CHAPTER X

THE TIPTOE BROTHERS AND THE SLIDE RAFT

Gran’ma and Gran’pa saw the Tiptoe Brothers throw their arms around each other’s necks in their joy at meeting, but they walked in a wide circle around the spot where Jingles the Magician was dancing in his efforts to free himself from the wire.

“I should have been sooner,” said the Dancing Master to Gran’pa and Gran’ma, “but just as I started to leave the Cottage-Cave I saw a Flying Boat coming across the country, and I knew from your story that the wicked Jingles must be in it.”

“What did he do?” asked the children.

“He left his Flying Boat out in front of the Cottage-Cave and came inside, and while he was snooping around I slipped out the back way, went round the Cottage-Cave, and touched a match to his Flying Boat! He will have to walk from now on!” And the Dancing Master did a graceful little dance step and snapped his fingers.

“Oh dear!” Gran’ma cried as she sat down hard upon the grass.

“Whatever is the matter?” the Tiptoe Brothers cried, as Gran’pa helped Gran’ma to her feet.

“It was our Flying Boat!” replied Gran’pa quietly, “and the only way we had of ever getting back home to the Earth!”

The Dancing Master was crestfallen. “I am always putting my foot into it!” he exclaimed.

“Please do not worry,” said Gran’ma, seeing how sorry the Dancing Master felt. “You did just what you thought was best!”

“Indeed I did!” answered the Dancing Master. “But that does not bring back the Flying Boat.”

“What do you intend doing with the wicked Magician?” asked Gran’pa.

“Nothing!” replied the Chief of Detectives. “He is very well off where he is, and he will never be able to do any mischief as long as he holds on to the wire, or,” he added with a sly wink at the Soft-Voiced Cow, “until the wire lets go of him!”

“I feel sorry for him!” said Janey.

“Well you need not, Sis!” Johnny cried. “Look at me and you will see about how you look! And it is all the wicked Jingles’ fault!”

“Why, what in the world is the matter?” asked the Dancing Master, noticing for the first time that Janey and Johnny had grown so much taller.

“We caught hold of the wire!” replied Johnny.

“And it made you grow so much taller?” cried the Dancing Master in astonishment.

“Have they grown taller?” asked the Chief of Detectives.

“Certainly!” the Dancing Master answered. “They were only children and were no taller than myself when they left me three hours ago!”

Without saying a word, the Chief of Detectives motioned to the children and the others to follow him, and going to the counter he took a small case from under the counter, and from it a tiny bellows.

He then blew a puff of powder over the children and in a short time they had resumed their normal size.

Then, putting the case in his pocket, the Chief of Detectives said it would be best for them to try and reach the City of Nite as soon as possible.

“We shall have the old Witch to contend with when we reach there,” he reminded the others, “and perhaps even now the Princess is under the power of the wicked creature!”

“Let us hasten!” cried Gran’pa.

The road now led down the mountain side. A short distance from the Chief of Detectives’ hut it wound through a deep forest, which made the traveling cool and comfortable.

At last they came to a section of the forest where all the trees were of pine. Here there was a thick carpet of pine needles that had dropped from the boughs for years.

They were smooth, soft and slippery.

“Let’s get a board and slide down the mountain on the pine needles!” said Gran’pa, noticing that there was a clear space beneath the trees, which slanted straight down the mountain side.

“There are no boards about!” said Gran’ma.

“I’ll run back to the hut up the mountain and get some!” the Chief of Detectives volunteered, and away he started.

“Wait there for me!” he called as he disappeared up the path.

The party sat down to wait the return of the Chief of Detectives.

“It was funny the electric wire did not affect the Soft-Voiced Cow!” mused Johnny. “It surely made Janey and me grow like weeds!”

“I’ll ask my brother about it when he returns!” replied the Dancing Master.

It was not long before they heard the Chief of Detectives singing a yodel song, and soon he came into view over the rocks, carrying a pile of boards, a hammer, some nails and a long piece of rope.

As Gran’pa was an expert carpenter he offered to fix the sliding boards.

“Let’s build one big sled!” he suggested, “and then we can all be together.”

“A good idea!” agreed the Tiptoe Brothers.

So Gran’pa hammered the boards together and tied them in such a manner that soon he had a fine looking Slide Raft.

“We should have a rudder to guide it with,” Gran’pa said as he stood and studied his work, “for who knows but that the mountain may take a few sudden turns farther down!”

So Gran’pa with his jack knife sawed away at a small tree until he had cut it down, and with the help of the rope and some small pieces of boards he made a rudder.

They all sat down on the Slide Raft, and with everybody pushing and shoving the Slide Raft started down the mountain side, gaining momentum as it went over the slippery needles.

The Soft-Voiced Cow sat in the center of the Slide Raft and the others about her. Gran’pa stood at the rudder to guide the Slide Raft should they come to a sudden turn.

It was well that Gran’pa had thought of the rudder, for when they had slid down the mountain for about a mile, and the Slide Raft was speeding along at a terrific pace, they came to where the open space beneath the trees turned sharply to the right.

Gran’pa swung the rudder round as hard as he could and turned the Slide Raft just in time to escape the trees at the side.

Down, down, the Slide Raft sped, until it was going so fast that its occupants could not talk. The wind whistled past them like a gale, and if it had not been for the weight of the Soft-Voiced Cow they would have been swept from the Slide Raft by the force of the wind.

Just as they were nearing the bottom of the mountain the ground took a dip. Down this the frail Slide Raft shot suddenly, and up the other side.

Gran’ma and Janey screamed as the Slide Raft left the ground at the top of the little mound and plunged straight down for a hundred feet or more.

As good fortune had it, the path of the Slide Raft seemed to have been made for just such tobogganing. At the bottom of the fearful drop the ground fell away in a graceful curve, so, after hitting the ground at the bottom of the mountain, the Slide Raft went about five hundred feet out across a small pond at the edge of the pine forest, skipping across the water like a skipper rock thrown by a boy, and came to rest a short distance from the opposite bank.

As the Slide Raft stopped, the Soft-Voiced Cow fell over on her side and closed her eyes.

Gran’pa jumped from the raft and pulled it into shore, while the Tiptoe Brothers filled their hats with water which they dashed over the head of the Soft-Voiced Cow.

“She has fainted!” Gran’ma said.

“Let’s get her ashore!” Johnny cried. “Everybody take hold!”

It took a lot of pulling and tugging, but finally they got the Soft-Voiced Cow up the bank and pulled grass for a pillow.

“I wish I had my smelling salts!” cried Gran’ma.

The water did not seem to help the Soft-Voiced Cow, and she rolled her eyes in an alarming manner.

“She may start kicking any minute!” Gran’pa warned. “Don’t get too close to her heels! I had a cow that acted the same way once!”

Sure enough, the Soft-Voiced Cow did begin kicking, and as they drew away from her she turned her head towards Gran’ma with a pathetic look in her eyes.

“I’m going to hold her head!” cried Gran’ma, forgetting in her anxiety that her friend was only a Cow.

Gran’ma’s soft hand smoothed the Soft-Voiced Cow’s forehead, and the Cow, seeming to feel Gran’ma’s affection, placed one of her front feet on Gran’ma’s lap. Gran’ma sat holding the Cow’s foot and smoothing her brow, meanwhile talking to her in a gentle, soothing manner.

The others, who stood by watching, had to brush the tears from their eyes.

“Why not puff your magic powder on her?” Janey cried to the Chief of Detectives.

“It will only cure magic!” cried that good little man as he took the tiny bellows from his pocket.

Johnny jumped forward and blew a generous puff upon the Soft-Voiced Cow’s head.

The Soft-Voiced Cow seemed to shrink in size and turned a different color.

“Now, Mister! You _HAVE_ done it!” Janey cried as she stamped her foot at Johnny.

Johnny stood as if frozen, watching the Soft-Voiced Cow.

“She’s got a HAND!” Gran’ma cried excitedly. “Two of them!”

As the others drew closer they saw that their friend, the Soft-Voiced Cow, was turning into a woman.

The Tiptoe Brothers uttered glad cries, and the Dancing Master threw his arms about the woman.

“My wife!” he cried as he kissed her.

“It’s Jenny!” cried the Chief of Detectives, turning a radiant face to Gran’pa.

“There! You see?” Johnny said, as he and Janey turned their backs on the reunited pair. “If the magic wire could not make the Soft-Voiced Cow grow taller it was because she already had been magicked. So I remembered that the powder cured magic, and there you are!

“Johnny, you’re a dear!” Janey answered, as she gave him a great hug. “You always know just what to do, all the time!”

“Ah, shucks!” Johnny replied. “I did it without much thinking!”

“Well, you did it, anyway!” his sister insisted. “To think she was a lady all this time and we did not know it!”

“She was a very ladylike Cow, at least!” said Johnny.

Mr. and Mrs. Tiptoe came up to Johnny and Janey and thanked them for what they had done.

“It was Johnny!” said Janey, generously, as the pretty lady kissed her.

“It was Janey who suggested it!” said Johnny as he bashfully received Mrs. Tiptoe’s reward.

The happy little Dancing Master told his wife all that had happened since the Princess and she had disappeared, and that now the Princess was safe at home.

“At least, I hope she is,” he added. “She left us and flew off for the City of Nite in the Magic Umbrella. Now tell us of your strange adventure!”

“There is not much to tell,” Mrs. Tiptoe said, as the happy party walked over the fields. “When you left me in the rooms of the Witch she was hiding behind a door all the time, and just as you left she pushed me into the Magic Umbrella and jumped in with me. We flew out of the window.

“As you now know, it does not take the Magic Umbrella long to get where you wish it to go, or at least it did not take us long to get to where it settled to the ground. I could scarcely stand when we got there. The wicked creature struck me with her cane and said a strange rhyme, and I did not know a thing until I awakened with my head in Gran’ma’s lap.”

“How does it come that you are here, too?” she asked of the Chief of Detectives.

“I started to tell Gran’ma and Gran’pa up on the mountain a while ago,” he replied, “but I got off the subject. Now I will tell the story, strange as it may seem.”

“Here comes the Magic Umbrella!” cried Gran’ma, as she pointed to a speck in the air.

“It’s the Princess!” cried the Detective. “No, it isn’t, either,” he added as the Magic Umbrella drew closer.

It proved to be the General of the Guard, and when he had embraced the Tiptoe Brothers and Mrs. Tiptoe he was introduced to the rest of the party.

“The Princess is quite safe!” he exclaimed, as all started to ask after her, “and she has sent me to try and find you and bring you to the Castle.”