“No,” said Phonny.  “It is not foolish.  It is very useful for me to learn to climb.”  So saying he went on scrambling up the railing of the bannisters as before.

Just then Beechnut came along through the yard, towards the house.  He was coming for the whip.

“Beechnut,” said Malleville, “I wish that you would speak to Phonny.”

“Is it foolish for me to learn to climb?” asked Phonny.  In order to see Beechnut while he asked this question, Phonny had to twist his head round in a very unusual position, and look out under his arm.  It was obvious that in doing this he was in imminent danger of falling, so unstable was the equilibrium in which he was poised upon the rail.

“Is not he foolish?” asked Malleville.

Beechnut looked at him a moment, and then said, as he resumed his walk through the entry,

“Not very;—­that is for a boy.  I have known boys sometimes to do foolisher things than that.”

“What did they do?” asked Phonny.

“Why once,” said Beechnut, “I knew a boy who put his nose into the crack of the door, and then took hold of the latch and pulled the door to, and pinched his nose to death.  That was a little more foolish, though not much.”

So saying Beechnut passed through the door and disappeared.

Phonny was seized with so violent a convulsion of laughter at the idea of such absurd folly as Beechnut had described, that he tumbled off the bannisters, but fortunately he fell in, towards the stairs, and was very little hurt.  He came down the stairs to Malleville, and as Beechnut returned in a few minutes with the whip, they all went out towards the barn together.

Beechnut had already put the bags of grain into the wagon behind, and now he assisted Phonny and Malleville to get in.  He gave them the whole of the seat, in order that they might have plenty of room, and also that they might be high up, where they could see.  He had a small bench which was made to fit in, in front, and which he was accustomed to use for himself, as a sort of driver’s seat, whenever the wagon was full.  He placed this bench in its place in front, and taking his seat upon it, he drove away.

When the party had thus fairly set out, and Phonny and Malleville had in some measure finished uttering the multitude of exclamations of delight with which they usually commenced a ride, they began to wish that Beechnut would tell them a story.  Now Beechnut was a boy of boundless fertility of imagination, and he was almost always ready to tell a story.  His stories were usually invented on the spot, and were often extremely wild and extravagant, both in the incidents involved in them, and in the personages whom he introduced as actors.  The extravagance of these tales was however usually no objection to them in Phonny’s and Malleville’s estimation.  In fact Beechnut observed that the more extravagant his stories were, the better pleased his auditors generally appeared to be in listening to them.  He therefore did not spare invention, or restrict himself by any rules either of truth or probability in his narratives.  Nor did he usually require any time for preparation, but commenced at once with whatever came into his head, pronouncing the first sentence of his story, very often without any idea of what he was to say next.