Part 5

Now, the truth was, Johnny had for some time been wishing he had a bicycle, although he had not as much as hinted this desire to his father or mother; since he belonged to a society of boys and girls who called themselves "Independents," because they had pledged themselves not to spend any money for amusement, etc., which they had not earned themselves. Johnny wore the badge of the society, and had taken great pleasure in earning the not very large amount of money he needed for his chemicals and other trifling expenses, by carrying papers, and doing various other little odd jobs which came in his way. Indeed, he had got to be the great errand-boy of the neighborhood, because it had come to be understood that he was willing to make himself useful for a very reasonable remuneration. His father and mother had not discouraged this endeavor, because Johnny was inclined to read and study too much, and any thing which would divert his mind out of doors in healthful exercise was beneficial to him. But as for earning enough to buy a bicycle, of course that was beyond Johnny's present abilities as an Independent.

"Would you be willing that I should try it?" replied Johnny.

"Why, of course! You may hurt yourself, but you can't hurt the bicycle; and if you did, I could have it mended or get another before my ankle gets well."

"You must ask mother, Johnny," said Sue, who began to look rather sober over the possibility of Johnny's getting hurt.

Mrs. Le Bras was just entering the room.

"May I try Felix's bicycle, mother?" asked Johnny, with a wistful look.

"Why, yes," she said, "if you can try it in a safe way: you will have to have some one hold it for you."

"I'll hold it, ma'am," said Kate, who was clearing off the table in the dining-room: "I'm very strong in my arms."

"The platform will be a grand good place to mount," said Felix. "You can step up on the railing, and get right on: you can't get on as I do, very well, until you get used to it."

"Come right out now, before I wash my dishes," said Kate.

"But you must promise, Johnny, that if think there is any danger, and ask you to get down, you will obey me at once," said Mrs. Le Bras: "I am almost sorry I said you could try, before your father came home."

They all went out on the platform; and Johnny brought the bicycle out of the shed, and leaned it up against the railing of the platform, near the steps on which Kate was standing. Kate came out, and held the wheel with a firm grip, while Johnny stepped on the railing, and got upon the seat.

"Now, Katie," said Johnny, "just help me wheel it out, where I can balance it."

Kate cautiously pulled the machine away from the platform; while Johnny placed his feet firmly on the pedals, and turned the wheel slowly at first, while Kate was holding it. "Let go now, Katie," he said.

"Shall I?" asked Kate doubtfully, looking at Mrs. Le Bras.

"No, no!" cried Sue: "he'll fall if you do, I know he will!"

"I am afraid so too," said Mrs. Le Bras. "We don't want two boys with sprained ankles, Johnny."

"But I think I can keep my balance," replied Johnny; "and of course I can't learn to ride while Katie is holding the wheel still."

"Oh, let go of it!" said Felix. "I don't believe he would fall; anyway, he can jump off: he'll only waver around a little, but he's got to do that before he learns."

"Move it over gently, Katie," said Mrs. Le Bras.

Kate tried to do this; but in moving her hands to turn the wheel, Johnny, who was working the pedals, eluded her, and sailed off into the garden. After he had gone a little way, the bicycle wavered to the left. Sue shrieked; Kate rushed forward with outstretched arms; and Mrs. Le Bras called out, "Jump off, Johnny!" But Johnny quickly recovered his balance, and went bravely on down the garden-walk.

"I knew he wasn't going to fall off," said Felix. "He's getting on all right."

Johnny experienced a slight difficulty in turning around the walk at the foot of the garden, but performed that feat without falling, and arrived safely at the platform amid hearty congratulations, and loud clapping of hands.

"I knew that boy could do any thing he undertook," said Kate admiringly; for she was very fond of Johnny.

"All that is necessary," said Johnny, "is to preserve the centre of gravity."

Johnny then took a more extensive tour, going around the house, and making another circuit of the yard.

"I guess I can try the street now," he said: "I might as well get really used to it while I am about it. I don't go very straight yet: but there are ever so many beginners who go on the street; I see them almost every day."

"Yes," replied Sue: "you go better than Walter Cross now, and he's been trying ever so long."

So they all went out to the front-door, to see how the novice would succeed there. The sequel was, that Johnny rode out of sight, and left them gazing into vacancy.

"If that boy don't beat all!" said Kate. "Law, ma'am, he'll be on the race-course before we know it."

"That is a good joke!" said Mrs. Le Bras, laughing: "our professor on the race-course! Aren't you afraid you have lost your bicycle, Felix?"

"No," replied Felix: "this is prime! for uncle will have to get Johnny a bicycle now, and then we can ride everywhere together, when my ankle gets well; for by that time he can ride capitally, I'll bet."

Johnny came back in about half an hour, quite flushed with success and exercise, and looking very animated.

"I surprised the boys I met," said he. "I met Alec and Fred walking together, and they said, 'Oh, you've got a bicycle too! Now you must go to ride with us.' They were a good deal disappointed when I said it wasn't my own."

"You've got to have one," said Felix: "I'm going to tell uncle Frank so this noon!"

"No," replied Johnny. "I can't buy one,--they cost too much: but perhaps I can hire one while you are here, sometimes; I know a boy who rents his for so much an hour, when he don't want to use it himself."

The bicycle was put away; and then Johnny, who had enjoyed his success and the ride very much, began to feel grateful to Felix for letting him take it, and for saying he could use it every day until his ankle got well. It no longer seemed such a heavy task to think up some amusement for his cousin. Mrs. Le Bras had sat down at the sitting-room window with her sewing. Johnny stole up to her, while Felix was whittling into the waste-basket, with his back turned that way, and whistling rather drearily. "Mother," said he, "I have a mind to ask Felix to come up and see the sky-room."

"Then," said his mother, in a whisper too low for Felix to notice it, "you must not blame any one if you are not able afterwards to have it to yourself."

"No; but I'll make a bargain with him about it."

"Do as you please, only don't get fretted over the consequences."

Felix was trying to cut out the deck of a boat.

"Where is your boat?" asked Johnny.

"I thought I'd make the deck first: I haven't got the right piece of wood for the boat. Have you any thick blocks of wood?"

"No, but I can get some. Richard Scott is a great friend of the man who has charge of the wood-working room at the brass-works, and the man gives him any odd pieces of wood he wants, and lets him use the machinery too: he could cut out your boat in a very short time, with a circular saw and other machines."

"I wish I could get him to do it, then: I'll pay him for it. What I like to do, is to rig a ship: I can't make the hull very well."

"If you will let me take your bicycle again, this afternoon, I will go down and see Dick about it."

"Of course you can have the bicycle whenever you want it, till my ankle gets well."

"You didn't know I had a room all to myself. I have a room where no one can come in unless I tell them they may: my father gave it to me to read and study in."

"What a dismal place it must be!--I guess I'll keep on with this deck, and then you can take it down and tell Dick I want the hull made of about that size."

"No, it isn't a dismal room at all: it is the pleasantest room in the house, I think."

"Oh! you'd think a room was pleasant if it just had some books and bottles in it, and an old mortar and pestle, and a lot of such trash."

"I was going to say that if you want to come in and see it some time, you can ask me, and I will unlock it for you. I shall be in there a good deal of the time, probably; so, if you miss me, you will know where I am, and can come up if you want to. Of course I will let you in, if I am not very busy indeed."

"So it's up-stairs, is it? Is it what you call 'the spare room'?"

"No: it's an unfinished part of the French roof."

"Ho! It's up in the attic, is it?"

"Yes."

"Well, I guess you won't find me troubling you much up in the attic this hot weather: you must like to read, to go up there to do it! When you get a room down-cellar, let me know, and perhaps I'll pay you a visit once in a while."

So it did not seem very likely that Johnny's generous disclosure would cost him very dear, at present at least. But how to get away from Felix was still a question; although sitting around, and seeing him whittle, and hearing him fret about his ankle, was not very delightful employment. He had proposed, too, that, as soon as he finished the deck, Johnny should assist him in writing an advertisement to have put in the paper, in case Clyde did not appear by the next day. Johnny finally took a book from the bookcase, and sat down to read.

"Bother your book!" said Felix. "Why don't you talk?"

"I don't see as there is any thing in particular to say."

"Who wants you to say any thing in particular? There! I've got that old deck done, I hope! What's your old book about?"

"It's about those boys and their one-acre farm."

"Haven't you read that about a thousand times before?"

"I have read it twice."

"And I don't believe it's fit to read half a time."

"If you want me to, I'll read a little of the first chapter aloud, so that you can see how you like it."

"Fire away, then! Only stop when I tell you to, for I know I can't stand much of it."

Johnny began to read, in a clear, expressive tone, while Felix picked up one of the pine sticks he had laid on the floor, and began to whittle a mast. Pretty soon the shavings began to fall almost anywhere except into the basket; and Sue, who was playing with her dolls in the corner, said, "Look out, Felix! your shavings are falling over everywhere."

"Bother the shavings!" replied Felix, seeming to notice them for the first time, and getting down to pick them up. "I don't believe they ever spaded over a whole acre of ground in any such time as that. Just read that over.--Oh! I thought you said in one hour. I mean to have father let me have an acre of ground by the cottage next season, and go down early, and see what I can do with it."

"But you have all the money you want without earning it," said Sue.

"That's so,--I forgot that; but I just wish my father was a poor man. I'll bet I could do as well as either of those boys. Go on now: let's see what they did next."

The morning had advanced considerably, and yet Felix had not asked Johnny to stop; although the masts were finished, and the shipbuilder was lying on the floor with his head on a hassock, for lack of any further employment. Johnny's throat ached with reading so long, and at last he felt obliged to say,--

"My throat is getting tired: let's put the book up now, until some other time."

"No: go on a little farther; just finish up that chapter, so you'll know where you left off."

"Stop a few moments, and rest, Johnny, and then, if Felix wants you to, you can finish the chapter," suggested Mrs. Le Bras, giving a significant glance towards Felix, which was intended for Johnny's benefit. Johnny looked, and saw that Felix's eyes were closed. Johnny put down the book, and in a few moments it was evident his audience was sound asleep. Johnny immediately rose softly, and left the room: he went into the back entry, and then ran up-stairs with light bounds to the sky-room. He opened all the windows; and the breeze, which was scarcely perceptible below, began to blow in very freshly. Johnny got one of his philosophies, and sat down by one of the front windows to read. He did not lock the door, since Felix had expressed himself as disinclined to pay him any calls. There was no danger of visits from any other source, for Sue understood that Johnny was not to be disturbed without permission. After reading in that book a while, he took down another, still leaving the first open upon the table. After consulting the second book, he took down the dictionary, and consulted that. While he was still in the midst of his researches, he was startled by a loud voice behind him.

"Well! I say! This isn't so bad, is it? Let's call this aboard ship, with the sky for sea; 'cause you can't see any land up here, except off at a distance as you do on the water. But I'd like to know if this is how you lock yourself in?"

"I didn't think of any one's coming up," replied Johnny, looking blankly at the open door. "But that's all right," he added, smiling. "I'm not very busy now: I've got about through with my studying."

"What are you studying?"

"I am studying about heat and light."

"What can you learn about those things, I'd like to know? When it's light, it's light; and when it's hot, it's hot; and when it isn't either of them, it's dark and cold."

"If folks didn't know any more about heat and light than that, you would have to go without a good many things you have now; for instance, there wouldn't be any machine-shops and railroads, and you couldn't have your picture taken."

"Why not?" said Felix.

"I can't tell you very well to begin with, any more than you could learn the back part of the arithmetic before you had studied fractions. But here is a magnifying-glass: we'll use it for a sun-glass."

As Johnny spoke, he placed a piece of white paper on the window-sill where there was a patch of sunshine, and, taking a magnifying-glass from the stand, held it above the paper in such a manner as to bring the rays to a focus.

"That is a regular sun-glass," said Felix: "I have had one many a time. It will burn the paper in a minute."

"It is something like a sun-glass," replied Johnny, "because it is a double convex lens."

"What do you mean by a double convex lens?"

"I'll show you in a moment."

Just then the paper began to burn, and Johnny removed the glass.

"Why didn't you let it go on burning?" said Felix.

"Because, you see, it was blackening the paint on the sill, and might have burned into the wood if I had kept the glass there. Now, what made the paper burn?"

"Why, you held the glass so that it made a focus, and that made the paper burn."

"But why was there what you call a focus? and why did that make the paper burn?"

"I never thought any thing about that," replied Felix, looking a little confused. "Do you know the reason?"

"Oh, yes! I knew that the first time I ever saw a sun-glass: my father told me. Just look at the shape of the glass on both sides; it's convex, you see; that is, it rounds out toward the centre. The rounding of the glass causes the rays of light to strike it obliquely everywhere except in the very centre; and when a ray enters a transparent surface obliquely, or comes out of it obliquely, it is bent out of its course in a particular manner,--it would take too long to tell you exactly in what manner, although I can lend you a book that will show you exactly,--and in passing through this convex lens, the rays are all bent towards a point at a little distance from the glass, and exactly opposite the centre of it; so that, if you hold any thing that will burn easily exactly at that point where the rays all join together, their united heat is sufficient to burn the article. I know exactly why each side is made convex, and why the glass is so much thicker in the middle; but it would take a long time to explain it to you, although you could read about it all in fifteen minutes in one of those volumes of 'Science for the Young,' there on the shelf. Any time you want to look it up, I will show you the place."

"No: I don't want to be bothered with reading it. I guess what you've told me will do."

Johnny then held the glass over the paper again.

"The focus is the gathering together, or concentration, of the rays of light; and as every ray of the sun has heat in it, the concentration of the heat of all the rays at that point makes the paper burn."

"Then, the larger the glass,"--

"The convex lens, you mean," said Johnny.

"Yes: the larger the lens, the more rays of the sun would be brought together at the focus, and the more heat there would be?"

"Of course."

"Then, if I had a real big convex lens in my room, in front of the window, I could sit in the focus of it, in the winter, and keep warm without any fire."

"You could keep too warm, perhaps; for you know a sun-glass will burn your hand: but even if the focus would be just right on a winter day, the light would be too bright for your eyes; and sometimes the sun wouldn't shine in at your window, and you would get very tired of sitting in one place. Besides, a convex lens of that size would cost a great deal more than a very nice stove and ever so much coal. So I guess convex lenses will never take the place of wood and coal, which are the best provisions the sun has made for warming people, that we know of yet, when it is not nearly enough over their heads to warm them itself, or when its rays are shut out by bad weather."

"I don't see what the sun has to do with wood and coal," replied Felix, sitting down by the table, and holding the magnifying-glass over Johnny's books and various other objects on the table.

"Why, the sun has stored up a lot of its heat in wood and coal, and all those things which we call combustibles."

"Come, now! none of your fooling," said Felix, staring at Johnny incredibly: "there isn't one bit of heat in wood or coal till you burn them."

Johnny began to laugh.

"Why, of course they are not hot until they begin to burn; if they were, you couldn't say that the heat was stored up; it would be escaping all the time: and then, wouldn't it be dreadful to have the trees hot instead of making a nice cool shade? and how could the miners get the coal if it were hot? and how could we carry fuel about from place to place? and we should have to be made like salamanders, if every thing around us that the sun had put heat into was hot: we couldn't sit at this table, or in these chairs, or handle these books; and the floor would burn our feet, and our clothes would feel hot."

"My clothes do feel hot," said Felix, beginning to laugh, also, at Johnny's vivid picture of what would be if the sun had not locked its stored heat up so coolly and comfortably for our use.

"It isn't your clothes that are hot, though, unless your body has heated them, or you have been sitting or standing in the sun; it is you who are warm, and your clothes keep the heat that comes from your body from passing freely into the air: your clothes themselves are not any hotter than they would be if they were in an ice-chest; that is, I mean the heat that the sun has stored in your clothes would be every particle there if your clothes were kept next to ice."

"I'd like to know, now, how you make all that nonsense out?"

"Heat is force: in one sense, the heat of the sun is the force of the sun. Now, when things are growing, the force of the sun goes into them in some way, and makes them take carbon out of the air, and hydrogen out of the water in the ground, and from the rain and dew: and just exactly as much heat or force as the sun has put into a tree or plant, or any thing else, can be got out of it by causing it to burn; that is, making the carbon and hydrogen contained in it, unite with the oxygen in the air.

"I don't wonder the boys call you professor," said Felix: "I'd like to know how you ever got to know so much about every thing. What you say is a great deal harder to believe than fairy-stories: I guess I'll go to believing fairy-stories."

Johnny laughed again.

"Because some very strange things are true, that is no reason every thing strange should be true, or why some things should be true that wouldn't be so very strange. Do you like fairy-stories?"

"Yes, I like them as well as any thing: I've never read many stories but fairy-tales. Story-books are all lies; and if I'm going to read lies, I'd rather read some good big ones."

"I don't think story-books are all lies. I don't think that story about the boys and their farm is all a lie."

"Do you suppose there were two just such boys, and that they had just such a farm, and did just as those boys did?"

"No: I think very likely that was not all true, and I don't much care whether it was or not: but I know there might be two such boys, and that they might do just as is described; and that makes the story interesting, and a good deal more so than a story might be about two other boys with every thing told exactly as it was and happened. But I don't like fairy-stories, because they couldn't be true, and so are not like any thing I am interested in. If there ever was a fairy, I should like very much to hear one described, even although this particular fairy was only a made-up one. I should say, 'I have learned how a fairy might look and act, which is a good deal as real fairies do look and act.'"

"I like a good fairy-story, anyhow: only I don't see why the fairies can't be men instead of women; men-fairies could do a great deal more wonderful things than women-fairies."

Johnny thought to himself that Felix was much too large a boy to care for fairy-stories, and to know nothing about books of a more mature description; for Felix was nearly fourteen,--a year older than Johnny, and also taller and broader.

"Suppose you tell us how it is that this glass magnifies these letters so much," said Felix, after a little pause.

At that instant Sue entered the room, saying,--

"Why! you let Felix in the very first time he came up, didn't you? That's funny enough! But dinner is ready, and papa has come, and Katie is going to ring the bell before we come down, if we don't hurry; and you know papa don't like to have us late."

"I'll explain about the magnifying some other time, then, Felix," said Johnny; and they all went down-stairs. Johnny forgot to lock his door when he went out. And when they reached the next floor, Sue reminded him of it.

"Never mind," replied Johnny: "I guess there won't any one go up before I do."

As soon as they entered the dining-room, Felix said to his uncle, who was just sitting down at his place,--

"Uncle Frank, Johnny's got to have a bicycle right off: he's been riding mine around finely this morning, and he likes it ever so much."

"Ah!" replied Mr. Le Bras. "Is that so, Johnny?"

"Part of it is so; it's so that I rode on Felix's bicycle, and that I like it: but I haven't got to have one right off, because, in the first place, I don't suppose you would feel rich enough to buy me one; and in the next place, I couldn't have one if you did; because I am an Independent, and it would be spending money for amusement which I did not earn."

"But it would not be your spending it, if I made you a present of a bicycle; it would be my spending money for my amusement or pleasure or some other reason: I am not an Independent, and even if I were, I have earned my own money."

This was such an entirely different aspect of the case, that Johnny was quite surprised.

"Why, I didn't think of that," he said.

"You see, lawyers can look at matters from a good many aspects," remarked Mrs. Le Bras, who had been inclined to think, as Johnny did, that so expensive and unnecessary an article as a bicycle would interfere with his being an Independent.