FullReads

“What’s the trouble there, Archie?” Jake asked. He was somewhere in the loft of the barn.

“It’s my Elephant!” Archie answered, trying to keep from crying. “My nice, Stuffed Christmas Elephant. He’s hanging on a rope!”

“On a rope!” exclaimed Jake. “Do you mean this wheel rope that I use to hoist up bags of oats to the bin here? Is it that rope?”

“I don’t know–but it’s some rope!” Archie answered. “Can’t you save my Elephant?”

“Of course I can!” called Jake. “Don’t worry! Your Elephant isn’t alive–choking with a rope can’t hurt him!”

“Yes, it can, too!” insisted Archie. “It can choke all the stuffing out of him and make him flat like a pancake.”

“Well, yes, that might happen,” admitted Jake. “But I didn’t know any of your toys were tangled in the hoisting rope, or I would not have pulled it. Wait a minute, now, and I’ll turn the wheel the other way and let your Elephant down to you.”

Slowly the big wheel turned in the other direction, and the end of the rope that was about the Elephant’s neck dropped toward the barn floor. The Elephant, also, began slowly to come down.

“Thank goodness!” said the toy to himself. “I could not have stood being hanged much longer. I’m glad it’s over!”

And it was over a moment later when Archie could reach up, take the loop of rope from around his plaything’s neck and set the Elephant down on the barn floor.

“How did it happen?” asked Jake. He came down out of the loft, or place where he stored the bags of oats. The oats were hauled to the lower floor of the barn. There a rope was put about each bag and it was lifted to the upper floor where it was stored in a bin. The lifting rope went around a big wheel, acting like a dumbwaiter in some houses.

Jake had turned the wheel by pulling on a second rope upstairs in the barn, and as the wheel turned it wound up the longer rope. It was the end of this rope that had looped itself about the Elephant.

“How did it happen?” asked Jake again.

“I don’t know,” Archie replied. “I left my Elephant here when I went to slide down the hay. When I came back he was on the rope.”

“Some of you children must have left the Elephant too near the end of the rope,” said Jake. “When I wound it up the Elephant became tangled in a loop, and of course he was lifted up.”

“Nope! We didn’t any of us leave the Elephant near the rope; did we?” asked Archie of his little friends.

“Nope!” they all answered.

“Well, that’s queer,” said Jake. “That Elephant never got on the rope by himself, I’m sure.”

But that is just what the Elephant did, as we know.

“Anyhow I’m glad he’s all right now,” said Archie, as he looked carefully at his new toy. “None of the stuffing came out.”

But it might have, if the Elephant had been left hanging much longer on the rope.

Finding that everything was all right and that none of the children was in danger, Jake went back to the oat bin. There was a long chute, or slide, from the upper bin to a box on the first floor of the barn. And the oats came rushing down this slide when a door in the top bin was opened. This door could be opened by pulling a rope near the horse stalls, and sometimes Archie was allowed to pull the rope, open the door of the large grain bin, and let the oats slide down the chute to the smaller bin on the lower floor.

But this day Jake was putting a new supply of oats in the upper bin, and Archie was not allowed to play near it. The little boy and his friends soon began having more fun with their Christmas toys, giving the Clown and smaller dolls rides on the back of the Stuffed Elephant.