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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Dragons, by Edith Nesbit
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Book of Dragons
+
+Author: Edith Nesbit
+
+Illustrator: H. R.  Millar
+             H. Granville Fell
+
+Release Date: November 29, 2007 [EBook #23661]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF DRAGONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE BOOK OF DRAGONS]
+
+
+The Book of DRAGONS
+
+E. Nesbit
+
+        With illustrations by
+        H. R. Millar
+
+        Decorations by
+        H. Granville Fell
+
+        DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
+        Mineola, New York
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+                                                           PAGE
+
+      I. The Book of Beasts                                   1
+
+     II. Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger                 19
+
+    III. The Deliverers of Their Country                     39
+
+     IV. The Ice Dragon, or Do as You Are Told               57
+
+      V. The Island of the Nine Whirlpools                   79
+
+     VI. The Dragon Tamers                                   99
+
+    VII. The Fiery Dragon, or The Heart of Stone
+         and the Heart of Gold                              119
+
+   VIII. Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the
+         Cockatrice                                         139
+
+
+
+
+List of Illustrations
+
+   The Book of Dragons                           _frontispiece_
+
+   The Book of Beasts                                    PAGE 1
+
+   "The dragon flew away across the garden."             PAGE 9
+
+   "The Manticora took refuge in the General Post
+       Office."                                         PAGE 14
+
+   Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger                  PAGE 19
+
+   "By-and-by he began to wander."                      PAGE 30
+
+   "The dragon ran after her."                          PAGE 36
+
+   The Deliverers of Their Country                      PAGE 39
+
+   "The largest elephant in the zoo was carried off."   PAGE 44
+
+   "He rose into the air, rattling like a third-class
+       carriage."                                       PAGE 51
+
+   The Ice Dragon, or Do as You Are Told                PAGE 57
+
+   "Sure enough, it was a dragon."                      PAGE 69
+
+   "The dwarfs seized the children."                    PAGE 73
+
+   The Island of the Nine Whirlpools                    PAGE 79
+
+   "The lone tower on the Island of the Nine
+       Whirlpools."                                     PAGE 89
+
+   "Little children play around him and over him."      PAGE 97
+
+   The Dragon Tamers                                    PAGE 99
+
+   "The dragon's purring pleased the baby."             PAGE 107
+
+   "He brought something in his mouth--it was a bag of
+       gold."                                           PAGE 117
+
+   The Fiery Dragon, or The Heart of Stone and the
+       Heart of Gold                                    PAGE 119
+
+   "The junior secretary cried out, 'Look at the
+       bottle!'"                                        PAGE 130
+
+   "They saw a cloud of steam."                         PAGE 136
+
+   Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the
+       Cockatrice                                       PAGE 139
+
+   "Creeping across the plain."                         PAGE 148
+
+   "That smells good, eh?"                              PAGE 153
+
+
+                      _To Rosamund,
+        chief among those for whom these tales are told,
+              The Book of Dragons is dedicated
+                  in the confident hope
+        that she, one of these days, will dedicate a book
+                  of her very own making
+                  to the one who now bids
+                  eight dreadful dragons
+                 crouch in all humbleness
+             at those little brown feet._
+
+
+
+
+The Book of DRAGONS
+
+[Illustration: THE BOOK OF BEASTS]
+
+
+
+
+I. The Book of Beasts
+
+
+He happened to be building a Palace when the news came, and he left all
+the bricks kicking about the floor for Nurse to clear up--but then the
+news was rather remarkable news. You see, there was a knock at the front
+door and voices talking downstairs, and Lionel thought it was the man
+come to see about the gas, which had not been allowed to be lighted
+since the day when Lionel made a swing by tying his skipping rope to the
+gas bracket.
+
+And then, quite suddenly, Nurse came in and said, "Master Lionel, dear,
+they've come to fetch you to go and be King."
+
+Then she made haste to change his smock and to wash his face and hands
+and brush his hair, and all the time she was doing it Lionel kept
+wriggling and fidgeting and saying, "Oh, don't, Nurse," and, "I'm sure
+my ears are quite clean," or, "Never mind my hair, it's all right," and,
+"That'll do."
+
+"You're going on as if you was going to be an eel instead of a King,"
+said Nurse.
+
+The minute Nurse let go for a moment Lionel bolted off without waiting
+for his clean handkerchief, and in the drawing room there were two very
+grave-looking gentlemen in red robes with fur, and gold coronets with
+velvet sticking up out of the middle like the cream in the very
+expensive jam tarts.
+
+They bowed low to Lionel, and the gravest one said: "Sire, your
+great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, the King of this country, is
+dead, and now you have got to come and be King."
+
+"Yes, please, sir," said Lionel, "when does it begin?"
+
+"You will be crowned this afternoon," said the grave gentleman who was
+not quite so grave-looking as the other.
+
+"Would you like me to bring Nurse, or what time would you like me to be
+fetched, and hadn't I better put on my velvet suit with the lace
+collar?" said Lionel, who had often been out to tea.
+
+"Your Nurse will be removed to the Palace later. No, never mind about
+changing your suit; the Royal robes will cover all that up."
+
+The grave gentlemen led the way to a coach with eight white horses,
+which was drawn up in front of the house where Lionel lived. It was No.
+7, on the left-hand side of the street as you go up.
+
+Lionel ran upstairs at the last minute, and he kissed Nurse and said:
+"Thank you for washing me. I wish I'd let you do the other ear.
+No--there's no time now. Give me the hanky. Good-bye, Nurse."
+
+"Good-bye, ducky," said Nurse. "Be a good little King now, and say
+'please' and 'thank you,' and remember to pass the cake to the little
+girls, and don't have more than two helps of anything."
+
+So off went Lionel to be made a King. He had never expected to be a King
+any more than you have, so it was all quite new to him--so new that he
+had never even thought of it. And as the coach went through the town he
+had to bite his tongue to be quite sure it was real, because if his
+tongue was real it showed he wasn't dreaming. Half an hour before he had
+been building with bricks in the nursery; and now--the streets were all
+fluttering with flags; every window was crowded with people waving
+handkerchiefs and scattering flowers; there were scarlet soldiers
+everywhere along the pavements, and all the bells of all the churches
+were ringing like mad, and like a great song to the music of their
+ringing he heard thousands of people shouting, "Long live Lionel! Long
+live our little King!"
+
+He was a little sorry at first that he had not put on his best clothes,
+but he soon forgot to think about that. If he had been a girl he would
+very likely have bothered about it the whole time.
+
+As they went along, the grave gentlemen, who were the Chancellor and the
+Prime Minister, explained the things which Lionel did not understand.
+
+"I thought we were a Republic," said Lionel. "I'm sure there hasn't been
+a King for some time."
+
+"Sire, your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather's death happened
+when my grandfather was a little boy," said the Prime Minister, "and
+since then your loyal people have been saving up to buy you a crown--so
+much a week, you know, according to people's means--sixpence a week from
+those who have first-rate pocket money, down to a halfpenny a week from
+those who haven't so much. You know it's the rule that the crown must be
+paid for by the people."
+
+"But hadn't my great-great-however-much-it-is-grandfather a crown?"
+
+"Yes, but he sent it to be tinned over, for fear of vanity, and he had
+had all the jewels taken out, and sold them to buy books. He was a
+strange man; a very good King he was, but he had his faults--he was fond
+of books. Almost with his last breath he sent the crown to be
+tinned--and he never lived to pay the tinsmith's bill."
+
+Here the Prime Minister wiped away a tear, and just then the carriage
+stopped and Lionel was taken out of the carriage to be crowned. Being
+crowned is much more tiring work than you would suppose, and by the time
+it was over, and Lionel had worn the Royal robes for an hour or two and
+had had his hand kissed by everybody whose business it was to do it, he
+was quite worn out, and was very glad to get into the Palace nursery.
+
+Nurse was there, and tea was ready: seedy cake and plummy cake, and jam
+and hot buttered toast, and the prettiest china with red and gold and
+blue flowers on it, and real tea, and as many cups of it as you liked.
+
+After tea Lionel said: "I think I should like a book. Will you get me
+one, Nurse?"
+
+"Bless the child," said Nurse. "You don't suppose you've lost the use of
+your legs with just being a King? Run along, do, and get your books
+yourself."
+
+So Lionel went down into the library. The Prime Minister and the
+Chancellor were there, and when Lionel came in they bowed very low, and
+were beginning to ask Lionel most politely what on earth he was coming
+bothering for now--when Lionel cried out: "Oh, what a worldful of books!
+Are they yours?"
+
+"They are yours, Your Majesty," answered the Chancellor. "They were the
+property of the late King, your great-great--"
+
+"Yes, I know," Lionel interrupted. "Well, I shall read them all. I love
+to read. I am so glad I learned to read."
+
+"If I might venture to advise Your Majesty," said the Prime Minister, "I
+should not read these books. Your great--"
+
+"Yes?" said Lionel, quickly.
+
+"He was a very good King--oh, yes, really a very superior King in his
+way, but he was a little--well, strange."
+
+"Mad?" asked Lionel, cheerfully.
+
+"No, no"--both the gentlemen were sincerely shocked. "Not mad; but if I
+may express it so, he was--er--too clever by half. And I should not like
+a little King of mine to have anything to do with his books."
+
+Lionel looked puzzled.
+
+"The fact is," the Chancellor went on, twisting his red beard in an
+agitated way, "your great--"
+
+"Go on," said Lionel.
+
+"--was called a wizard."
+
+"But he wasn't?"
+
+"Of course not--a most worthy King was your great--"
+
+"I see."
+
+"But I wouldn't touch his books."
+
+"Just this one," cried Lionel, laying his hands on the cover of a great
+brown book that lay on the study table. It had gold patterns on the
+brown leather, and gold clasps with turquoises and rubies in the twists
+of them, and gold corners, so that the leather should not wear out too
+quickly.
+
+"I must look at this one," Lionel said, for on the back in big letters
+he read: _The Book of Beasts_.
+
+The Chancellor said, "Don't be a silly little King."
+
+But Lionel had got the gold clasps undone, and he opened the first page,
+and there was a beautiful Butterfly all red, and brown, and yellow, and
+blue, so beautifully painted that it looked as if it were alive.
+
+"There," said Lionel, "Isn't that lovely? Why--"
+
+But as he spoke the beautiful Butterfly fluttered its many-colored wings
+on the yellow old page of the book, and flew up and out of the window.
+
+"Well!" said the Prime Minister, as soon as he could speak for the lump
+of wonder that had got into his throat and tried to choke him, "that's
+magic, that is."
+
+But before he had spoken, the King had turned the next page, and there
+was a shining bird complete and beautiful in every blue feather of him.
+Under him was written, "Blue Bird of Paradise," and while the King gazed
+enchanted at the charming picture the Blue Bird fluttered his wings on
+the yellow page and spread them and flew out of the book.
+
+Then the Prime Minister snatched the book away from the King and shut it
+up on the blank page where the bird had been, and put it on a very high
+shelf. And the Chancellor gave the King a good shaking, and said:
+"You're a naughty, disobedient little King!" and was very angry indeed.
+
+"I don't see that I've done any harm," said Lionel. He hated being
+shaken, as all boys do; he would much rather have been slapped.
+
+"No harm?" said the Chancellor. "Ah--but what do you know about it?
+That's the question. How do you know what might have been on the next
+page--a snake or a worm, or a centipede or a revolutionist, or
+something like that."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry if I've vexed you," said Lionel. "Come, let's kiss and
+be friends." So he kissed the Prime Minister, and they settled down for
+a nice quiet game of noughts and crosses while the Chancellor went to
+add up his accounts.
+
+But when Lionel was in bed he could not sleep for thinking of the book,
+and when the full moon was shining with all her might and light he got
+up and crept down to the library and climbed up and got _The Book of
+Beasts_.
+
+He took it outside to the terrace, where the moonlight was as bright as
+day, and he opened the book, and saw the empty pages with "Butterfly"
+and "Blue Bird of Paradise" underneath, and then he turned the next
+page. There was some sort of red thing sitting under a palm tree, and
+under it was written "Dragon." The Dragon did not move, and the King
+shut up the book rather quickly and went back to bed.
+
+But the next day he wanted another look, so he took the book out into
+the garden, and when he undid the clasps with the rubies and turquoises,
+the book opened all by itself at the picture with "Dragon" underneath,
+and the sun shone full on the page. And then, quite suddenly, a great
+Red Dragon came out of the book and spread vast scarlet wings and flew
+away across the garden to the far hills, and Lionel was left with the
+empty page before him, for the page was quite empty except for the green
+palm tree and the yellow desert, and the little streaks of red where the
+paintbrush had gone outside the pencil outline of the Red Dragon.
+
+And then Lionel felt that he had indeed done it. He had not been King
+twenty-four hours, and already he had let loose a Red Dragon to worry
+his faithful subjects' lives out. And they had been saving up so long to
+buy him a crown, and everything!
+
+Lionel began to cry.
+
+[Illustration: "The dragon flew away across the garden." _See page 8._]
+
+The Chancellor and the Prime Minister and the Nurse all came running
+to see what was the matter. And when they saw the book they understood,
+and the Chancellor said: "You naughty little King! Put him to bed,
+Nurse, and let him think over what he's done."
+
+"Perhaps, my Lord," said the Prime Minister, "we'd better first find out
+just exactly what he has done."
+
+Then Lionel, in floods of tears, said: "It's a Red Dragon, and it's gone
+flying away to the hills, and I am so sorry, and, oh, do forgive me!"
+
+But the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had other things to think of
+than forgiving Lionel. They hurried off to consult the police and see
+what could be done. Everyone did what they could. They sat on committees
+and stood on guard, and lay in wait for the Dragon, but he stayed up in
+the hills, and there was nothing more to be done. The faithful Nurse,
+meanwhile, did not neglect her duty. Perhaps she did more than anyone
+else, for she slapped the King and put him to bed without his tea, and
+when it got dark she would not give him a candle to read by.
+
+"You are a naughty little King," she said, "and nobody will love you."
+
+Next day the Dragon was still quiet, though the more poetic of Lionel's
+subjects could see the redness of the Dragon shining through the green
+trees quite plainly. So Lionel put on his crown and sat on his throne
+and said he wanted to make some laws.
+
+And I need hardly say that though the Prime Minister and the Chancellor
+and the Nurse might have the very poorest opinion of Lionel's private
+judgement, and might even slap him and send him to bed, the minute he
+got on his throne and set his crown on his head, he became
+infallible--which means that everything he said was right, and that he
+couldn't possibly make a mistake. So when he said: "There is to be a law
+forbidding people to open books in schools or elsewhere"--he had the
+support of at least half of his subjects, and the other half--the
+grown-up half--pretended to think he was quite right.
+
+Then he made a law that everyone should always have enough to eat. And
+this pleased everyone except the ones who had always had too much.
+
+And when several other nice new laws were made and written down he went
+home and made mud-houses and was very happy. And he said to his Nurse:
+"People will love me now I've made such a lot of pretty new laws for
+them."
+
+But Nurse said: "Don't count your chickens, my dear. You haven't seen
+the last of that Dragon yet."
+
+Now, the next day was Saturday. And in the afternoon the Dragon suddenly
+swooped down upon the common in all his hideous redness, and carried off
+the Soccer Players, umpires, goal-posts, ball, and all.
+
+Then the people were very angry indeed, and they said: "We might as well
+be a Republic. After saving up all these years to get his crown, and
+everything!"
+
+And wise people shook their heads and foretold a decline in the National
+Love of Sport. And, indeed, soccer was not at all popular for some time
+afterward.
+
+Lionel did his best to be a good King during the week, and the people
+were beginning to forgive him for letting the Dragon out of the book.
+"After all," they said, "soccer is a dangerous game, and perhaps it is
+wise to discourage it."
+
+Popular opinion held that the Soccer Players, being tough and hard, had
+disagreed with the Dragon so much that he had gone away to some place
+where they only play cats' cradle and games that do not make you hard
+and tough.
+
+All the same, Parliament met on the Saturday afternoon, a convenient
+time, for most of the Members would be free to attend, to consider the
+Dragon. But unfortunately the Dragon, who had only been asleep, woke up
+because it was Saturday, and he considered the Parliament, and
+afterwards there were not any Members left, so they tried to make a new
+Parliament, but being a member of Parliament had somehow grown as
+unpopular as soccer playing, and no one would consent to be elected, so
+they had to do without a Parliament. When the next Saturday came around
+everyone was a little nervous, but the Red Dragon was pretty quiet that
+day and only ate an Orphanage.
+
+Lionel was very, very unhappy. He felt that it was his disobedience that
+had brought this trouble on the Parliament and the Orphanage and the
+Soccer Players, and he felt that it was his duty to try and do
+something. The question was, what?
+
+The Blue Bird that had come out of the book used to sing very nicely in
+the Palace rose garden, and the Butterfly was very tame, and would perch
+on his shoulder when he walked among the tall lilies: so Lionel saw that
+all the creatures in _The Book of Beasts_ could not be wicked, like the
+Dragon, and he thought: "Suppose I could get another beast out who would
+fight the Dragon?"
+
+So he took _The Book of Beasts_ out into the rose garden and opened the
+page next to the one where the Dragon had been just a tiny bit to see
+what the name was. He could only see "cora," but he felt the middle of
+the page swelling up thick with the creature that was trying to come
+out, and it was only by putting the book down and sitting on it
+suddenly, very hard, that he managed to get it shut. Then he fastened
+the clasps with the rubies and turquoises in them and sent for the
+Chancellor, who had been ill since Saturday, and so had not been eaten
+with the rest of the Parliament, and he said: "What animal ends in
+'cora'?"
+
+The Chancellor answered: "The Manticora, of course."
+
+"What is he like?" asked the King.
+
+"He is the sworn foe of Dragons," said the Chancellor. "He drinks their
+blood. He is yellow, with the body of a lion and the face of a man. I
+wish we had a few Manticoras here now. But the last died hundreds of
+years ago--worse luck!"
+
+Then the King ran and opened the book at the page that had "cora" on it,
+and there was the picture--Manticora, all yellow, with a lion's body and
+a man's face, just as the Chancellor had said. And under the picture
+was written, "Manticora."
+
+In a few minutes the Manticora came sleepily out of the book, rubbing
+its eyes with its hands and mewing piteously. It seemed very stupid, and
+when Lionel gave it a push and said, "Go along and fight the Dragon,
+do," it put its tail between its legs and fairly ran away. It went and
+hid behind the Town Hall, and at night when the people were asleep it
+went around and ate all the pussy-cats in the town. And then it mewed
+more than ever. And on the Saturday morning, when people were a little
+timid about going out, because the Dragon had no regular hour for
+calling, the Manticora went up and down the streets and drank all the
+milk that was left in the cans at the doors for people's teas, and it
+ate the cans as well.
+
+And just when it had finished the very last little halfpenny worth,
+which was short measure, because the milkman's nerves were quite upset,
+the Red Dragon came down the street looking for the Manticora. It edged
+off when it saw him coming, for it was not at all the Dragon-fighting
+kind; and, seeing no other door open, the poor, hunted creature took
+refuge in the General Post Office, and there the Dragon found it, trying
+to conceal itself among the ten o'clock mail. The Dragon fell on the
+Manticora at once, and the mail was no defense. The mewings were heard
+all over the town. All the kitties and the milk the Manticora had had
+seemed to have strengthened its mew wonderfully. Then there was a sad
+silence, and presently the people whose windows looked that way saw the
+Dragon come walking down the steps of the General Post Office spitting
+fire and smoke, together with tufts of Manticora fur, and the fragments
+of the registered letters. Things were growing very serious. However
+popular the King might become during the week, the Dragon was sure to do
+something on Saturday to upset the people's loyalty.
+
+[Illustration "The Manticora took refuge in the General Post Office."
+_See page 13._]
+
+The Dragon was a perfect nuisance for the whole of Saturday, except
+during the hour of noon, and then he had to rest under a tree or he
+would have caught fire from the heat of the sun. You see, he was very
+hot to begin with.
+
+At last came a Saturday when the Dragon actually walked into the Royal
+nursery and carried off the King's own pet Rocking Horse. Then the King
+cried for six days, and on the seventh he was so tired that he had to
+stop. He heard the Blue Bird singing among the roses and saw the
+Butterfly fluttering among the lilies, and he said: "Nurse, wipe my
+face, please. I am not going to cry any more."
+
+Nurse washed his face, and told him not to be a silly little King.
+"Crying," said she, "never did anyone any good yet."
+
+"I don't know," said the little King, "I seem to see better, and to hear
+better now that I've cried for a week. Now, Nurse, dear, I know I'm
+right, so kiss me in case I never come back. I _must_ try to see if I
+can't save the people."
+
+"Well, if you must, you must," said Nurse, "but don't tear your clothes
+or get your feet wet."
+
+So off he went.
+
+The Blue Bird sang more sweetly than ever, and the Butterfly shone more
+brightly, as Lionel once more carried _The Book of Beasts_ out into the
+rose garden, and opened it--very quickly, so that he might not be afraid
+and change his mind. The book fell open wide, almost in the middle, and
+there was written at the bottom of the page, "Hippogriff," and before
+Lionel had time to see what the picture was, there was a fluttering of
+great wings and a stamping of hoofs, and a sweet, soft, friendly
+neighing; and there came out of the book a beautiful white horse with a
+long, long, white mane and a long, long, white tail, and he had great
+wings like swan's wings, and the softest, kindest eyes in the world, and
+he stood there among the roses.
+
+The Hippogriff rubbed its silky-soft, milky white nose against the
+little King's shoulder, and the little King thought: "But for the wings
+you are very like my poor, dear lost Rocking Horse." And the Blue Bird's
+song was very loud and sweet.
+
+Then suddenly the King saw coming through the sky the great straggling,
+sprawling, wicked shape of the Red Dragon. And he knew at once what he
+must do. He caught up _The Book of Beasts_ and jumped on the back of the
+gentle, beautiful Hippogriff, and leaning down he whispered in the
+sharp, white ear: "Fly, dear Hippogriff, fly your very fastest to the
+Pebbly Waste."
+
+And when the Dragon saw them start, he turned and flew after them, with
+his great wings flapping like clouds at sunset, and the Hippogriff's
+wide wings were snowy as clouds at moonrise.
+
+When the people in the town saw the Dragon fly off after the Hippogriff
+and the King they all came out of their houses to look, and when they
+saw the two disappear they made up their minds to the worst, and began
+to think what they would wear for Court mourning.
+
+But the Dragon could not catch the Hippogriff. The red wings were bigger
+than the white ones, but they were not so strong, and so the
+white-winged horse flew away and away and away, with the Dragon
+pursuing, till he reached the very middle of the Pebbly Waste.
+
+Now, the Pebbly Waste is just like the parts of the seaside where there
+is no sand--all round, loose, shifting stones, and there is no grass
+there and no tree within a hundred miles of it.
+
+Lionel jumped off the white horse's back in the very middle of the
+Pebbly Waste, and he hurriedly unclasped _The Book of Beasts_ and laid
+it open on the pebbles. Then he clattered among the pebbles in his haste
+to get back on to his white horse, and had just jumped on when up came
+the Dragon. He was flying very feebly, and looking around everywhere for
+a tree, for it was just on the stroke of twelve, the sun was shining
+like a gold guinea in the blue sky, and there was not a tree for a
+hundred miles.
+
+The white-winged horse flew around and around the Dragon as he writhed
+on the dry pebbles. He was getting very hot: indeed, parts of him even
+had begun to smoke. He knew that he must certainly catch fire in
+another minute unless he could get under a tree. He made a snatch with
+his red claws at the King and Hippogriff, but he was too feeble to reach
+them, and besides, he did not dare to overexert himself for fear he
+should get any hotter.
+
+It was then that he saw _The Book of Beasts_ lying on the pebbles, open
+at the page with "Dragon" written at the bottom. He looked and he
+hesitated, and he looked again, and then, with one last squirm of rage,
+the Dragon wriggled himself back into the picture and sat down under the
+palm tree, and the page was a little singed as he went in.
+
+As soon as Lionel saw that the Dragon had really been obliged to go and
+sit under his own palm tree because it was the only tree there, he
+jumped off his horse and shut the book with a bang.
+
+"Oh, hurrah!" he cried. "Now we really have done it."
+
+And he clasped the book very tightly with the turquoise and ruby clasps.
+
+"Oh, my precious Hippogriff," he cried. "You are the bravest, dearest,
+most beautiful--"
+
+"Hush," whispered the Hippogriff modestly. "Don't you see that we are
+not alone?"
+
+And indeed there was quite a crowd round them on the Pebbly Waste: the
+Prime Minister and the Parliament and the Soccer Players and the
+Orphanage and the Manticora and the Rocking Horse, and indeed everyone
+who had been eaten by the Dragon. You see, it was impossible for the
+Dragon to take them into the book with him--it was a tight fit even for
+one Dragon--so, of course, he had to leave them outside.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They all got home somehow, and all lived happy ever after.
+
+When the King asked the Manticora where he would like to live he begged
+to be allowed to go back into the book. "I do not care for public life,"
+he said.
+
+Of course he knew his way onto his own page, so there was no danger of
+his opening the book at the wrong page and letting out a Dragon or
+anything. So he got back into his picture and has never come out since:
+That is why you will never see a Manticora as long as you live, except
+in a picture-book. And of course he left the kitties outside, because
+there was no room for them in the book--and the milk cans too.
+
+Then the Rocking Horse begged to be allowed to go and live on the
+Hippogriff's page of the book. "I should like," he said, "to live
+somewhere where Dragons can't get at me."
+
+So the beautiful, white-winged Hippogriff showed him the way in, and
+there he stayed till the King had him taken out for his
+great-great-great-great-grandchildren to play with.
+
+As for the Hippogriff, he accepted the position of the King's Own
+Rocking Horse--a situation left vacant by the retirement of the wooden
+one. And the Blue Bird and the Butterfly sing and flutter among the
+lilies and roses of the Palace garden to this very day.
+
+[Illustration: UNCLE JAMES OR THE PURPLE STRANGER]
+
+
+
+
+II. Uncle James, or The Purple Stranger
+
+
+The Princess and the gardener's boy were playing in the backyard.
+
+"What will you do when you grow up, Princess?" asked the gardener's boy.
+
+"I should like to marry you, Tom," said the Princess. "Would you mind?"
+
+"No," said the gardener's boy. "I shouldn't mind much. I'll marry you if
+you like--if I have time."
+
+For the gardener's boy meant, as soon as he was grown up, to be a
+general and a poet and a Prime Minister and an admiral and a civil
+engineer. Meanwhile, he was top of all his classes at school, and
+tip-top of the geography class.
+
+As for the Princess Mary Ann, she was a very good little girl, and
+everyone loved her. She was always kind and polite, even to her Uncle
+James and to other people whom she did not like very much; and though
+she was not very clever, for a Princess, she always tried to do her
+lessons. Even if you know perfectly well that you can't do your lessons,
+you may as well try, and sometimes you find that by some fortunate
+accident they really _are_ done. Then the Princess had a truly good
+heart: She was always kind to her pets. She never slapped her
+hippopotamus when it broke her dolls in its playful gambols, and she
+never forgot to feed her rhinoceroses in their little hutch in the
+backyard. Her elephant was devoted to her, and sometimes Mary Ann made
+her nurse quite cross by smuggling the dear little thing up to bed with
+her and letting it go to sleep with its long trunk laid lovingly across
+her throat, and its pretty head cuddled under the Royal right ear.
+
+When the Princess had been good all through the week--for, like all
+real, live, nice children, she was sometimes naughty, but never
+bad--Nurse would allow her to ask her little friends to come on
+Wednesday morning early and spend the day, because Wednesday is the end
+of the week in that country. Then, in the afternoon, when all the little
+dukes and duchesses and marquises and countesses had finished their rice
+pudding and had had their hands and faces washed after it, Nurse would
+say: "Now, my dears, what would you like to do this afternoon?" just as
+if she didn't know. And the answer would be always the same:
+
+"Oh, do let's go to the Zoological Gardens and ride on the big guinea
+pig and feed the rabbits and hear the dormouse asleep."
+
+So their pinafores were taken off and they all went to the Zoological
+Gardens, where twenty of them could ride at a time on the guinea pig,
+and where even the little ones could feed the great rabbits if some
+grown-up person were kind enough to lift them up for the purpose.
+
+There always was some such person, because in Rotundia everybody was
+kind--except one.
+
+Now that you have read as far as this you know, of course, that the
+Kingdom of Rotundia was a very remarkable place; and if you are a
+thoughtful child--as of course you are--you will not need me to tell you
+what was the most remarkable thing about it. But in case you are not a
+thoughtful child--and it is just possible of course that you are not--I
+will tell you at once what that most remarkable thing was. _All the
+animals were the wrong sizes!_ And this was how it happened.
+
+In old, old, olden times, when all our world was just loose earth and
+air and fire and water mixed up anyhow like a pudding, and spinning
+around like mad trying to get the different things to settle into their
+proper places, a round piece of earth got loose and went spinning away
+by itself across the water, which was just beginning to try to get
+spread out smooth into a real sea. And as the great round piece of earth
+flew away, going around and around as hard as it could, it met a long
+piece of hard rock that had got loose from another part of the puddingy
+mixture, and the rock was so hard, and was going so fast, that it ran
+its point through the round piece of earth and stuck out on the other
+side of it, so that the two together were like a very-very-much-too-big
+spinning top.
+
+I am afraid all this is very dull, but you know geography is never quite
+lively, and after all, I must give you a little information even in a
+fairy tale--like the powder in jam.
+
+Well, when the pointed rock smashed into the round bit of earth the
+shock was so great that it set them spinning together through the
+air--which was just getting into its proper place, like all the rest of
+the things--only, as luck would have it, they forgot which way around
+they had been going, and began to spin around the wrong way. Presently
+Center of Gravity--a great giant who was managing the whole
+business--woke up in the middle of the earth and began to grumble.
+
+"Hurry up," he said. "Come down and lie still, can't you?"
+
+So the rock with the round piece of earth fell into the sea, and the
+point of the rock went into a hole that just fitted it in the stony sea
+bottom, and there it spun around the wrong way seven times and then lay
+still. And that round piece of land became, after millions of years, the
+Kingdom of Rotundia.
+
+This is the end of the geography lesson. And now for just a little
+natural history, so that we may not feel that we are quite wasting our
+time. Of course, the consequence of the island having spun around the
+wrong way was that when the animals began to grow on the island they all
+grew the wrong sizes. The guinea pig, as you know, was as big as our
+elephants, and the elephant--dear little pet--was the size of the silly,
+tiny, black-and-tan dogs that ladies carry sometimes in their muffs. The
+rabbits were about the size of our rhinoceroses, and all about the wild
+parts of the island they had made their burrows as big as railway
+tunnels. The dormouse, of course, was the biggest of all the creatures.
+I can't tell you how big he was. Even if you think of elephants it will
+not help you at all. Luckily there was only one of him, and he was
+always asleep. Otherwise I don't think the Rotundians could have borne
+with him. As it was, they made him a house, and it saved the expense of
+a brass band, because no band could possibly have been heard when the
+dormouse was talking in his sleep.
+
+The men and women and children in this wonderful island were quite the
+right size, because their ancestors had come over with the Conqueror
+long after the island had settled down and the animals grown on it.
+
+Now the natural history lesson is over, and if you have been attending,
+you know more about Rotundia than anyone there did, except three people:
+the Lord Chief Schoolmaster, the Princess's uncle--who was a magician,
+and knew everything without learning it--and Tom, the gardener's son.
+
+Tom had learned more at school than anyone else, because he wished to
+take a prize. The prize offered by the Lord Chief Schoolmaster was a
+_History of Rotundia_, beautifully bound, with the Royal arms on the
+back. But after that day when the Princess said she meant to marry Tom,
+the gardener's boy thought it over, and he decided that the best prize
+in the world would be the Princess, and this was the prize Tom meant to
+take; and when you are a gardener's son and have decided to marry a
+Princess, you will find that the more you learn at school the better.
+
+The Princess always played with Tom on the days when the little dukes
+and marquises did not come to tea--and when he told her he was almost
+sure of the first prize, she clapped her hands and said: "Dear Tom, dear
+good, clever Tom, you deserve all the prizes. And I will give you my pet
+elephant--and you can keep him till we're married."
+
+The pet elephant was called Fido, and the gardener's son took him away
+in his coat pocket. He was the dearest little elephant you ever
+saw--about six inches long. But he was very, very wise--he could not
+have been wiser if he had been a mile high. He lay down comfortably in
+Tom's pocket, and when Tom put in his hand, Fido curled his little trunk
+around Tom's fingers with an affectionate confidence that made the boy's
+heart warm to his new little pet. What with the elephant, and the
+Princess's affection, and the knowledge that the very next day he would
+receive the _History of Rotundia_, beautifully bound, with the Royal
+arms on the cover, Tom could hardly sleep a wink. And, besides, the dog
+did bark so terribly. There was only one dog in Rotundia--the kingdom
+could not afford to keep more than one: He was a Mexican lapdog of the
+kind that in most parts of the world only measures seven inches from the
+end of his dear nose to the tip of his darling tail--but in Rotundia he
+was bigger than I can possibly expect you to believe. And when he
+barked, his bark was so large that it filled up all the night and left
+no room for sleep or dreams or polite conversation, or anything else at
+all. He never barked at things that went on in the island--he was too
+large-minded for that; but when ships went blundering by in the dark,
+tumbling over the rocks at the end of the island, he would bark once or
+twice, just to let the ships know that they couldn't come playing about
+there just as they liked.
+
+But on this particular night he barked and barked and barked--and the
+Princess said, "Oh dear, oh dear, I wish he wouldn't, I am so sleepy."
+And Tom said to himself, "I wonder whatever is the matter. As soon as
+it's light I'll go and see."
+
+So when it began to be pretty pink-and-yellow daylight, Tom got up and
+went out. And all the time the Mexican lapdog barked so that the houses
+shook, and the tiles on the roof of the palace rattled like milk cans in
+a cart whose horse is frisky.
+
+"I'll go to the pillar," thought Tom, as he went through the town. The
+pillar, of course, was the top of the piece of rock that had stuck
+itself through Rotundia millions of years before, and made it spin
+around the wrong way. It was quite in the middle of the island, and
+stuck up ever so far, and when you were at the top you could see a great
+deal farther than when you were not.
+
+As Tom went out from the town and across the downs, he thought what a
+pretty sight it was to see the rabbits in the bright, dewy morning,
+frisking with their young ones by the mouths of their burrows. He did
+not go very near the rabbits, of course, because when a rabbit of that
+size is at play it does not always look where it is going, and it might
+easily have crushed Tom with its foot, and then it would have been very
+sorry afterward. And Tom was a kind boy, and would not have liked to
+make even a rabbit unhappy. Earwigs in our country often get out of the
+way when they think you are going to walk on them. They too have kind
+hearts, and they would not like you to be sorry afterward.
+
+So Tom went on, looking at the rabbits and watching the morning grow
+more and more red and golden. And the Mexican lapdog barked all the
+time, till the church bells tinkled, and the chimney of the apple
+factory rocked again.
+
+But when Tom got to the pillar, he saw that he would not need to climb
+to the top to find out what the dog was barking at.
+
+For there, by the pillar, lay a very large purple dragon. His wings were
+like old purple umbrellas that have been very much rained on, and his
+head was large and bald, like the top of a purple toadstool, and his
+tail, which was purple too, was very, very, very long and thin and
+tight, like the lash of a carriage whip.
+
+It was licking one of its purple umbrella-y wings, and every now and
+then it moaned and leaned its head back against the rocky pillar as
+though it felt faint. Tom saw at once what had happened. A flight of
+purple dragons must have crossed the island in the night, and this poor
+one must have knocked its wing and broken it against the pillar.
+
+Everyone is kind to everyone in Rotundia, and Tom was not afraid of the
+dragon, although he had never spoken to one before. He had often watched
+them flying across the sea, but he had never expected to get to know one
+personally.
+
+So now he said: "I am afraid you don't feel quite well."
+
+The dragon shook his large purple head. He could not speak, but like all
+other animals, he could understand well enough when he liked.
+
+"Can I get you anything?" asked Tom, politely.
+
+The dragon opened his purple eyes with an inquiring smile.
+
+"A bun or two, now," said Tom, coaxingly. "There's a beautiful bun tree
+quite close."
+
+The dragon opened a great purple mouth and licked his purple lips, so
+Tom ran and shook the bun tree, and soon came back with an armful of
+fresh currant buns, and as he came he picked a few of the Bath kind,
+which grow on the low bushes near the pillar.
+
+Because, of course, another consequence of the island's having spun the
+wrong way is that all the things we have to make--buns and cakes and
+shortbread--grow on trees and bushes, but in Rotundia they have to make
+their cauliflowers and cabbages and carrots and apples and onions, just
+as our cooks make puddings and turnovers.
+
+Tom gave all the buns to the dragon, saying: "Here, try to eat a little.
+You'll soon feel better then."
+
+The dragon ate up the buns, nodded rather ungraciously, and began to
+lick his wing again. So Tom left him and went back to the town with the
+news, and everyone was so excited at a real live dragon's being on the
+island--a thing that had never happened before--that they all went out
+to look at it, instead of going to the prize-giving, and the Lord Chief
+Schoolmaster went with the rest. Now, he had Tom's prize, the _History
+of Rotundia_, in his pocket--the one bound in calf, with the Royal arms
+on the cover--and it happened to drop out, and the dragon ate it, so Tom
+never got the prize after all. But the dragon, when he had gotten it,
+did not like it.
+
+"Perhaps it's all for the best," said Tom. "I might not have liked that
+prize either, if I had gotten it."
+
+It happened to be a Wednesday, so when the Princess's friends were asked
+what they would like to do, all the little dukes and marquises and earls
+said, "Let's go and see the dragon." But the little duchesses and
+marchionesses and countesses said they were afraid.
+
+Then Princess Mary Ann spoke up royally, and said, "Don't be silly,
+because it's only in fairy stories and histories of England and things
+like that, that people are unkind and want to hurt each other. In
+Rotundia everyone is kind, and no one has anything to be afraid of,
+unless they're naughty; and then we know it's for our own good. Let's
+all go and see the dragon. We might take him some acid drops." So they
+went. And all the titled children took it in turns to feed the dragon
+with acid drops, and he seemed pleased and flattered, and wagged as much
+of his purple tail as he could get at conveniently; for it was a very,
+very long tail indeed. But when it came to the Princess's turn to give
+an acid drop to the dragon, he smiled a very wide smile, and wagged his
+tail to the very last long inch of it, as much as to say, "Oh, you nice,
+kind, pretty little Princess." But deep down in his wicked purple heart
+he was saying, "Oh, you nice, fat, pretty little Princess, I should like
+to eat you instead of these silly acid drops." But of course nobody
+heard him except the Princess's uncle, and he was a magician, and
+accustomed to listening at doors. It was part of his trade.
+
+Now, you will remember that I told you there was one wicked person in
+Rotundia, and I cannot conceal from you any longer that this Complete
+Bad was the Princess's Uncle James. Magicians are always bad, as you
+know from your fairy books, and some uncles are bad, as you see by the
+_Babes in the Wood_, or the _Norfolk Tragedy_, and one James at least
+was bad, as you have learned from your English history. And when anyone
+is a magician, and is also an uncle, and is named James as well, you
+need not expect anything nice from him. He is a Threefold Complete
+Bad--and he will come to no good.
+
+Uncle James had long wanted to get rid of the Princess and have the
+kingdom to himself. He did not like many things--a nice kingdom was
+almost the only thing he cared for--but he had never seen his way quite
+clearly, because everyone is so kind in Rotundia that wicked spells will
+not work there, but run off those blameless islanders like water off a
+duck's back. Now, however, Uncle James thought there might be a chance
+for him--because he knew that now there were two wicked people on the
+island who could stand by each other--himself and the dragon. He said
+nothing, but he exchanged a meaningful glance with the dragon, and
+everyone went home to tea. And no one had seen the meaningful glance
+except Tom.
+
+Tom went home, and told his elephant all about it. The intelligent
+little creature listened carefully, and then climbed from Tom's knee to
+the table, on which stood an ornamental calendar that the Princess had
+given Tom for a Christmas present. With its tiny trunk the elephant
+pointed out a date--the fifteenth of August, the Princess's birthday,
+and looked anxiously at its master.
+
+"What is it, Fido--good little elephant--then?" said Tom, and the
+sagacious animal repeated its former gesture. Then Tom understood.
+
+"Oh, something is to happen on her birthday? All right. I'll be on the
+lookout." And he was.
+
+[Illustration: "By-and-by he began to wander." _See page 29._]
+
+At first the people of Rotundia were quite pleased with the dragon, who
+lived by the pillar and fed himself from the bun trees, but by-and-by he
+began to wander. He would creep into the burrows made by the great
+rabbits; and excursionists, sporting on the downs, would see his long,
+tight, whiplike tail wriggling down a burrow and out of sight, and
+before they had time to say, "There he goes," his ugly purple head
+would come poking out from another rabbit-hole--perhaps just behind
+them--or laugh softly to itself just in their ears. And the dragon's
+laugh was not a merry one. This sort of hide-and-seek amused people at
+first, but by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't
+know what that means, ask Mother to tell you next time you are playing
+blind man's buff when she has a headache. Then the dragon got into the
+habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on
+people's nerves. Then, too, little things began to be missed. And you
+know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public
+kingdom it is, of course, much worse. The things that were missed were
+nothing much at first--a few little elephants, a hippopotamus or two,
+and some giraffes, and things like that. It was nothing much, as I say,
+but it made people feel uncomfortable. Then one day a favorite rabbit of
+the Princess's, called Frederick, mysteriously disappeared, and then
+came a terrible morning when the Mexican lapdog was missing. He had
+barked ever since the dragon came to the island, and people had grown
+quite used to the noise. So when his barking suddenly ceased it woke
+everybody up--and they all went out to see what was the matter. And the
+lapdog was gone!
+
+A boy was sent to wake the army, so that it might look for him. But the
+army was gone too! And now the people began to be frightened. Then Uncle
+James came out onto the terrace of the palace, and he made the people a
+speech. He said: "Friends--fellow citizens--I cannot disguise from
+myself or from you that this purple dragon is a poor penniless exile, a
+helpless alien in our midst, and, besides, he is a--is no end of a
+dragon."
+
+The people thought of the dragon's tail and said, "Hear, hear."
+
+Uncle James went on: "Something has happened to a gentle and defenseless
+member of our community. We don't know what has happened."
+
+Everyone thought of the rabbit named Frederick, and groaned.
+
+"The defenses of our country have been swallowed up," said Uncle James.
+
+Everyone thought of the poor army.
+
+"There is only one thing to be done." Uncle James was warming to his
+subject. "Could we ever forgive ourselves if by neglecting a simple
+precaution we lost more rabbits--or even, perhaps, our navy, our police,
+and our fire brigade? For I warn you that the purple dragon will respect
+nothing, however sacred."
+
+Everyone thought of themselves--and they said, "What is the simple
+precaution?"
+
+Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday. He is
+accustomed to have a present on his birthday. If he gets a nice present
+he will be in a hurry to take it away and show it to his friends, and he
+will fly off and never come back."
+
+The crowd cheered wildly--and the Princess from her balcony clapped her
+hands.
+
+"The present the dragon expects," said Uncle James, cheerfully, "is
+rather an expensive one. But, when we give, it should not be in a
+grudging spirit, especially to visitors. What the dragon wants is a
+Princess. We have only one Princess, it is true; but far be it from us
+to display a miserly temper at such a moment. And the gift is worthless
+that costs the giver nothing. Your readiness to give up your Princess
+will only show how generous you are."
+
+The crowd began to cry, for they loved their Princess, though they quite
+saw that their first duty was to be generous and give the poor dragon
+what it wanted.
+
+The Princess began to cry, for she did not want to be anybody's birthday
+present--especially a purple dragon's. And Tom began to cry because he
+was so angry.
+
+He went straight home and told his little elephant; and the elephant
+cheered him up so much that presently the two grew quite absorbed in a
+top that the elephant was spinning with his little trunk.
+
+Early in the morning Tom went to the palace. He looked out across the
+downs--there were hardly any rabbits playing there now--and then he
+gathered white roses and threw them at the Princess's window till she
+woke up and looked out.
+
+"Come up and kiss me," she said.
+
+So Tom climbed up the white rosebush and kissed the Princess through the
+window, and said: "Many happy returns of the day."
+
+Then Mary Ann began to cry, and said: "Oh, Tom--how can you? When you
+know quite well--"
+
+"Oh, don't," said Tom. "Why, Mary Ann, my precious, my Princess--what do
+you think I should be doing while the dragon was getting his birthday
+present? Don't cry, my own little Mary Ann! Fido and I have arranged
+everything. You've only got to do as you are told."
+
+"Is that all?" said the Princess. "Oh--that's easy--I've often done
+that!"
+
+Then Tom told her what she was to do. And she kissed him again and
+again. "Oh, you dear, good, clever Tom," she said. "How glad I am that I
+gave you Fido. You two have saved me. You dears!"
+
+The next morning Uncle James put on his best coat and hat and the vest
+with the gold snakes on it--he was a magician, and he had a bright taste
+in vests--and he called with a cab to take the Princess out.
+
+"Come, little birthday present," he said tenderly. "The dragon will be
+so pleased. And I'm glad to see you're not crying. You know, my child,
+we cannot begin too young to learn to think of the happiness of others
+rather than our own. I should not like my dear little niece to be
+selfish, or to wish to deny a trivial pleasure to a poor, sick dragon,
+far from his home and friends."
+
+The Princess said she would try not to be selfish.
+
+Presently the cab drew up near the pillar, and there was the dragon, his
+ugly purple head shining in the sun, and his ugly purple mouth half
+open.
+
+Uncle James said: "Good morning, sir. We have brought you a small
+present for your birthday. We do not like to let such an anniversary go
+by without some suitable testimonial, especially to one who is a
+stranger in our midst. Our means are small, but our hearts are large. We
+have but one Princess, but we give her freely--do we not, my child?"
+
+The Princess said she supposed so, and the dragon came a little nearer.
+
+Suddenly a voice cried: "Run!" and there was Tom, and he had brought the
+Zoological guinea pig and a pair of Belgian hares with him. "Just to see
+fair," said Tom.
+
+Uncle James was furious. "What do you mean, sir," he cried, "by
+intruding on a State function with your common rabbits and things? Go
+away, naughty little boy, and play with them somewhere else."
+
+But while he was speaking the rabbits had come up one on each side of
+him, their great sides towering ever so high, and now they pressed him
+between them so that he was buried in their thick fur and almost choked.
+The Princess, meantime, had run to the other side of the pillar and was
+peeping around it to see what was going on. A crowd had followed the cab
+out of the town; now they reached the scene of the "State Function"--and
+they all cried out: "Fair play--play fair! We can't go back on our word
+like this. Give a thing and take a thing? Why, it's never done. Let the
+poor exiled stranger dragon have his birthday present." And they tried
+to get at Tom--but the guinea pig stood in the way.
+
+"Yes," Tom cried. "Fair play is a jewel. And your helpless exile shall
+have the Princess--if he can catch her. Now then, Mary Ann."
+
+Mary Ann looked around the big pillar and called to the dragon: "Bo! you
+can't catch me," and began to run as fast as ever she could, and the
+dragon ran after her. When the Princess had run a half mile she stopped,
+dodged around a tree, and ran back to the pillar and around it, and the
+dragon after her. You see, he was so long he could not turn as quickly
+as she could. Around and around the pillar ran the Princess. The first
+time she ran around a long way from the pillar, and then nearer and
+nearer--with the dragon after her all the time; and he was so busy
+trying to catch her that he never noticed that Tom had tied the very end
+of his long, tight, whipcordy tail to the rock, so that the more the
+dragon ran around, the more times he twisted his tail around the pillar.
+It was exactly like winding a top--only the peg was the pillar, and the
+dragon's tail was the string. And the magician was safe between the
+Belgian hares, and couldn't see anything but darkness, or do anything
+but choke.
+
+When the dragon was wound onto the pillar as much as he possibly could
+be, and as tight--like cotton on a reel--the Princess stopped running,
+and though she had very little breath left, she managed to say,
+"Yah--who's won now?"
+
+This annoyed the dragon so much that he put out all his strength--spread
+his great purple wings, and tried to fly at her. Of course this pulled
+his tail, and pulled it very hard, so hard that as he pulled the tail
+_had_ to come, and the pillar _had_ to come around with the tail, and
+the island _had_ to come around with the pillar, and in another minute
+the tail was loose, and the island was spinning around exactly like a
+top. It spun so fast that everyone fell flat on their faces and held on
+tight to themselves, because they felt something was going to happen.
+All but the magician, who was choking between the Belgian hares, and
+felt nothing but fur and fury.
+
+And something did happen. The dragon had sent the kingdom of Rotundia
+spinning the way it ought to have gone at the beginning of the world,
+and as it spun around, all the animals began to change sizes. The guinea
+pigs got small, and the elephants got big, and the men and women and
+children would have changed sizes too, if they had not had the sense to
+hold on to themselves, very tight indeed, with both hands; which, of
+course, the animals could not be expected to know how to do. And the
+best of it was that when the small beasts got big and the big beasts got
+small the dragon got small too, and fell at the Princess's feet--a
+little, crawling, purple newt with wings.
+
+[Illustration: "The dragon ran after her." _See page 34._]
+
+"Funny little thing," said the Princess, when she saw it. "I will take
+it for a birthday present."
+
+But while all the people were still on their faces, holding on tight to
+themselves, Uncle James, the magician, never thought of holding
+tight--he only thought of how to punish Belgian hares and the sons of
+gardeners; so when the big beasts grew small, he grew small with the
+other beasts, and the little purple dragon, when he fell at the
+Princess's feet, saw there a very small magician named Uncle James. And
+the dragon took him because it wanted a birthday present.
+
+So now all the animals were new sizes--and at first it seemed very
+strange to everyone to have great lumbering elephants and a tiny little
+dormouse, but they have gotten used to it now, and think no more of it
+than we do.
+
+All this happened several years ago, and the other day I saw in the
+_Rotundia Times_ an account of the wedding of the Princess with Lord
+Thomas Gardener, K.C.D., and I knew she could not have married anyone
+but Tom, so I suppose they made him a Lord on purpose for the
+wedding--and _K.C.D._, of course, means Clever Conqueror of the Dragon.
+If you think that is wrong it is only because you don't know how they
+spell in Rotundia. The paper said that among the beautiful presents of
+the bridegroom to the bride was an enormous elephant, on which the
+bridal pair made their wedding tour. This must have been Fido. You
+remember Tom promised to give him back to the Princess when they were
+married. The _Rotundia Times_ called the married couple "the happy
+pair." It was clever of the paper to think of calling them that--it is
+such a pretty and novel expression, and I think it is truer than many of
+the things you see in papers.
+
+Because, you see, the Princess and the gardener's son were so fond of
+each other they could not help being happy--and besides, they had an
+elephant of their very own to ride on. If that is not enough to make
+people happy, I should like to know what is. Though, of course, I know
+there are some people who could not be happy unless they had a whale to
+sail on, and perhaps not even then. But they are greedy, grasping
+people, the kind who would take four helps of pudding, as likely as not,
+which neither Tom nor Mary Ann ever did.
+
+[Illustration: THE DELIVERERS OF THEIR COUNTRY]
+
+
+
+
+III. The Deliverers of Their Country
+
+
+It all began with Effie's getting something in her eye. It hurt very
+much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark--only it seemed
+to have legs as well, and wings like a fly. Effie rubbed and cried--not
+real crying, but the kind your eye does all by itself without your being
+miserable inside your mind--and then she went to her father to have the
+thing in her eye taken out. Effie's father was a doctor, so of course he
+knew how to take things out of eyes--he did it very cleverly with a soft
+paintbrush dipped in castor oil.
+
+When he had gotten the thing out, he said: "This is very curious." Effie
+had often got things in her eye before, and her father had always seemed
+to think it was natural--rather tiresome and naughty perhaps, but still
+natural. He had never before thought it curious.
+
+Effie stood holding her handkerchief to her eye, and said: "I don't
+believe it's out." People always say this when they have had something
+in their eyes.
+
+"Oh, yes--it's out," said the doctor. "Here it is, on the brush. This is
+very interesting."
+
+Effie had never heard her father say that about anything that she had
+any share in. She said: "What?"
+
+The doctor carried the brush very carefully across the room, and held
+the point of it under his microscope--then he twisted the brass screws
+of the microscope, and looked through the top with one eye.
+
+"Dear me," he said. "Dear, dear me! Four well-developed limbs; a long
+caudal appendage; five toes, unequal in lengths, almost like one of the
+_Lacertidae_, yet there are traces of wings." The creature under his eye
+wriggled a little in the castor oil, and he went on: "Yes; a batlike
+wing. A new specimen, undoubtedly. Effie, run round to the professor and
+ask him to be kind enough to step in for a few minutes."
+
+"You might give me sixpence, Daddy," said Effie, "because I did bring
+you the new specimen. I took great care of it inside my eye, and my eye
+_does_ hurt."
+
+The doctor was so pleased with the new specimen that he gave Effie a
+shilling, and presently the professor stepped round. He stayed to lunch,
+and he and the doctor quarreled very happily all the afternoon about the
+name and the family of the thing that had come out of Effie's eye.
+
+But at teatime another thing happened. Effie's brother Harry fished
+something out of his tea, which he thought at first was an earwig. He
+was just getting ready to drop it on the floor, and end its life in the
+usual way, when it shook itself in the spoon--spread two wet wings, and
+flopped onto the tablecloth. There it sat, stroking itself with its feet
+and stretching its wings, and Harry said: "Why, it's a tiny newt!"
+
+The professor leaned forward before the doctor could say a word. "I'll
+give you half a crown for it, Harry, my lad," he said, speaking very
+fast; and then he picked it up carefully on his handkerchief.
+
+"It is a new specimen," he said, "and finer than yours, Doctor."
+
+It was a tiny lizard, about half an inch long--with scales and wings.
+
+So now the doctor and the professor each had a specimen, and they were
+both very pleased. But before long these specimens began to seem less
+valuable. For the next morning, when the knife-boy was cleaning the
+doctor's boots, he suddenly dropped the brushes and the boot and the
+blacking, and screamed out that he was burnt.
+
+And from inside the boot came crawling a lizard as big as a kitten, with
+large, shiny wings.
+
+"Why," said Effie, "I know what it is. It is a dragon like the one St.
+George killed."
+
+And Effie was right. That afternoon Towser was bitten in the garden by a
+dragon about the size of a rabbit, which he had tried to chase, and the
+next morning all the papers were full of the wonderful "winged lizards"
+that were appearing all over the country. The papers would not call them
+dragons, because, of course, no one believes in dragons nowadays--and at
+any rate the papers were not going to be so silly as to believe in fairy
+stories. At first there were only a few, but in a week or two the
+country was simply running alive with dragons of all sizes, and in the
+air you could sometimes see them as thick as a swarm of bees. They all
+looked alike except as to size. They were green with scales, and they
+had four legs and a long tail and great wings like bats' wings, only the
+wings were a pale, half-transparent yellow, like the gear-boxes on
+bicycles.
+
+They breathed fire and smoke, as all proper dragons must, but still the
+newspapers went on pretending they were lizards, until the editor of the
+_Standard_ was picked up and carried away by a very large one, and then
+the other newspaper people had not anyone left to tell them what they
+ought not to believe. So when the largest elephant in the Zoo was
+carried off by a dragon, the papers gave up pretending--and put ALARMING
+PLAGUE OF DRAGONS at the top of the paper.
+
+[Illustration: "The largest elephant in the zoo was carried off." _See
+page 43._]
+
+You have no idea how alarming it was, and at the same time how
+aggravating. The large-size dragons were terrible certainly, but when
+once you had found out that the dragons always went to bed early because
+they were afraid of the chill night air, you had only to stay indoors
+all day, and you were pretty safe from the big ones. But the smaller
+sizes were a perfect nuisance. The ones as big as earwigs got in the
+soap, and they got in the butter. The ones as big as dogs got in the
+bath, and the fire and smoke inside them made them steam like anything
+when the cold water tap was turned on, so that careless people were
+often scalded quite severely. The ones that were as large as pigeons
+would get into workbaskets or corner drawers and bite you when you were
+in a hurry to get a needle or a handkerchief. The ones as big as sheep
+were easier to avoid, because you could see them coming; but when they
+flew in at the windows and curled up under your eiderdown, and you did
+not find them till you went to bed, it was always a shock. The ones this
+size did not eat people, only lettuce, but they always scorched the
+sheets and pillowcases dreadfully.
+
+Of course, the County Council and the police did everything that could
+be done: It was no use offering the hand of the Princess to anyone who
+killed a dragon. This way was all very well in olden times--when there
+was only one dragon and one Princess; but now there were far more
+dragons than Princesses--although the Royal Family was a large one. And
+besides, it would have been a mere waste of Princesses to offer rewards
+for killing dragons, because everybody killed as many dragons as they
+could quite out of their own heads and without rewards at all, just to
+get the nasty things out of the way. The County Council undertook to
+cremate all dragons delivered at their offices between the hours of ten
+and two, and whole wagonloads and cartloads and truckloads of dead
+dragons could be seen any day of the week standing in a long line in the
+street where the County Council had their offices. Boys brought
+barrowloads of dead dragons, and children on their way home from morning
+school would call in to leave the handful or two of little dragons they
+had brought in their satchels, or carried in their knotted pocket
+handkerchiefs. And yet there seemed to be as many dragons as ever. Then
+the police stuck up great wood and canvas towers covered with patent
+glue. When the dragons flew against these towers, they stuck fast, as
+flies and wasps do on the sticky papers in the kitchen; and when the
+towers were covered all over with dragons, the police inspector used to
+set fire to the towers, and burnt them and dragons and all.
+
+And yet there seemed to be more dragons than ever. The shops were full
+of patent dragon poison and anti-dragon soap, and dragonproof curtains
+for the windows; and indeed, everything that could be done was done.
+
+And yet there seemed to be more dragons than ever.
+
+It was not very easy to know what would poison a dragon, because, you
+see, they ate such different things. The largest kind ate elephants as
+long as there were any, and then went on with horses and cows. Another
+size ate nothing but lilies of the valley, and a third size ate only
+Prime Ministers if they were to be had, and, if not, would feed freely
+on servants in livery. Another size lived on bricks, and three of them
+ate two thirds of the South Lambeth Infirmary in one afternoon.
+
+But the size Effie was most afraid of was about as big as your dining
+room, and that size ate little girls and boys.
+
+At first Effie and her brother were quite pleased with the change in
+their lives. It was so amusing to sit up all night instead of going to
+sleep, and to play in the garden lighted by electric lamps. And it
+sounded so funny to hear Mother say, when they were going to bed: "Good
+night, my darlings, sleep sound all day, and don't get up too soon. You
+must not get up before it's quite dark. You wouldn't like the nasty
+dragons to catch you."
+
+But after a time they got very tired of it all: They wanted to see the
+flowers and trees growing in the fields, and to see the pretty sunshine
+out of doors, and not just through glass windows and patent dragonproof
+curtains. And they wanted to play on the grass, which they were not
+allowed to do in the electric lamp-lighted garden because of the
+night-dew.
+
+And they wanted so much to get out, just for once, in the beautiful,
+bright, dangerous daylight, that they began to try and think of some
+reason why they ought to go out. Only they did not like to disobey their
+mother.
+
+But one morning their mother was busy preparing some new dragon poison
+to lay down in the cellars, and their father was bandaging the hand of
+the boot boy, which had been scratched by one of the dragons who liked
+to eat Prime Ministers when they were to be had, so nobody remembered to
+say to the children: "Don't get up till it is quite dark!"
+
+"Go now," said Harry. "It would not be disobedient to go. And I know
+exactly what we ought to do, but I don't know how we ought to do it."
+
+"What ought we to do?" said Effie.
+
+"We ought to wake St. George, of course," said Harry. "He was the only
+person in his town who knew how to manage dragons; the people in the
+fairy tales don't count. But St. George is a real person, and he is only
+asleep, and he is waiting to be waked up. Only nobody believes in St.
+George now. I heard father say so."
+
+"We do," said Effie.
+
+"Of course we do. And don't you see, Ef, that's the very reason why we
+could wake him? You can't wake people if you don't believe in them, can
+you?"
+
+Effie said no, but where could they find St. George?
+
+"We must go and look," said Harry boldly. "You shall wear a dragonproof
+frock, made of stuff like the curtains. And I will smear myself all over
+with the best dragon poison, and--"
+
+Effie clasped her hands and skipped with joy and cried: "Oh, Harry! I
+know where we can find St. George! In St. George's Church, of course."
+
+"Um," said Harry, wishing he had thought of it for himself, "you have a
+little sense sometimes, for a girl."
+
+So the next afternoon, quite early, long before the beams of sunset
+announced the coming night, when everybody would be up and working, the
+two children got out of bed. Effie wrapped herself in a shawl of
+dragonproof muslin--there was no time to make the frock--and Harry made
+a horrid mess of himself with the patent dragon poison. It was warranted
+harmless to infants and invalids, so he felt quite safe.
+
+Then they joined hands and set out to walk to St. George's Church. As
+you know, there are many St. George's churches, but fortunately they
+took the turning that leads to the right one, and went along in the
+bright sunlight, feeling very brave and adventurous.
+
+There was no one about in the streets except dragons, and the place was
+simply swarming with them. Fortunately none of the dragons were just the
+right size for eating little boys and girls, or perhaps this story might
+have had to end here. There were dragons on the pavement, and dragons on
+the roadway, dragons basking on the front doorsteps of public buildings,
+and dragons preening their wings on the roofs in the hot afternoon sun.
+The town was quite green with them. Even when the children had gotten
+out of the town and were walking in the lanes, they noticed that the
+fields on each side were greener than usual with the scaly legs and
+tails; and some of the smaller sizes had made themselves asbestos nests
+in the flowering hawthorn hedges.
+
+Effie held her brother's hand very tight, and once when a fat dragon
+flopped against her ear she screamed out, and a whole flight of green
+dragons rose from the field at the sound, and sprawled away across the
+sky. The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew.
+
+"Oh, I want to go home," said Effie.
+
+"Don't be silly," said Harry. "Surely you haven't forgotten about the
+Seven Champions and all the princes. People who are going to be their
+country's deliverers never scream and say they want to go home."
+
+"And are we," asked Effie--"deliverers, I mean?"
+
+"You'll see," said her brother, and on they went.
+
+When they came to St. George's Church they found the door open, and they
+walked right in--but St. George was not there, so they walked around the
+churchyard outside, and presently they found the great stone tomb of St.
+George, with the figure of him carved in marble outside, in his armor
+and helmet, and with his hands folded on his breast.
+
+"How ever can we wake him?" they said. Then Harry spoke to St.
+George--but he would not answer; and he called, but St. George did not
+seem to hear; and then he actually tried to waken the great
+dragon-slayer by shaking his marble shoulders. But St. George took no
+notice.
+
+Then Effie began to cry, and she put her arms around St. George's neck
+as well as she could for the marble, which was very much in the way at
+the back, and she kissed the marble face, and she said: "Oh, dear, good,
+kind St. George, please wake up and help us."
+
+And at that St. George opened his eyes sleepily, and stretched himself
+and said: "What's the matter, little girl?"
+
+So the children told him all about it; he turned over in his marble and
+leaned on one elbow to listen. But when he heard that there were so many
+dragons he shook his head.
+
+"It's no good," he said, "they would be one too many for poor old
+George. You should have waked me before. I was always for a fair
+fight--one man one dragon, was my motto."
+
+Just then a flight of dragons passed overhead, and St. George half drew
+his sword.
+
+But he shook his head again and pushed the sword back as the flight of
+dragons grew small in the distance.
+
+"I can't do anything," he said. "Things have changed since my time. St.
+Andrew told me about it. They woke him up over the engineers' strike,
+and he came to talk to me. He says everything is done by machinery now;
+there must be some way of settling these dragons. By the way, what sort
+of weather have you been having lately?"
+
+This seemed so careless and unkind that Harry would not answer, but
+Effie said patiently, "It has been very fine. Father says it is the
+hottest weather there has ever been in this country."
+
+"Ah, I guessed as much," said the Champion, thoughtfully. "Well, the
+only thing would be ... dragons can't stand wet and cold, that's the
+only thing. If you could find the taps."
+
+St. George was beginning to settle down again on his stone slab.
+
+"Good night, very sorry I can't help you," he said, yawning behind his
+marble hand.
+
+"Oh, but you can," cried Effie. "Tell us--what taps?"
+
+"Oh, like in the bathroom," said St. George, still more sleepily. "And
+there's a looking glass, too; shows you all the world and what's going
+on. St. Denis told me about it; said it was a very pretty thing. I'm
+sorry I can't--good night."
+
+And he fell back into his marble and was fast asleep again in a moment.
+
+"We shall never find the taps," said Harry. "I say, wouldn't it be awful
+if St. George woke up when there was a dragon near, the size that eats
+champions?"
+
+Effie pulled off her dragonproof veil. "We didn't meet any the size of
+the dining room as we came along," she said. "I daresay we shall be
+quite safe."
+
+So she covered St. George with the veil, and Harry rubbed off as much as
+he could of the dragon poison onto St. George's armor, so as to make
+everything quite safe for him.
+
+"We might hide in the church till it is dark," he said, "and then--"
+
+But at that moment a dark shadow fell on them, and they saw that it was
+a dragon exactly the size of the dining room at home.
+
+So then they knew that all was lost. The dragon swooped down and caught
+the two children in his claws; he caught Effie by her green silk sash,
+and Harry by the little point at the back of his Eton jacket--and then,
+spreading his great yellow wings, he rose into the air, rattling like a
+third-class carriage when the brake is hard on.
+
+"Oh, Harry," said Effie, "I wonder when he will eat us!" The dragon was
+flying across woods and fields with great flaps of his wings that
+carried him a quarter of a mile at each flap.
+
+[Illustration: "He rose into the air, rattling like a third-class
+carriage." _See page 50._]
+
+Harry and Effie could see the country below, hedges and rivers and
+churches and farmhouses flowing away from under them, much faster than
+you see them running away from the sides of the fastest express train.
+
+And still the dragon flew on. The children saw other dragons in the air
+as they went, but the dragon who was as big as the dining room never
+stopped to speak to any of them, but just flew on quite steadily.
+
+"He knows where he wants to go," said Harry. "Oh, if he would only drop
+us before he gets there!"
+
+But the dragon held on tight, and he flew and flew and flew until at
+last, when the children were quite giddy, he settled down, with a
+rattling of all his scales, on the top of a mountain. And he lay there
+on his great green scaly side, panting, and very much out of breath,
+because he had come such a long way. But his claws were fast in Effie's
+sash and the little point at the back of Harry's Eton jacket.
+
+Then Effie took out the knife Harry had given her on her birthday. It
+had cost only sixpence to begin with, and she had had it a month, and it
+never could sharpen anything but slate-pencils; but somehow she managed
+to make that knife cut her sash in front, and crept out of it, leaving
+the dragon with only a green silk bow in one of his claws. That knife
+would never have cut Harry's jacket-tail off, though, and when Effie had
+tried for some time she saw that this was so and gave it up. But with
+her help Harry managed to wriggle quietly out of his sleeves, so that
+the dragon had only an Eton jacket in his other claw. Then the children
+crept on tiptoe to a crack in the rocks and got in. It was much too
+narrow for the dragon to get in also, so they stayed in there and waited
+to make faces at the dragon when he felt rested enough to sit up and
+begin to think about eating them. He was very angry, indeed, when they
+made faces at him, and blew out fire and smoke at them, but they ran
+farther into the cave so that he could not reach them, and when he was
+tired of blowing he went away.
+
+But they were afraid to come out of the cave, so they went farther in,
+and presently the cave opened out and grew bigger, and the floor was
+soft sand, and when they had come to the very end of the cave there was
+a door, and on it was written: UNIVERSAL TAPROOM. PRIVATE. NO ONE
+ALLOWED INSIDE.
+
+So they opened the door at once just to peep in, and then they
+remembered what St. George had said.
+
+"We can't be worse off than we are," said Harry, "with a dragon waiting
+for us outside. Let's go in."
+
+They went boldly into the taproom, and shut the door behind them.
+
+And now they were in a sort of room cut out of the solid rock, and all
+along one side of the room were taps, and all the taps were labeled with
+china labels like you see in baths. And as they could both read words of
+two syllables or even three sometimes, they understood at once that they
+had gotten to the place where the weather is turned on from. There were
+six big taps labeled "Sunshine," "Wind," "Rain," "Snow," "Hail," "Ice,"
+and a lot of little ones, labeled "Fair to moderate," "Showery," "South
+breeze," "Nice growing weather for the crops," "Skating," "Good open
+weather," "South wind," "East wind," and so on. And the big tap labeled
+"Sunshine" was turned full on. They could not see any sunshine--the cave
+was lighted by a skylight of blue glass--so they supposed the sunlight
+was pouring out by some other way, as it does with the tap that washes
+out the underneath parts of patent sinks in kitchens.
+
+Then they saw that one side of the room was just a big looking glass,
+and when you looked in it you could see everything that was going on in
+the world--and all at once, too, which is not like most looking glasses.
+They saw the carts delivering the dead dragons at the County Council
+offices, and they saw St. George asleep under the dragonproof veil. And
+they saw their mother at home crying because her children had gone out
+in the dreadful, dangerous daylight, and she was afraid a dragon had
+eaten them. And they saw the whole of England, like a great puzzle
+map--green in the field parts and brown in the towns, and black in the
+places where they make coal and crockery and cutlery and chemicals. All
+over it, on the black parts, and on the brown, and on the green, there
+was a network of green dragons. And they could see that it was still
+broad daylight, and no dragons had gone to bed yet.
+
+Effie said, "Dragons do not like cold." And she tried to turn off the
+sunshine, but the tap was out of order, and that was why there had been
+so much hot weather, and why the dragons had been able to be hatched. So
+they left the sunshine tap alone, and they turned on the snow and left
+the tap full on while they went to look in the glass. There they saw the
+dragons running all sorts of ways like ants if you are cruel enough to
+pour water into an ant-heap, which, of course, you never are. And the
+snow fell more and more.
+
+Then Effie turned the rain tap quite full on, and presently the dragons
+began to wriggle less, and by-and-by some of them lay quite still, so
+the children knew the water had put out the fires inside them, and they
+were dead. So then they turned on the hail--only half on, for fear of
+breaking people's windows--and after a while there were no more dragons
+to be seen moving.
+
+Then the children knew that they were indeed the deliverers of their
+country.
+
+"They will put up a monument to us," said Harry, "as high as Nelson's!
+All the dragons are dead."
+
+"I hope the one that was waiting outside for us is dead!" said Effie.
+"And about the monument, Harry, I'm not so sure. What can they do with
+such a lot of dead dragons? It would take years and years to bury them,
+and they could never be burnt now they are so soaking wet. I wish the
+rain would wash them off into the sea."
+
+But this did not happen, and the children began to feel that they had
+not been so frightfully clever after all.
+
+"I wonder what this old thing's for," said Harry. He had found a rusty
+old tap, which seemed as though it had not been used for ages. Its china
+label was quite coated over with dirt and cobwebs. When Effie had
+cleaned it with a bit of her skirt--for curiously enough both the
+children had come out without pocket handkerchiefs--she found that the
+label said "Waste."
+
+"Let's turn it on," she said. "It might carry off the dragons."
+
+The tap was very stiff from not having been used for such a long time,
+but together they managed to turn it on, and then ran to the mirror to
+see what happened.
+
+Already a great, round black hole had opened in the very middle of the
+map of England, and the sides of the map were tilting themselves up, so
+that the rain ran down toward the hole.
+
+"Oh, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" cried Effie, and she hurried back to the
+taps and turned on everything that seemed wet. "Showery," "Good open
+weather," "Nice growing weather for the crops," and even "South" and
+"South-West," because she had heard her father say that those winds
+brought rain.
+
+And now the floods of rain were pouring down on the country, and great
+sheets of water flowed toward the center of the map, and cataracts of
+water poured into the great round hole in the middle of the map, and the
+dragons were being washed away and disappearing down the waste pipe in
+great green masses and scattered green shoals--single dragons and
+dragons by the dozen; of all sizes, from the ones that carry off
+elephants down to the ones that get in your tea.
+
+Presently there was not a dragon left. So then they turned off the tap
+named "Waste," and they half-turned off the one labeled "Sunshine"--it
+was broken, so that they could not turn it off altogether--and they
+turned on "Fair to moderate" and "Showery" and both taps stuck, so that
+they could not be turned off, which accounts for our climate.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+How did they get home again? By the Snowdon railway of course.
+
+And was the nation grateful? Well--the nation was very wet. And by the
+time the nation had gotten dry again it was interested in the new
+invention for toasting muffins by electricity, and all the dragons were
+almost forgotten. Dragons do not seem so important when they are dead
+and gone, and, you know, there never was a reward offered.
+
+And what did Father and Mother say when Effie and Harry got home?
+
+My dear, that is the sort of silly question you children always will
+ask. However, just for this once I don't mind telling you.
+
+Mother said: "Oh, my darlings, my darlings, you're safe--you're safe!
+You naughty children--how could you be so disobedient? Go to bed at
+once!"
+
+And their father the doctor said: "I wish I had known what you were
+going to do! I should have liked to preserve a specimen. I threw away
+the one I got out of Effie's eye. I intended to get a more perfect
+specimen. I did not anticipate this immediate extinction of the
+species."
+
+The professor said nothing, but he rubbed his hands. He had kept his
+specimen--the one the size of an earwig that he gave Harry half a crown
+for--and he has it to this day.
+
+You must get him to show it to you!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE ICE DRAGON]
+
+
+
+
+IV. The Ice Dragon, or Do as You Are Told
+
+
+This is the tale of the wonders that befell on the evening of the
+eleventh of December, when they did what they were told not to do. You
+may think that you know all the unpleasant things that could possibly
+happen to you if you are disobedient, but there are some things which
+even you do not know, and they did not know them either.
+
+Their names were George and Jane.
+
+There were no fireworks that year on Guy Fawkes' Day, because the heir
+to the throne was not well. He was cutting his first tooth, and that is
+a very anxious time for any person--even for a Royal one. He was really
+very poorly, so that fireworks would have been in the worst possible
+taste, even at Land's End or in the Isle of Man, whilst in Forest Hill,
+which was the home of Jane and George, anything of the kind was quite
+out of the question. Even the Crystal Palace, empty-headed as it is,
+felt that this was no time for Catherine-wheels.
+
+But when the Prince had cut his tooth, rejoicings were not only
+admissible but correct, and the eleventh of December was proclaimed
+firework day. All the people were most anxious to show their loyalty,
+and to enjoy themselves at the same time. So there were fireworks and
+torchlight processions, and set pieces at the Crystal Palace, with
+"Blessings on our Prince" and "Long Live our Royal Darling" in
+different-colored fires; and the most private of boarding schools had a
+half holiday; and even the children of plumbers and authors had tuppence
+each given them to spend as they liked.
+
+George and Jane had sixpence each--and they spent the whole amount on a
+golden rain, which would not light for ever so long, and when it did
+light went out almost at once, so they had to look at the fireworks in
+the gardens next door, and at the ones at the Crystal Palace, which were
+very glorious indeed.
+
+All their relations had colds in their heads, so Jane and George were
+allowed to go out into the garden alone to let off their firework. Jane
+had put on her fur cape and her thick gloves, and her hood with the
+silver fox fur on it that was made out of Mother's old muff; and George
+had his overcoat with the three capes, and his comforter, and Father's
+sealskin traveling cap with the pieces that come down over your ears.
+
+It was dark in the garden, but the fireworks all about made it seem very
+gay, and though the children were cold they were quite sure that they
+were enjoying themselves.
+
+They got up on the fence at the end of the garden to see better; and
+then they saw, very far away, where the edge of the dark world is, a
+shining line of straight, beautiful lights arranged in a row, as if they
+were the spears carried by a fairy army.
+
+"Oh, how pretty," said Jane. "I wonder what they are. It looks as if the
+fairies were planting little shining baby poplar trees and watering them
+with liquid light."
+
+"Liquid fiddlestick!" said George. He had been to school, so he knew
+that these were only the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. And he
+said so.
+
+"But what is the Rory Bory what's-its-name?" asked Jane. "Who lights it,
+and what's it there for?"
+
+George had to own that he had not learned that.
+
+"But I know," said he, "that it has something to do with the Great Bear,
+and the Dipper, and the Plough, and Charles's Wain."
+
+"And what are they?" asked Jane.
+
+"Oh, they're the surnames of some of the star families. There goes a
+jolly rocket," answered George, and Jane felt as if she almost
+understood about the star families.
+
+The fairy spears of light twinkled and gleamed: They were much prettier
+than the big, blaring, blazing bonfire that was smoking and flaming and
+spluttering in the next-door-but-one garden--prettier even than the
+colored fires at the Crystal Palace.
+
+"I wish we could see them nearer," Jane said. "I wonder if the star
+families are nice families--the kind that Mother would like us to go to
+tea with, if we were little stars?"
+
+"They aren't that sort of families at all, Silly," said her brother,
+kindly trying to explain. "I only said 'families' because a kid like you
+wouldn't have understood if I'd said constel ... and, besides, I've
+forgotten the end of the word. Anyway, the stars are all up in the sky,
+so you can't go to tea with them."
+
+"No," said Jane. "I said if we were little stars."
+
+"But we aren't," said George.
+
+"No," said Jane, with a sigh. "I know that. I'm not so stupid as you
+think, George. But the Tory Bories are somewhere at the edge. Couldn't
+we go and see them?"
+
+"Considering you're eight, you haven't much sense." George kicked his
+boots against the fencing to warm his toes. "It's half the world away."
+
+"It looks very near," said Jane, hunching up her shoulders to keep her
+neck warm.
+
+"They're close to the North Pole," said George. "Look here--I don't care
+a straw about the Aurora Borealis, but I shouldn't mind discovering the
+North Pole: It's awfully difficult and dangerous, and then you come home
+and write a book about it with a lot of pictures, and everybody says how
+brave you are."
+
+Jane got off the fence.
+
+"Oh, George, _let's_," she said. "We shall never have such a chance
+again--all alone by ourselves--and quite late, too."
+
+"I'd go right enough if it wasn't for you," George answered gloomily,
+"but you know they always say I lead you into mischief--and if we went
+to the North Pole we should get our boots wet, as likely as not, and
+you remember what they said about not going on the grass."
+
+"They said the _lawn_," said Jane. "We're not going on the _lawn_. Oh,
+George, do, do let's. It doesn't look so _very_ far--we could be back
+before they had time to get dreadfully angry."
+
+"All right," said George, "but mind, I don't want to go."
+
+So off they went. They got over the fence, which was very cold and white
+and shiny because it was beginning to freeze, and on the other side of
+the fence was somebody else's garden, so they got out of that as quickly
+as they could, and beyond that was a field where there was another big
+bonfire, with people standing around it who looked quite dark-skinned.
+
+"It's like Indians," said George, and wanted to stop and look, but Jane
+pulled him on, and they passed by the bonfire and got through a gap in
+the hedge into another field--a dark one; and far away, beyond quite a
+number of other dark fields, the Northern Lights shone and sparkled and
+twinkled.
+
+Now, during the winter the Arctic regions come much farther south than
+they are marked on the map. Very few people know this, though you would
+think they could tell it by the ice in the jugs of a morning. And just
+when George and Jane were starting for the North Pole, the Arctic
+regions had come down very nearly as far as Forest Hill, so that, as the
+children walked on, it grew colder and colder, and presently they saw
+that the fields were covered with snow, and there were great icicles
+hanging from all the hedges and gates. And the Northern Lights still
+seemed some way off.
+
+They were crossing a very rough, snowy field when Jane first noticed the
+animals. There were white rabbits and white hares and all sorts and
+sizes of white birds, and some larger creatures in the shadows of the
+hedges that Jane was sure were wolves and bears.
+
+"Polar bears and Arctic wolves, of course I mean," she said, for she did
+not want George to think her stupid again.
+
+There was a great hedge at the end of this field, all covered with snow
+and icicles; but the children found a place where there was a hole, and
+as no bears or wolves seemed to be just in that part of the hedge, they
+crept through and scrambled out of the frozen ditch on the other side.
+And then they stood still and held their breath with wonder.
+
+For in front of them, running straight and smooth right away to the
+Northern Lights, lay a great wide road of pure dark ice, and on each
+side were tall trees all sparkling with white frost, and from the boughs
+of the trees hung strings of stars threaded on fine moonbeams, and
+shining so brightly that it was like a beautiful fairy daylight. Jane
+said so; but George said it was like the electric lights at the Earl's
+Court Exhibition.
+
+The rows of trees went as straight as ruled lines away--away and
+away--and at the other end of them shone the Aurora Borealis.
+
+There was a signpost of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure ice
+the children read: THIS WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.
+
+Then George said: "Way or no way, I know a slide when I see one--so here
+goes." And he took a run on the frozen snow, and Jane took a run when
+she saw him do it, and the next moment they were sliding away, each with
+feet half a yard apart, along the great slide that leads to the North
+Pole.
+
+This great slide is made for the convenience of the Polar bears, who,
+during the winter months, get their food from the Army and Navy
+Stores--and it is the most perfect slide in the world. If you have never
+come across it, it is because you have never let off fireworks on the
+eleventh of December, and have never been thoroughly naughty and
+disobedient. But do not be these things in the hope of finding the great
+slide--because you might find something quite different, and then you
+will be sorry.
+
+The great slide is like common slides in that when once you have started
+you have to go on to the end--unless you fall down--and then it hurts
+just as much as the smaller kind on ponds. The great slide runs
+downhill all the way, so that you keep on going faster and faster and
+faster. George and Jane went so fast that they had not time to notice
+the scenery. They only saw the long lines of frosted trees and the
+starry lamps, and on each side, rushing back as they slid on, a very
+broad, white world and a very large, black night; and overhead as well
+as in the trees the stars were bright like silver lamps, and far ahead
+shone and trembled and sparkled the line of fairy spears. Jane said
+that, and George said: "I can see the Northern Lights quite plain."
+
+It is very pleasant to slide and slide and slide on clear, dark
+ice--especially if you feel you are really going somewhere, and more
+especially if that somewhere is the North Pole. The children's feet made
+no noise on the ice, and they went on and on in a beautiful white
+silence. But suddenly the silence was shattered and a cry rang out over
+the snow.
+
+"Hey! You there! Stop!"
+
+"Tumble for your life!" cried George, and he fell down at once, because
+it is the only way to stop. Jane fell on top of him--and then they
+crawled on hands and knees to the snow at the edge of the slide--and
+there was a sportsman, dressed in a peaked cap and a frozen moustache,
+like the one you see in the pictures about Ice-Peter, and he had a gun
+in his hand.
+
+"You don't happen to have any bullets about you?" said he.
+
+"No," George said, truthfully. "I had five of father's revolver
+cartridges, but they were taken away the day Nurse turned out my pockets
+to see if I had taken the knob of the bathroom door by mistake."
+
+"Quite so," said the sportsman, "these accidents will occur. You don't
+carry firearms, then, I presume?"
+
+"I haven't any fire_arms_," said George, "but I have a fire_work_. It's
+only a squib one of the boys gave me, if that's any good." And he began
+to feel among the string and peppermints, and buttons and tops and nibs
+and chalk and foreign postage stamps in his knickerbocker pockets.
+
+"One could but try," the sportsman replied, and he held out his hand.
+
+But Jane pulled at her brother's jacket-tail and whispered, "Ask him
+what he wants it for."
+
+So then the sportsman had to confess that he wanted the firework to kill
+the white grouse with; and, when they came to look, there was the white
+grouse himself, sitting in the snow, looking quite pale and careworn,
+and waiting anxiously for the matter to be decided one way or the other.
+
+George put all the things back in his pockets, and said, "No, I shan't.
+The reason for shooting him stopped yesterday--I heard Father say so--so
+it wouldn't be fair, anyhow. I'm very sorry; but I can't--so there!"
+
+The sportsman said nothing, only he shook his fist at Jane, and then he
+got on the slide and tried to go toward the Crystal Palace--which was
+not easy, because that way is uphill. So they left him trying, and went
+on.
+
+Before they started, the white grouse thanked them in a few pleasant,
+well-chosen words, and then they took a sideways slanting run and
+started off again on the great slide, and so away toward the North Pole
+and the twinkling, beautiful lights.
+
+The great slide went on and on, and the lights did not seem to come much
+nearer, and the white silence wrapped around them as they slid along the
+wide, icy path. Then once again the silence was broken to bits by
+someone calling: "Hey! You there! Stop!"
+
+"Tumble for your life!" cried George, and tumbled as before, stopping in
+the only possible way, and Jane stopped on top of him, and they crawled
+to the edge and came suddenly on a butterfly collector, who was looking
+for specimens with a pair of blue glasses and a blue net and a blue book
+with colored plates.
+
+"Excuse me," said the collector, "but have you such a thing as a needle
+about you--a very long needle?"
+
+"I have a needle _book_," replied Jane, politely, "but there aren't any
+needles in it now. George took them all to do the things with pieces of
+cork--in the 'Boy's Own Scientific Experimenter' and 'The Young
+Mechanic.' He did not do the things, but he did for the needles."
+
+"Curiously enough," said the collector, "I too wish to use the needle in
+connection with cork."
+
+"I have a hatpin in my hood," said Jane. "I fastened the fur with it
+when it caught in the nail on the greenhouse door. It is very long and
+sharp--would that do?"
+
+"One could but try," said the collector, and Jane began to feel for the
+pin. But George pinched her arm and whispered, "Ask what he wants it
+for." Then the collector had to own that he wanted the pin to stick
+through the great Arctic moth, "a magnificent specimen," he added,
+"which I am most anxious to preserve."
+
+And there, sure enough, in the collector's butterfly net sat the great
+Arctic moth, listening attentively to the conversation.
+
+"Oh, I couldn't!" cried Jane. And while George was explaining to the
+collector that they would really rather not, Jane opened the blue folds
+of the butterfly net, and asked the moth quietly if it would please step
+outside for a moment. And it did.
+
+When the collector saw that the moth was free, he seemed less angry than
+grieved.
+
+"Well, well," said he, "here's a whole Arctic expedition thrown away! I
+shall have to go home and fit out another. And that means a lot of
+writing to the papers and things. You seem to be a singularly
+thoughtless little girl."
+
+So they went on, leaving him too, trying to go uphill towards the
+Crystal Palace.
+
+When the great white Arctic moth had returned thanks in a suitable
+speech, George and Jane took a sideways slanting run and started sliding
+again, between the star-lamps along the great slide toward the North
+Pole. They went faster and faster, and the lights ahead grew brighter
+and brighter--so that they could not keep their eyes open, but had to
+blink and wink as they went--and then suddenly the great slide ended in
+an immense heap of snow, and George and Jane shot right into it because
+they could not stop themselves, and the snow was soft, so that they went
+in up to their very ears.
+
+When they had picked themselves out and thumped each other on the back
+to get rid of the snow, they shaded their eyes and looked, and there,
+right in front of them, was the wonder of wonders--the North
+Pole--towering high and white and glistening, like an ice-lighthouse,
+and it was quite, quite close, so that you had to put your head as far
+back as it would go, and farther, before you could see the high top of
+it. It was made entirely of ice. You will hear grown-up people talk a
+great deal of nonsense about the North Pole, and when you are grown up,
+it is even possible that you may talk nonsense about it yourself (the
+most unlikely things do happen) but deep down in your heart you must
+always remember that the North Pole is made of clear ice, and could not
+possibly, if you come to think of it, be made of anything else.
+
+All around the Pole, making a bright ring about it, were hundreds of
+little fires, and the flames of them did not flicker and twist, but went
+up blue and green and rosy and straight like the stalks of dream lilies.
+
+Jane said so, but George said they were as straight as ramrods.
+
+And these flames were the Aurora Borealis, which the children had seen
+as far away as Forest Hill.
+
+The ground was quite flat, and covered with smooth, hard snow, which
+shone and sparkled like the top of a birthday cake that has been iced at
+home. The ones done at the shops do not shine and sparkle, because they
+mix flour with the icing sugar.
+
+"It is like a dream," said Jane.
+
+And George said, "It _is_ the North Pole. Just think of the fuss people
+always make about getting here--and it was no trouble at all, really."
+
+"I daresay lots of people have gotten here," said Jane, dismally. "It's
+not the getting _here_--I see that--it's the getting back again.
+Perhaps no one will ever know that _we_ have been here, and the robins
+will cover us with leaves and--"
+
+"Nonsense," said George. "There aren't any robins, and there aren't any
+leaves. It's just the North Pole, that's all, and I've found it; and now
+I shall try to climb up and plant the British flag on the top--my
+handkerchief will do; and if it really _is_ the North Pole, my pocket
+compass Uncle James gave me will spin around and around, and then I
+shall know. Come on."
+
+So Jane came on; and when they got close to the clear, tall, beautiful
+flames they saw that there was a great, queer-shaped lump of ice all
+around the bottom of the Pole--clear, smooth, shining ice, that was
+deep, beautiful Prussian blue, like icebergs, in the thick parts, and
+all sorts of wonderful, glimmery, shimmery, changing colors in the thin
+parts, like the cut-glass chandelier in Grandmamma's house in London.
+
+"It is a very curious shape," said Jane. "It's almost like"--she moved
+back a step to get a better view of it--"it's almost like a dragon."
+
+"It's much more like the lampposts on the Thames Embankment," said
+George, who had noticed a curly thing like a tail that went twisting up
+the North Pole.
+
+"Oh, George," cried Jane, "it _is_ a dragon; I can see its wings.
+Whatever shall we do?"
+
+And, sure enough, it _was_ a dragon--a great, shining, winged, scaly,
+clawy, big-mouthed dragon--made of pure ice. It must have gone to sleep
+curled around the hole where the warm steam used to come up from the
+middle of the earth, and then when the earth got colder, and the column
+of steam froze and was turned into the North Pole, the dragon must have
+got frozen in his sleep--frozen too hard to move--and there he stayed.
+And though he was very terrible he was very beautiful too.
+
+Jane said so, but George said, "Oh, don't bother; I'm thinking how to
+get onto the Pole and try the compass without waking the brute."
+
+[Illustration: "Sure enough, it was a dragon." _See page 68._]
+
+The dragon certainly was beautiful, with his deep, clear Prussian
+blueness, and his rainbow-colored glitter. And rising from within the
+cold coil of the frozen dragon the North Pole shot up like a pillar made
+of one great diamond, and every now and then it cracked a little, from
+sheer cold. The sound of the cracking was the only thing that broke the
+great white silence in the midst of which the dragon lay like an
+enormous jewel, and the straight flames went up all around him like the
+stalks of tall lilies.
+
+And as the children stood there looking at the most wonderful sight
+their eyes had ever seen, there was a soft padding of feet and a
+hurry-scurry behind them, and from the outside darkness beyond the
+flame-stalks came a crowd of little brown creatures running, jumping,
+scrambling, tumbling head over heels and on all fours, and some even
+walking on their heads. They joined hands as they came near the fires
+and danced around in a ring.
+
+"It's bears," said Jane. "I know it is. Oh, how I wish we hadn't come;
+and my boots are so wet."
+
+The dancing-ring broke up suddenly, and the next moment hundreds of
+furry arms clutched at George and Jane, and they found themselves in the
+middle of a great, soft, heaving crowd of little fat people in brown fur
+dresses, and the white silence was quite gone.
+
+"Bears, indeed," cried a shrill voice. "You'll wish we were bears before
+you've done with us."
+
+This sounded so dreadful that Jane began to cry. Up to now the children
+had only seen the most beautiful and wondrous things, but now they began
+to be sorry they had done what they were told not to, and the difference
+between "lawn" and "grass" did not seem so great as it had at Forest
+Hill.
+
+Directly Jane began to cry, all the brown people started back. No one
+cries in the Arctic regions for fear of being struck by the frost. So
+that these people had never seen anyone cry before.
+
+"Don't cry for real," whispered George, "or you'll get chilblains in
+your eyes. But pretend to howl--it frightens them."
+
+So Jane went on pretending to howl, and the real crying stopped: It
+always does when you begin to pretend. You try it.
+
+Then, speaking very loud so as to be heard over the howls of Jane,
+George said: "Yah--who's afraid? We are George and Jane--who are you?"
+
+"We are the sealskin dwarfs," said the brown people, twisting their
+furry bodies in and out of the crowd like the changing glass in
+kaleidoscopes. "We are very precious and expensive, for we are made,
+throughout, of the very best sealskin."
+
+"And what are those fires for?" bellowed George--for Jane was crying
+louder and louder.
+
+"Those," shouted the dwarfs, coming a step nearer, "are the fires we
+make to thaw the dragon. He is frozen now--so he sleeps curled up around
+the Pole--but when we have thawed him with our fires he will wake up and
+go and eat everybody in the world except us."
+
+"WHATEVER--DO--YOU--WANT--HIM--TO--DO--THAT--FOR?" yelled George.
+
+"Oh--just for spite," bawled the dwarfs carelessly--as if they were
+saying, "Just for fun."
+
+Jane stopped crying to say: "You are heartless."
+
+"No, we aren't," they said. "Our hearts are made of the finest sealskin,
+just like little fat sealskin purses--"
+
+And they all came a step nearer. They were very fat and round. Their
+bodies were like sealskin jackets on a very stout person; their heads
+were like sealskin muffs; their legs were like sealskin boas; and their
+hands and feet were like sealskin tobacco pouches. And their faces were
+like seals' faces, inasmuch as they, too, were covered with sealskin.
+
+"Thank you so much for telling us," said George. "Good evening. (Keep on
+howling, Jane!)"
+
+But the dwarfs came a step nearer, muttering and whispering. Then the
+muttering stopped--and there was a silence so deep that Jane was afraid
+to howl in it. But it was a brown silence, and she had liked the white
+silence better.
+
+Then the chief dwarf came quite close and said: "What's that on your
+head?"
+
+And George felt it was all up--for he knew it was his father's sealskin
+cap.
+
+The dwarf did not wait for an answer. "It's made of one of us," he
+screamed, "or else one of the seals, our poor relations. Boy, now your
+fate is sealed!"
+
+Looking at the wicked seal-faces all around them, George and Jane felt
+that their fate was sealed indeed.
+
+The dwarfs seized the children in their furry arms. George kicked, but
+it is no use kicking sealskin, and Jane howled, but the dwarfs were
+getting used to that. They climbed up the dragon's side and dumped the
+children down on his icy spine, with their backs against the North Pole.
+You have no idea how cold it was--the kind of cold that makes you feel
+small and prickly inside your clothes, and makes you wish you had twenty
+times as many clothes to feel small and prickly inside of.
+
+The sealskin dwarfs tied George and Jane to the North Pole, and, as they
+had no ropes, they bound them with snow-wreaths, which are very strong
+when they are made in the proper way, and they heaped up the fires very
+close and said: "Now the dragon will get warm, and when he gets warm he
+will wake, and when he wakes he will be hungry, and when he is hungry he
+will begin to eat, and the first thing he will eat will be you."
+
+The little, sharp, many-colored flames sprang up like the stalks of
+dream lilies, but no heat came to the children, and they grew colder and
+colder.
+
+"We shan't be very nice when the dragon does eat us, that's one
+comfort," said George. "We shall be turned into ice long before that."
+
+Suddenly there was a flapping of wings, and the white grouse perched on
+the dragon's head and said: "Can I be of any assistance?"
+
+[Illustration: "The dwarfs seized the children." _See page 72._]
+
+Now, by this time the children were so cold, so cold, so very, very
+cold, that they had forgotten everything but that, and they could say
+nothing else. So the white grouse said: "One moment. I am only too
+grateful for this opportunity of showing my sense of your manly conduct
+about the firework!"
+
+And the next moment there was a soft whispering rustle of wings
+overhead, and then, fluttering slowly, softly down, came hundreds and
+thousands of little white fluffy feathers. They fell on George and Jane
+like snowflakes, and, like flakes of fallen snow lying one above
+another, they grew into a thicker and thicker covering, so that
+presently the children were buried under a heap of white feathers, and
+only their faces peeped out.
+
+"Oh, you dear, good, kind white grouse," said Jane, "but you'll be cold
+yourself, won't you, now you have given us all your pretty dear
+feathers?"
+
+The white grouse laughed, and his laugh was echoed by thousands of kind,
+soft bird voices.
+
+"Did you think all those feathers came out of one breast? There are
+hundreds and hundreds of us here, and every one of us can spare a little
+tuft of soft breast feathers to help to keep two kind little hearts
+warm!"
+
+Thus spoke the grouse, who certainly had very pretty manners.
+
+So now the children snuggled under the feathers and were warm, and when
+the sealskin dwarfs tried to take the feathers away, the grouse and his
+friends flew in their faces with flappings and screams, and drove the
+dwarfs back. They are a cowardly folk.
+
+The dragon had not moved yet--but then he might at any moment get warm
+enough to move, and though George and Jane were now warm they were not
+comfortable nor easy in their minds. They tried to explain to the
+grouse; but though he is polite, he is not clever, and he only said:
+"You've got a warm nest, and we'll see that no one takes it from you.
+What more can you possibly want?"
+
+Just then came a new, strange, jerky fluttering of wings far softer
+than the grouse's, and George and Jane cried out together: "Oh, _do_
+mind your wings in the fires!"
+
+For they saw at once that it was the great white Arctic moth.
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, settling on the dragon's tail.
+
+So they told him.
+
+"Sealskin, are they?" said the moth. "Just you wait a minute!"
+
+He flew off very crookedly, dodging the flames, and presently he came
+back, and there were so many moths with him that it was as if a live
+sheet of white wingedness were suddenly drawn between the children and
+the stars.
+
+And then the doom of the bad sealskin dwarfs fell suddenly on them.
+
+For the great sheet of winged whiteness broke up and fell as snow falls,
+and it fell upon the sealskin dwarfs; and every snowflake of it was a
+live, fluttering, hungry moth that buried its greedy nose deep in the
+sealskin fur.
+
+Grown-up people will tell you that it is not moths but moths' children
+who eat fur--but this is only when they are trying to deceive you. When
+they are not thinking about you they say, "I fear the moths have got at
+my ermine tippet," or, "Your poor Aunt Emma had a lovely sable cloak,
+but it was eaten by moths." And now there were more moths than have ever
+been together in this world before, all settling on the sealskin dwarfs.
+
+The dwarfs did not see their danger till it was too late. Then they
+called for camphor and bitter apple and oil of lavender and yellow soap
+and borax; and some of the dwarfs even started to get these things, but
+long before any of them could get to the chemist's, all was over. The
+moths ate and ate and ate till the sealskin dwarfs, being sealskin
+throughout, even to the empty hearts of them, were eaten down to the
+very life--and they fell one by one on the snow and so came to their
+end. And all around the North Pole the snow was brown with their flat
+bare pelts.
+
+"Oh, thank you--thank you, darling Arctic moth," cried Jane. "You are
+good--I do hope you haven't eaten enough to disagree with you
+afterward!"
+
+Millions of moth voices answered, with laughter as soft as moth wings,
+"We should be a poor set of fellows if we couldn't over eat ourselves
+once in a while--to oblige a friend."
+
+And off they all fluttered, and the white grouse flew off, and the
+sealskin dwarfs were all dead, and the fires went out, and George and
+Jane were left alone in the dark with the dragon!
+
+"Oh, dear," said Jane, "this is the worst of all!"
+
+"We've no friends left to help us," said George. He never thought that
+the dragon himself might help them--but then that was an idea that would
+never have occurred to any boy.
+
+It grew colder and colder and colder, and even under the grouse feathers
+the children shivered.
+
+Then, when it was so cold that it could not manage to be any colder
+without breaking the thermometer, it stopped. And then the dragon
+uncurled himself from around the North Pole, and stretched his long, icy
+length over the snow, and said: "This is something like! How faint those
+fires did make me feel!"
+
+The fact was, the sealskin dwarfs had gone the wrong way to work: The
+dragon had been frozen so long that now he was nothing but solid ice all
+through, and the fires only made him feel as if he were going to die.
+
+But when the fires were out he felt quite well, and very hungry. He
+looked around for something to eat. But he never noticed George and
+Jane, because they were frozen to his back.
+
+He moved slowly off, and the snow-wreaths that bound the children to the
+Pole gave way with a snap, and there was the dragon, crawling
+south--with Jane and George on his great, scaly, icy shining back. Of
+course the dragon had to go south if he went anywhere, because when you
+get to the North Pole there is no other way to go. The dragon rattled
+and tinkled as he went, exactly like the cut-glass chandelier when you
+touch it, as you are strictly forbidden to do. Of course there are a
+million ways of going south from the North Pole--so you will own that it
+was lucky for George and Jane when the dragon took the right way and
+suddenly got his heavy feet on the great slide. Off he went, full speed,
+between the starry lamps, toward Forest Hill and the Crystal Palace.
+
+"He's going to take us home," said Jane. "Oh, he is a good dragon. I
+_am_ glad!"
+
+George was rather glad too, though neither of the children felt at all
+sure of their welcome, especially as their feet were wet, and they were
+bringing a strange dragon home with them.
+
+They went very fast, because dragons can go uphill as easily as down.
+You would not understand why if I told you--because you are only in long
+division at present; yet if you want me to tell you, so that you can
+show off to other children, I will. It is because dragons can get their
+tails into the fourth dimension and hold on there, and when you can do
+that everything else is easy.
+
+The dragon went very fast, only stopping to eat the collector and the
+sportsman, who were still struggling to go up the slide--vainly, because
+they had no tails, and had never even heard of the fourth dimension.
+
+When the dragon got to the end of the slide he crawled very slowly
+across the dark field beyond the field where there was a bonfire, next
+to the next-door garden at Forest Hill.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He went slower and slower, and in the bonfire field he stopped
+altogether, and because the Arctic regions had not got down so far as
+that, and because the bonfire was very hot, the dragon began to melt and
+melt and melt--and before the children knew what he was doing they found
+themselves sitting in a large pool of water, and their boots were as wet
+as wet, and there was not a bit of dragon left!
+
+So they went indoors.
+
+Of course some grown-up or other noticed at once that the boots of
+George and Jane were wet and muddy, and that they had both been sitting
+down in a very damp place, so they were sent to bed immediately.
+
+It was long past their time, anyhow.
+
+Now, if you are of an inquiring mind--not at all a nice thing in a
+little child who reads fairy tales--you will want to know how it is that
+since the sealskin dwarfs have all been killed, and the fires all been
+let out, the Aurora Borealis shines, on cold nights, as brightly as
+ever.
+
+My dear, I do not know! I am not too proud to own that there are some
+things I know nothing about--and this is one of them. But I do know that
+whoever has lighted those fires again, it is certainly not the sealskin
+dwarfs. They were all eaten by moths--and motheaten things are of no
+use, even to light fires!
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: THE ISLAND OF THE NINE WHIRLPOOLS]
+
+
+
+
+V. The Island of the Nine Whirlpools
+
+
+The dark arch that led to the witch's cave was hung with a
+black-and-yellow fringe of live snakes. As the Queen went in, keeping
+carefully in the middle of the arch, all the snakes lifted their wicked,
+flat heads and stared at her with their wicked, yellow eyes. You know it
+is not good manners to stare, even at Royalty, except of course for
+cats. And the snakes had been so badly brought up that they even put
+their tongues out at the poor lady. Nasty, thin, sharp tongues they were
+too.
+
+Now, the Queen's husband was, of course, the King. And besides being a
+King he was an enchanter, and considered to be quite at the top of his
+profession, so he was very wise, and he knew that when Kings and Queens
+want children, the Queen always goes to see a witch. So he gave the
+Queen the witch's address, and the Queen called on her, though she was
+very frightened and did not like it at all. The witch was sitting by a
+fire of sticks, stirring something bubbly in a shiny copper cauldron.
+
+"What do you want, my dear?" she said to the Queen.
+
+"Oh, if you please," said the Queen, "I want a baby--a very nice one. We
+don't want any expense spared. My husband said--"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the witch. "I know all about him. And so you want a
+child? Do you know it will bring you sorrow?"
+
+"It will bring me joy first," said the Queen.
+
+"Great sorrow," said the witch.
+
+"Greater joy," said the Queen.
+
+Then the witch said, "Well, have your own way. I suppose it's as much as
+your place is worth to go back without it?"
+
+"The King would be very much annoyed," said the poor Queen.
+
+"Well, well," said the witch. "What will you give me for the child?"
+
+"Anything you ask for, and all I have," said the Queen.
+
+"Then give me your gold crown."
+
+The Queen took it off quickly.
+
+"And your necklace of blue sapphires."
+
+The Queen unfastened it.
+
+"And your pearl bracelets."
+
+The Queen unclasped them.
+
+"And your ruby clasps."
+
+And the Queen undid the clasps.
+
+"Now the lilies from your breast."
+
+The Queen gathered together the lilies.
+
+"And the diamonds of your little bright shoe buckles."
+
+The Queen pulled off her shoes.
+
+Then the witch stirred the stuff that was in the cauldron, and, one by
+one, she threw in the gold crown and the sapphire necklace and the pearl
+bracelets and the ruby clasps and the diamonds of the little bright shoe
+buckles, and last of all she threw in the lilies.
+
+The stuff in the cauldron boiled up in foaming flashes of yellow and
+blue and red and white and silver, and sent out a sweet scent, and
+presently the witch poured it out into a pot and set it to cool in the
+doorway among the snakes.
+
+Then she said to the Queen: "Your child will have hair as golden as your
+crown, eyes as blue as your sapphires. The red of your rubies will lie
+on its lips, and its skin will be clear and pale as your pearls. Its
+soul will be white and sweet as your lilies, and your diamonds will be
+no clearer than its wits."
+
+"Oh, thank you, thank you," said the Queen, "and when will it come?"
+
+"You will find it when you get home."
+
+"And won't you have something for yourself?" asked the Queen. "Any
+little thing you fancy--would you like a country, or a sack of jewels?"
+
+"Nothing, thank you," said the witch. "I could make more diamonds in a
+day than I should wear in a year."
+
+"Well, but do let me do some little thing for you," the Queen went on.
+"Aren't you tired of being a witch? Wouldn't you like to be a Duchess or
+a Princess, or something like that?"
+
+"There is one thing I should rather like," said the witch, "but it's
+hard to get in my trade."
+
+"Oh, tell me what," said the Queen.
+
+"I should like some one to love me," said the witch.
+
+Then the Queen threw her arms around the witch's neck and kissed her
+half a hundred times. "Why," she said, "I love you better than my life!
+You've given me the baby--and the baby shall love you too."
+
+"Perhaps it will," said the witch, "and when the sorrow comes, send for
+me. Each of your fifty kisses will be a spell to bring me to you. Now,
+drink up your medicine, there's a dear, and run along home."
+
+So the Queen drank the stuff in the pot, which was quite cool by this
+time, and she went out under the fringe of snakes, and they all behaved
+like good Sunday-school children. Some of them even tried to drop a
+curtsy to her as she went by, though that is not easy when you are
+hanging wrong way up by your tail. But the snakes knew the Queen was
+friends with their mistress; so, of course, they had to do their best to
+be civil.
+
+When the Queen got home, sure enough there was the baby lying in the
+cradle with the Royal arms blazoned on it, crying as naturally as
+possible. It had pink ribbons to tie up its sleeves, so the Queen saw at
+once it was a girl. When the King knew this he tore his black hair with
+fury.
+
+"Oh, you silly, silly Queen!" he said. "Why didn't I marry a clever
+lady? Did you think I went to all the trouble and expense of sending you
+to a witch to get a girl? You knew well enough it was a boy I wanted--a
+boy, an heir, a Prince--to learn all my magic and my enchantments, and
+to rule the kingdom after me. I'll bet a crown--my crown," he said, "you
+never even thought to tell the witch what kind you wanted! Did you now?"
+
+And the Queen hung her head and had to confess that she had only asked
+for a child.
+
+"Very well, madam," said the King, "very well--have your own way. And
+make the most of your daughter, while she is a child."
+
+The Queen did. All the years of her life had never held half so much
+happiness as now lived in each of the moments when she held her little
+baby in her arms. And the years went on, and the King grew more and more
+clever at magic, and more and more disagreeable at home, and the
+Princess grew more beautiful and more dear every day she lived.
+
+The Queen and the Princess were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard
+fountains with crumbs of the Princess's eighteenth birthday cake, when
+the King came into the courtyard, looking as black as thunder, with his
+black raven hopping after him. He shook his fist at his family, as
+indeed he generally did whenever he met them, for he was not a King with
+pretty home manners. The raven sat down on the edge of the marble basin
+and tried to peck the goldfish. It was all he could do to show that he
+was in the same temper as his master.
+
+"A girl indeed!" said the King angrily. "I wonder you can dare to look
+me in the face, when you remember how your silliness has spoiled
+everything."
+
+"You oughtn't to speak to my mother like that," said the Princess. She
+was eighteen, and it came to her suddenly and all in a moment that she
+was a grown-up, so she spoke out.
+
+The King could not utter a word for several minutes. He was too angry.
+But the Queen said, "My dear child, don't interfere," quite crossly, for
+she was frightened.
+
+And to her husband she said, "My dear, why do you go on worrying about
+it? Our daughter is not a boy, it is true--but she may marry a clever
+man who could rule your kingdom after you, and learn as much magic as
+ever you cared to teach him."
+
+Then the King found his tongue.
+
+"If she does marry," he said, slowly, "her husband will have to be a
+very clever man--oh, yes, very clever indeed! And he will have to know a
+very great deal more magic than I shall ever care to teach him."
+
+The Queen knew at once by the King's tone that he was going to be
+disagreeable.
+
+"Ah," she said, "don't punish the child because she loves her mother."
+
+"I'm not going to punish her for that," said he. "I'm only going to
+teach her to respect her father."
+
+And without another word he went off to his laboratory and worked all
+night, boiling different-colored things in crucibles, and copying charms
+in curious twisted letters from old brown books with mold stains on
+their yellowy pages.
+
+The next day his plan was all arranged. He took the poor Princess to the
+Lone Tower, which stands on an island in the sea, a thousand miles from
+everywhere. He gave her a dowry, and settled a handsome income on her.
+He engaged a competent dragon to look after her, and also a respectable
+griffin whose birth and upbringing he knew all about. And he said: "Here
+you shall stay, my dear, respectful daughter, till the clever man comes
+to marry you. He'll have to be clever enough to sail a ship through the
+Nine Whirlpools that spin around the island, and to kill the dragon and
+the griffin. Till he comes you'll never get any older or any wiser. No
+doubt he will soon come. You can employ yourself in embroidering your
+wedding gown. I wish you joy, my dutiful child."
+
+And his carriage, drawn by live thunderbolts (thunder travels very
+fast), rose in the air and disappeared, and the poor Princess was left,
+with the dragon and the griffin, on the Island of the Nine Whirlpools.
+
+The Queen, left at home, cried for a day and a night, and then she
+remembered the witch and called to her. And the witch came, and the
+Queen told her all.
+
+"For the sake of the twice twenty-five kisses you gave me," said the
+witch, "I will help you. But it is the last thing I can do, and it is
+not much. Your daughter is under a spell, and I can take you to her.
+But, if I do, you will have to be turned to stone, and to stay so till
+the spell is taken off the child."
+
+"I would be a stone for a thousand years," said the poor Queen, "if at
+the end of them I could see my dear again."
+
+So the witch took the Queen in a carriage drawn by live sunbeams (which
+travel more quickly than anything else in the world, and much quicker
+than thunder), and so away and away to the Lone Tower on the Island of
+the Nine Whirlpools. And there was the Princess sitting on the floor in
+the best room of the Lone Tower, crying as if her heart would break, and
+the dragon and the griffin were sitting primly on each side of her.
+
+"Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother," she cried, and hung around the Queen's
+neck as if she would never let go.
+
+"Now," said the witch, when they had all cried as much as was good for
+them, "I can do one or two other little things for you. Time shall not
+make the Princess sad. All days will be like one day till her deliverer
+comes. And you and I, dear Queen, will sit in stone at the gate of the
+tower. In doing this for you I lose all my witch's powers, and when I
+say the spell that changes you to stone, I shall change with you, and if
+ever we come out of the stone, I shall be a witch no more, but only a
+happy old woman."
+
+Then the three kissed one another again and again, and the witch said
+the spell, and on each side of the door there was now a stone lady. One
+of them had a stone crown on its head and a stone scepter in its hand;
+but the other held a stone tablet with words on it, which the griffin
+and the dragon could not read, though they had both had a very good
+education.
+
+And now all days seemed like one day to the Princess, and the next day
+always seemed the day when her mother would come out of the stone and
+kiss her again. And the years went slowly by. The wicked King died, and
+some one else took his kingdom, and many things were changed in the
+world; but the island did not change, nor the Nine Whirlpools, nor the
+griffin, nor the dragon, nor the two stone ladies. And all the time,
+from the very first, the day of the Princess's deliverance was coming,
+creeping nearer, and nearer, and nearer. But no one saw it coming except
+the Princess, and she only in dreams. And the years went by in tens and
+in hundreds, and still the Nine Whirlpools spun around, roaring in
+triumph the story of many a good ship that had gone down in their swirl,
+bearing with it some Prince who had tried to win the Princess and her
+dowry. And the great sea knew all the other stories of the Princes who
+had come from very far, and had seen the whirlpools, and had shaken
+their wise young heads and said: "'Bout ship!" and gone discreetly home
+to their nice, safe, comfortable kingdoms.
+
+But no one told the story of the deliverer who was to come. And the
+years went by.
+
+Now, after more scores of years than you would like to add up on your
+slate, a certain sailor-boy sailed on the high seas with his uncle, who
+was a skilled skipper. And the boy could reef a sail and coil a rope and
+keep the ship's nose steady before the wind. And he was as good a boy as
+you would find in a month of Sundays, and worthy to be a Prince.
+
+Now there is Something which is wiser than all the world--and it knows
+when people are worthy to be Princes. And this Something came from the
+farther side of the seventh world, and whispered in the boy's ear.
+
+And the boy heard, though he did not know he heard, and he looked out
+over the black sea with the white foam-horses galloping over it, and far
+away he saw a light. And he said to the skipper, his uncle: "What light
+is that?"
+
+Then the skipper said: "All good things defend you, Nigel, from sailing
+near that light. It is not mentioned in all charts; but it is marked
+in the old chart I steer by, which was my father's father's before me,
+and his father's father's before him. It is the light that shines from
+the Lone Tower that stands above the Nine Whirlpools. And when my
+father's father was young he heard from the very old man, his
+great-great-grandfather, that in that tower an enchanted Princess,
+fairer than the day, waits to be delivered. But there is no deliverance,
+so never steer that way; and think no more of the Princess, for that is
+only an idle tale. But the whirlpools are quite real."
+
+So, of course, from that day Nigel thought of nothing else. And as he
+sailed hither and thither upon the high seas he saw from time to time
+the light that shone out to sea across the wild swirl of the Nine
+Whirlpools. And one night, when the ship was at anchor and the skipper
+asleep in his bunk, Nigel launched the ship's boat and steered alone
+over the dark sea towards the light. He dared not go very near till
+daylight should show him what, indeed, were the whirlpools he had to
+dread.
+
+But when the dawn came he saw the Lone Tower standing dark against the
+pink and primrose of the East, and about its base the sullen swirl of
+black water, and he heard the wonderful roar of it. So he hung off and
+on, all that day and for six days besides. And when he had watched seven
+days he knew something. For you are certain to know something if you
+give for seven days your whole thought to it, even though it be only the
+first declension, or the nine-times table, or the dates of the Norman
+Kings.
+
+What he knew was this: that for five minutes out of the 1,440 minutes
+that make up a day the whirlpools slipped into silence, while the tide
+went down and left the yellow sand bare. And every day this happened,
+but every day it was five minutes earlier than it had been the day
+before. He made sure of this by the ship's chronometer, which he had
+thoughtfully brought with him.
+
+[Illustration: "The Lone Tower on the Island of the Nine Whirlpools."
+_See page 88._]
+
+So on the eighth day, at five minutes before noon, Nigel got ready. And
+when the whirlpools suddenly stopped whirling and the tide sank, like
+water in a basin that has a hole in it, he stuck to his oars and put
+his back into his stroke, and presently beached the boat on the yellow
+sand. Then he dragged it into a cave, and sat down to wait.
+
+By five minutes and one second past noon, the whirlpools were black and
+busy again, and Nigel peeped out of his cave. And on the rocky ledge
+overhanging the sea he saw a Princess as beautiful as the day, with
+golden hair and a green gown--and he went out to meet her.
+
+"I've come to save you," he said. "How darling and beautiful you are!"
+
+"You are very good, and very clever, and very dear," said the Princess,
+smiling and giving him both her hands.
+
+He shut a little kiss in each hand before he let them go.
+
+"So now, when the tide is low again, I will take you away in my boat,"
+he said.
+
+"But what about the dragon and the griffin?" asked the Princess.
+
+"Dear me," said Nigel. "I didn't know about them. I suppose I can kill
+them?"
+
+"Don't be a silly boy," said the Princess, pretending to be very grown
+up, for, though she had been on the island time only knows how many
+years, she was just eighteen, and she still liked pretending. "You
+haven't a sword, or a shield, or anything!"
+
+"Well, don't the beasts ever go to sleep?"
+
+"Why, yes," said the Princess, "but only once in twenty-four hours, and
+then the dragon is turned to stone. But the griffin has dreams. The
+griffin sleeps at teatime every day, but the dragon sleeps every day for
+five minutes, and every day it is three minutes later than it was the
+day before."
+
+"What time does he sleep today?" asked Nigel.
+
+"At eleven," said the Princess.
+
+"Ah," said Nigel, "can you do sums?"
+
+"No," said the Princess sadly. "I was never good at them."
+
+"Then I must," said Nigel. "I can, but it's slow work, and it makes me
+very unhappy. It'll take me days and days."
+
+"Don't begin yet," said the Princess. "You'll have plenty of time to be
+unhappy when I'm not with you. Tell me all about yourself."
+
+So he did. And then she told him all about herself.
+
+"I know I've been here a long time," she said, "but I don't know what
+Time is. And I am very busy sewing silk flowers on a golden gown for my
+wedding day. And the griffin does the housework--his wings are so
+convenient and feathery for sweeping and dusting. And the dragon does
+the cooking--he's hot inside, so, of course, it's no trouble to him; and
+though I don't know what Time is I'm sure it's time for my wedding day,
+because my golden gown only wants one more white daisy on the sleeve,
+and a lily on the bosom of it, and then it will be ready."
+
+Just then they heard a dry, rustling clatter on the rocks above them and
+a snorting sound. "It's the dragon," said the Princess hurriedly.
+"Good-bye. Be a good boy, and get your sum done." And she ran away and
+left him to his arithmetic.
+
+Now, the sum was this: "If the whirlpools stop and the tide goes down
+once in every twenty-four hours, and they do it five minutes earlier
+every twenty-four hours, and if the dragon sleeps every day, and he does
+it three minutes later every day, in how many days and at what time in
+the day will the tide go down three minutes before the dragon falls
+asleep?"
+
+It is quite a simple sum, as you see: You could do it in a minute
+because you have been to a good school and have taken pains with your
+lessons; but it was quite otherwise with poor Nigel. He sat down to work
+out his sum with a piece of chalk on a smooth stone. He tried it by
+practice and the unitary method, by multiplication, and by
+rule-of-three-and-three-quarters. He tried it by decimals and by
+compound interest. He tried it by square root and by cube root. He tried
+it by addition, simple and otherwise, and he tried it by mixed examples
+in vulgar fractions. But it was all of no use. Then he tried to do the
+sum by algebra, by simple and by quadratic equations, by trigonometry,
+by logarithms, and by conic sections. But it would not do. He got an
+answer every time, it is true, but it was always a different one, and he
+could not feel sure which answer was right.
+
+And just as he was feeling how much more important than anything else it
+is to be able to do your sums, the Princess came back. And now it was
+getting dark.
+
+"Why, you've been seven hours over that sum," she said, "and you haven't
+done it yet. Look here, this is what is written on the tablet of the
+statue by the lower gate. It has figures in it. Perhaps it is the answer
+to the sum."
+
+She held out to him a big white magnolia leaf. And she had scratched on
+it with the pin of her pearl brooch, and it had turned brown where she
+had scratched it, as magnolia leaves will do. Nigel read:
+
+        AFTER NINE DAYS
+        T ii. 24.
+        D ii. 27 Ans.
+        P.S.--And the griffin is artificial. R.
+
+He clapped his hands softly.
+
+"Dear Princess," he said, "I know that's the right answer. It says R
+too, you see. But I'll just prove it." So he hastily worked the sum
+backward in decimals and equations and conic sections, and all the rules
+he could think of. And it came right every time.
+
+"So now we must wait," said he. And they waited.
+
+And every day the Princess came to see Nigel and brought him food cooked
+by the dragon, and he lived in his cave, and talked to her when she was
+there, and thought about her when she was not, and they were both as
+happy as the longest day in summer. Then at last came The Day. Nigel and
+the Princess laid their plans.
+
+"You're sure he won't hurt you, my only treasure?" said Nigel.
+
+"Quite," said the Princess. "I only wish I were half as sure that he
+wouldn't hurt you."
+
+"My Princess," he said tenderly, "two great powers are on our side: the
+power of Love and the power of Arithmetic. Those two are stronger than
+anything else in the world."
+
+So when the tide began to go down, Nigel and the Princess ran out on to
+the sands, and there, in full sight of the terrace where the dragon kept
+watch, Nigel took his Princess in his arms and kissed her. The griffin
+was busy sweeping the stairs of the Lone Tower, but the dragon saw, and
+he gave a cry of rage--and it was like twenty engines all letting off
+steam at the top of their voices inside Cannon Street Station.
+
+And the two lovers stood looking up at the dragon. He was dreadful to
+look at. His head was white with age--and his beard had grown so long
+that he caught his claws in it as he walked. His wings were white with
+the salt that had settled on them from the spray of the sea. His tail
+was long and thick and jointed and white, and had little legs to it, any
+number of them--far too many--so that it looked like a very large fat
+silkworm; and his claws were as long as lessons and as sharp as
+bayonets.
+
+"Good-bye, love!" cried Nigel, and ran out across the yellow sand toward
+the sea. He had one end of a cord tied to his arm.
+
+The dragon was clambering down the face of the cliff, and next moment he
+was crawling and writhing and sprawling and wriggling across the beach
+after Nigel, making great holes in the sand with his heavy feet--and the
+very end of his tail, where there were no legs, made, as it dragged, a
+mark in the sand such as you make when you launch a boat; and he
+breathed fire till the wet sand hissed again, and the water of the
+little rock pools got quite frightened, and all went off in steam.
+
+Still Nigel held on and the dragon after him. The Princess could see
+nothing for the steam, and she stood crying bitterly, but still holding
+on tight with her right hand to the other end of the cord that Nigel had
+told her to hold; while with her left she held the ship's chronometer,
+and looked at it through her tears as he had bidden her look, so as to
+know when to pull the rope.
+
+On went Nigel over the sand, and on went the dragon after him. And the
+tide was low, and sleepy little waves lapped the sand's edge.
+
+Now at the lip of the water, Nigel paused and looked back, and the
+dragon made a bound, beginning a scream of rage that was like all the
+engines of all the railways in England. But it never uttered the second
+half of that scream, for now it knew suddenly that it was sleepy--it
+turned to hurry back to dry land, because sleeping near whirlpools is so
+unsafe. But before it reached the shore sleep caught it and turned it to
+stone. Nigel, seeing this, ran shoreward for his life--and the tide
+began to flow in, and the time of the whirlpools' sleep was nearly over,
+and he stumbled and he waded and he swam, and the Princess pulled for
+dear life at the cord in her hand, and pulled him up on to the dry shelf
+of rock just as the great sea dashed in and made itself once more into
+the girdle of Nine Whirlpools all around the island.
+
+But the dragon was asleep under the whirlpools, and when he woke up from
+being asleep he found he was drowned, so there was an end of him.
+
+"Now, there's only the griffin," said Nigel. And the Princess said:
+"Yes--only--" And she kissed Nigel and went back to sew the last leaf of
+the last lily on the bosom of her wedding gown. She thought and thought
+of what was written on the stone about the griffin being artificial--and
+next day she said to Nigel: "You know a griffin is half a lion and half
+an eagle, and the other two halves when they've joined make the
+leo-griff. But I've never seen him. Yet I have an idea."
+
+So they talked it over and arranged everything.
+
+When the griffin fell asleep that afternoon at teatime, Nigel went
+softly behind him and trod on his tail, and at the same time the
+Princess cried: "Look out! There's a lion behind you."
+
+And the griffin, waking suddenly from his dreams, twisted his large
+neck around to look for the lion, saw a lion's flank, and fastened its
+eagle beak in it. For the griffin had been artificially made by the
+King-enchanter, and the two halves had never really got used to each
+other. So now the eagle half of the griffin, who was still rather
+sleepy, believed that it was fighting a lion, and the lion part, being
+half asleep, thought it was fighting an eagle, and the whole griffin in
+its deep drowsiness hadn't the sense to pull itself together and
+remember what it was made of. So the griffin rolled over and over, one
+end of it fighting with the other, till the eagle end pecked the lion
+end to death, and the lion end tore the eagle end with its claws till it
+died. And so the griffin that was made of a lion and an eagle perished,
+exactly as if it had been made of Kilkenny cats.
+
+"Poor griffin," said the Princess, "it was very good at the housework. I
+always liked it better than the dragon: It wasn't so hot-tempered."
+
+At that moment there was a soft, silky rush behind the Princess, and
+there was her mother, the Queen, who had slipped out of the stone statue
+at the moment the griffin was dead, and now came hurrying to take her
+dear daughter in her arms. The witch was clambering slowly off her
+pedestal. She was a little stiff from standing still so long.
+
+When they had all explained everything over and over to each other as
+many times as was good for them, the witch said: "Well, but what about
+the whirlpools?"
+
+And Nigel said he didn't know. Then the witch said: "I'm not a witch
+anymore. I'm only a happy old woman, but I know some things still. Those
+whirlpools were made by the enchanter-King's dropping nine drops of his
+blood into the sea. And his blood was so wicked that the sea has been
+trying ever since to get rid of it, and that made the whirlpools. Now
+you've only got to go out at low tide."
+
+So Nigel understood and went out at low tide, and found in the sandy
+hollow left by the first whirlpool a great red ruby. That was the first
+drop of the wicked King's blood. The next day Nigel found another, and
+next day another, and so on till the ninth day, and then the sea was as
+smooth as glass.
+
+The nine rubies were used afterwards in agriculture. You had only to
+throw them out into a field if you wanted it plowed. Then the whole
+surface of the land turned itself over in its anxiety to get rid of
+something so wicked, and in the morning the field was found to be plowed
+as thoroughly as any young man at Oxford. So the wicked King did some
+good after all.
+
+When the sea was smooth, ships came from far and wide, bringing people
+to hear the wonderful story. And a beautiful palace was built, and the
+Princess was married to Nigel in her gold dress, and they all lived
+happily as long as was good for them.
+
+The dragon still lies, a stone dragon on the sand, and at low tide the
+little children play around him and over him. But the pieces that were
+left of the griffin were buried under the herb-bed in the palace garden,
+because it had been so good at housework, and it wasn't its fault that
+it had been made so badly and put to such poor work as guarding a lady
+from her lover.
+
+I have no doubt that you will wish to know what the Princess lived on
+during the long years when the dragon did the cooking. My dear, she
+lived on her income--and that is a thing that a great many people would
+like to be able to do.
+
+[Illustration: "Little children play around him and over him." _See page
+96._]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VI
+
+THE DRAGON TAMERS]
+
+
+
+
+VI. The Dragon Tamers
+
+
+There was once an old, old castle--it was so old that its walls and
+towers and turrets and gateways and arches had crumbled to ruins, and of
+all its old splendor there were only two little rooms left; and it was
+here that John the blacksmith had set up his forge. He was too poor to
+live in a proper house, and no one asked any rent for the rooms in the
+ruin, because all the lords of the castle were dead and gone this many a
+year. So there John blew his bellows and hammered his iron and did all
+the work which came his way. This was not much, because most of the
+trade went to the mayor of the town, who was also a blacksmith in quite
+a large way of business, and had his huge forge facing the square of the
+town, and had twelve apprentices, all hammering like a nest of
+woodpeckers, and twelve journeymen to order the apprentices about, and a
+patent forge and a self-acting hammer and electric bellows, and all
+things handsome about him. So of course the townspeople, whenever they
+wanted a horse shod or a shaft mended, went to the mayor. John the
+blacksmith struggled on as best he could, with a few odd jobs from
+travelers and strangers who did not know what a superior forge the
+mayor's was. The two rooms were warm and weather-tight, but not very
+large; so the blacksmith got into the way of keeping his old iron, his
+odds and ends, his fagots, and his twopence worth of coal in the great
+dungeon down under the castle. It was a very fine dungeon indeed, with a
+handsome vaulted roof and big iron rings whose staples were built into
+the wall, very strong and convenient for tying captives to, and at one
+end was a broken flight of wide steps leading down no one knew where.
+Even the lords of the castle in the good old times had never known where
+those steps led to, but every now and then they would kick a prisoner
+down the steps in their lighthearted, hopeful way, and sure enough, the
+prisoners never came back. The blacksmith had never dared to go beyond
+the seventh step, and no more have I--so I know no more than he did what
+was at the bottom of those stairs.
+
+John the blacksmith had a wife and a little baby. When his wife was not
+doing the housework she used to nurse the baby and cry, remembering the
+happy days when she lived with her father, who kept seventeen cows and
+lived quite in the country, and when John used to come courting her in
+the summer evenings, as smart as smart, with a posy in his buttonhole.
+And now John's hair was getting gray, and there was hardly ever enough
+to eat.
+
+As for the baby, it cried a good deal at odd times; but at night, when
+its mother had settled down to sleep, it would always begin to cry,
+quite as a matter of course, so that she hardly got any rest at all.
+This made her very tired.
+
+The baby could make up for its bad nights during the day if it liked,
+but the poor mother couldn't. So whenever she had nothing to do she used
+to sit and cry, because she was tired out with work and worry.
+
+One evening the blacksmith was busy with his forge. He was making a
+goat-shoe for the goat of a very rich lady, who wished to see how the
+goat liked being shod, and also whether the shoe would come to fivepence
+or sevenpence before she ordered the whole set. This was the only order
+John had had that week. And as he worked his wife sat and nursed the
+baby, who, for a wonder, was not crying.
+
+Presently, over the noise of the bellows and over the clank of the iron,
+there came another sound. The blacksmith and his wife looked at each
+other.
+
+"I heard nothing," said he.
+
+"Neither did I," said she.
+
+But the noise grew louder--and the two were so anxious not to hear it
+that he hammered away at the goat-shoe harder than he had ever hammered
+in his life, and she began to sing to the baby--a thing she had not had
+the heart to do for weeks.
+
+But through the blowing and hammering and singing the noise came louder
+and louder, and the more they tried not to hear it, the more they had
+to. It was like the noise of some great creature purring, purring,
+purring--and the reason they did not want to believe they really heard
+it was that it came from the great dungeon down below, where the old
+iron was, and the firewood and the twopence worth of coal, and the
+broken steps that went down into the dark and ended no one knew where.
+
+"It can't be anything in the dungeon," said the blacksmith, wiping his
+face. "Why, I shall have to go down there after more coals in a minute."
+
+"There isn't anything there, of course. How could there be?" said his
+wife. And they tried so hard to believe that there could be nothing
+there that presently they very nearly did believe it.
+
+Then the blacksmith took his shovel in one hand and his riveting hammer
+in the other, and hung the old stable lantern on his little finger, and
+went down to get the coals.
+
+"I am not taking the hammer because I think there is something there,"
+said he, "but it is handy for breaking the large lumps of coal."
+
+"I quite understand," said his wife, who had brought the coal home in
+her apron that very afternoon, and knew that it was all coal dust.
+
+So he went down the winding stairs to the dungeon and stood at the
+bottom of the steps, holding the lantern above his head just to see that
+the dungeon really was empty, as usual. Half of it was empty as usual,
+except for the old iron and odds and ends, and the firewood and the
+coals. But the other side was not empty. It was quite full, and what it
+was full of was Dragon.
+
+"It must have come up those nasty broken steps from goodness knows
+where," said the blacksmith to himself, trembling all over, as he tried
+to creep back up the winding stairs.
+
+But the dragon was too quick for him--it put out a great claw and caught
+him by the leg, and as it moved it rattled like a great bunch of keys,
+or like the sheet iron they make thunder out of in pantomimes.
+
+"No you don't," said the dragon in a spluttering voice, like a damp
+squib.
+
+"Deary, deary me," said poor John, trembling more than ever in the claw
+of the dragon. "Here's a nice end for a respectable blacksmith!"
+
+The dragon seemed very much struck by this remark.
+
+"Do you mind saying that again?" said he, quite politely.
+
+So John said again, very distinctly:
+"_Here_--_is_--_a_--_nice_--_end_--_for_--_a_--_respectable_--_blacksmith._"
+
+"I didn't know," said the dragon. "Fancy now! You're the very man I
+wanted."
+
+"So I understood you to say before," said John, his teeth chattering.
+
+"Oh, I don't mean what you mean," said the dragon, "but I should like
+you to do a job for me. One of my wings has got some of the rivets out
+of it just above the joint. Could you put that to rights?"
+
+"I might, sir," said John, politely, for you must always be polite to a
+possible customer, even if he be a dragon.
+
+"A master craftsman--you are a master, of course?--can see in a minute
+what's wrong," the dragon went on. "Just come around here and feel my
+plates, will you?"
+
+John timidly went around when the dragon took his claw away; and sure
+enough, the dragon's wing was hanging loose, and several of the plates
+near the joint certainly wanted riveting.
+
+The dragon seemed to be made almost entirely of iron armor--a sort of
+tawny, red-rust color it was; from damp, no doubt--and under it he
+seemed to be covered with something furry.
+
+All the blacksmith welled up in John's heart, and he felt more at ease.
+
+"You could certainly do with a rivet or two, sir," said he. "In fact,
+you want a good many."
+
+"Well, get to work, then," said the dragon. "You mend my wing, and then
+I'll go out and eat up all the town, and if you make a really smart job
+of it I'll eat you last. There!"
+
+"I don't want to be eaten last, sir," said John.
+
+"Well then, I'll eat you first," said the dragon.
+
+"I don't want that, sir, either," said John.
+
+"Go on with you, you silly man," said the dragon, "you don't know your
+own silly mind. Come, set to work."
+
+"I don't like the job, sir," said John, "and that's the truth. I know
+how easily accidents happen. It's all fair and smooth, and 'Please rivet
+me, and I'll eat you last'--and then you get to work and you give a
+gentleman a bit of a nip or a dig under his rivets--and then it's fire
+and smoke, and no apologies will meet the case."
+
+"Upon my word of honor as a dragon," said the other.
+
+"I know you wouldn't do it on purpose, sir," said John, "but any
+gentleman will give a jump and a sniff if he's nipped, and one of your
+sniffs would be enough for me. Now, if you'd just let me fasten you up?"
+
+"It would be so undignified," objected the dragon.
+
+"We always fasten a horse up," said John, "and he's the 'noble animal.'"
+
+"It's all very well," said the dragon, "but how do I know you'd untie me
+again when you'd riveted me? Give me something in pledge. What do you
+value most?"
+
+"My hammer," said John. "A blacksmith is nothing without a hammer."
+
+"But you'd want that for riveting me. You must think of something else,
+and at once, or I'll eat you first."
+
+At this moment the baby in the room above began to scream. Its mother
+had been so quiet that it thought she had settled down for the night,
+and that it was time to begin.
+
+"Whatever's that?" said the dragon, starting so that every plate on his
+body rattled.
+
+"It's only the baby," said John.
+
+"What's that?" asked the dragon. "Something you value?"
+
+"Well, yes, sir, rather," said the blacksmith.
+
+"Then bring it here," said the dragon, "and I'll take care of it till
+you've done riveting me, and you shall tie me up."
+
+"All right, sir," said John, "but I ought to warn you. Babies are poison
+to dragons, so I don't deceive you. It's all right to touch--but don't
+you go putting it into your mouth. I shouldn't like to see any harm come
+to a nice-looking gentleman like you."
+
+The dragon purred at this compliment and said: "All right, I'll be
+careful. Now go and fetch the thing, whatever it is."
+
+So John ran up the steps as quickly as he could, for he knew that if the
+dragon got impatient before it was fastened, it could heave up the roof
+of the dungeon with one heave of its back, and kill them all in the
+ruins. His wife was asleep, in spite of the baby's cries; and John
+picked up the baby and took it down and put it between the dragon's
+front paws.
+
+"You just purr to it, sir," he said, "and it'll be as good as gold."
+
+So the dragon purred, and his purring pleased the baby so much that it
+stopped crying.
+
+Then John rummaged among the heap of old iron and found there some heavy
+chains and a great collar that had been made in the days when men sang
+over their work and put their hearts into it, so that the things they
+made were strong enough to bear the weight of a thousand years, let
+alone a dragon.
+
+John fastened the dragon up with the collar and the chains, and when he
+had padlocked them all on safely he set to work to find out how many
+rivets would be needed.
+
+"Six, eight, ten--twenty, forty," said he. "I haven't half enough rivets
+in the shop. If you'll excuse me, sir, I'll step around to another forge
+and get a few dozen. I won't be a minute."
+
+[Illustration: "The dragon's purring pleased the baby." _See page
+106._]
+
+And off he went, leaving the baby between the dragon's fore-paws,
+laughing and crowing with pleasure at the very large purr of it.
+
+John ran as hard as he could into the town, and found the mayor and
+corporation.
+
+"There's a dragon in my dungeon," he said; "I've chained him up. Now
+come and help to get my baby away."
+
+And he told them all about it.
+
+But they all happened to have engagements for that evening; so they
+praised John's cleverness, and said they were quite content to leave the
+matter in his hands.
+
+"But what about my baby?" said John.
+
+"Oh, well," said the mayor, "if anything should happen, you will always
+be able to remember that your baby perished in a good cause."
+
+So John went home again, and told his wife some of the tale.
+
+"You've given the baby to the dragon!" she cried. "Oh, you unnatural
+parent!"
+
+"Hush," said John, and he told her some more. "Now," he said, "I'm going
+down. After I've been down you can go, and if you keep your head the boy
+will be all right."
+
+So down went the blacksmith, and there was the dragon purring away with
+all his might to keep the baby quiet.
+
+"Hurry up, can't you?" he said. "I can't keep up this noise all night."
+
+"I'm very sorry, sir," said the blacksmith, "but all the shops are shut.
+The job must wait till the morning. And don't forget you've promised to
+take care of that baby. You'll find it a little wearing, I'm afraid.
+Good night, sir."
+
+The dragon had purred till he was quite out of breath--so now he
+stopped, and as soon as everything was quiet the baby thought everyone
+must have settled for the night, and that it was time to begin to
+scream. So it began.
+
+"Oh, dear," said the dragon, "this is awful." He patted the baby with
+his claw, but it screamed more than ever.
+
+"And I am so tired too," said the dragon. "I did so hope I should have a
+good night."
+
+The baby went on screaming.
+
+"There'll be no peace for me after this," said the dragon. "It's enough
+to ruin one's nerves. Hush, then--did 'ums, then." And he tried to quiet
+the baby as if it had been a young dragon. But when he began to sing
+"Hush-a-by, Dragon," the baby screamed more and more and more. "I can't
+keep it quiet," said the dragon; and then suddenly he saw a woman
+sitting on the steps. "Here, I say," said he, "do you know anything
+about babies?"
+
+"I do, a little," said the mother.
+
+"Then I wish you'd take this one, and let me get some sleep," said the
+dragon, yawning. "You can bring it back in the morning before the
+blacksmith comes."
+
+So the mother picked up the baby and took it upstairs and told her
+husband, and they went to bed happy, for they had caught the dragon and
+saved the baby.
+
+And next day John went down and explained carefully to the dragon
+exactly how matters stood, and he got an iron gate with a grating to it
+and set it up at the foot of the steps, and the dragon mewed furiously
+for days and days, but when he found it was no good he was quiet.
+
+So now John went to the mayor, and said: "I've got the dragon and I've
+saved the town."
+
+"Noble preserver," cried the mayor, "we will get up a subscription for
+you, and crown you in public with a laurel wreath."
+
+So the mayor put his name down for five pounds, and the corporation each
+gave three, and other people gave their guineas and half guineas and
+half crowns and crowns, and while the subscription was being made the
+mayor ordered three poems at his own expense from the town poet to
+celebrate the occasion. The poems were very much more admired,
+especially by the mayor and corporation.
+
+The first poem dealt with the noble conduct of the mayor in arranging to
+have the dragon tied up. The second described the splendid assistance
+rendered by the corporation. And the third expressed the pride and joy
+of the poet in being permitted to sing such deeds, beside which the
+actions of St. George must appear quite commonplace to all with a
+feeling heart or a well-balanced brain.
+
+When the subscription was finished there was a thousand pounds, and a
+committee was formed to settle what should be done with it. A third of
+it went to pay for a banquet to the mayor and corporation; another third
+was spent in buying a gold collar with a dragon on it for the mayor and
+gold medals with dragons on them for the corporation; and what was left
+went in committee expenses.
+
+So there was nothing for the blacksmith except the laurel wreath and the
+knowledge that it really was he who had saved the town. But after this
+things went a little better with the blacksmith. To begin with, the baby
+did not cry so much as it had before. Then the rich lady who owned the
+goat was so touched by John's noble action that she ordered a complete
+set of shoes at 2 shillings, 4 pence, and even made it up to 2
+shillings, 6 pence, in grateful recognition of his public-spirited
+conduct. Then tourists used to come in breaks from quite a long way off,
+and pay twopence each to go down the steps and peep through the iron
+grating at the rusty dragon in the dungeon--and it was threepence extra
+for each party if the blacksmith let off colored fire to see it by,
+which, as the fire was extremely short, was twopence-halfpenny clear
+profit every time. And the blacksmith's wife used to provide teas at
+ninepence a head, and altogether things grew brighter week by week.
+
+The baby--named John, after his father, and called Johnnie for
+short--began presently to grow up. He was great friends with Tina, the
+daughter of the whitesmith, who lived nearly opposite. She was a dear
+little girl with yellow pigtails and blue eyes, and she was tired of
+hearing the story of how Johnnie, when he was a baby, had been minded by
+a real dragon.
+
+The two children used to go together to peep through the iron grating at
+the dragon, and sometimes they would hear him mew piteously. And they
+would light a halfpenny's worth of colored fire to look at him by. And
+they grew older and wiser.
+
+At last one day the mayor and corporation, hunting the hare in their
+gold gowns, came screaming back to the town gates with the news that a
+lame, humpy giant, as big as a tin church, was coming over the marshes
+toward the town.
+
+"We're lost," said the mayor. "I'd give a thousand pounds to anyone who
+could keep that giant out of the town. I know what he eats--by his
+teeth."
+
+No one seemed to know what to do. But Johnnie and Tina were listening,
+and they looked at each other, and ran off as fast as their boots would
+carry them.
+
+They ran through the forge, and down the dungeon steps, and knocked at
+the iron door. "Who's there?" said the dragon. "It's only us," said the
+children.
+
+And the dragon was so dull from having been alone for ten years that he
+said: "Come in, dears."
+
+"You won't hurt us, or breathe fire at us or anything?" asked Tina.
+
+And the dragon said, "Not for worlds."
+
+So they went in and talked to him, and told him what the weather was
+like outside, and what there was in the papers, and at last Johnnie
+said: "There's a lame giant in the town. He wants you."
+
+"Does he?" said the dragon, showing his teeth. "If only I were out of
+this!"
+
+"If we let you loose you might manage to run away before he could catch
+you."
+
+"Yes, I might," answered the dragon, "but then again I mightn't."
+
+"Why--you'd never fight him?" said Tina.
+
+"No," said the dragon; "I'm all for peace, I am. You let me out, and
+you'll see."
+
+So the children loosed the dragon from the chains and the collar, and
+he broke down one end of the dungeon and went out--only pausing at the
+forge door to get the blacksmith to rivet his wing.
+
+He met the lame giant at the gate of the town, and the giant banged on
+the dragon with his club as if he were banging an iron foundry, and the
+dragon behaved like a smelting works--all fire and smoke. It was a
+fearful sight, and people watched it from a distance, falling off their
+legs with the shock of every bang, but always getting up to look again.
+
+At last the dragon won, and the giant sneaked away across the marshes,
+and the dragon, who was very tired, went home to sleep, announcing his
+intention of eating the town in the morning. He went back into his old
+dungeon because he was a stranger in the town, and he did not know of
+any other respectable lodging. Then Tina and Johnnie went to the mayor
+and corporation and said, "The giant is settled. Please give us the
+thousand pounds reward."
+
+But the mayor said: "No, no, my boy. It is not you who have settled the
+giant, it is the dragon. I suppose you have chained him up again? When
+he comes to claim the reward he shall have it."
+
+"He isn't chained up yet," said Johnnie. "Shall I send him to claim the
+reward?"
+
+But the mayor said he need not trouble; and now he offered a thousand
+pounds to anyone who would get the dragon chained up again.
+
+"I don't trust you," said Johnnie. "Look how you treated my father when
+he chained up the dragon."
+
+But the people who were listening at the door interrupted, and said that
+if Johnnie could fasten up the dragon again they would turn out the
+mayor and let Johnnie be mayor in his place. For they had been
+dissatisfied with the mayor for some time, and thought they would like a
+change.
+
+So Johnnie said, "Done," and off he went, hand in hand with Tina, and
+they called on all their little friends and said: "Will you help us to
+save the town?"
+
+And all the children said: "Yes, of course we will. What fun!"
+
+"Well, then," said Tina, "you must all bring your basins of bread and
+milk to the forge tomorrow at breakfast time."
+
+"And if ever I am mayor," said Johnnie, "I will give a banquet, and you
+shall be invited. And we'll have nothing but sweet things from beginning
+to end."
+
+All the children promised, and next morning Tina and Johnnie rolled
+their big washing tub down the winding stair.
+
+"What's that noise?" asked the dragon.
+
+"It's only a big giant breathing," said Tina, "He's gone by now."
+
+Then, when all the town children brought their bread and milk, Tina
+emptied it into the wash tub, and when the tub was full Tina knocked at
+the iron door with the grating in it and said: "May we come in?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said the dragon, "it's very dull here."
+
+So they went in, and with the help of nine other children they lifted
+the washing tub in and set it down by the dragon. Then all the other
+children went away, and Tina and Johnnie sat down and cried.
+
+"What's this?" asked the dragon. "And what's the matter?"
+
+"This is bread and milk," said Johnnie; "it's our breakfast--all of it."
+
+"Well," said the dragon, "I don't see what you want with breakfast. I'm
+going to eat everyone in the town as soon as I've rested a little."
+
+"Dear Mr. Dragon," said Tina, "I wish you wouldn't eat us. How would you
+like to be eaten yourself?"
+
+"Not at all," the dragon confessed, "but nobody will eat me."
+
+"I don't know," said Johnnie, "there's a giant--"
+
+"I know. I fought with him, and licked him."
+
+"Yes, but there's another come now--the one you fought was only this
+one's little boy. This one is half as big again."
+
+"He's seven times as big," said Tina.
+
+"No, nine times," said Johnnie. "He's bigger than the steeple."
+
+"Oh, dear," said the dragon. "I never expected this."
+
+"And the mayor has told him where you are," Tina went on, "and he is
+coming to eat you as soon as he has sharpened his big knife. The mayor
+told him you were a wild dragon--but he didn't mind. He said he only ate
+wild dragons--with bread sauce."
+
+"That's tiresome," said the dragon. "And I suppose this sloppy stuff in
+the tub is the bread sauce?"
+
+The children said it was. "Of course," they added, "bread sauce is only
+served with wild dragons. Tame ones are served with apple sauce and
+onion stuffing. What a pity you're not a tame one: He'd never look at
+you then," they said. "Good-bye, poor dragon, we shall never see you
+again, and now you'll know what it's like to be eaten." And they began
+to cry again.
+
+"Well, but look here," said the dragon, "couldn't you pretend I was a
+tame dragon? Tell the giant that I'm just a poor little timid tame
+dragon that you kept for a pet."
+
+"He'd never believe it," said Johnnie. "If you were our tame dragon we
+should keep you tied up, you know. We shouldn't like to risk losing such
+a dear, pretty pet."
+
+Then the dragon begged them to fasten him up at once, and they did so:
+with the collar and chains that were made years ago--in the days when
+men sang over their work and made it strong enough to bear any strain.
+
+And then they went away and told the people what they had done, and
+Johnnie was made mayor, and had a glorious feast exactly as he had said
+he would--with nothing in it but sweet things. It began with Turkish
+delight and halfpenny buns, and went on with oranges, toffee, coconut
+ice, peppermints, jam puffs, raspberry-noyeau, ice creams, and
+meringues, and ended with bull's-eyes and gingerbread and acid drops.
+
+This was all very well for Johnnie and Tina; but if you are kind
+children with feeling hearts you will perhaps feel sorry for the poor
+deceived, deluded dragon--chained up in the dull dungeon, with nothing
+to do but to think over the shocking untruths that Johnnie had told him.
+
+When he thought how he had been tricked, the poor captive dragon began
+to weep--and the large tears fell down over his rusty plates. And
+presently he began to feel faint, as people sometimes do when they have
+been crying, especially if they have not had anything to eat for ten
+years or so.
+
+And then the poor creature dried his eyes and looked about him, and
+there he saw the tub of bread and milk. So he thought, "If giants like
+this damp, white stuff, perhaps I should like it too," and he tasted a
+little, and liked it so much that he ate it all up.
+
+And the next time the tourists came, and Johnnie let off the colored
+fire, the dragon said shyly: "Excuse my troubling you, but could you
+bring me a little more bread and milk?"
+
+So Johnnie arranged that people should go around with carts every day to
+collect the children's bread and milk for the dragon. The children were
+fed at the town's expense--on whatever they liked; and they ate nothing
+but cake and buns and sweet things, and they said the poor dragon was
+very welcome to their bread and milk.
+
+Now, when Johnnie had been mayor ten years or so he married Tina, and on
+their wedding morning they went to see the dragon. He had grown quite
+tame, and his rusty plates had fallen off in places, and underneath he
+was soft and furry to stroke. So now they stroked him.
+
+And he said, "I don't know how I could ever have liked eating anything
+but bread and milk. I _am_ a tame dragon now, aren't I?" And when they
+said that yes, he was, the dragon said: "I am so tame, won't you undo
+me?" And some people would have been afraid to trust him, but Johnnie
+and Tina were so happy on their wedding day that they could not believe
+any harm of anyone in the world. So they loosened the chains, and the
+dragon said: "Excuse me a moment, there are one or two little things I
+should like to fetch," and he moved off to those mysterious steps and
+went down them, out of sight into the darkness. And as he moved, more
+and more of his rusty plates fell off.
+
+In a few minutes they heard him clanking up the steps. He brought
+something in his mouth--it was a bag of gold.
+
+"It's no good to me," he said. "Perhaps you might find it useful." So
+they thanked him very kindly.
+
+"More where that came from," said he, and fetched more and more and
+more, till they told him to stop. So now they were rich, and so were
+their fathers and mothers. Indeed, everyone was rich, and there were no
+more poor people in the town. And they all got rich without working,
+which is very wrong; but the dragon had never been to school, as you
+have, so he knew no better.
+
+And as the dragon came out of the dungeon, following Johnnie and Tina
+into the bright gold and blue of their wedding day, he blinked his eyes
+as a cat does in the sunshine, and he shook himself, and the last of his
+plates dropped off, and his wings with them, and he was just like a
+very, very extra-sized cat. And from that day he grew furrier and
+furrier, and he was the beginning of all cats. Nothing of the dragon
+remained except the claws, which all cats have still, as you can easily
+ascertain.
+
+And I hope you see now how important it is to feed your cat with bread
+and milk. If you were to let it have nothing to eat but mice and birds
+it might grow larger and fiercer, and scalier and tailier, and get wings
+and turn into the beginning of dragons. And then there would be all the
+bother over again.
+
+[Illustration: "He brought something in his mouth--it was a bag of
+gold." _See page 116._]
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VII
+
+THE FIERY DRAGON]
+
+
+
+
+VII. The Fiery Dragon,
+
+or The Heart of Stone and the Heart of Gold
+
+
+The little white Princess always woke in her little white bed when the
+starlings began to chatter in the pearl gray morning. As soon as the
+woods were awake, she used to run up the twisting turret-stairs with her
+little bare feet, and stand on the top of the tower in her white
+bed-gown, and kiss her hands to the sun and to the woods and to the
+sleeping town, and say: "Good morning, pretty world!"
+
+Then she would run down the cold stone steps and dress herself in her
+short skirt and her cap and apron, and begin the day's work. She swept
+the rooms and made the breakfast, she washed the dishes and she scoured
+the pans, and all this she did because she was a real Princess. For of
+all who should have served her, only one remained faithful--her old
+nurse, who had lived with her in the tower all the Princess's life. And,
+now the nurse was old and feeble, the Princess would not let her work
+any more, but did all the housework herself, while Nurse sat still and
+did the sewing, because this was a real Princess with skin like milk and
+hair like flax and a heart like gold.
+
+Her name was Sabrinetta, and her grandmother was Sabra, who married St.
+George after he had killed the dragon, and by real rights all the
+country belonged to her: the woods that stretched away to the mountains,
+the downs that sloped down to the sea, the pretty fields of corn and
+maize and rye, the olive orchards and the vineyards, and the little town
+itself--with its towers and its turrets, its steep roofs and strange
+windows--that nestled in the hollow between the sea, where the whirlpool
+was, and the mountains, white with snow and rosy with sunrise.
+
+But when her father and mother had died, leaving her cousin to take care
+of the kingdom till she grew up, he, being a very evil Prince, took
+everything away from her, and all the people followed him, and now
+nothing was left her of all her possessions except the great dragon
+proof tower that her grandfather, St. George, had built, and of all who
+should have been her servants only the good nurse.
+
+This was why Sabrinetta was the first person in all the land to get a
+glimpse of the wonder.
+
+Early, early, early, while all the townspeople were fast asleep, she ran
+up the turret-steps and looked out over the field, and at the other side
+of the field there was a green, ferny ditch and a rose-thorny hedge, and
+then came the wood. And as Sabrinetta stood on her tower she saw a
+shaking and a twisting of the rose-thorny hedge, and then something very
+bright and shining wriggled out through it into the ferny ditch and back
+again. It only came out for a minute, but she saw it quite plainly, and
+she said to herself: "Dear me, what a curious, shiny, bright-looking
+creature! If it were bigger, and if I didn't know that there have been
+no fabulous monsters for quite a long time now, I should almost think it
+was a dragon."
+
+The thing, whatever it was, did look rather like a dragon--but then it
+was too small; and it looked rather like a lizard--only then it was too
+big. It was about as long as a hearthrug.
+
+"I wish it had not been in such a hurry to get back into the wood," said
+Sabrinetta. "Of course, it's quite safe for me, in my dragonproof tower;
+but if it is a dragon, it's quite big enough to eat people, and today's
+the first of May, and the children go out to get flowers in the wood."
+
+When Sabrinetta had done the housework (she did not leave so much as a
+speck of dust anywhere, even in the corneriest corner of the winding
+stair) she put on her milk white, silky gown with the moon-daisies
+worked on it, and went up to the top of her tower again.
+
+Across the fields troops of children were going out to gather the may,
+and the sound of their laughter and singing came up to the top of the
+tower.
+
+"I do hope it wasn't a dragon," said Sabrinetta.
+
+The children went by twos and by threes and by tens and by twenties, and
+the red and blue and yellow and white of their frocks were scattered on
+the green of the field.
+
+"It's like a green silk mantle worked with flowers," said the Princess,
+smiling.
+
+Then by twos and by threes, by tens and by twenties, the children
+vanished into the wood, till the mantle of the field was left plain
+green once more.
+
+"All the embroidery is unpicked," said the Princess, sighing.
+
+The sun shone, and the sky was blue, and the fields were quite green,
+and all the flowers were very bright indeed, because it was May Day.
+
+Then quite suddenly a cloud passed over the sun, and the silence was
+broken by shrieks from far off; and, like a many-colored torrent, all
+the children burst from the wood and rushed, a red and blue and yellow
+and white wave, across the field, screaming as they ran. Their voices
+came up to the Princess on her tower, and she heard the words threaded
+on their screams like beads on sharp needles: "The dragon, the dragon,
+the dragon! Open the gates! The dragon is coming! The fiery dragon!"
+
+And they swept across the field and into the gate of the town, and the
+Princess heard the gate bang, and the children were out of sight--but on
+the other side of the field the rose-thorns crackled and smashed in the
+hedge, and something very large and glaring and horrible trampled the
+ferns in the ditch for one moment before it hid itself again in the
+covert of the wood.
+
+The Princess went down and told her nurse, and the nurse at once locked
+the great door of the tower and put the key in her pocket.
+
+"Let them take care of themselves," she said, when the Princess begged
+to be allowed to go out and help to take care of the children. "My
+business is to take care of you, my precious, and I'm going to do it.
+Old as I am, I can turn a key still."
+
+So Sabrinetta went up again to the top of her tower, and cried whenever
+she thought of the children and the fiery dragon. For she knew, of
+course, that the gates of the town were not dragonproof, and that the
+dragon could just walk in whenever he liked.
+
+The children ran straight to the palace, where the Prince was cracking
+his hunting whip down at the kennels, and told him what had happened.
+
+"Good sport," said the Prince, and he ordered out his pack of
+hippopotamuses at once. It was his custom to hunt big game with
+hippopotamuses, and people would not have minded that so much--but he
+would swagger about in the streets of the town with his pack yelping and
+gamboling at his heels, and when he did that, the green-grocer, who had
+his stall in the marketplace, always regretted it; and the crockery
+merchant, who spread his wares on the pavement, was ruined for life
+every time the Prince chose to show off his pack.
+
+The Prince rode out of the town with his hippopotamuses trotting and
+frisking behind him, and people got inside their houses as quickly as
+they could when they heard the voices of his pack and the blowing of his
+horn. The pack squeezed through the town gates and off across country to
+hunt the dragon. Few of you who had not seen a pack of hippopotamuses in
+full cry will be able to imagine at all what the hunt was like. To begin
+with, hippopotamuses do not bay like hounds: They grunt like pigs, and
+their grunt is very big and fierce. Then, of course, no one expects
+hippopotamuses to jump. They just crash through the hedges and lumber
+through the standing corn, doing serious injury to the crops, and
+annoying the farmers very much. All the hippopotamuses had collars with
+their name and address on, but when the farmers called at the palace to
+complain of the injury to their standing crops, the Prince always said
+it served them right for leaving their crops standing about in people's
+way, and he never paid anything at all.
+
+So now, when he and his pack went out, several people in the town
+whispered, "I wish the dragon would eat him"--which was very wrong of
+them, no doubt, but then he was such a very nasty Prince.
+
+They hunted by field, and they hunted by wold; they drew the woods
+blank, and the scent didn't lie on the downs at all. The dragon was shy,
+and would not show himself.
+
+But just as the Prince was beginning to think there was no dragon at
+all, but only a cock and bull, his favourite old hippopotamus gave
+tongue. The Prince blew his horn and shouted: "Tally ho! Hark forward!
+Tantivy!" and the whole pack charged downhill toward the hollow by the
+wood. For there, plain to be seen, was the dragon, as big as a barge,
+glowing like a furnace, and spitting fire and showing his shining teeth.
+
+"The hunt is up!" cried the Prince. And indeed it was. For the
+dragon--instead of behaving as a quarry should, and running away--ran
+straight at the pack, and the Prince, on his elephant, had the
+mortification of seeing his prize pack swallowed up one by one in the
+twinkling of an eye, by the dragon they had come out to hunt. The dragon
+swallowed all the hippopotamuses just as a dog swallows bits of meat. It
+was a shocking sight. Of the whole of the pack that had come out
+sporting so merrily to the music of the horn, now not even a
+puppy-hippopotamus was left, and the dragon was looking anxiously around
+to see if he had forgotten anything.
+
+The Prince slipped off his elephant on the other side and ran into the
+thickest part of the wood. He hoped the dragon could not break through
+the bushes there, since they were very strong and close. He went
+crawling on hands and knees in a most un-Prince-like way, and at last,
+finding a hollow tree, he crept into it. The wood was very still--no
+crashing of branches and no smell of burning came to alarm the Prince.
+He drained the silver hunting bottle slung from his shoulder, and
+stretched his legs in the hollow tree. He never shed a single tear for
+his poor tame hippopotamuses who had eaten from his hand and followed
+him faithfully in all the pleasures of the chase for so many years. For
+he was a false Prince, with a skin like leather and hair like hearth
+brushes and a heart like a stone. He never shed a tear, but he just went
+to sleep.
+
+When he awoke it was dark. He crept out of the tree and rubbed his eyes.
+The wood was black about him, but there was a red glow in a dell close
+by. It was a fire of sticks, and beside it sat a ragged youth with long,
+yellow hair; all around lay sleeping forms which breathed heavily.
+
+"Who are you?" said the Prince.
+
+"I'm Elfin, the pig keeper," said the ragged youth. "And who are you?"
+
+"I'm Tiresome, the Prince," said the other.
+
+"And what are you doing out of your palace at this time of night?" asked
+the pig keeper, severely.
+
+"I've been hunting," said the Prince.
+
+The pig keeper laughed. "Oh, it was you I saw, then? A good hunt, wasn't
+it? My pigs and I were looking on."
+
+All the sleeping forms grunted and snored, and the Prince saw that they
+were pigs: He knew it by their manners.
+
+"If you had known as much as I do," Elfin went on, "you might have saved
+your pack."
+
+"What do you mean?" said Tiresome.
+
+"Why, the dragon," said Elfin. "You went out at the wrong time of day.
+The dragon should be hunted at night."
+
+"No, thank you," said the Prince, with a shudder. "A daylight hunt is
+quite good enough for me, you silly pig keeper."
+
+"Oh, well," said Elfin, "do as you like about it--the dragon will come
+and hunt you tomorrow, as likely as not. I don't care if he does, you
+silly Prince."
+
+"You're very rude," said Tiresome.
+
+"Oh, no, only truthful," said Elfin.
+
+"Well, tell me the truth, then. What is it that, if I had known as much
+as you do about, I shouldn't have lost my hippopotamuses?"
+
+"You don't speak very good English," said Elfin. "But come, what will
+you give me if I tell you?"
+
+"If you tell me what?" said the tiresome Prince.
+
+"What you want to know."
+
+"I don't want to know anything," said Prince Tiresome.
+
+"Then you're more of a silly even than I thought," said Elfin. "Don't
+you want to know how to settle the dragon before he settles you?"
+
+"It might be as well," the Prince admitted.
+
+"Well, I haven't much patience at any time," said Elfin, "and now I can
+assure you that there's very little left. What will you give me if I
+tell you?"
+
+"Half my kingdom," said the Prince, "and my cousin's hand in marriage."
+
+"Done," said the pig keeper. "Here goes! The dragon grows small at
+night! He sleeps under the root of this tree. I use him to light my fire
+with."
+
+And, sure enough, there under the tree was the dragon on a nest of
+scorched moss, and he was about as long as your finger.
+
+"How can I kill him?" asked the Prince.
+
+"I don't know that you can kill him," said Elfin, "but you can take him
+away if you've brought anything to put him in. That bottle of yours
+would do."
+
+So between them they managed, with bits of stick and by singeing their
+fingers a little, to poke and shove the dragon till they made it creep
+into the silver hunting bottle, and then the Prince screwed on the top
+tight.
+
+"Now we've got him," said Elfin. "Let's take him home and put Solomon's
+seal on the mouth of the bottle, and then he'll be safe enough. Come
+along--we'll divide up the kingdom tomorrow, and then I shall have some
+money to buy fine clothes to go courting in."
+
+But when the wicked Prince made promises he did not make them to keep.
+
+"Go on with you! What do you mean?" he said. "I found the dragon and
+I've imprisoned him. I never said a word about courtings or kingdoms. If
+you say I did, I shall cut your head off at once." And he drew his
+sword.
+
+"All right," said Elfin, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm better off than
+you are, anyhow."
+
+"What do you mean?" spluttered the Prince.
+
+"Why, you've only got a kingdom (and a dragon), but I've got clean hands
+(and five and seventy fine black pigs)."
+
+So Elfin sat down again by his fire, and the Prince went home and told
+his Parliament how clever and brave he had been, and though he woke them
+up on purpose to tell them, they were not angry, but said: "You are
+indeed brave and clever." For they knew what happened to people with
+whom the Prince was not pleased.
+
+Then the Prime Minister solemnly put Solomon's seal on the mouth of the
+bottle, and the bottle was put in the Treasury, which was the strongest
+building in the town, and was made of solid copper, with walls as thick
+as Waterloo Bridge.
+
+The bottle was set down among the sacks of gold, and the junior
+secretary to the junior clerk of the last Lord of the Treasury was
+appointed to sit up all night with it and see if anything happened. The
+junior secretary had never seen a dragon, and, what was more, he did not
+believe the Prince had ever seen a dragon either. The Prince had never
+been a really truthful boy, and it would have been just like him to
+bring home a bottle with nothing in it and then to pretend that there
+was a dragon inside. So the junior secretary did not at all mind being
+left. They gave him the key, and when everyone in the town had gone back
+to bed he let in some of the junior secretaries from other Government
+departments, and they had a jolly game of hide-and-seek among the sacks
+of gold, and played marbles with the diamonds and rubies and pearls in
+the big ivory chests.
+
+They enjoyed themselves very much, but by-and-by the copper treasury
+began to get warmer and warmer, and suddenly the junior secretary cried
+out, "Look at the bottle!"
+
+The bottle sealed with Solomon's seal had swollen to three times its
+proper size and seemed to be nearly red hot, and the air got warmer and
+warmer and the bottle bigger and bigger, till all the junior secretaries
+agreed that the place was too hot to hold them, and out they went,
+tumbling over each other in their haste, and just as the last got out
+and locked the door the bottle burst, and out came the dragon, very
+fiery, and swelling more and more every minute, and he began to eat the
+sacks of gold and crunch up the pearls and diamonds and rubies as if
+they were sugar.
+
+By breakfasttime he had devoured the whole of the Prince's treasures,
+and when the Prince came along the street at about eleven, he met the
+dragon coming out of the broken door of the Treasury, with molten gold
+still dripping from his jaws. Then the Prince turned and ran for his
+life, and as he ran toward the dragonproof tower the little white
+Princess saw him coming, and she ran down and unlocked the door and let
+him in, and slammed the dragonproof door in the fiery face of the
+dragon, who sat down and whined outside, because he wanted the Prince
+very much indeed.
+
+The Princess took Prince Tiresome into the best room, and laid the
+cloth, and gave him cream and eggs and white grapes and honey and bread,
+with many other things, yellow and white and good to eat, and she served
+him just as kindly as she would have done if he had been anyone else
+instead of the bad Prince who had taken away her kingdom and kept it for
+himself--because she was a true Princess and had a heart of gold.
+
+When he had eaten and drunk, he begged the Princess to show him how to
+lock and unlock the door. The nurse was asleep, so there was no one to
+tell the Princess not to, and she did.
+
+[Illustration: "The junior secretary cried out, 'Look at the bottle!'"
+_See page 129._]
+
+"You turn the key like this," she said, "and the door keeps shut. But
+turn it nine times around the wrong way, and the door flies open."
+
+And so it did. And the moment it opened, the Prince pushed the white
+Princess out of her tower, just as he had pushed her out of her kingdom,
+and shut the door. For he wanted to have the tower all for himself. And
+there she was, in the street, and on the other side of the way the
+dragon was sitting whining, but he did not try to eat her,
+because--though the old nurse did not know it--dragons cannot eat white
+Princesses with hearts of gold.
+
+The Princess could not walk through the streets of the town in her
+milky-silky gown with the daisies on it, and with no hat and no gloves,
+so she turned the other way, and ran out across the meadows, toward the
+wood. She had never been out of her tower before, and the soft grass
+under her feet felt like grass of Paradise.
+
+She ran right into the thickest part of the wood, because she did not
+know what her heart was made of, and she was afraid of the dragon, and
+there in a dell she came on Elfin and his five and seventy fine pigs. He
+was playing his flute, and around him the pigs were dancing cheerfully
+on their hind legs.
+
+"Oh, dear," said the Princess, "do take care of me. I am so frightened."
+
+"I will," said Elfin, putting his arms around her. "Now you are quite
+safe. What were you frightened of?"
+
+"The dragon," she said.
+
+"So it's gotten out of the silver bottle," said Elfin. "I hope it's
+eaten the Prince."
+
+"No," said Sabrinetta. "But why?"
+
+He told her of the mean trick that the Prince had played on him.
+
+"And he promised me half his kingdom and the hand of his cousin the
+Princess," said Elfin.
+
+"Oh, dear, what a shame!" said Sabrinetta, trying to get out of his
+arms. "How dare he?"
+
+"What's the matter?" he asked, holding her tighter. "It _was_ a shame,
+or at least _I_ thought so. But now he may keep his kingdom, half and
+whole, if I may keep what I have."
+
+"What's that?" asked the Princess.
+
+"Why, you--my pretty, my dear," said Elfin, "and as for the Princess,
+his cousin--forgive me, dearest heart, but when I asked for her I hadn't
+seen the real Princess, the _only_ Princess, _my_ Princess."
+
+"Do you mean me?" said Sabrinetta.
+
+"Who else?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, but five minutes ago you hadn't seen me!"
+
+"Five minutes ago I was a pig keeper--now I've held you in my arms I'm a
+Prince, though I should have to keep pigs to the end of my days."
+
+"But you haven't asked _me_," said the Princess.
+
+"You asked me to take care of you," said Elfin, "and I will--all my life
+long."
+
+So that was settled, and they began to talk of really important things,
+such as the dragon and the Prince, and all the time Elfin did not know
+that this was the Princess, but he knew that she had a heart of gold,
+and he told her so, many times.
+
+"The mistake," said Elfin, "was in not having a dragonproof bottle. I
+see that now."
+
+"Oh, is that all?" said the Princess. "I can easily get you one of
+those--because everything in my tower is dragonproof. We ought to do
+something to settle the dragon and save the little children."
+
+So she started off to get the bottle, but she would not let Elfin come
+with her.
+
+"If what you say is true," she said, "if you are sure that I have a
+heart of gold, the dragon won't hurt me, and somebody must stay with the
+pigs."
+
+Elfin was quite sure, so he let her go.
+
+She found the door of her tower open. The dragon had waited patiently
+for the Prince, and the moment he opened the door and came out--though
+he was only out for an instant to post a letter to his Prime Minister
+saying where he was and asking them to send the fire brigade to deal
+with the fiery dragon--the dragon ate him. Then the dragon went back to
+the wood, because it was getting near his time to grow small for the
+night.
+
+So Sabrinetta went in and kissed her nurse and made her a cup of tea and
+explained what was going to happen, and that she had a heart of gold, so
+the dragon couldn't eat her; and the nurse saw that of course the
+Princess was quite safe, and kissed her and let her go.
+
+She took the dragonproof bottle, made of burnished brass, and ran back
+to the wood, and to the dell, where Elfin was sitting among his sleek
+black pigs, waiting for her.
+
+"I thought you were never coming back," he said. "You have been away a
+year, at least."
+
+The Princess sat down beside him among the pigs, and they held each
+other's hands till it was dark, and then the dragon came crawling over
+the moss, scorching it as he came, and getting smaller as he crawled,
+and curled up under the root of the tree.
+
+"Now then," said Elfin, "you hold the bottle." Then he poked and prodded
+the dragon with bits of stick till it crawled into the dragonproof
+bottle. But there was no stopper.
+
+"Never mind," said Elfin. "I'll put my finger in for a stopper."
+
+"No, let me," said the Princess. But of course Elfin would not let her.
+He stuffed his finger into the top of the bottle, and the Princess cried
+out: "The sea--the sea--run for the cliffs!" And off they went, with the
+five and seventy pigs trotting steadily after them in a long black
+procession.
+
+The bottle got hotter and hotter in Elfin's hands, because the dragon
+inside was puffing fire and smoke with all his might--hotter and hotter
+and hotter--but Elfin held on till they came to the cliff edge, and
+there was the dark blue sea, and the whirlpool going around and around.
+
+Elfin lifted the bottle high above his head and hurled it out between
+the stars and the sea, and it fell in the middle of the whirlpool.
+
+"We've saved the country," said the Princess. "You've saved the little
+children. Give me your hands."
+
+"I can't," said Elfin. "I shall never be able to take your dear hands
+again. My hands are burnt off."
+
+And so they were: There were only black cinders where his hands ought to
+have been. The Princess kissed them, and cried over them, and tore
+pieces of her silky-milky gown to tie them up with, and the two went
+back to the tower and told the nurse all about everything. And the pigs
+sat outside and waited.
+
+"He is the bravest man in the world," said Sabrinetta. "He has saved the
+country and the little children; but, oh, his hands--his poor, dear,
+darling hands!"
+
+Here the door of the room opened, and the oldest of the five and seventy
+pigs came in. It went up to Elfin and rubbed itself against him with
+little loving grunts.
+
+"See the dear creature," said the nurse, wiping away a tear. "It knows,
+it knows!"
+
+Sabrinetta stroked the pig, because Elfin had no hands for stroking or
+for anything else.
+
+"The only cure for a dragon burn," said the old nurse, "is pig's fat,
+and well that faithful creature knows it----"
+
+"I wouldn't for a kingdom," cried Elfin, stroking the pig as best he
+could with his elbow.
+
+"Is there no other cure?" asked the Princess.
+
+Here another pig put its black nose in at the door, and then another and
+another, till the room was full of pigs, a surging mass of rounded
+blackness, pushing and struggling to get at Elfin, and grunting softly
+in the language of true affection.
+
+"There is one other," said the nurse. "The dear, affectionate
+beasts--they all want to die for you."
+
+"What is the other cure?" said Sabrinetta anxiously.
+
+"If a man is burnt by a dragon," said the nurse, "and a certain number
+of people are willing to die for him, it is enough if each should kiss
+the burn and wish it well in the depths of his loving heart."
+
+"The number! The number!" cried Sabrinetta.
+
+"Seventy-seven," said the nurse.
+
+"We have only seventy-five pigs," said the Princess, "and with me that's
+seventy-six!"
+
+"It must be seventy-seven--and I really can't die for him, so nothing
+can be done," said the nurse, sadly. "He must have cork hands."
+
+"I knew about the seventy-seven loving people," said Elfin. "But I never
+thought my dear pigs loved me so much as all this, and my dear too--and,
+of course, that only makes it more impossible. There's one other charm
+that cures dragon burns, though; but I'd rather be burnt black all over
+than marry anyone but you, my dear, my pretty."
+
+"Why, who must you marry to cure your dragon burns?" asked Sabrinetta.
+
+"A Princess. That's how St. George cured his burns."
+
+"There now! Think of that!" said the nurse. "And I never heard tell of
+that cure, old as I am."
+
+But Sabrinetta threw her arms round Elfin's neck, and held him as though
+she would never let him go.
+
+"Then it's all right, my dear, brave, precious Elfin," she cried, "for I
+am a Princess, and you shall be my Prince. Come along, Nurse--don't wait
+to put on your bonnet. We'll go and be married this very moment."
+
+So they went, and the pigs came after, moving in stately blackness, two
+by two. And, the minute he was married to the Princess, Elfin's hands
+got quite well. And the people, who were weary of Prince Tiresome and
+his hippopotamuses, hailed Sabrinetta and her husband as rightful
+Sovereigns of the land.
+
+[Illustration: "They saw a cloud of steam." _See page 135._]
+
+Next morning the Prince and Princess went out to see if the dragon had
+been washed ashore. They could see nothing of him; but when they looked
+out toward the whirlpool they saw a cloud of steam; and the fishermen
+reported that the water for miles around was hot enough to shave with!
+And as the water is hot there to this day, we may feel pretty sure
+that the fierceness of that dragon was such that all the waters of all
+the sea were not enough to cool him. The whirlpool is too strong for him
+to be able to get out of it, so there he spins around and around forever
+and ever, doing some useful work at last, and warming the water for poor
+fisher-folk to shave with.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Prince and Princess rule the land well and wisely. The nurse lives
+with them, and does nothing but fine sewing, and only that when she
+wants to very much. The Prince keeps no hippopotamuses, and is
+consequently very popular. The five and seventy devoted pigs live in
+white marble sties with brass knockers and Pig on the doorplate, and are
+washed twice a day with Turkish sponges and soap scented with violets,
+and no one objects to their following the Prince when he walks abroad,
+for they behave beautifully, and always keep to the footpath, and obey
+the notices about not walking on the grass. The Princess feeds them
+every day with her own hands, and her first edict on coming to the
+throne was that the word _pork_ should never be uttered on pain of
+death, and should, besides, be scratched out of all the dictionaries.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: VIII
+
+KIND LITTLE EDMUND]
+
+
+
+
+VIII. Kind Little Edmund, or The Caves and the Cockatrice
+
+
+Edmund was a boy. The people who did not like him said that he was the
+most tiresome boy that ever lived, but his grandmother and his other
+friends said that he had an inquiring mind. And his granny often added
+that he was the best of boys. But she was very kind and very old.
+
+Edmund loved to find out about things. Perhaps you will think that in
+that case he was constant in his attendance at school, since there, if
+anywhere, we may learn whatever there is to be learned. But Edmund did
+not want to learn things: He wanted to find things out, which is quite
+different. His inquiring mind led him to take clocks to pieces to see
+what made them go, to take locks off doors to see what made them stick.
+It was Edmund who cut open the India rubber ball to see what made it
+bounce, and he never did see, any more than you did when you tried the
+same experiment.
+
+Edmund lived with his grandmother. She loved him very much, in spite of
+his inquiring mind, and hardly scolded him at all when he frizzled up
+her tortoiseshell comb in his anxiety to find out whether it was made of
+real tortoiseshell or of something that would burn. Edmund went to
+school, of course, now and then, and sometimes he could not prevent
+himself from learning something, but he never did it on purpose.
+
+"It is such waste of time," said he. "They only know what everybody
+knows. I want to find out new things that nobody has thought of but me."
+
+"I don't think you're likely to find out anything that none of the wise
+men in the whole world have thought of all these thousands of years,"
+said Granny.
+
+But Edmund did not agree with her. He played truant whenever he could,
+for he was a kindhearted boy, and could not bear to think of a master's
+time and labor being thrown away on a boy like himself--who did not wish
+to learn, only to find out--when there were so many worthy lads
+thirsting for instruction in geography and history and reading and
+ciphering, and Mr. Smiles's "Self-Help."
+
+Other boys played truant too, of course--and these went nutting or
+blackberrying or wild plum gathering, but Edmund never went on the side
+of the town where the green woods and hedges grew. He always went up the
+mountain where the great rocks were, and the tall, dark pine trees, and
+where other people were afraid to go because of the strange noises that
+came out of the caves.
+
+Edmund was not afraid of these noises--though they were very strange and
+terrible. He wanted to find out what made them.
+
+One day he did. He had invented, all by himself, a very ingenious and
+new kind of lantern, made with a turnip and a tumbler, and when he took
+the candle out of Granny's bedroom candlestick to put in it, it gave
+quite a splendid light.
+
+He had to go to school next day, and he was caned for being absent
+without leave--although he very straightforwardly explained that he had
+been too busy making the lantern to have time to come to school.
+
+But the day after he got up very early and took the lunch Granny had
+ready for him to take to school--two boiled eggs and an apple
+turnover--and he took his lantern and went off as straight as a dart to
+the mountains to explore the caves.
+
+The caves were very dark, but his lantern lighted them up beautifully;
+and they were most interesting caves, with stalactites and stalagmites
+and fossils, and all the things you read about in the instructive books
+for the young. But Edmund did not care for any of these things just
+then. He wanted to find out what made the noises that people were afraid
+of, and there was nothing in the caves to tell him.
+
+Presently he sat down in the biggest cave and listened very carefully,
+and it seemed to him that he could distinguish three different sorts of
+noises. There was a heavy rumbling sound, like a very large old
+gentleman asleep after dinner; and there was a smaller sort of rumble
+going on at the same time; and there was a sort of crowing, clucking
+sound, such as a chicken might make if it happened to be as big as a
+haystack.
+
+"It seems to me," said Edmund to himself, "that the clucking is nearer
+than the others." So he started up again and explored the caves once
+more. He found out nothing, but about halfway up the wall of the cave,
+he saw a hole. And, being a boy, he climbed up to it and crept in; and
+it was the entrance to a rocky passage. And now the clucking sounded
+more plainly than before, and he could hardly hear the rumbling at all.
+
+"I _am_ going to find out something at last," said Edmund, and on he
+went. The passage wound and twisted, and twisted and turned, and turned
+and wound, but Edmund kept on.
+
+"My lantern's burning better and better," said he presently, but the
+next minute he saw that all the light did not come from his lantern. It
+was a pale yellow light, and it shone down the passage far ahead of him
+through what looked like the chink of a door.
+
+"I expect it's the fire in the middle of the earth," said Edmund, who
+had not been able to help learning about that at school.
+
+But quite suddenly the fire ahead gave a pale flicker and went down; and
+the clucking ceased.
+
+The next moment Edmund turned a corner and found himself in front of a
+rocky door. The door was ajar. He went in, and there was a round cave,
+like the dome of St. Paul's. In the middle of the cave was a hole like a
+very big hand-washing basin, and in the middle of the basin Edmund saw
+a large pale person sitting.
+
+This person had a man's face and a griffin's body, and big feathery
+wings, and a snake's tail, and a cock's comb and neck feathers.
+
+"Whatever are you?" said Edmund.
+
+"I'm a poor starving cockatrice," answered the pale person in a very
+faint voice, "and I shall die--oh, I know I shall! My fire's gone out! I
+can't think how it happened; I must have been asleep. I have to stir it
+seven times round with my tail once in a hundred years to keep it
+alight, and my watch must have been wrong. And now I shall die."
+
+I think I have said before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was.
+
+"Cheer up," said he. "I'll light your fire for you." And off he went,
+and in a few minutes he came back with a great armful of sticks from the
+pine trees outside, and with these and a lesson book or two that he had
+forgotten to lose before, and which, quite by an oversight, were safe in
+his pocket, he lit a fire all around the cockatrice. The wood blazed up,
+and presently something in the basin caught fire, and Edmund saw that it
+was a sort of liquid that burned like the brandy in a snapdragon. And
+now the cockatrice stirred it with his tail and flapped his wings in it
+so that some of it splashed out on Edmund's hand and burnt it rather
+badly. But the cockatrice grew red and strong and happy, and its comb
+grew scarlet, and its feathers glossy, and it lifted itself up and
+crowed "Cock-a-trice-a-doodle-doo!" very loudly and clearly.
+
+Edmund's kindly nature was charmed to see the cockatrice so much
+improved in health, and he said: "Don't mention it; delighted, I'm
+sure," when the cockatrice began to thank him.
+
+"But what can I do for you?" said the creature.
+
+"Tell me stories," said Edmund.
+
+"What about?" said the cockatrice.
+
+"About true things that they don't know at school," said Edmund.
+
+So the cockatrice began, and he told him about mines and treasures and
+geological formations, and about gnomes and fairies and dragons, and
+about glaciers and the Stone Age and the beginning of the world, and
+about the unicorn and the phoenix, and about Magic, black and white.
+
+And Edmund ate his eggs and his turnover, and listened. And when he got
+hungry again he said good-bye and went home. But he came again the next
+day for more stories, and the next day, and the next, for a long time.
+
+He told the boys at school about the cockatrice and his wonderful true
+tales, and the boys liked the stories; but when he told the master he
+was caned for untruthfulness.
+
+"But it's true," said Edmund. "Just you look where the fire burnt my
+hand."
+
+"I see you've been playing with fire--into mischief as usual," said the
+master, and he caned Edmund harder than ever. The master was ignorant
+and unbelieving: but I am told that some schoolmasters are not like
+that.
+
+Now, one day Edmund made a new lantern out of something chemical that he
+sneaked from the school laboratory. And with it he went exploring again
+to see if he could find the things that made the other sorts of noises.
+And in quite another part of the mountain he found a dark passage, all
+lined with brass, so that it was like the inside of a huge telescope,
+and at the very end of it he found a bright green door. There was a
+brass plate on the door that said MRS. D. KNOCK AND RING, and a white
+label that said CALL ME AT THREE. Edmund had a watch: It had been given
+to him on his birthday two days before, and he had not yet had time to
+take it to pieces and see what made it go, so it was still going. He
+looked at it now. It said a quarter to three.
+
+Did I tell you before what a kindhearted boy Edmund was? He sat down on
+the brass doorstep and waited till three o'clock. Then he knocked and
+rang, and there was a rattling and puffing inside. The great door flew
+open, and Edmund had only just time to hide behind it when out came an
+immense yellow dragon, who wriggled off down the brass cave like a long,
+rattling worm--or perhaps more like a monstrous centipede.
+
+Edmund crept slowly out and saw the dragon stretching herself on the
+rocks in the sun, and he crept past the great creature and tore down the
+hill into the town and burst into school, crying out: "There's a great
+dragon coming! Somebody ought to do something, or we shall all be
+destroyed."
+
+He was caned for untruthfulness without any delay. His master was never
+one for postponing a duty.
+
+"But it's true," said Edmund. "You just see if it isn't."
+
+He pointed out of the window, and everyone could see a vast yellow cloud
+rising up into the air above the mountain.
+
+"It's only a thunder shower," said the master, and caned Edmund more
+than ever. This master was not like some masters I know: He was very
+obstinate, and would not believe his own eyes if they told him anything
+different from what he had been saying before his eyes spoke.
+
+So while the master was writing _Lying is very wrong, and liars must be
+caned. It is all for their own good_ on the black-board for Edmund to
+copy out seven hundred times, Edmund sneaked out of school and ran for
+his life across the town to warn his granny, but she was not at home. So
+then he made off through the back door of the town, and raced up the
+hill to tell the cockatrice and ask for his help. It never occurred to
+him that the cockatrice might not believe him. You see, he had heard so
+many wonderful tales from him and had believed them all--and when you
+believe all a person's stories they ought to believe yours. This is only
+fair.
+
+At the mouth of the cockatrice's cave Edmund stopped, very much out of
+breath, to look back at the town. As he ran he had felt his little legs
+tremble and shake, while the shadows of the great yellow cloud fell upon
+him. Now he stood once more between warm earth and blue sky, and looked
+down on the green plain dotted with fruit trees and red-roofed farms
+and plots of gold corn. In the middle of that plain the gray town lay,
+with its strong walls with the holes pierced for the archers, and its
+square towers with holes for dropping melted lead on the heads of
+strangers; its bridges and its steeples; the quiet river edged with
+willow and alder; and the pleasant green garden place in the middle of
+the town, where people sat on holidays to smoke their pipes and listen
+to the band.
+
+Edmund saw it all; and he saw, too, creeping across the plain, marking
+her way by a black line as everything withered at her touch, the great
+yellow dragon--and he saw that she was many times bigger than the whole
+town.
+
+"Oh, my poor, dear granny," said Edmund, for he had a feeling heart, as
+I ought to have told you before.
+
+The yellow dragon crept nearer and nearer, licking her greedy lips with
+her long red tongue, and Edmund knew that in the school his master was
+still teaching earnestly and still not believing Edmund's tale the least
+little bit.
+
+"He'll jolly well have to believe it soon, anyhow," said Edmund to
+himself, and though he was a very tender-hearted boy--I think it only
+fair to tell you that he was this--I am afraid he was not as sorry as he
+ought to have been to think of the way in which his master was going to
+learn how to believe what Edmund said. Then the dragon opened her jaws
+wider and wider and wider. Edmund shut his eyes, for though his master
+was in the town, the amiable Edmund shrank from beholding the awful
+sight.
+
+When he opened his eyes again there was no town--only a bare place where
+it had stood, and the dragon licking her lips and curling herself up to
+go to sleep, just as Kitty does when she has quite finished with a
+mouse. Edmund gasped once or twice, and then ran into the cave to tell
+the cockatrice.
+
+"Well," said the cockatrice thoughtfully, when the tale had been told.
+"What then?"
+
+"I don't think you quite understand," said Edmund gently. "The dragon
+has swallowed up the town."
+
+"Does it matter?" said the cockatrice.
+
+[Illustration: "Creeping across the plain." _See page 147._]
+
+"But I live there," said Edmund blankly.
+
+"Never mind," said the cockatrice, turning over in the pool of fire to
+warm its other side, which was chilly, because Edmund had, as usual,
+forgotten to close the cave door. "You can live here with me."
+
+"I'm afraid I haven't made my meaning clear," said Edmund patiently.
+"You see, my granny is in the town, and I can't bear to lose my granny
+like this."
+
+"I don't know what a granny may be," said the cockatrice, who seemed to
+be growing weary of the subject, "but if it's a possession to which you
+attach any importance----"
+
+"Of course it is," said Edmund, losing patience at last. "Oh--do help
+me. What can I do?"
+
+"If I were you," said his friend, stretching itself out in the pool of
+flame so that the waves covered him up to his chin, "I should find the
+drakling and bring it here."
+
+"But why?" said Edmund. He had gotten into the habit of asking why at
+school, and the master had always found it trying. As for the
+cockatrice, he was not going to stand that sort of thing for a moment.
+
+"Oh, don't talk to me!" he said, splashing angrily in the flames. "I
+give you advice; take it or leave it--I shan't bother about you anymore.
+If you bring the drakling here to me, I'll tell you what to do next. If
+not, not."
+
+And the cockatrice drew the fire up close around his shoulders, tucked
+himself up in it, and went to sleep.
+
+Now this was exactly the right way to manage Edmund, only no one had
+ever thought of trying to do it before.
+
+He stood for a moment looking at the cockatrice; the cockatrice looked
+at Edmund out of the corner of his eye and began to snore very loudly,
+and Edmund understood, once and for all, that the cockatrice wasn't
+going to put up with any nonsense. He respected the cockatrice very much
+from that moment, and set off at once to do exactly as he was told--for
+perhaps the first time in his life.
+
+Though he had played truant so often, he knew one or two things that
+perhaps you don't know, though you have always been so good and gone to
+school regularly. For instance, he knew that a drakling is a dragon's
+baby, and he felt sure that what he had to do was to find the third of
+the three noises that people used to hear coming from the mountains. Of
+course, the clucking had been the cockatrice, and the big noise like a
+large gentleman asleep after dinner had been the big dragon. So the
+smaller rumbling must have been the drakling.
+
+He plunged boldly into the caves and searched and wandered and wandered
+and searched, and at last he came to a third door in the mountain, and
+on it was written THE BABY IS ASLEEP. Just before the door stood fifty
+pairs of copper shoes, and no one could have looked at them for a moment
+without seeing what sort of feet they were made for, for each shoe had
+five holes in it for the drakling's five claws. And there were fifty
+pairs because the drakling took after his mother, and had a hundred
+feet--no more and no less. He was the kind called _Draco centipedis_ in
+the learned books.
+
+Edmund was a good deal frightened, but he remembered the grim expression
+of the cockatrice's eye, and the fixed determination of his snore still
+rang in his ears, in spite of the snoring of the drakling, which was, in
+itself, considerable. He screwed up his courage, flung the door open,
+and called out: "Hello, you drakling. Get out of bed this minute."
+
+The drakling stopped snoring and said sleepily: "It ain't time yet."
+
+"Your mother says you are to, anyhow; and look sharp about it, what's
+more," said Edmund, gaining courage from the fact that the drakling had
+not yet eaten him.
+
+The drakling sighed, and Edmund could hear it getting out of bed. The
+next moment it began to come out of its room and to put on its shoes. It
+was not nearly so big as its mother; only about the size of a Baptist
+chapel.
+
+"Hurry up," said Edmund, as it fumbled clumsily with the seventeenth
+shoe.
+
+"Mother said I was never to go out without my shoes," said the
+drakling; so Edmund had to help it to put them on. It took some time,
+and was not a comfortable occupation.
+
+At last the drakling said it was ready, and Edmund, who had forgotten to
+be frightened, said, "Come on then," and they went back to the
+cockatrice.
+
+The cave was rather narrow for the drakling, but it made itself thin, as
+you may see a fat worm do when it wants to get through a narrow crack in
+a piece of hard earth.
+
+"Here it is," said Edmund, and the cockatrice woke up at once and asked
+the drakling very politely to sit down and wait. "Your mother will be
+here presently," said the cockatrice, stirring up its fire.
+
+The drakling sat down and waited, but it watched the fire with hungry
+eyes.
+
+"I beg your pardon," it said at last, "but I am always accustomed to
+having a little basin of fire as soon as I get up, and I feel rather
+faint. Might I?"
+
+It reached out a claw toward the cockatrice's basin.
+
+"Certainly not," said the cockatrice sharply. "Where were you brought
+up? Did they never teach you that 'we must not ask for all we see'? Eh?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said the drakling humbly, "but I am really _very_
+hungry."
+
+The cockatrice beckoned Edmund to the side of the basin and whispered in
+his ear so long and so earnestly that one side of the dear boy's hair
+was quite burnt off. And he never once interrupted the cockatrice to ask
+why. But when the whispering was over, Edmund--whose heart, as I may
+have mentioned, was very tender--said to the drakling: "If you are
+really hungry, poor thing, I can show you where there is plenty of
+fire." And off he went through the caves, and the drakling followed.
+
+When Edmund came to the proper place he stopped.
+
+There was a round iron thing in the floor, like the ones the men shoot
+the coals down into your cellar, only much larger. Edmund heaved it up
+by a hook that stuck out at one side, and a rush of hot air came up
+that nearly choked him. But the drakling came close and looked down with
+one eye and sniffed, and said: "That smells good, eh?"
+
+"Yes," said Edmund, "well, that's the fire in the middle of the earth.
+There's plenty of it, all done to a turn. You'd better go down and begin
+your breakfast, hadn't you?"
+
+So the drakling wriggled through the hole, and began to crawl faster and
+faster down the slanting shaft that leads to the fire in the middle of
+the earth. And Edmund, doing exactly as he had been told, for a wonder,
+caught the end of the drakling's tail and ran the iron hook through it
+so that the drakling was held fast. And it could not turn around and
+wriggle up again to look after its poor tail, because, as everyone
+knows, the way to the fires below is very easy to go down, but quite
+impossible to come back on. There is something about it in Latin,
+beginning: "_Facilis descensus_."
+
+So there was the drakling, fast by the silly tail of it, and there was
+Edmund very busy and important and very pleased with himself, hurrying
+back to the cockatrice.
+
+"Now," said he.
+
+"Well, now," said the cockatrice. "Go to the mouth of the cave and laugh
+at the dragon so that she hears you."
+
+Edmund very nearly said "Why?" but he stopped in time, and instead,
+said: "She won't hear me--"
+
+"Oh, very well," said the cockatrice. "No doubt you know best," and he
+began to tuck himself up again in the fire, so Edmund did as he was bid.
+
+And when he began to laugh his laughter echoed in the mouth of the cave
+till it sounded like the laughter of a whole castleful of giants.
+
+And the dragon, lying asleep in the sun, woke up and said very crossly:
+"What are you laughing at?"
+
+[Illustration: "That smells good, eh?" _See page 152._]
+
+"At you," said Edmund, and went on laughing. The dragon bore it as long
+as she could, but, like everyone else, she couldn't stand being made fun
+of, so presently she dragged herself up the mountain very slowly,
+because she had just had a rather heavy meal, and stood outside and
+said, "What are you laughing at?" in a voice that made Edmund feel as if
+he should never laugh again.
+
+Then the good cockatrice called out: "At you! You've eaten your own
+drakling--swallowed it with the town. Your own little drakling! He, he,
+he! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+And Edmund found the courage to cry "Ha, ha!" which sounded like
+tremendous laughter in the echo of the cave.
+
+"Dear me," said the dragon. "I _thought_ the town stuck in my throat
+rather. I must take it out, and look through it more carefully." And
+with that she coughed--and choked--and there was the town, on the
+hillside.
+
+Edmund had run back to the cockatrice, and it had told him what to do.
+So before the dragon had time to look through the town again for her
+drakling, the voice of the drakling itself was heard howling miserably
+from inside the mountain, because Edmund was pinching its tail as hard
+as he could in the round iron door, like the one where the men pour the
+coals out of the sacks into the cellar. And the dragon heard the voice
+and said: "Why, whatever's the matter with Baby? He's not here!" and
+made herself thin, and crept into the mountain to find her drakling. The
+cockatrice kept on laughing as loud as it could, and Edmund kept on
+pinching, and presently the great dragon--very long and narrow she had
+made herself--found her head where the round hole was with the iron lid.
+Her tail was a mile or two off--outside the mountain. When Edmund heard
+her coming he gave one last nip to the drakling's tail, and then heaved
+up the lid and stood behind it, so that the dragon could not see him.
+Then he loosed the drakling's tail from the hook, and the dragon peeped
+down the hole just in time to see her drakling's tail disappear down the
+smooth, slanting shaft with one last squeak of pain. Whatever may have
+been the poor dragon's other faults, she was an excellent mother. She
+plunged headfirst into the hole, and slid down the shaft after her baby.
+Edmund watched her head go--and then the rest of her. She was so long,
+now she had stretched herself thin, that it took all night. It was like
+watching a goods train go by in Germany. When the last joint of her tail
+had gone Edmund slammed down the iron door. He was a kindhearted boy, as
+you have guessed, and he was glad to think that dragon and drakling
+would now have plenty to eat of their favorite food, forever and ever.
+He thanked the cockatrice for his kindness, and got home just in time to
+have breakfast and get to school by nine. Of course, he could not have
+done this if the town had been in its old place by the river in the
+middle of the plain, but it had taken root on the hillside just where
+the dragon left it.
+
+"Well," said the master, "where were you yesterday?"
+
+Edmund explained, and the master at once caned him for not speaking the
+truth.
+
+"But it _is_ true," said Edmund. "Why, the whole town was swallowed by
+the dragon. You know it was--"
+
+"Nonsense," said the master. "There was a thunderstorm and an
+earthquake, that's all." And he caned Edmund more than ever.
+
+"But," said Edmund, who always would argue, even in the least favorable
+circumstances, "how do you account for the town being on the hillside
+now, instead of by the river as it used to be?"
+
+"It was _always_ on the hillside," said the master. And all the class
+said the same, for they had more sense than to argue with a person who
+carried a cane.
+
+"But look at the maps," said Edmund, who wasn't going to be beaten in
+argument, whatever he might be in the flesh. The master pointed to the
+map on the wall.
+
+There was the town, on the hillside! And nobody but Edmund could see
+that of course the shock of being swallowed by the dragon had upset all
+the maps and put them wrong.
+
+And then the master caned Edmund again, explaining that this time it was
+not for untruthfulness, but for his vexatious argumentative habits. This
+will show you what a prejudiced and ignorant man Edmund's master
+was--how different from the revered Head of the nice school where your
+good parents are kind enough to send you.
+
+The next day Edmund thought he would prove his tale by showing people
+the cockatrice, and he actually persuaded some people to go into the
+cave with him; but the cockatrice had bolted himself in and would not
+open the door--so Edmund got nothing by that except a scolding for
+taking people on a wild-goose chase.
+
+"A wild goose," said they, "is nothing like a cockatrice."
+
+And poor Edmund could not say a word, though he knew how wrong they
+were. The only person who believed him was his granny. But then she was
+very old and very kind, and had always said he was the best of boys.
+
+Only one good thing came of all this long story. Edmund has never been
+quite the same boy since. He does not argue quite so much, and he agreed
+to be apprenticed to a locksmith, so that he might one day be able to
+pick the lock of the cockatrice's front door--and learn some more of the
+things that other people don't know.
+
+But he is quite an old man now, and he hasn't gotten that door open
+yet!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 23, "around" changed to "round" (round piece of land)
+
+Page 152, "chocked" changed to "choked" (nearly choked him)
+
+Page 154, "he" changed to "she" (that she coughed)
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Book of Dragons, by Edith Nesbit
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