
“What are those?” demanded Albert, pointing with his nose. “They look as if they should belong in a hardware store.”
“Those are lobsters,” replied Rudolph.
“There’s a look about them I don’t much fancy,” observed Albert. “It’s a sinister, painful look.”
“If you’ll just turn your head a little to the left,” whispered Rudolph, “you’ll see something with an even more sinister and painful look.”
Albert followed his brother’s frightened gaze and began to tremble violently when his eyes encountered those of the owner of the sinister and painful look. This look was owned by a small dog who was coming down the street in their direction. He was one of those extremely busy and jaunty little dogs who make up in general information what they lack in size. It was plain to see that he fully intended to find out all about those two lions that had so strangely appeared in his village. It was equally plain to see that the lions strongly suspected the little dog’s intentions. They had no desire to be found out about. They were afraid of little dogs. They were afraid of all dogs. And of this little dog they were especially afraid. This was because of the ice cream sodas and all. Ice cream sodas are not the best things in the world to inhale into one’s system before facing an enemy. They have a dampening effect.
“He’s coming,” muttered Rudolph.
“Fast,” chattered Albert.
“He’s coming fast,” said Rudolph.
“Too fast,” whispered Albert.
“Let’s go just as fast,” suggested his brother.
“No,” said Albert, “let’s go faster.”
Together the Twins backed into the fish and meat store. Now it is never a reassuring sight to see a lion approaching you head first. It is even less reassuring to see a lion approaching you tail first. The sight makes you feel that perhaps the lion has gone mad, and a mad lion, of course, is even less dependable, even less enjoyable, than a lion in full possession of his faculties. And when you take another lion and add him to the first lion and both of them come at you with their tails where their heads ought to be, then everything becomes quite confusing and very disagreeable. So thought the people in the fish and meat store when they saw Albert and Rudy backing into them. The people let out a terrible whoop and got busy. There was a big icebox such as you see in butcher stores. Many of the people went into that and tried to hide themselves behind legs of lamb and sides of beef and pork chops and strings of sausages and all sorts of perfectly good but hardly fascinating parts of various unfortunate animals.
At the sound of the whoop Albert and Rudy turned quickly with pained expressions on their faces. As luck would have it, Albert’s tail hung alluringly over a large, vicious-looking lobster. The lobster looked at the tail and the tail tempted the lobster. It is a well-known fact that lobsters have very little self-control. This lobster had none at all. To see the tail was to want the tail, and to want the tail was to take it. This the lobster did. He opened one of his claws just as wide as it would open, then closed it with a sickening click on poor Albert’s innocent tail. It was not as if poor Albert did not have enough to think about already, what with the dog and the people and the noise and everything. The lobster was more than he could bear. With a roar of pain he turned and looked at his tail with horrified eyes.
“I’m choking,” he gasped to his brother. “Can’t you do something, Rudy?”
But Rudy either could not or would not do a thing. He was far too distressed himself. Together, but not alone this time because the lobster was very much with them, they rushed out of the store. As they did so they stepped all over the little dog, who no longer seemed important to them when they thought of the lobster, a thought they were thinking all the time. Especially Albert. As his tail swung from side to side the lobster became a little dizzy. To steady himself he reached out and clamped down on Rudolph’s tail with his other claw. Although this may have helped the lobster a little, it did not help the lions at all. It merely added to their troubles. Also it made them run faster. As they sped through the village they looked exactly like two lions being driven by one lobster. And that is about the way it was.
