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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magic World, 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 Magic World
+
+Author: Edith Nesbit
+
+Illustrator: H. R. Millar
+             Spencer Pryse
+
+Release Date: January 27, 2009 [EBook #27903]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGIC WORLD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Wilson and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: He scrambled out of the cupboard, and the boots and
+goloshes fell off him like spray off a bather.--P. 24.]
+
+
+
+
+THE MAGIC WORLD
+
+BY
+E. NESBIT
+
+AUTHOR OF
+'THE TREASURE SEEKERS,' 'THE WONDERFUL GARDEN,'
+'THE MAGIC CITY,' ETC.
+
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
+H. R. MILLAR and SPENCER PRYSE
+
+MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
+1924
+
+
+
+
+_First published by Macmillan & Co. 1912_
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+                                              PAGE
+   1. The Cat-hood of Maurice                    1
+
+   2. The Mixed Mine                            27
+
+   3. Accidental Magic                          58
+
+   4. The Princess and the Hedge-pig            96
+
+   5. Septimus Septimusson                     126
+
+   6. The White Cat                            148
+
+   7. Belinda and Bellamant                    160
+
+   8. Justnowland                              185
+
+   9. The Related Muff                         206
+
+  10. The Aunt and Amabel                      218
+
+  11. Kenneth and the Carp                     233
+
+  12. The Magician's Heart                     260
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+  He scrambled out of the cupboard, and the
+  boots and goloshes fell off him like spray
+  off a bather (p. 24)                       _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                 FACE PAGE
+  'If you think cats have such a jolly time,'
+  said Lord Hugh, 'why not _be_ a cat?'                 7
+
+  It was Mabel who untied the string and soothed
+  his terrors                                          14
+
+  He landed there on his four padded feet light
+  as a feather                                         17
+
+  When Jane went in to put Mabel's light out,
+  Maurice crept in too                                 21
+
+  Her bow went down suddenly                           28
+
+  'Look!' he said, 'look!' and pointed                 35
+
+  Far above him and every one else towered the
+  elephant                                             39
+
+  It became a quite efficient motor                    42
+
+  Quentin de Ward                                      58
+
+  It landed on the point of the chin of Smithson
+  major                                                67
+
+  'Who are you?' he said. 'Answer, I adjure you
+  by the Sacred Tau!'                                  79
+
+  The cart was drawn by an enormous creature, more
+  like an elephant than anything else                  85
+
+  'Silence!' cried the priest. 'Chosen of the
+  Immortals, close your eyes!'                         91
+
+  On the lower terrace the royal nurse was walking
+  up and down with the baby princess that all the
+  fuss was about                                       98
+
+  Instantly a flight of winged arrows crossed the
+  garden                                              109
+
+  'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand
+  spears,' she said, 'to give you what you wish'      123
+
+  So we all sat on chairs in the drawing-room, and
+  thought of nothing to say harder than ever          208
+
+  We scalped Eliza as she passed through the hall     213
+
+  Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her
+  over and over                                       215
+
+  Early next morning he tried to catch fish with
+  several pieces of string knotted together and
+  a hairpin                                           235
+
+  A radiant vision stepped into the circle of light   241
+
+  There was a splash                                  248
+
+  'Oh, good-bye!' he cried desperately, and snapped
+  at the worm                                         256
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+THE CAT-HOOD OF MAURICE
+
+
+To have your hair cut is not painful, nor does it hurt to have your
+whiskers trimmed. But round wooden shoes, shaped like bowls, are not
+comfortable wear, however much it may amuse the onlooker to see you try
+to walk in them. If you have a nice fur coat like a company promoter's,
+it is most annoying to be made to swim in it. And if you had a tail,
+surely it would be solely your own affair; that any one should tie a tin
+can to it would strike you as an unwarrantable impertinence--to say the
+least.
+
+Yet it is difficult for an outsider to see these things from the point
+of view of both the persons concerned. To Maurice, scissors in hand,
+alive and earnest to snip, it seemed the most natural thing in the world
+to shorten the stiff whiskers of Lord Hugh Cecil by a generous inch. He
+did not understand how useful those whiskers were to Lord Hugh, both in
+sport and in the more serious business of getting a living. Also it
+amused Maurice to throw Lord Hugh into ponds, though Lord Hugh only
+once permitted this liberty. To put walnuts on Lord Hugh's feet and then
+to watch him walk on ice was, in Maurice's opinion, as good as a play.
+Lord Hugh was a very favourite cat, but Maurice was discreet, and Lord
+Hugh, except under violent suffering, was at that time anyhow, dumb.
+
+But the empty sardine-tin attached to Lord Hugh's tail and hind
+legs--this had a voice, and, rattling against stairs, banisters, and the
+legs of stricken furniture, it cried aloud for vengeance. Lord Hugh,
+suffering violently, added his voice, and this time the family heard.
+There was a chase, a chorus of 'Poor pussy!' and 'Pussy, then!' and the
+tail and the tin and Lord Hugh were caught under Jane's bed. The tail
+and the tin acquiesced in their rescue. Lord Hugh did not. He fought,
+scratched, and bit. Jane carried the scars of that rescue for many a
+long week.
+
+When all was calm Maurice was sought and, after some little natural
+delay, found--in the boot-cupboard.
+
+'Oh, Maurice!' his mother almost sobbed, 'how _can_ you? What will your
+father say?'
+
+Maurice thought he knew what his father would do.
+
+'Don't you know,' the mother went on, 'how wrong it is to be cruel?'
+
+'I didn't mean to be cruel,' Maurice said. And, what is more, he spoke
+the truth. All the unwelcome attentions he had showered on Lord Hugh had
+not been exactly intended to hurt that stout veteran--only it was
+interesting to see what a cat would do if you threw it in the water, or
+cut its whiskers, or tied things to its tail.
+
+'Oh, but you must have meant to be cruel,' said mother, 'and you will
+have to be punished.'
+
+'I wish I hadn't,' said Maurice, from the heart.
+
+'So do I,' said his mother, with a sigh; 'but it isn't the first time;
+you know you tied Lord Hugh up in a bag with the hedgehog only last
+Tuesday week. You'd better go to your room and think it over. I shall
+have to tell your father directly he comes home.'
+
+Maurice went to his room and thought it over. And the more he thought
+the more he hated Lord Hugh. Why couldn't the beastly cat have held his
+tongue and sat still? That, at the time would have been a
+disappointment, but now Maurice wished it had happened. He sat on the
+edge of his bed and savagely kicked the edge of the green Kidderminster
+carpet, and hated the cat.
+
+He hadn't meant to be cruel; he was sure he hadn't; he wouldn't have
+pinched the cat's feet or squeezed its tail in the door, or pulled its
+whiskers, or poured hot water on it. He felt himself ill-used, and knew
+that he would feel still more so after the inevitable interview with his
+father.
+
+But that interview did not take the immediately painful form expected by
+Maurice. His father did _not_ say, 'Now I will show you what it feels
+like to be hurt.' Maurice had braced himself for that, and was looking
+beyond it to the calm of forgiveness which should follow the storm in
+which he should so unwillingly take part. No; his father was already
+calm and reasonable--with a dreadful calm, a terrifying reason.
+
+'Look here, my boy,' he said. 'This cruelty to dumb animals must be
+checked--severely checked.'
+
+'I didn't mean to be cruel,' said Maurice.
+
+'Evil,' said Mr. Basingstoke, for such was Maurice's surname, 'is
+wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart. What about your
+putting the hen in the oven?'
+
+'You know,' said Maurice, pale but determined, 'you _know_ I only wanted
+to help her to get her eggs hatched quickly. It says in "Fowls for Food
+and Fancy" that heat hatches eggs.'
+
+'But she hadn't any eggs,' said Mr. Basingstoke.
+
+'But she soon would have,' urged Maurice. 'I thought a stitch in
+time----'
+
+'That,' said his father, 'is the sort of thing that you must learn not
+to think.'
+
+'I'll try,' said Maurice, miserably hoping for the best.
+
+'I intend that you shall,' said Mr. Basingstoke. 'This afternoon you go
+to Dr. Strongitharm's for the remaining week of term. If I find any more
+cruelty taking place during the holidays you will go there permanently.
+You can go and get ready.'
+
+'Oh, father, _please_ not,' was all Maurice found to say.
+
+'I'm sorry, my boy,' said his father, much more kindly; 'it's all for
+your own good, and it's as painful to me as it is to you--remember that.
+The cab will be here at four. Go and put your things together, and Jane
+shall pack for you.'
+
+So the box was packed. Mabel, Maurice's kiddy sister, cried over
+everything as it was put in. It was a very wet day.
+
+'If it had been any school but old Strong's,' she sobbed.
+
+She and her brother knew that school well: its windows, dulled with wire
+blinds, its big alarm bell, the high walls of its grounds, bristling
+with spikes, the iron gates, always locked, through which gloomy boys,
+imprisoned, scowled on a free world. Dr. Strongitharm's was a school
+'for backward and difficult boys.' Need I say more?
+
+Well, there was no help for it. The box was packed, the cab was at the
+door. The farewells had been said. Maurice determined that he wouldn't
+cry and he didn't, which gave him the one touch of pride and joy that
+such a scene could yield. Then at the last moment, just as father had
+one leg in the cab, the Taxes called. Father went back into the house to
+write a cheque. Mother and Mabel had retired in tears. Maurice used the
+reprieve to go back after his postage-stamp album. Already he was
+planning how to impress the other boys at old Strong's, and his was
+really a very fair collection. He ran up into the schoolroom, expecting
+to find it empty. But some one was there: Lord Hugh, in the very middle
+of the ink-stained table-cloth.
+
+'You brute,' said Maurice; 'you know jolly well I'm going away, or you
+wouldn't be here.' And, indeed, the room had never, somehow, been a
+favourite of Lord Hugh's.
+
+'Meaow,' said Lord Hugh.
+
+[Illustration: 'If you think cats have such a jolly time,' said Lord
+Hugh, 'why not _be_ a cat?']
+
+'Mew!' said Maurice, with scorn. 'That's what you always say. All that
+fuss about a jolly little sardine-tin. Any one would have thought you'd
+be only too glad to have it to play with. I wonder how you'd like being
+a boy? Lickings, and lessons, and impots, and sent back from breakfast
+to wash your ears. You wash yours anywhere--I wonder what they'd say to
+me if I washed my ears on the drawing-room hearthrug?'
+
+'Meaow,' said Lord Hugh, and washed an ear, as though he were showing
+off.
+
+'Mew,' said Maurice again; 'that's all you can say.'
+
+'Oh, no, it isn't,' said Lord Hugh, and stopped his ear-washing.
+
+'I say!' said Maurice in awestruck tones.
+
+'If you think cats have such a jolly time,' said Lord Hugh, 'why not
+_be_ a cat?'
+
+'I would if I could,' said Maurice, 'and fight you----'
+
+'Thank you,' said Lord Hugh.
+
+'But I can't,' said Maurice.
+
+'Oh, yes, you can,' said Lord Hugh. 'You've only got to say the word.'
+
+'What word?'
+
+Lord Hugh told him the word; but I will not tell you, for fear you
+should say it by accident and then be sorry.
+
+'And if I say that, I shall turn into a cat?'
+
+'Of course,' said the cat.
+
+'Oh, yes, I see,' said Maurice. 'But I'm not taking any, thanks. I don't
+want to be a cat for always.'
+
+'You needn't,' said Lord Hugh. 'You've only got to get some one to say
+to you, "Please leave off being a cat and be Maurice again," and there
+you are.'
+
+Maurice thought of Dr. Strongitharm's. He also thought of the horror of
+his father when he should find Maurice gone, vanished, not to be traced.
+'He'll be sorry, then,' Maurice told himself, and to the cat he said,
+suddenly:--
+
+'Right--I'll do it. What's the word, again?'
+
+'----,' said the cat.
+
+'----,' said Maurice; and suddenly the table shot up to the height of a
+house, the walls to the height of tenement buildings, the pattern on the
+carpet became enormous, and Maurice found himself on all fours. He tried
+to stand up on his feet, but his shoulders were oddly heavy. He could
+only rear himself upright for a moment, and then fell heavily on his
+hands. He looked down at them; they seemed to have grown shorter and
+fatter, and were encased in black fur gloves. He felt a desire to walk
+on all fours--tried it--did it. It was very odd--the movement of the
+arms straight from the shoulder, more like the movement of the piston of
+an engine than anything Maurice could think of at that moment.
+
+'I am asleep,' said Maurice--'I am dreaming this. I am dreaming I am a
+cat. I hope I dreamed that about the sardine-tin and Lord Hugh's tail,
+and Dr. Strong's.'
+
+'You didn't,' said a voice he knew and yet didn't know, 'and you aren't
+dreaming this.'
+
+'Yes, I am,' said Maurice; 'and now I'm going to dream that I fight that
+beastly black cat, and give him the best licking he ever had in his
+life. Come on, Lord Hugh.'
+
+A loud laugh answered him.
+
+'Excuse my smiling,' said the voice he knew and didn't know, 'but don't
+you see--you _are_ Lord Hugh!'
+
+A great hand picked Maurice up from the floor and held him in the air.
+He felt the position to be not only undignified but unsafe, and gave
+himself a shake of mingled relief and resentment when the hand set him
+down on the inky table-cloth.
+
+'You are Lord Hugh now, my dear Maurice,' said the voice, and a huge
+face came quite close to his. It was his own face, as it would have
+seemed through a magnifying glass. And the voice--oh, horror!--the
+voice was his own voice--Maurice Basingstoke's voice. Maurice shrank
+from the voice, and he would have liked to claw the face, but he had had
+no practice.
+
+'You are Lord Hugh,' the voice repeated, 'and I am Maurice. I like being
+Maurice. I am so large and strong. I could drown you in the water-butt,
+my poor cat--oh, so easily. No, don't spit and swear. It's bad
+manners--even in a cat.'
+
+'Maurice!' shouted Mr. Basingstoke from between the door and the cab.
+
+Maurice, from habit, leaped towards the door.
+
+'It's no use _your_ going,' said the thing that looked like a giant
+reflection of Maurice; 'it's _me_ he wants.'
+
+'But I didn't agree to your being me.'
+
+'That's poetry, even if it isn't grammar,' said the thing that looked
+like Maurice. 'Why, my good cat, don't you see that if you are I, I must
+be you? Otherwise we should interfere with time and space, upset the
+balance of power, and as likely as not destroy the solar system. Oh,
+yes--I'm you, right enough, and shall be, till some one tells you to
+change from Lord Hugh into Maurice. And now you've got to find some one
+to do it.'
+
+('Maurice!' thundered the voice of Mr. Basingstoke.)
+
+'That'll be easy enough,' said Maurice.
+
+'Think so?' said the other.
+
+'But I sha'n't try yet. I want to have some fun first. I shall catch
+heaps of mice!'
+
+'Think so? You forget that your whiskers are cut off--Maurice cut them.
+Without whiskers, how can you judge of the width of the places you go
+through? Take care you don't get stuck in a hole that you can't get out
+of or go in through, my good cat.'
+
+'Don't call me a cat,' said Maurice, and felt that his tail was growing
+thick and angry.
+
+'You _are_ a cat, you know--and that little bit of temper that I see in
+your tail reminds me----'
+
+Maurice felt himself gripped round the middle, abruptly lifted, and
+carried swiftly through the air. The quickness of the movement made him
+giddy. The light went so quickly past him that it might as well have
+been darkness. He saw nothing, felt nothing, except a sort of long
+sea-sickness, and then suddenly he was not being moved. He could see
+now. He could feel. He was being held tight in a sort of vice--a vice
+covered with chequered cloth. It looked like the pattern, very much
+exaggerated, of his school knickerbockers. It _was_. He was being held
+between the hard, relentless knees of that creature that had once been
+Lord Hugh, and to whose tail he had tied a sardine-tin. Now _he_ was
+Lord Hugh, and something was being tied to _his_ tail. Something
+mysterious, terrible. Very well, he would show that he was not afraid of
+anything that could be attached to tails. The string rubbed his fur the
+wrong way--it was that that annoyed him, not the string itself; and as
+for what was at the end of the string, what _could_ that matter to any
+sensible cat? Maurice was quite decided that he was--and would keep on
+being--a sensible cat.
+
+The string, however, and the uncomfortable, tight position between those
+chequered knees--something or other was getting on his nerves.
+
+'Maurice!' shouted his father below, and the be-catted Maurice bounded
+between the knees of the creature that wore his clothes and his looks.
+
+'Coming, father,' this thing called, and sped away, leaving Maurice on
+the servant's bed--under which Lord Hugh had taken refuge, with his
+tin-can, so short and yet so long a time ago. The stairs re-echoed to
+the loud boots which Maurice had never before thought loud; he had
+often, indeed, wondered that any one could object to them. He wondered
+now no longer.
+
+He heard the front door slam. That thing had gone to Dr.
+Strongitharm's. That was one comfort. Lord Hugh was a boy now; he would
+know what it was to be a boy. He, Maurice, was a cat, and he meant to
+taste fully all catty pleasures, from milk to mice. Meanwhile he was
+without mice or milk, and, unaccustomed as he was to a tail, he could
+not but feel that all was not right with his own. There was a feeling of
+weight, a feeling of discomfort, of positive terror. If he should move,
+what would that thing that was tied to his tail do? Rattle, of course.
+Oh, but he could not bear it if that thing rattled. Nonsense; it was
+only a sardine-tin. Yes, Maurice knew that. But all the same--if it did
+rattle! He moved his tail the least little soft inch. No sound. Perhaps
+really there wasn't anything tied to his tail. But he couldn't be sure
+unless he moved. But if he moved the thing would rattle, and if it
+rattled Maurice felt sure that he would expire or go mad. A mad cat.
+What a dreadful thing to be! Yet he couldn't sit on that bed for ever,
+waiting, waiting, waiting for the dreadful thing to happen.
+
+'Oh, dear,' sighed Maurice the cat. 'I never knew what people meant by
+"afraid" before.'
+
+His cat-heart was beating heavily against his furry side. His limbs were
+getting cramped--he must move. He did. And instantly the awful thing
+happened. The sardine-tin touched the iron of the bed-foot. It rattled.
+
+'Oh, I can't bear it, I can't,' cried poor Maurice, in a heartrending
+meaow that echoed through the house. He leaped from the bed and tore
+through the door and down the stairs, and behind him came the most
+terrible thing in the world. People might call it a sardine-tin, but he
+knew better. It was the soul of all the fear that ever had been or ever
+could be. _It rattled._
+
+Maurice who was a cat flew down the stairs; down, down--the rattling
+horror followed. Oh, horrible! Down, down! At the foot of the stairs the
+horror, caught by something--a banister--a stair-rod--stopped. The
+string on Maurice's tail tightened, his tail was jerked, he was stopped.
+But the noise had stopped too. Maurice lay only just alive at the foot
+of the stairs.
+
+It was Mabel who untied the string and soothed his terrors with
+strokings and tender love-words. Maurice was surprised to find what a
+nice little girl his sister really was.
+
+'I'll never tease you again,' he tried to say, softly--but that was not
+what he said. What he said was 'Purrrr.'
+
+[Illustration: It was Mabel who untied the string and soothed his
+terrors.]
+
+'Dear pussy, nice poor pussy, then,' said Mabel, and she hid away the
+sardine-tin and did not tell any one. This seemed unjust to Maurice
+until he remembered that, of course, Mabel thought that he was really
+Lord Hugh, and that the person who had tied the tin to his tail was her
+brother Maurice. Then he was half grateful. She carried him down, in
+soft, safe arms, to the kitchen, and asked cook to give him some milk.
+
+'Tell me to change back into Maurice,' said Maurice who was quite worn
+out by his cattish experiences. But no one heard him. What they heard
+was, 'Meaow--Meaow--Meeeaow!'
+
+Then Maurice saw how he had been tricked. He could be changed back into
+a boy as soon as any one said to him, 'Leave off being a cat and be
+Maurice again,' but his tongue had no longer the power to ask any one to
+say it.
+
+He did not sleep well that night. For one thing he was not accustomed to
+sleeping on the kitchen hearthrug, and the blackbeetles were too many
+and too cordial. He was glad when cook came down and turned him out into
+the garden, where the October frost still lay white on the yellowed
+stalks of sunflowers and nasturtiums. He took a walk, climbed a tree,
+failed to catch a bird, and felt better. He began also to feel hungry.
+A delicious scent came stealing out of the back kitchen door. Oh, joy,
+there were to be herrings for breakfast! Maurice hastened in and took
+his place on his usual chair.
+
+His mother said, 'Down, puss,' and gently tilted the chair so that
+Maurice fell off it. Then the family had herrings. Maurice said, 'You
+might give me some,' and he said it so often that his father, who, of
+course, heard only mewings, said:--
+
+'For goodness' sake put that cat out of the room.'
+
+Maurice breakfasted later, in the dust-bin, on herring heads.
+
+But he kept himself up with a new and splendid idea. They would give him
+milk presently, and then they should see.
+
+He spent the afternoon sitting on the sofa in the dining-room, listening
+to the conversation of his father and mother. It is said that listeners
+never hear any good of themselves. Maurice heard so much that he was
+surprised and humbled. He heard his father say that he was a fine,
+plucky little chap, but he needed a severe lesson, and Dr. Strongitharm
+was the man to give it to him. He heard his mother say things that made
+his heart throb in his throat and the tears prick behind those green
+cat-eyes of his. He had always thought his parents a little bit unjust.
+Now they did him so much more than justice that he felt quite small and
+mean inside his cat-skin.
+
+[Illustration: He landed there on his four padded feet light as a
+feather.]
+
+'He's a dear, good, affectionate boy,' said mother. 'It's only his high
+spirits. Don't you think, darling, perhaps you were a little hard on
+him?'
+
+'It was for his own good,' said father.
+
+'Of course,' said mother; 'but I can't bear to think of him at that
+dreadful school.'
+
+'Well----,' father was beginning, when Jane came in with the tea-things
+on a clattering tray, whose sound made Maurice tremble in every leg.
+Father and mother began to talk about the weather.
+
+Maurice felt very affectionately to both his parents. The natural way of
+showing this was to jump on to the sideboard and thence on to his
+father's shoulders. He landed there on his four padded feet, light as a
+feather, but father was not pleased.
+
+'Bother the cat!' he cried. 'Jane, put it out of the room.'
+
+Maurice was put out. His great idea, which was to be carried out with
+milk, would certainly not be carried out in the dining-room. He sought
+the kitchen, and, seeing a milk-can on the window-ledge, jumped up
+beside the can and patted it as he had seen Lord Hugh do.
+
+'My!' said a friend of Jane's who happened to be there, 'ain't that cat
+clever--a perfect moral, I call her.'
+
+'He's nothing to boast of this time,' said cook. 'I will say for Lord
+Hugh he's not often taken in with a empty can.'
+
+This was naturally mortifying for Maurice, but he pretended not to hear,
+and jumped from the window to the tea-table and patted the milk-jug.
+
+'Come,' said the cook, 'that's more like it,' and she poured him out a
+full saucer and set it on the floor.
+
+Now was the chance Maurice had longed for. Now he could carry out that
+idea of his. He was very thirsty, for he had had nothing since that
+delicious breakfast in the dust-bin. But not for worlds would he have
+drunk the milk. No. He carefully dipped his right paw in it, for his
+idea was to make letters with it on the kitchen oil-cloth. He meant to
+write: 'Please tell me to leave off being a cat and be Maurice again,'
+but he found his paw a very clumsy pen, and he had to rub out the first
+'P' because it only looked like an accident. Then he tried again and
+actually did make a 'P' that any fair-minded person could have read
+quite easily.
+
+'I wish they'd notice,' he said, and before he got the 'l' written they
+did notice.
+
+'Drat the cat,' said cook; 'look how he's messing the floor up.'
+
+And she took away the milk.
+
+Maurice put pride aside and mewed to have the milk put down again. But
+he did not get it.
+
+Very weary, very thirsty, and very tired of being Lord Hugh, he
+presently found his way to the schoolroom, where Mabel with patient toil
+was doing her home-lessons. She took him on her lap and stroked him
+while she learned her French verb. He felt that he was growing very fond
+of her. People were quite right to be kind to dumb animals. Presently
+she had to stop stroking him and do a map. And after that she kissed him
+and put him down and went away. All the time she had been doing the map,
+Maurice had had but one thought: _Ink!_
+
+The moment the door had closed behind her--how sensible people were who
+closed doors gently--he stood up in her chair with one paw on the map
+and the other on the ink. Unfortunately, the inkstand top was made to
+dip pens in, and not to dip paws. But Maurice was desperate. He
+deliberately upset the ink--most of it rolled over the table-cloth and
+fell pattering on the carpet, but with what was left he wrote quite
+plainly, across the map:--
+
+   'Please tell Lord Hugh
+    to stop being
+    a cat and be Mau
+    rice again.'
+
+'There!' he said; 'they can't make any mistake about that.' They didn't.
+But they made a mistake about who had done it, and Mabel was deprived of
+jam with her supper bread.
+
+Her assurance that some naughty boy must have come through the window
+and done it while she was not there convinced nobody, and, indeed, the
+window was shut and bolted.
+
+Maurice, wild with indignation, did not mend matters by seizing the
+opportunity of a few minutes' solitude to write:--
+
+   'It was not Mabel
+    it was Maur
+    ice I mean Lord Hugh,'
+
+because when that was seen Mabel was instantly sent to bed.
+
+'It's not fair!' cried Maurice.
+
+'My dear,' said Maurice's father, 'if that cat goes on mewing to this
+extent you'll have to get rid of it.'
+
+[Illustration: When Jane went in to put Mabel's light out Maurice crept
+in too.]
+
+Maurice said not another word. It was bad enough to be a cat, but to be
+a cat that was 'got rid of'! He knew how people got rid of cats. In a
+stricken silence he left the room and slunk up the stairs--he dared not
+mew again, even at the door of Mabel's room. But when Jane went in to
+put Mabel's light out Maurice crept in too, and in the dark tried with
+stifled mews and purrs to explain to Mabel how sorry he was. Mabel
+stroked him and he went to sleep, his last waking thought amazement at
+the blindness that had once made him call her a silly little kid.
+
+If you have ever been a cat you will understand something of what
+Maurice endured during the dreadful days that followed. If you have not,
+I can never make you understand fully. There was the affair of the
+fishmonger's tray balanced on the wall by the back door--the delicious
+curled-up whiting; Maurice knew as well as you do that one mustn't steal
+fish out of other people's trays, but the cat that he was didn't know.
+There was an inward struggle--and Maurice was beaten by the cat-nature.
+Later he was beaten by the cook.
+
+Then there was that very painful incident with the butcher's dog, the
+flight across gardens, the safety of the plum tree gained only just in
+time.
+
+And, worst of all, despair took hold of him, for he saw that nothing he
+could do would make any one say those simple words that would release
+him. He had hoped that Mabel might at last be made to understand, but
+the ink had failed him; she did not understand his subdued mewings, and
+when he got the cardboard letters and made the same sentence with them
+Mabel only thought it was that naughty boy who came through locked
+windows. Somehow he could not spell before any one--his nerves were not
+what they had been. His brain now gave him no new ideas. He felt that he
+was really growing like a cat in his mind. His interest in his meals
+grew beyond even what it had been when they were a schoolboy's meals. He
+hunted mice with growing enthusiasm, though the loss of his whiskers to
+measure narrow places with made hunting difficult.
+
+He grew expert in bird-stalking, and often got quite near to a bird
+before it flew away, laughing at him. But all the time, in his heart, he
+was very, very miserable. And so the week went by.
+
+Maurice in his cat shape dreaded more and more the time when Lord Hugh
+in the boy shape should come back from Dr. Strongitharm's. He knew--who
+better?--exactly the kind of things boys do to cats, and he trembled to
+the end of his handsome half-Persian tail.
+
+And then the boy came home from Dr. Strongitharm's, and at the first
+sound of his boots in the hall Maurice in the cat's body fled with
+silent haste to hide in the boot-cupboard.
+
+Here, ten minutes later, the boy that had come back from Dr.
+Strongitharm's found him.
+
+Maurice fluffed up his tail and unsheathed his claws. Whatever this boy
+was going to do to him Maurice meant to resist, and his resistance
+should hurt the boy as much as possible. I am sorry to say Maurice swore
+softly among the boots, but cat-swearing is not really wrong.
+
+'Come out, you old duffer,' said Lord Hugh in the boy shape of Maurice.
+'I'm not going to hurt you.'
+
+'I'll see to that,' said Maurice, backing into the corner, all teeth and
+claws.
+
+'Oh, I've had such a time!' said Lord Hugh. 'It's no use, you know, old
+chap; I can see where you are by your green eyes. My word, they do
+shine. I've been caned and shut up in a dark room and given thousands of
+lines to write out.'
+
+'I've been beaten, too, if you come to that,' mewed Maurice. 'Besides
+the butcher's dog.'
+
+It was an intense relief to speak to some one who could understand his
+mews.
+
+'Well, I suppose it's Pax for the future,' said Lord Hugh; 'if you
+won't come out, you won't. Please leave off being a cat and be Maurice
+again.'
+
+And instantly Maurice, amid a heap of goloshes and old tennis bats, felt
+with a swelling heart that he was no longer a cat. No more of those
+undignified four legs, those tiresome pointed ears, so difficult to
+wash, that furry coat, that contemptible tail, and that terrible
+inability to express all one's feelings in two words--'mew' and 'purr.'
+
+He scrambled out of the cupboard, and the boots and goloshes fell off
+him like spray off a bather.
+
+He stood upright in those very chequered knickerbockers that were so
+terrible when their knees held one vice-like, while things were tied to
+one's tail. He was face to face with another boy, exactly like himself.
+
+'_You_ haven't changed, then--but there can't be two Maurices.'
+
+'There sha'n't be; not if I know it,' said the other boy; 'a boy's
+life's a dog's life. Quick, before any one comes.'
+
+'Quick what?' asked Maurice.
+
+'Why tell me to leave off being a boy, and to be Lord Hugh Cecil again.'
+
+Maurice told him at once. And at once the boy was gone, and there was
+Lord Hugh in his own shape, purring politely, yet with a watchful eye
+on Maurice's movements.
+
+'Oh, you needn't be afraid, old chap. It's Pax right enough,' Maurice
+murmured in the ear of Lord Hugh. And Lord Hugh, arching his back under
+Maurice's stroking hand, replied with a purrrr-meaow that spoke volumes.
+
+'Oh, Maurice, here you are. It _is_ nice of you to be nice to Lord Hugh,
+when it was because of him you----'
+
+'He's a good old chap,' said Maurice, carelessly. 'And you're not half a
+bad old girl. See?'
+
+Mabel almost wept for joy at this magnificent compliment, and Lord Hugh
+himself took on a more happy and confident air.
+
+Please dismiss any fears which you may entertain that after this Maurice
+became a model boy. He didn't. But he was much nicer than before. The
+conversation which he overheard when he was a cat makes him more patient
+with his father and mother. And he is almost always nice to Mabel, for
+he cannot forget all that she was to him when he wore the shape of Lord
+Hugh. His father attributes all the improvement in his son's character
+to that week at Dr. Strongitharm's--which, as you know, Maurice never
+had. Lord Hugh's character is unchanged. Cats learn slowly and with
+difficulty.
+
+Only Maurice and Lord Hugh know the truth--Maurice has never told it to
+any one except me, and Lord Hugh is a very reserved cat. He never at
+any time had that free flow of mew which distinguished and endangered
+the cat-hood of Maurice.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE MIXED MINE
+
+
+The ship was first sighted off Dungeness. She was labouring heavily. Her
+paint was peculiar and her rig outlandish. She looked like a golden ship
+out of a painted picture.
+
+'Blessed if I ever see such a rig--nor such lines neither,' old
+Hawkhurst said.
+
+It was a late afternoon, wild and grey. Slate-coloured clouds drove
+across the sky like flocks of hurried camels. The waves were purple and
+blue, and in the west a streak of unnatural-looking green light was all
+that stood for the splendours of sunset.
+
+'She do be a rum 'un,' said young Benenden, who had strolled along the
+beach with the glasses the gentleman gave him for saving the little boy
+from drowning. 'Don't know as I ever see another just like her.'
+
+'I'd give half a dollar to any chap as can tell me where she hails
+from--and what port it is where they has ships o' that cut,' said
+middle-aged Haversham to the group that had now gathered.
+
+'George!' exclaimed young Benenden from under his field-glasses, 'she's
+going.' And she went. Her bow went down suddenly and she stood stern up
+in the water--like a duck after rain. Then quite slowly, with no
+unseemly hurry, but with no moment's change of what seemed to be her
+fixed purpose, the ship sank and the grey rolling waves wiped out the
+place where she had been.
+
+Now I hope you will not expect me to tell you anything more about this
+ship--because there is nothing more to tell. What country she came from,
+what port she was bound for, what cargo she carried, and what kind of
+tongue her crew spoke--all these things are dead secrets. And a dead
+secret is a secret that nobody knows. No other secrets are dead secrets.
+Even I do not know this one, or I would tell you at once. For I, at
+least, have no secrets from you.
+
+[Illustration: Her bow went down suddenly.]
+
+When ships go down off Dungeness, things from them have a way of being
+washed up on the sands of that bay which curves from Dungeness to
+Folkestone, where the sea has bitten a piece out of the land--just such
+a half-moon-shaped piece as you bite out of a slice of bread-and-butter.
+Bits of wood tangled with ropes--broken furniture--ships' biscuits in
+barrels and kegs that have held brandy--seamen's chests--and sometimes
+sadder things that we will not talk about just now.
+
+Now, if you live by the sea and are grown-up you know that if you find
+anything on the seashore (I don't mean starfish or razor-shells or
+jellyfish and sea-mice, but anything out of a ship that you would really
+like to keep) your duty is to take it up to the coast-guard and say,
+'Please, I've found this.' Then the coast-guard will send it to the
+proper authority, and one of these days you'll get a reward of one-third
+of the value of whatever it was that you picked up. But two-thirds of
+the value of anything, or even three-thirds of its value, is not at all
+the same thing as the thing itself--if it happened to be the kind of
+thing you want. But if you are not grown-up and do not live by the sea,
+but in a nice little villa in a nice little suburb, where all the
+furniture is new and the servants wear white aprons and white caps with
+long strings in the afternoon, then you won't know anything about your
+duty, and if you find anything by the sea you'll think that findings are
+keepings.
+
+Edward was not grown-up--and he kept everything he found, including
+sea-mice, till the landlady of the lodgings where his aunt was threw his
+collection into the pig-pail.
+
+Being a quiet and persevering little boy he did not cry or complain,
+but having meekly followed his treasures to their long home--the pig
+was six feet from nose to tail, and ate the dead sea-mouse as easily
+and happily as your father eats an oyster--he started out to make a new
+collection.
+
+And the first thing he found was an oyster-shell that was pink and green
+and blue inside, and the second was an old boot--very old indeed--and
+the third was _it_.
+
+It was a square case of old leather embossed with odd little figures of
+men and animals and words that Edward could not read. It was oblong and
+had no key, but a sort of leather hasp, and was curiously knotted with
+string--rather like a boot-lace. And Edward opened it. There were
+several things inside: queer-looking instruments, some rather like those
+in the little box of mathematical instruments that he had had as a prize
+at school, and some like nothing he had ever seen before. And in a deep
+groove of the russet soaked velvet lining lay a neat little brass
+telescope.
+
+T-squares and set-squares and so forth are of little use on a sandy
+shore. But you can always look through a telescope.
+
+Edward picked it out and put it to his eye, and tried to see through it
+a little tug that was sturdily puffing up Channel. He failed to find the
+tug, and found himself gazing at a little cloud on the horizon. As he
+looked it grew larger and darker, and presently a spot of rain fell on
+his nose. He rubbed it off--on his jersey sleeve, I am sorry to say, and
+not on his handkerchief. Then he looked through the glass again; but he
+found he needed both hands to keep it steady, so he set down the box
+with the other instruments on the sand at his feet and put the glass to
+his eye again.
+
+He never saw the box again. For in his unpractised efforts to cover the
+tug with his glass he found himself looking at the shore instead of at
+the sea, and the shore looked so odd that he could not make up his mind
+to stop looking at it.
+
+He had thought it was a sandy shore, but almost at once he saw that it
+was not sand but fine shingle, and the discovery of this mistake
+surprised him so much that he kept on looking at the shingle through the
+little telescope, which showed it quite plainly. And as he looked the
+shingle grew coarser; it was stones now--quite decent-sized stones,
+large stones, enormous stones.
+
+Something hard pressed against his foot, and he lowered the glass.
+
+He was surrounded by big stones, and they all seemed to be moving; some
+were tumbling off others that lay in heaps below them, and others were
+rolling away from the beach in every direction. And the place where he
+had put down the box was covered with great stones which he could not
+move.
+
+Edward was very much upset. He had never been accustomed to great stones
+that moved about when no one was touching them, and he looked round for
+some one to ask how it had happened.
+
+The only person in sight was another boy in a blue jersey with red
+letters on its chest.
+
+'Hi!' said Edward, and the boy also said 'Hi!'
+
+'Come along here,' said Edward, 'and I'll show you something.'
+
+'Right-o!' the boy remarked, and came.
+
+The boy was staying at the camp where the white tents were below the
+Grand Redoubt. His home was quite unlike Edward's, though he also lived
+with his aunt. The boy's home was very dirty and very small, and nothing
+in it was ever in its right place. There was no furniture to speak of.
+The servants did not wear white caps with long streamers, because there
+were no servants. His uncle was a dock-labourer and his aunt went out
+washing. But he had felt just the same pleasure in being shown things
+that Edward or you or I might have felt, and he went climbing over the
+big stones to where Edward stood waiting for him in a sort of pit among
+the stones with the little telescope in his hand.
+
+'I say,' said Edward, 'did you see any one move these stones?'
+
+'I ain't only just come up on to the sea-wall,' said the boy, who was
+called Gustus.
+
+'They all came round me,' said Edward, rather pale. 'I didn't see any
+one shoving them.'
+
+'Who're you a-kiddin' of?' the boy inquired.
+
+'But I _did_,' said Edward, 'honour bright I did. I was just taking a
+squint through this little telescope I've found--and they came rolling
+up to me.'
+
+'Let's see what you found,' said Gustus, and Edward gave him the glass.
+He directed it with inexpert fingers to the sea-wall, so little trodden
+that on it the grass grows, and the sea-pinks, and even convolvulus and
+mock-strawberry.
+
+'Oh, look!' cried Edward, very loud. 'Look at the grass!'
+
+Gustus let the glass fall to long arm's length and said 'Krikey!'
+
+The grass and flowers on the sea-wall had grown a foot and a
+half--quite tropical they looked.
+
+'Well?' said Edward.
+
+'What's the matter wiv everyfink?' said Gustus. 'We must both be a bit
+balmy, seems ter me.'
+
+'What's balmy?' asked Edward.
+
+'Off your chump--looney--like what you and me is,' said Gustus. 'First I
+sees things, then I sees you.'
+
+'It was only fancy, I expect,' said Edward. 'I expect the grass on the
+sea-wall was always like that, really.'
+
+'Let's have a look through your spy-glass at that little barge,' said
+Gustus, still holding the glass. 'Come on outer these 'ere
+paving-stones.'
+
+'There was a box,' said Edward, 'a box I found with lots of jolly things
+in it. I laid it down somewhere--and----'
+
+'Ain't that it over there?' Gustus asked, and levelled the glass at a
+dark object a hundred yards away. 'No; it's only an old boot. I say,
+this is a fine spy-glass. It does make things come big.'
+
+'That's not it. I'm certain I put it down somewhere just here. Oh,
+_don't_!'
+
+[Illustration: 'Look!' he said, 'look!' and pointed.]
+
+He snatched the glass from Gustus.
+
+'Look!' he said, 'look!' and pointed.
+
+A hundred yards away stood a boot about as big as the bath you see Marat
+in at Madame Tussaud's.
+
+'S'welp me,' said Gustus, 'we're asleep, both of us, and a-dreaming as
+things grow while we look at them.'
+
+'But we're not dreaming,' Edward objected. 'You let me pinch you and
+you'll see.'
+
+'No fun in that,' said Gustus. 'Tell you what--it's the
+spy-glass--that's what it is. Ever see any conjuring? I see a chap at
+the Mile End Empire what made things turn into things like winking. It's
+the spy-glass, that's what it is.'
+
+'It can't be,' said the little boy who lived in a villa.
+
+'But it _is_,' said the little boy who lived in a slum. 'Teacher says
+there ain't no bounds to the wonders of science. Blest if this ain't one
+of 'em.'
+
+'Let me look,' said Edward.
+
+'All right; only you mark me. Whatever you sets eyes on'll grow and
+grow--like the flower-tree the conjurer had under the wipe. Don't you
+look at _me_, that's all. Hold on; I'll put something up for you to look
+at--a mark like--something as doesn't matter.'
+
+He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a boot-lace.
+
+'I hold this up,' he said, 'and you look.'
+
+Next moment he had dropped the boot-lace, which, swollen as it was with
+the magic of the glass, lay like a snake on the stone at his feet.
+
+So the glass _was_ a magic glass, as, of course, you know already.
+
+'My!' said Gustus, 'wouldn't I like to look at my victuals through that
+there!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Thus we find Edward, of the villa--and through him Gustus, of the
+slum--in possession of a unique instrument of magic. What could they do
+with it?
+
+This was the question which they talked over every time they met, and
+they met continually. Edward's aunt, who at home watched him as cats
+watch mice, rashly believed that at the seaside there was no mischief
+for a boy to get into. And the gentleman who commanded the tented camp
+believed in the ennobling effects of liberty.
+
+After the boot, neither had dared to look at anything through the
+telescope--and so they looked _at_ it, and polished it on their sleeves
+till it shone again.
+
+Both were agreed that it would be a fine thing to get some money and
+look at it, so that it would grow big. But Gustus never had any
+pocket-money, and Edward had had his confiscated to pay for a window he
+had not intended to break.
+
+Gustus felt certain that some one would find out about the spy-glass and
+take it away from them. His experience was that anything you happened to
+like was always taken away. Edward knew that his aunt would want to take
+the telescope away to 'take care of' for him. This had already happened
+with the carved chessmen that his father had sent him from India.
+
+'I been thinking,' said Gustus, on the third day. 'When I'm a man I'm
+a-going to be a burglar. You has to use your headpiece in that trade, I
+tell you. So I don't think thinking's swipes, like some blokes do. And I
+think p'r'aps it don't turn everything big. An' if we could find out
+what it don't turn big we could see what we wanted to turn big or what
+it didn't turn big, and then it wouldn't turn anything big except what
+we wanted it to. See?'
+
+Edward did not see; and I don't suppose you do, either.
+
+So Gustus went on to explain that teacher had told him there were some
+substances impervious to light, and some to cold, and so on and so
+forth, and that what they wanted was a substance that should be
+impervious to the magic effects of the spy-glass.
+
+'So if we get a tanner and set it on a plate and squint at it it'll get
+bigger--but so'll the plate. And we don't want to litter the place up
+with plates the bigness of cartwheels. But if the plate didn't get big
+we could look at the tanner till it covered the plate, and then go on
+looking and looking and looking and see nothing but the tanner till it
+was as big as a circus. See?'
+
+This time Edward did see. But they got no further, because it was time
+to go to the circus. There was a circus at Dymchurch just then, and that
+was what made Gustus think of the sixpence growing to that size.
+
+It was a very nice circus, and all the boys from the camp went to
+it--also Edward, who managed to scramble over and wriggle under benches
+till he was sitting near his friend.
+
+[Illustration: Far above him and every one else towered the elephant.]
+
+It was the size of the elephant that did it. Edward had not seen an
+elephant before, and when he saw it, instead of saying, 'What a size he
+is!' as everybody else did, he said to himself, 'What a size I could
+make him!' and pulled out the spy-glass, and by a miracle of good luck
+or bad got it levelled at the elephant as it went by. He turned the
+glass slowly--as it went out--and the elephant only just got out in
+time. Another moment and it would have been too big to get through the
+door. The audience cheered madly. They thought it was a clever trick;
+and so it would have been, very clever.
+
+'You silly cuckoo,' said Gustus, bitterly, 'now you've turned that
+great thing loose on the country, and how's his keeper to manage him?'
+
+'I could make the keeper big, too.'
+
+'Then if I was you I should just bunk out and do it.'
+
+Edward obeyed, slipped under the canvas of the circus tent, and found
+himself on the yellow, trampled grass of the field among guy-ropes,
+orange-peel, banana-skins, and dirty paper. Far above him and every one
+else towered the elephant--it was now as big as the church.
+
+Edward pointed the glass at the man who was patting the elephant's
+foot--that was as far up as he could reach--and telling it to 'Come down
+with you!' He was very much frightened. He did not know whether you
+could be put in prison for making an elephant's keeper about forty times
+his proper size. But he felt that something must be done to control the
+gigantic mountain of black-lead-coloured living flesh. So he looked at
+the keeper through the spy-glass, and the keeper remained his normal
+size!
+
+In the shock of this failure he dropped the spy-glass, picked it up, and
+tried once more to fix the keeper. Instead he only got a circle of
+black-lead-coloured elephant; and while he was trying to find the
+keeper, and finding nothing but more and more of the elephant, a shout
+startled him and he dropped the glass once more. He was a very clumsy
+little boy, was Edward.
+
+'Well,' said one of the men, 'what a turn it give me! I thought Jumbo'd
+grown as big as a railway station, s'welp me if I didn't.'
+
+'Now that's rum,' said another, 'so did I.'
+
+'And he _ain't_,' said a third; 'seems to me he's a bit below his usual
+figure. Got a bit thin or somethink, ain't he?'
+
+Edward slipped back into the tent unobserved.
+
+'It's all right,' he whispered to his friend, 'he's gone back to his
+proper size, and the man didn't change at all.'
+
+'Ho!' Gustus said slowly--'Ho! All right. Conjuring's a rum thing. You
+don't never know where you are!'
+
+'Don't you think you might as well be a conjurer as a burglar?'
+suggested Edward, who had had his friend's criminal future rather
+painfully on his mind for the last hour.
+
+'_You_ might,' said Gustus, 'not me. My people ain't dooks to set me up
+on any such a swell lay as conjuring. Now I'm going to think, I am. You
+hold your jaw and look at the 'andsome Dona a-doin' of 'er griceful
+barebacked hact.'
+
+That evening after tea Edward went, as he had been told to do, to the
+place on the shore where the big stones had taught him the magic of the
+spy-glass.
+
+Gustus was already at the tryst.
+
+'See here,' he said, 'I'm a-goin' to do something brave and fearless, I
+am, like Lord Nelson and the boy on the fire-ship. You out with that
+spy-glass, an' I'll let you look at _me_. Then we'll know where we are.'
+
+'But s'pose you turn into a giant?'
+
+'Don't care. 'Sides, I shan't. T'other bloke didn't.'
+
+'P'r'aps,' said Edward, cautiously, 'it only works by the seashore.'
+
+'Ah,' said Gustus, reproachfully, 'you've been a-trying to think, that's
+what you've been a-doing. What about the elephant, my emernent
+scientister? Now, then!'
+
+Very much afraid, Edward pulled out the glass and looked.
+
+And nothing happened.
+
+'That's number one,' said Gustus, 'now, number two.'
+
+He snatched the telescope from Edward's hand, and turned it round and
+looked through the other end at the great stones. Edward, standing by,
+saw them get smaller and smaller--turn to pebbles, to beach, to sand.
+When Gustus turned the glass to the giant grass and flowers on the
+sea-wall, they also drew back into themselves, got smaller and smaller,
+and presently were as they had been before ever Edward picked up the
+magic spy-glass.
+
+'Now we know all about it--I _don't_ think,' said Gustus. 'To-morrow
+we'll have a look at that there model engine of yours that you say
+works.'
+
+[Illustration: It became a quite efficient motor.]
+
+They did. They had a look at it through the spy-glass, and it became a
+quite efficient motor; of rather an odd pattern it is true, and very
+bumpy, but capable of quite a decent speed. They went up to the hills in
+it, and so odd was its design that no one who saw it ever forgot it.
+People talk about that rummy motor at Bonnington and Aldington to this
+day. They stopped often, to use the spy-glass on various objects. Trees,
+for instance, could be made to grow surprisingly, and there were patches
+of giant wheat found that year near Ashford that were never
+satisfactorily accounted for. Blackberries, too, could be enlarged to a
+most wonderful and delicious fruit. And the sudden growth of a fugitive
+toffee-drop found in Edward's pocket and placed on the hand was a happy
+surprise. When you scraped the pocket dirt off the outside you had a
+pound of delicious toffee. Not so happy was the incident of the earwig,
+which crawled into view when Edward was enlarging a wild strawberry, and
+had grown the size of a rat before the slow but horrified Edward gained
+courage to shake it off.
+
+It was a beautiful drive. As they came home they met a woman driving a
+weak-looking little cow. It went by on one side of the engine and the
+woman went by on the other. When they were restored to each other the
+cow was nearly the size of a cart-horse, and the woman did not recognise
+it. She ran back along the road after her cow, which must, she said,
+have taken fright at the beastly motor. She scolded violently as she
+went. So the boys had to make the cow small again, when she wasn't
+looking.
+
+'This is all very well,' said Gustus, 'but we've got our fortune to
+make, I don't think. We've got to get hold of a tanner--or a bob would
+be better.'
+
+But this was not possible, because that broken window wasn't paid for,
+and Gustus never had any money.
+
+'We ought to be the benefactors of the human race,' said Edward; 'make
+all the good things more and all the bad things less.'
+
+And _that_ was all very well--but the cow hadn't been a great success,
+as Gustus reminded him.
+
+'I see I shall have to do some of my thinking,' he added.
+
+They stopped in a quiet road close by Dymchurch; the engine was made
+small again, and Edward went home with it under his arm.
+
+It was the next day that they found the shilling on the road. They could
+hardly believe their good luck. They went out on to the shore with it,
+put it on Edward's hand while Gustus looked at it with the glass, and
+the shilling began to grow.
+
+'It's as big as a saucer,' said Edward, 'and it's heavy. I'll rest it on
+these stones. It's as big as a plate; it's as big as a tea-tray; it's as
+big as a cart-wheel.'
+
+And it was.
+
+'Now,' said Gustus, 'we'll go and borrow a cart to take it away. Come
+on.'
+
+But Edward could not come on. His hand was in the hollow between the two
+stones, and above lay tons of silver. He could not move, and the stones
+couldn't move. There was nothing for it but to look at the great round
+lump of silver through the wrong end of the spy-glass till it got small
+enough for Edward to lift it. And then, unfortunately, Gustus looked a
+little too long, and the shilling, having gone back to its own size,
+went a little further--and it went to sixpenny size, and then went out
+altogether.
+
+So nobody got anything by that.
+
+And now came the time when, as was to be expected, Edward dropped the
+telescope in his aunt's presence. She said, 'What's that?' picked it up
+with quite unfair quickness, and looked through it, and through the open
+window at a fishing-boat, which instantly swelled to the size of a
+man-of-war.
+
+'My goodness! what a strong glass!' said the aunt.
+
+'Isn't it?' said Edward, gently taking it from her. He looked at the
+ship through the glass's other end till she got to her proper size again
+and then smaller. He just stopped in time to prevent its disappearing
+altogether.
+
+'I'll take care of it for you,' said the aunt. And for the first time in
+their lives Edward said 'No' to his aunt.
+
+It was a terrible moment.
+
+Edward, quite frenzied by his own courage, turned the glass on one
+object after another--the furniture grew as he looked, and when he
+lowered the glass the aunt was pinned fast between a monster table-leg
+and a great chiffonier.
+
+'There!' said Edward. 'And I shan't let you out till you say you won't
+take it to take care of either.'
+
+'Oh, have it your own way,' said the aunt, faintly, and closed her eyes.
+When she opened them the furniture was its right size and Edward was
+gone. He had twinges of conscience, but the aunt never mentioned the
+subject again. I have reason to suppose that _she_ supposed that she had
+had a fit of an unusual and alarming nature.
+
+Next day the boys in the camp were to go back to their slums. Edward and
+Gustus parted on the seashore and Edward cried. He had never met a boy
+whom he liked as he liked Gustus. And Gustus himself was almost melted.
+
+'I will say for you you're more like a man and less like a snivelling
+white rabbit now than what you was when I met you. Well, we ain't done
+nothing to speak of with that there conjuring trick of yours, but we've
+'ad a right good time. So long. See you 'gain some day.'
+
+Edward hesitated, spluttered, and still weeping flung his arms round
+Gustus.
+
+''Ere, none o' that,' said Gustus, sternly. 'If you ain't man enough to
+know better, I am. Shake 'ands like a Briton; right about face--and part
+game.'
+
+He suited the action to the word.
+
+Edward went back to his aunt snivelling, defenceless but happy. He had
+never had a friend except Gustus, and now he had given Gustus the
+greatest treasure that he possessed.
+
+For Edward was not such a white rabbit as he seemed. And in that last
+embrace he had managed to slip the little telescope into the pocket of
+the reefer coat which Gustus wore, ready for his journey.
+
+It was the greatest treasure that Edward had, but it was also the
+greatest responsibility, so that while he felt the joy of self-sacrifice
+he also felt the rapture of relief. Life is full of such mixed moments.
+
+And the holidays ended and Edward went back to his villa. Be sure he had
+given Gustus his home address, and begged him to write, but Gustus never
+did.
+
+Presently Edward's father came home from India, and they left his aunt
+to her villa and went to live at a jolly little house on a sloping hill
+at Chiselhurst, which was Edward's father's very own. They were not
+rich, and Edward could not go to a very good school, and though there
+was enough to eat and wear, what there was was very plain. And Edward's
+father had been wounded, and somehow had not got a pension.
+
+Now one night in the next summer Edward woke up in his bed with the
+feeling that there was some one in the room. And there was. A dark
+figure was squeezing itself through the window. Edward was far too
+frightened to scream. He simply lay and listened to his heart. It was
+like listening to a cheap American clock. The next moment a lantern
+flashed in his eyes and a masked face bent over him.
+
+'Where does your father keep his money?' said a muffled voice.
+
+'In the b-b-b-b-bank,' replied the wretched Edward, truthfully.
+
+'I mean what he's got in the house.'
+
+'In his trousers pocket,' said Edward, 'only he puts it in the
+dressing-table drawer at night.'
+
+'You must go and get it,' said the burglar, for such he plainly was.
+
+'Must I?' said Edward, wondering how he could get out of betraying his
+father's confidence and being branded as a criminal.
+
+'Yes,' said the burglar in an awful voice, 'get up and go.'
+
+'_No_,' said Edward, and he was as much surprised at his courage as you
+are.
+
+'Bravo!' said the burglar, flinging off his mask. 'I see you _aren't_
+such a white rabbit as what I thought you.'
+
+'It's Gustus,' said Edward. 'Oh, Gustus, I'm so glad! Oh, Gustus, I'm so
+sorry! I always hoped you wouldn't be a burglar. And now you are.'
+
+'I am so,' said Gustus, with pride, 'but,' he added sadly, 'this is my
+first burglary.'
+
+'Couldn't it be the last?' suggested Edward.
+
+'That,' replied Gustus, 'depends on you.'
+
+'I'll do anything,' said Edward, 'anything.'
+
+'You see,' said Gustus, sitting down on the edge of the bed in a
+confidential attitude, with the dark lantern in one hand and the mask in
+the other, 'when you're as hard up as we are, there's not much of a
+living to be made honest. I'm sure I wonder we don't all of us turn
+burglars, so I do. And that glass of yours--you little beggar--you did
+me proper--sticking of that thing in my pocket like what you did. Well,
+it kept us alive last winter, that's a cert. I used to look at the
+victuals with it, like what I said I would. A farden's worth o'
+pease-pudden was a dinner for three when that glass was about, and a
+penn'orth o' scraps turned into a big beef-steak almost. They used to
+wonder how I got so much for the money. But I'm always afraid o' being
+found out--or of losing the blessed spy-glass--or of some one pinching
+it. So we got to do what I always said--make some use of it. And if I go
+along and nick your father's dibs we'll make our fortunes right away.'
+
+'No,' said Edward, 'but I'll ask father.'
+
+'Rot.' Gustus was crisp and contemptuous. 'He'd think you was off your
+chump, and he'd get me lagged.'
+
+'It would be stealing,' said Edward.
+
+'Not when you'll pay it back.'
+
+'Yes, it would,' said Edward. 'Oh, don't ask me--I can't.'
+
+'Then I shall,' said Gustus. 'Where's his room.'
+
+'Oh, don't!' said Edward. 'I've got a half-sovereign of my own. I'll
+give you that.'
+
+'Lawk!' said Gustus. 'Why the blue monkeys couldn't you say so? Come
+on.'
+
+He pulled Edward out of bed by the leg, hurried his clothes on anyhow,
+and half-dragged, half-coaxed him through the window and down by the ivy
+and the chicken-house roof.
+
+They stood face to face in the sloping garden and Edward's teeth
+chattered. Gustus caught him by his hand, and led him away.
+
+At the other end of the shrubbery, where the rockery was, Gustus stooped
+and dragged out a big clinker--then another, and another. There was a
+hole like a big rabbit-hole. If Edward had really been a white rabbit it
+would just have fitted him.
+
+'I'll go first,' said Gustus, and went, head-foremost. 'Come on,' he
+said, hollowly, from inside. And Edward, too, went. It was dreadful
+crawling into that damp hole in the dark. As his head got through the
+hole he saw that it led to a cave, and below him stood a dark figure.
+The lantern was on the ground.
+
+'Come on,' said Gustus, 'I'll catch you if you fall.'
+
+With a rush and a scramble Edward got in.
+
+'It's caves,' said Gustus. 'A chap I know that goes about the country
+bottoming cane-chairs, 'e told me about it. And I nosed about and found
+he lived here. So then I thought what a go. So now we'll put your
+half-shiner down and look at it, and we'll have a gold-mine, and you can
+pretend to find it.'
+
+'Halves!' said Edward, briefly and firmly.
+
+'You're a man,' said Gustus. 'Now, then!' He led the way through a maze
+of chalk caves till they came to a convenient spot, which he had marked.
+And now Edward emptied his pockets on the sand--he had brought all the
+contents of his money-box, and there was more silver than gold, and more
+copper than either, and more odd rubbish than there was anything else.
+You know what a boy's pockets are like. Stones and putty, and
+slate-pencils and marbles--I urge in excuse that Edward was a very
+little boy--a bit of plasticine, one or two bits of wood.
+
+'No time to sort 'em,' said Gustus, and, putting the lantern in a
+suitable position, he got out the glass and began to look through it at
+the tumbled heap.
+
+And the heap began to grow. It grew out sideways till it touched the
+walls of the recess, and outwards till it touched the top of the recess,
+and then it slowly worked out into the big cave and came nearer and
+nearer to the boys. Everything grew--stones, putty, money, wood,
+plasticine.
+
+Edward patted the growing mass as though it were alive and he loved it,
+and Gustus said:
+
+'Here's clothes, and beef, and bread, and tea, and coffee--and
+baccy--and a good school, and me a engineer. I see it all a-growing and
+a-growing.'
+
+'Hi--stop!' said Edward suddenly.
+
+Gustus dropped the telescope. It rolled away into the darkness.
+
+'Now you've done it,' said Edward.
+
+'What?' said Gustus.
+
+'My hand,' said Edward, 'it's fast between the rock and the gold and
+things. Find the glass and make it go smaller so that I can get my hand
+out.'
+
+But Gustus could not find the glass. And, what is more, no one ever has
+found it to this day.
+
+'It's no good,' said Gustus, at last. 'I'll go and find your father.
+They must come and dig you out of this precious Tom Tiddler's ground.'
+
+'And they'll lag you if they see you. You said they would,' said Edward,
+not at all sure what lagging was, but sure that it was something
+dreadful. 'Write a letter and put it in his letter-box. They'll find it
+in the morning.'
+
+'And leave you pinned by the hand all night? Likely--I _don't_ think,'
+said Gustus.
+
+'I'd rather,' said Edward, bravely, but his voice was weak. 'I couldn't
+bear you to be lagged, Gustus. I do love you so.'
+
+'None of that,' said Gustus, sternly. 'I'll leave you the lamp; I can
+find my way with matches. Keep up your pecker, and never say die.'
+
+'I won't,' said Edward, bravely. 'Oh, Gustus!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That was how it happened that Edward's father was roused from slumbers
+by violent shakings from an unknown hand, while an unknown voice
+uttered these surprising words:--
+
+'Edward is in the gold and silver and copper mine that we've found under
+your garden. Come and get him out.'
+
+When Edward's father was at last persuaded that Gustus was not a silly
+dream--and this took some time--he got up.
+
+He did not believe a word that Gustus said, even when Gustus added
+'S'welp me!' which he did several times.
+
+But Edward's bed was empty--his clothes gone.
+
+Edward's father got the gardener from next door--with, at the suggestion
+of Gustus, a pick--the hole in the rockery was enlarged, and they all
+got in.
+
+And when they got to the place where Edward was, there, sure enough, was
+Edward, pinned by the hand between a piece of wood and a piece of rock.
+Neither the father nor the gardener noticed any metal. Edward had
+fainted.
+
+They got him out; a couple of strokes with the pick released his hand,
+but it was bruised and bleeding.
+
+They all turned to go, but they had not gone twenty yards before there
+was a crash and a loud report like thunder, and a slow rumbling,
+rattling noise very dreadful to hear.
+
+'Get out of this quick, sir,' said the gardener; 'the roof's fell in;
+this part of the caves ain't safe.'
+
+Edward was very feverish and ill for several days, during which he told
+his father the whole story--of which his father did not believe a word.
+But he was kind to Gustus, because Gustus was evidently fond of Edward.
+
+When Edward was well enough to walk in the garden his father and he
+found that a good deal of the shrubbery had sunk, so that the trees
+looked as though they were growing in a pit.
+
+It spoiled the look of the garden, and Edward's father decided to move
+the trees to the other side.
+
+When this was done the first tree uprooted showed a dark hollow below
+it. The man is not born who will not examine and explore a dark hollow
+in his own grounds. So Edward's father explored.
+
+This is the true story of the discovery of that extraordinary vein of
+silver, copper, and gold which has excited so much interest in
+scientific and mining circles. Learned papers have been written about
+it, learned professors have been rude to each other about it, but no one
+knows how it came there except Gustus and Edward and you and me.
+Edward's father is quite as ignorant as any one else, but he is much
+richer than most of them; and, at any rate, he knows that it was Gustus
+who first told him of the gold-mine, and who risked being
+lagged--arrested by the police, that is--rather than let Edward wait
+till morning with his hand fast between wood and rock.
+
+So Edward and Gustus have been to a good school, and now they are at
+Winchester, and presently they will be at Oxford. And when Gustus is
+twenty-one he will have half the money that came from the gold-mine. And
+then he and Edward mean to start a school of their own. And the boys who
+are to go to it are to be the sort of boys who go to the summer camp of
+the Grand Redoubt near the sea--the kind of boy that Gustus was.
+
+So the spy-glass will do some good after all, though it _was_ so
+unmanageable to begin with.
+
+Perhaps it may even be found again. But I rather hope it won't. It
+might, really, have done much more mischief than it did--and if any one
+found it, it might do more yet.
+
+There is no moral to this story, except.... But no--there is no moral.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Quentin de Ward.]
+
+
+III
+
+ACCIDENTAL MAGIC; OR DON'T TELL ALL YOU KNOW
+
+
+Quentin de Ward was rather a nice little boy, but he had never been with
+other little boys, and that made him in some ways a little different
+from other little boys. His father was in India, and he and his mother
+lived in a little house in the New Forest. The house--it was a cottage
+really, but even a cottage is a house, isn't it?--was very pretty and
+thatched and had a porch covered with honeysuckle and ivy and white
+roses, and straight red hollyhocks were trained to stand up in a row
+against the south wall of it. The two lived quite alone, and as they had
+no one else to talk to they talked to each other a good deal. Mrs. de
+Ward read a great many books, and she used to tell Quentin about them
+afterwards. They were usually books about out of the way things, for
+Mrs. de Ward was interested in all the things that people are not quite
+sure about--the things that are hidden and secret, wonderful and
+mysterious--the things people make discoveries about. So that when the
+two were having their tea on the little brick terrace in front of the
+hollyhocks, with the white cloth flapping in the breeze, and the wasps
+hovering round the jam-pot, it was no uncommon thing for Quentin to say
+thickly through his bread and jam:--
+
+'I say, mother, tell me some more about Atlantis.' Or, 'Mother, tell me
+some more about ancient Egypt and the little toy-boats they made for
+their little boys.' Or, 'Mother, tell me about the people who think Lord
+Bacon wrote Shakespeare.'
+
+And his mother always told him as much as she thought he could
+understand, and he always understood quite half of what she told him.
+
+They always talked the things out thoroughly, and thus he learned to be
+fond of arguing, and to enjoy using his brains, just as you enjoy using
+your muscles in the football field or the gymnasium.
+
+Also he came to know quite a lot of odd, out of the way things, and to
+have opinions of his own concerning the lost Kingdom of Atlantis, and
+the Man with the Iron Mask, the building of Stonehenge, the Pre-dynastic
+Egyptians, cuneiform writings and Assyrian sculptures, the Mexican
+pyramids and the shipping activities of Tyre and Sidon.
+
+Quentin did no regular lessons, such as most boys have, but he read all
+sorts of books and made notes from them, in a large and straggling
+handwriting.
+
+You will already have supposed that Quentin was a prig. But he wasn't,
+and you would have owned this if you had seen him scampering through the
+greenwood on his quiet New Forest pony, or setting snares for the
+rabbits that _would_ get into the garden and eat the precious lettuces
+and parsley. Also he fished in the little streams that run through that
+lovely land, and shot with a bow and arrows. And he was a very good
+shot too.
+
+Besides this he collected stamps and birds' eggs and picture post-cards,
+and kept guinea-pigs and bantams, and climbed trees and tore his clothes
+in twenty different ways. And once he fought the grocer's boy and got
+licked and didn't cry, and made friends with the grocer's boy
+afterwards, and got him to show him all he knew about fighting, so you
+see he was really not a mug. He was ten years old and he had enjoyed
+every moment of his ten years, even the sleeping ones, because he always
+dreamed jolly dreams, though he could not always remember what they
+were.
+
+I tell you all this so that you may understand why he said what he did
+when his mother broke the news to him.
+
+He was sitting by the stream that ran along the end of the garden,
+making bricks of the clay that the stream's banks were made of. He dried
+them in the sun, and then baked them under the kitchen stove. (It is
+quite a good way to make bricks--you might try it sometimes.) His mother
+came out, looking just as usual, in her pink cotton gown and her pink
+sunbonnet; and she had a letter in her hand.
+
+'Hullo, boy of my heart,' she said, 'very busy?'
+
+'Yes,' said Quentin importantly, not looking up, and going on with his
+work. 'I'm making stones to build Stonehenge with. You'll show me how to
+build it, won't you, mother.'
+
+'Yes, dear,' she said absently. 'Yes, if I can.'
+
+'Of course you can,' he said, 'you can do everything.'
+
+She sat down on a tuft of grass near him.
+
+'Quentin dear,' she said, and something in her voice made him look up
+suddenly.
+
+'Oh, mother, what is it?' he asked.
+
+'Daddy's been wounded,' she said; 'he's all right now, dear--don't be
+frightened. Only I've got to go out to him. I shall meet him in Egypt.
+And you must go to school in Salisbury, a very nice school, dear, till I
+come back.'
+
+'Can't I come too?' he asked.
+
+And when he understood that he could not he went on with the bricks in
+silence, with his mouth shut very tight.
+
+After a moment he said, 'Salisbury? Then I shall see Stonehenge?'
+
+'Yes,' said his mother, pleased that he took the news so calmly, 'you
+will be sure to see Stonehenge some time.'
+
+He stood still, looking down at the little mould of clay in his hand--so
+still that his mother got up and came close to him.
+
+'Quentin,' she said, 'darling, what is it?'
+
+He leaned his head against her.
+
+'I won't make a fuss,' he said, 'but you can't begin to be brave the
+very first minute. Or, if you do, you can't go on being.'
+
+And with that he began to cry, though he had not cried after the affair
+of the grocer's boy.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The thought of school was not so terrible to Quentin as Mrs. de Ward had
+thought it would be. In fact, he rather liked it, with half his mind;
+but the other half didn't like it, because it meant parting from his
+mother who, so far, had been his only friend. But it was exciting to be
+taken to Southampton, and have all sorts of new clothes bought for you,
+and a school trunk, and a little polished box that locked up, to keep
+your money in and your gold sleeve links, and your watch and chain when
+you were not wearing them.
+
+Also the journey to Salisbury was made in a motor, which was very
+exciting of course, and rather took Quentin's mind off the parting with
+his mother, as she meant it should. And there was a very grand lunch at
+The White Hart Hotel at Salisbury, and then, very suddenly indeed, it
+was good-bye, good-bye, and the motor snorted, and hooted, and throbbed,
+and rushed away, and mother was gone, and Quentin was at school.
+
+I believe it was quite a nice school. It was in a very nice house with a
+large quiet garden, and there were only about twenty boys. And the
+masters were kind, and the boys no worse than other boys of their age.
+But Quentin hated it from the very beginning. For when his mother had
+gone the Headmaster said: 'School will be out in half-an-hour; take a
+book, de Ward,' and gave him _Little Eric and his Friends_, a mere baby
+book. It was too silly. He could not read it. He saw on a shelf near
+him, _Smith's Antiquities_, a very old friend of his, so he said: 'I'd
+rather have this, please.'
+
+'You should say "sir" when you speak to a master,' the Head said to him.
+'Take the book by all means.' To himself the Head said, 'I wish you joy
+of it, you little prig.'
+
+When school was over, one of the boys was told to show Quentin his bed
+and his locker. The matron had already unpacked his box and his pile of
+books was waiting for him to carry it over.
+
+'Golly, what a lot of books,' said Smithson minor. 'What's this?
+_Atlantis_? Is it a jolly story?'
+
+'It isn't a story,' said Quentin. And just then the classical master
+came by. 'What's that about _Atlantis_?' he said.
+
+'It's a book the new chap's got,' said Smithson.
+
+The classical master glanced at the book.
+
+'And how much do you understand of this?' he asked, fluttering the
+leaves.
+
+'Nearly all, I think,' said Quentin.
+
+'You should say "sir" when you speak to a master,' said the classical
+one; and to himself he added, 'little prig.' Then he said to Quentin: 'I
+am afraid you will find yourself rather out of your element among
+ordinary boys.'
+
+'I don't think so,' said Quentin calmly, adding as an afterthought
+'sir.'
+
+'I'm glad you're so confident,' said the classical master and went.
+
+'My word,' said Smithson minor in a rather awed voice, 'you did answer
+him back.'
+
+'Of course I did,' said Quentin. 'Don't _you_ answer when you're spoken
+to?'
+
+Smithson minor informed the interested school that the new chap was a
+prig, but he had a cool cheek, and that some sport might be expected.
+
+After supper the boys had half an hour's recreation. Quentin, who was
+tired, picked up a book which a big boy had just put down. It was the
+_Midsummer Night's Dream_.
+
+'Hi, you kid,' said the big boy, 'don't pretend you read Shakespeare for
+fun. That's simple swank, you know.'
+
+'I don't know what swank is,' said Quentin, 'but I like the _Midsummer_
+whoever wrote it.'
+
+'Whoever _what_?'
+
+'Well,' said Quentin, 'there's a good deal to be said for its being
+Bacon who wrote the plays.'
+
+Of course that settled it. From that moment, he was called not de Ward,
+which was strange enough, but Bacon. He rather liked that. But the next
+day it was Pork, and the day after Pig, and that was unbearable.
+
+He was at the bottom of his class, for he knew no Latin as it is taught
+in schools, only odd words that English words come from, and some Latin
+words that are used in science. And I cannot pretend that his arithmetic
+was anything but contemptible.
+
+The book called _Atlantis_ had been looked at by most of the school, and
+Smithson major, not nearly such an agreeable boy as his brother, hit on
+a new nickname.
+
+'Atlantic Pork's a good name for a swanker,' he said. 'You know the
+rotten meat they have in Chicago.'
+
+This was in the playground before dinner. Quentin, who had to keep his
+mouth shut very tight these days, because, of course, a boy of ten
+cannot cry before other chaps, shut the book he was reading and looked
+up.
+
+'I won't be called that,' he said quietly.
+
+'Who said you wouldn't?' said Smithson major, who, after all, was only
+twelve. 'I say you will.'
+
+'If you call me that I shall hit you,' said Quentin, 'as hard as I can.'
+
+A roar of laughter went up, and cries of, 'Poor old
+Smithson'--'Apologise, Smithie, and leave the omnibus.'
+
+'And what should I be doing while you were hitting me?' asked Smithson
+contemptuously.
+
+[Illustration: It landed on the point of the chin of Smithson major.]
+
+'I don't know and I don't care,' said Quentin.
+
+Smithson looked round. No master was in sight. It seemed an excellent
+opportunity to teach young de Ward his place.
+
+'Atlantic pig-swine,' he said very deliberately. And Quentin sprang at
+him, and instantly it was a fight.
+
+Now Quentin had only once fought--really fought--before. Then it was
+the grocer's boy and he had been beaten. But he had learned something
+since. And the chief conclusion he now drew from his memories of that
+fight was that he had not hit half hard enough, an opinion almost
+universal among those who have fought and not won.
+
+As the fist of Smithson major described a half circle and hurt his ear
+very much, Quentin suddenly screwed himself up and hit out with his
+right hand, straight, and with his whole weight behind the blow as the
+grocer's boy had shown him. All his grief for his wounded father, his
+sorrow at the parting from his mother, all his hatred of his school, and
+his contempt for his schoolfellows went into that blow. It landed on the
+point of the chin of Smithson major who fell together like a heap of
+rags.
+
+'Oh,' said Quentin, gazing with interest at his hand--it hurt a good
+deal but he looked at it with respect--'I'm afraid I've hurt him.'
+
+He had forgotten for a moment that he was in an enemies' country, and
+so, apparently, had his enemies.
+
+'Well done, Piggy! Bravo, young 'un! Well hit, by Jove!'
+
+Friendly hands thumped him on the back. Smithson major was no popular
+hero.
+
+Quentin felt--as his schoolfellows would have put it--bucked. It is one
+thing to be called Pig in enmity and derision. Another to be called
+Piggy--an affectionate diminutive, after all--to the chorus of admiring
+smacks.
+
+'Get up, Smithie,' cried the ring. 'Want any more?'
+
+It appeared that Smithie did not want any more. He lay, not moving at
+all, and very white.
+
+'I say,' the crowd's temper veered, 'you've killed him, I expect. I
+wouldn't like to be you, Bacon.'
+
+Pig, you notice, for aggravation--Piggy in enthusiastic applause. In the
+moment of possible tragedy the more formal Bacon.
+
+'I haven't,' said Quentin, very white himself, 'but if I have he
+began--by calling names.'
+
+Smithson moved and grunted. A sigh of relief swept the ring as a breeze
+sweeps a cornfield.
+
+'He's all right. A fair knock out. Piggy's got the use of 'em. Do
+Smithie good.' The voices hushed suddenly. A master was on the
+scene--the classical master.
+
+'Fighting?' he said. 'The new boy? Who began it?'
+
+'I did,' said Quentin, 'but he began with calling names.'
+
+'Sneak!' murmured the entire school, and Quentin, who had seen no reason
+for not speaking the truth, perceived that one should not tell all one
+knows, and that once more he stood alone in the world.
+
+'You will go to your room, de Ward,' said the classical master, bending
+over Smithson, who having been 'knocked silly' still remained in that
+condition, 'and the headmaster will consider your case to-morrow. You
+will probably be expelled.'
+
+Quentin went to his room and thought over his position. It seemed to be
+desperate. How was he to know that the classical master was even then
+saying to the Head:
+
+'He's got something in him, prig or no prig, sir.'
+
+'You were quite right to send him to his room,' said the Head,
+'discipline must be maintained, as Mr. Ducket says. But it will do
+Smithson major a world of good. A boy who reads Shakespeare for fun, and
+has views about Atlantis, and can knock out a bully as well.... He'll be
+a power in the school. But we mustn't let him know it.'
+
+That was rather a pity. Because Quentin, furious at the injustice of the
+whole thing--Smithson, the aggressor, consoled with; himself punished;
+expulsion threatened--was maturing plans.
+
+'If mother had known what it was like,' he said to himself, 'she would
+never have left me here. I've got the two pounds she gave me. I shall
+go to the White Hart at Salisbury ... no, they'd find me then. I'll go
+to Lyndhurst; and write to her. It's better to run away than to be
+expelled. Quentin Durward would never have waited to be expelled from
+anywhere.'
+
+Of course Quentin Durward was my hero's hero. It could not be otherwise
+since his own name was so like that of the Scottish guardsman.
+
+Now the school in Salisbury was a little school for little boys--boys
+who were used to schools and took the rough with the smooth. But Quentin
+was not used to schools, and he had taken the rough very much to heart.
+So much that he did not mean to take any more of it.
+
+His dinner was brought up on a tray--bread and water. He put the bread
+in his pocket. Then when he knew that every one was at dinner in the
+long dining-room at the back of the house, he just walked very quietly
+down the stairs, opened the side door and marched out, down the garden
+path and out at the tradesmen's gate. He knew better than to shut either
+gate or door.
+
+He went quickly down the street, turned the first corner he came to so
+as to get out of sight of the school. He turned another corner, went
+through an archway, and found himself in an inn-yard--very quiet indeed.
+Only a liver-coloured lurcher dog wagged a sleepy tail on the hot
+flag-stones.
+
+Quentin was just turning to go back through the arch, for there was no
+other way out of the yard, when he saw a big covered cart, whose horse
+wore a nose-bag and looked as if there was no hurry. The cart bore the
+name, 'Miles, Carrier, Lyndhurst.'
+
+Quentin knew all about lifts. He had often begged them and got them. Now
+there was no one to ask. But he felt he could very well explain later
+that he had wanted a lift, much better than now, in fact, when he might
+be caught at any moment by some one from the school.
+
+He climbed up by the shaft. There were boxes and packages of all sorts
+in the cart, and at the back an empty crate with sacking over it. He got
+into the crate, pulled the sacking over himself, and settled down to eat
+his bread.
+
+Presently the carrier came out, and there was talk, slow, long-drawn
+talk. After a long while the cart shook to the carrier's heavy climb
+into it, the harness rattled, the cart lurched, and the wheels were loud
+and bumpy over the cobble stones of the yard.
+
+Quentin felt safe. The glow of anger was still hot in him, and he was
+glad to think how they would look for him all over the town, in vain. He
+lifted the sacking at one corner so that he could look out between the
+canvas of the cart's back and side, and hoped to see the classical
+master distractedly looking for him. But the streets were very sleepy.
+Every one in Salisbury was having dinner--or in the case of the
+affluent, lunch.
+
+The black horse seemed as sleepy as the streets, and went very slowly.
+Also it stopped very often, and wherever there were parcels to leave
+there was slow, long talkings to be exchanged. I think, perhaps, Quentin
+dozed a good deal under his sacks. At any rate it was with a shock of
+surprise that he suddenly heard the carrier's voice saying, as the horse
+stopped with a jerk:
+
+'There's a crate for you, Mrs. Baddock, returned empty,' and knew that
+that crate was not empty, but full--full of boy.
+
+'I'll go and call Joe,' said a voice--Mrs. Baddock's, Quentin supposed,
+and slow feet stumped away over stones. Mr. Miles leisurely untied the
+tail of the cart, ready to let the crate be taken out.
+
+Quentin spent a paralytic moment. What could he do?
+
+And then, luckily or unluckily, a reckless motor tore past, and the
+black horse plunged and Mr. Miles had to go to its head and 'talk
+pretty' to it for a minute. And in that minute Quentin lifted the
+sacking, and looked out. It was low sunset, and the street was deserted.
+He stepped out of the crate, dropped to the ground, and slipped behind a
+stout and friendly water-butt that seemed to offer protective shelter.
+
+Joe came, and the crate was taken down.
+
+'You haven't seen nothing of that there runaway boy by chance?' said a
+new voice--Joe's no doubt.
+
+'What boy?' said Mr. Miles.
+
+'Run away from school, Salisbury,' said Joe. 'Telegrams far and near, so
+they be. Little varmint.'
+
+'I ain't seen no boys, not more'n ordinary,' said Mr. Miles. 'Thick as
+flies they be, here, there, and everywhere, drat 'em. Sixpence--Correct.
+So long, Joe.'
+
+The cart rattled away. Joe and the crate blundered out of hearing, and
+Quentin looked cautiously round the water-butt.
+
+This was an adventure. But he was cooler now than he had been at
+starting--his hot anger had died down. He would have been contented, he
+could not help feeling, with a less adventurous adventure.
+
+But he was in for it now. He felt, as I suppose people feel when they
+jump off cliffs with parachutes, that return was impossible.
+
+Hastily turning his school cap inside out--the only disguise he could
+think of, he emerged from the water-butt seclusion and into the street,
+trying to look as if there was no reason why he should not be there. He
+did not know the village. It was not Lyndhurst. And of course asking the
+way was not to be thought of.
+
+There was a piece of sacking lying on the road; it must have dropped
+from the carrier's cart. He picked it up and put it over his shoulders.
+
+'A deeper disguise,' he said, and walked on.
+
+He walked steadily for a long, long way as it seemed, and the world got
+darker and darker. But he kept on. Surely he must presently come to some
+village, or some signpost.
+
+Anyhow, whatever happened, he could not go back. That was the one
+certain thing. The broad stretches of country to right and left held no
+shapes of houses, no glimmer of warm candle-light; they were bare and
+bleak, only broken by circles of trees that stood out like black islands
+in the misty grey of the twilight.
+
+'I shall have to sleep behind a hedge,' he said bravely enough; but
+there did not seem to be any hedges. And then, quite suddenly, he came
+upon it.
+
+A scattered building, half transparent as it seemed, showing black
+against the last faint pink and primrose of the sunset. He stopped, took
+a few steps off the road on short, crisp turf that rose in a gentle
+slope. And at the end of a dozen paces he knew it. Stonehenge!
+Stonehenge he had always wanted so desperately to see. Well, he saw it
+now, more or less.
+
+He stopped to think. He knew that Stonehenge stands all alone on
+Salisbury Plain. He was very tired. His mother had told him about a girl
+in a book who slept all night on the altar stone at Stonehenge. So it
+was a thing that people did--to sleep there. He was not afraid, as you
+or I might have been--of that lonely desolate ruin of a temple of long
+ago. He was used to the forest, and, compared with the forest, any
+building is homelike.
+
+There was just enough light left amid the stones of the wonderful broken
+circle to guide him to its centre. As he went his hand brushed a plant;
+he caught at it, and a little group of flowers came away in his hand.
+
+'St. John's wort,' he said, 'that's the magic flower.' And he remembered
+that it is only magic when you pluck it on Midsummer Eve.
+
+'And this _is_ Midsummer Eve,' he told himself, and put it in his
+buttonhole.
+
+'I don't know where the altar stone is,' he said, 'but that looks a cosy
+little crack between those two big stones.'
+
+He crept into it, and lay down on a flat stone that stretched between
+and under two fallen pillars.
+
+The night was soft and warm; it was Midsummer Eve.
+
+'Mother isn't going till the twenty-sixth,' he told himself. 'I sha'n't
+bother about hotels. I shall send her a telegram in the morning, and get
+a carriage at the nearest stables and go straight back to her. No, she
+won't be angry when she hears all about it. I'll ask her to let me go to
+sea instead of to school. It's much more manly. Much more manly ... much
+much more, much.'
+
+He was asleep. And the wild west wind that swept across the plain spared
+the little corner where he lay asleep, curled up in his sacking with the
+inside-out school cap, doubled twice, for pillow.
+
+He fell asleep on the smooth, solid, steady stone.
+
+He awoke on the stone in a world that rocked as sea-boats rock on a
+choppy sea.
+
+He went to sleep between fallen moveless pillars of a ruin older than
+any world that history knows.
+
+He awoke in the shade of a purple awning through which strong sunlight
+filtered, and purple curtains that flapped and strained in the wind; and
+there was a smell, a sweet familiar smell, of tarred ropes and the sea.
+
+'I say,' said Quentin to himself, 'here's a rum go.'
+
+He had learned that expression in a school in Salisbury, a long time ago
+as it seemed.
+
+The stone on which he lay dipped and rose to a rhythm which he knew well
+enough. He had felt it when he and his mother went in a little boat from
+Keyhaven to Alum Bay in the Isle of Wight. There was no doubt in his
+mind. He was on a ship. But how, but why? Who could have carried him all
+that way without waking him? Was it magic? Accidental magic? The St.
+John's wort perhaps? And the stone--it was not the same. It was new,
+clean cut, and, where the wind displaced a corner of the curtain,
+dazzlingly white in the sunlight.
+
+There was the pat pat of bare feet on the deck, a dull sort of shuffling
+as though people were arranging themselves. And then people outside the
+awning began to sing. It was a strange song, not at all like any music
+you or I have ever heard. It had no tune, no more tune than a drum has,
+or a trumpet, but it had a sort of wild rough glorious exciting
+splendour about it, and gave you the sort of intense all-alive feeling
+that drums and trumpets give.
+
+Quentin lifted a corner of the purple curtain and looked out.
+
+Instantly the song stopped, drowned in the deepest silence Quentin had
+ever imagined. It was only broken by the flip-flapping of the sheets
+against the masts of the ship. For it was a ship, Quentin saw that as
+the bulwark dipped to show him an unending waste of sea, broken by
+bigger waves than he had ever dreamed of. He saw also a crowd of men,
+dressed in white and blue and purple and gold. Their right arms were
+raised towards the sun, half of whose face showed across the sea--but
+they seemed to be, as my old nurse used to say, 'struck so,' for their
+eyes were not fixed on the sun, but on Quentin. And not in anger, he
+noticed curiously, but with surprise and ... could it be that they were
+afraid of him?
+
+[Illustration: 'Who are you?' he said. 'Answer, I adjure you by the
+sacred Tau!']
+
+Quentin was shivering with the surprise and newness of it all. He had
+read about magic, but he had not wholly believed in it, and yet, now, if
+this was not magic, what was it? You go to sleep on an old stone in a
+ruin. You wake on the same stone, quite new, on a ship. Magic, magic, if
+ever there was magic in this wonderful, mysterious world!
+
+The silence became awkward. Some one had to say something.
+
+'Good-morning,' said Quentin, feeling that he ought perhaps to be the
+one.
+
+Instantly every one in sight fell on his face on the deck.
+
+Only one, a tall man with a black beard and a blue mantle, stood up and
+looked Quentin in the eyes.
+
+'Who are you?' he said. 'Answer, I adjure you by the Sacred Tau!' Now
+this was very odd, and Quentin could never understand it, but when this
+man spoke Quentin understood _him_ perfectly, and yet at the same time
+he knew that the man was speaking a foreign language. So that his
+thought was not, 'Hullo, you speak English!' but 'Hullo, I can
+understand your language.'
+
+'I am Quentin de Ward,' he said.
+
+'A name from other stars! How came you here?' asked the blue-mantled
+man.
+
+'_I_ don't know,' said Quentin.
+
+'He does not know. He did not sail with us. It is by magic that he is
+here,' said Blue Mantle. 'Rise, all, and greet the Chosen of the
+Gods.'
+
+They rose from the deck, and Quentin saw that they were all bearded
+men, with bright, earnest eyes, dressed in strange dress of something
+like jersey and tunic and heavy golden ornaments.
+
+'Hail! Chosen of the Gods,' cried Blue Mantle, who seemed to be the
+leader.
+
+'Hail, Chosen of the Gods!' echoed the rest.
+
+'Thank you very much, I'm sure,' said Quentin.
+
+'And what is this stone?' asked Blue Mantle, pointing to the stone on
+which Quentin sat.
+
+And Quentin, anxious to show off his knowledge, said:
+
+'I'm not quite sure, but I _think_ it's the altar stone of Stonehenge.'
+
+'It is proved,' said Blue Mantle. 'Thou art the Chosen of the Gods. Is
+there anything my Lord needs?' he added humbly.
+
+'I ... I'm rather hungry,' said Quentin; 'it's a long time since dinner,
+you know.'
+
+They brought him bread and bananas, and oranges.
+
+'Take,' said Blue Mantle, 'of the fruits of the earth, and specially of
+this, which gives drink and meat and ointment to man,' suddenly
+offering a large cocoa-nut.
+
+Quentin took, with appropriate 'Thank you's' and 'You're very kind's.'
+
+'Nothing,' said Blue Mantle, 'is too good for the Chosen of the Gods.
+All that we have is yours, to the very last day of your life you have
+only to command, and we obey. You will like to eat in seclusion. And
+afterwards you will let us behold the whole person of the Chosen of the
+Gods.'
+
+Quentin retired into the purple tent, with the fruits and the cocoa-nut.
+As you know, a cocoa-nut is not handy to get at the inside of, at the
+best of times, so Quentin set that aside, meaning to ask Blue Mantle
+later on for a gimlet and a hammer.
+
+When he had had enough to eat he peeped out again. Blue Mantle was on
+the watch and came quickly forward.
+
+'Now,' said he, very crossly indeed, 'tell me how you got here. This
+Chosen of the Gods business is all very well for the vulgar. But you and
+I know that there is no such thing as magic.'
+
+'Speak for yourself,' said Quentin. 'If I'm not here by magic I'm not
+here at all.'
+
+'Yes, you are,' said Blue Mantle.
+
+'I know I am,' said Quentin, 'but if I'm not here by magic what am I
+here by?'
+
+'Stowawayishness,' said Blue Mantle.
+
+'If you think that why don't you treat me as a stowaway?'
+
+'Because of public opinion,' said Blue Mantle, rubbing his nose in an
+angry sort of perplexedness.
+
+'Very well,' said Quentin, who was feeling so surprised and bewildered
+that it was a real relief to him to bully somebody. 'Now look here. I
+came here by magic, accidental magic. I belong to quite a different
+world from yours. But perhaps you are right about my being the Chosen of
+the Gods. And I sha'n't tell you anything about my world. But I command
+you, by the Sacred Tau' (he had been quick enough to catch and remember
+the word), 'to tell me who you are, and where you come from, and where
+you are going.'
+
+Blue Mantle shrugged his shoulders. 'Oh, well,' he said, 'if you invoke
+the sacred names of Power.... But I don't call it fair play. Especially
+as you know perfectly well, and just want to browbeat me into telling
+lies. I shall not tell lies. I shall tell you the truth.'
+
+'I hoped you would,' said Quentin gently.
+
+'Well then,' said Blue Mantle, 'I am a Priest of Poseidon, and I come
+from the great and immortal kingdom of Atlantis.'
+
+'From the temple where the gold statue is, with the twelve sea-horses in
+gold?' Quentin asked eagerly.
+
+'Ah, I knew you knew all about it,' said Blue Mantle, 'so I don't need
+to tell you that I am taking the sacred stone, on which you are sitting
+(profanely if you are a mere stowaway, and not the Chosen of the Gods)
+to complete the splendid structure of a temple built on a great plain in
+the second of the islands which are our colonies in the North East.'
+
+'Tell me all about Atlantis,' said Quentin. And the priest, protesting
+that Quentin knew as much about it as he did, told.
+
+And all the time the ship was ploughing through the waves, sometimes
+sailing, sometimes rowed by hidden rowers with long oars. And Quentin
+was served in all things as though he had been a king. If he had
+insisted that he was not the Chosen of the Gods everything might have
+been different. But he did not. And he was very anxious to show how much
+he knew about Atlantis. And sometimes he was wrong, the Priest said, but
+much more often he was right.
+
+'We are less than three days' journey now from the Eastern Isles,' Blue
+Mantle said one day, 'and I warn you that if you are a mere stowaway you
+had better own it. Because if you persist in calling yourself the Chosen
+of the Gods you will be expected to act as such--to the very end.'
+
+'I don't call myself anything,' said Quentin, 'though I am not a
+stowaway, anyhow, and I don't know how I came here--so of course it was
+magic. It's simply silly your being so cross. _I_ can't help being here.
+Let's be friends.'
+
+'Well,' said Blue Mantle, much less crossly, 'I never believed in magic,
+though I _am_ a priest, but if it is, it is. We may as well be friends,
+as you call it. It isn't for very long, anyway,' he added mysteriously.
+
+[Illustration: The cart was drawn by an enormous creature, more like an
+elephant than anything else.]
+
+And then to show his friendliness he took Quentin all over the ship, and
+explained it all to him. And Quentin enjoyed himself thoroughly, though
+every now and then he had to pinch himself to make sure that he was
+awake. And he was fed well all the time, and all the time made much of,
+so that when the ship reached land he was quite sorry. The ship anchored
+by a stone quay, most solid and serviceable, and every one was very
+busy.
+
+Quentin kept out of sight behind the purple curtains. The sailors and
+the priests and the priests' attendants and everybody on the boat had
+asked him so many questions, and been so curious about his clothes, that
+he was not anxious to hear any more questions asked, or to have to
+invent answers to them.
+
+And after a very great deal of talk--almost as much as Mr. Miles's
+carrying had needed--the altar stone was lifted, Quentin, curtains,
+awning and all, and carried along a gangway to the shore, and there it
+was put on a sort of cart, more like what people in Manchester call a
+lurry than anything else I can think of. The wheels were made of solid
+circles of wood bound round with copper. And the cart was drawn by--not
+horses or donkeys or oxen or even dogs--but by an enormous creature more
+like an elephant than anything else, only it had long hair rather like
+the hair worn by goats.
+
+You, perhaps, would not have known what this vast creature was, but
+Quentin, who had all sorts of out-of-the-way information packed in his
+head, knew at once that it was a mammoth.
+
+And by that he knew, too, that he had slipped back many thousands of
+years, because, of course, it is a very long time indeed since there
+were any mammoths alive, and able to draw lurries. And the car and the
+priest and the priest's retinue and the stone and Quentin and the
+mammoth journeyed slowly away from the coast, passing through great
+green forests and among strange gray mountains.
+
+Where were they journeying?
+
+Quentin asked the same question you may be sure, and Blue Mantle told
+him--
+
+'To Stonehenge.' And Quentin understood him perfectly, though
+Stonehenge was not the word Blue Mantle used, or anything like it.
+
+'The great temple is now complete,' he said, 'all but the altar stone.
+It will be the most wonderful temple ever built in any of the colonies
+of Atlantis. And it will be consecrated on the longest day of the year.'
+
+'Midsummer Day,' said Quentin thoughtlessly--and, as usual, anxious to
+tell all he knew. 'I know. The sun strikes through the arch on to the
+altar stone at sunrise. Hundreds of people go to see it: the ruins are
+quite crowded sometimes, I believe.'
+
+'Ruins?' said the priest in a terrible voice. 'Crowded? Ruins?'
+
+'I mean,' said Quentin hastily, 'the sun will still shine the same way
+even when the temple is in ruins, won't it?'
+
+'The temple,' said the priest, 'is built to defy time. It will never be
+in ruins.'
+
+'That's all _you_ know,' said Quentin, not very politely.
+
+'It is not by any means all I know,' said the priest. 'I do not tell all
+I know. Nor do you.'
+
+'I used to,' said Quentin, 'but I sha'n't any more. It only leads to
+trouble--I see that now.'
+
+Now, though Quentin had been intensely interested in everything he had
+seen in the ship and on the journey, you may be sure he had not lost
+sight of the need there was to get back out of this time of Atlantis
+into his own time. He knew that he must have got into these Atlantean
+times by some very simple accidental magic, and he felt no doubt that he
+should get back in the same way. He felt almost sure that the
+reverse-action, so to speak, of the magic would begin when the stone got
+back to the place where it had lain for so many thousand years before he
+happened to go to sleep on it, and to start--perhaps by the St. John's
+wort--the accidental magic. If only, when he got back there he could
+think of the compelling, the magic word!
+
+And now the slow procession wound over the downs, and far away across
+the plain, which was almost just the same then as it is now, Quentin saw
+what he knew must be Stonehenge. But it was no longer the grey pile of
+ruins that you have perhaps seen--or have, at any rate, seen pictures
+of.
+
+From afar one could see the gleam of yellow gold and red copper; the
+flutter of purple curtains, the glitter and dazzle of shimmering silver.
+
+As they drew near to the spot Quentin perceived that the great stones he
+remembered were overlaid with ornamental work, with vivid,
+bright-coloured paintings. The whole thing was a great circular
+building, every stone in its place. At a mile or two distant lay a town.
+And in that town, with every possible luxury, served with every
+circumstance of servile homage, Quentin ate and slept.
+
+I wish I had time to tell you what that town was like where he slept and
+ate, but I have not. You can read for yourself, some day, what Atlantis
+was like. Plato tells us a good deal, and the Colonies of Atlantis must
+have had at least a reasonable second-rate copy of the cities of that
+fair and lovely land.
+
+That night, for the first time since he had first gone to sleep on the
+altar stone, Quentin slept apart from it. He lay on a wooden couch
+strewn with soft bear-skins, and a woollen coverlet was laid over him.
+And he slept soundly.
+
+In the middle of the night, as it seemed, Blue Mantle woke him.
+
+'Come,' he said, 'Chosen of the Gods--since you _will_ be that, and no
+stowaway--the hour draws nigh.'
+
+The mammoth was waiting. Quentin and Blue Mantle rode on its back to the
+outer porch of the new temple of Stonehenge. Rows of priests and
+attendants, robed in white and blue and purple, formed a sort of avenue
+up which Blue Mantle led the Chosen of the Gods, who was Quentin. They
+took off his jacket and put a white dress on him, rather like a
+night-shirt without sleeves. And they put a thick wreath of London Pride
+on his head and another, larger and longer, round his neck.
+
+'If only the chaps at school could see me now!' he said to himself
+proudly.
+
+And by this time it was gray dawn.
+
+'Lie down now,' said Blue Mantle, 'lie down, O Beloved of the Gods, upon
+the altar stone, for the last time.'
+
+'I shall be able to go, then?' Quentin asked. This accidental magic was,
+he perceived, a tricky thing, and he wanted to be sure.
+
+'You will not be able to stay,' said the priest. 'If going is what you
+desire, the desire of the Chosen of the Gods is fully granted.'
+
+The grass on the plain far and near rustled with the tread of many feet;
+the cold air of dawn thrilled to the awed murmured of many voices.
+
+Quentin lay down, with his pink wreaths and his white robe, and watched
+the quickening pinkiness of the East. And slowly the great circle of the
+temple filled with white-robed folk, all carrying in their hands the
+faint pinkiness of the flowers which we nowadays call London Pride.
+
+And all eyes were fixed on the arch through which, at sunrise on
+Midsummer Day, the sun's first beam should fall upon the white, new,
+clean altar stone. The stone is still there, after all these thousands
+of years, and at sunrise on Midsummer Day the sun's first ray still
+falls on it.
+
+[Illustration: 'Silence,' cried the priest. 'Chosen of the Immortals,
+close your eyes!']
+
+The sky grew lighter and lighter, and at last the sun peered redly over
+the down, and the first ray of the morning sunlight fell full on the
+altar stone and on the face of Quentin.
+
+And, as it did so, a very tall, white-robed priest with a deer-skin
+apron and a curious winged head-dress stepped forward. He carried a
+great bronze knife, and he waved it ten times in the shaft of sunlight
+that shot through the arch and on to the altar stone.
+
+'Thus,' he cried, 'thus do I bathe the sacred blade in the pure fountain
+of all light, all wisdom, all splendour. In the name of the ten kings,
+the ten virtues, the ten hopes, the ten fears I make my weapon clean!
+May this temple of our love and our desire endure for ever, so long as
+the glory of our Lord the Sun is shed upon this earth. May the sacrifice
+I now humbly and proudly offer be acceptable to the gods by whom it has
+been so miraculously provided. Chosen of the Gods! return to the gods
+who sent thee!'
+
+A roar of voices rang through the temple. The bronze knife was raised
+over Quentin. He could not believe that this, this horror, was the end
+of all these wonderful happenings.
+
+'No--no,' he cried, 'it's not true. I'm not the Chosen of the Gods! I'm
+only a little boy that's got here by accidental magic!'
+
+'Silence,' cried the priest, 'Chosen of the Immortals, close your eyes!
+It will not hurt. This life is only a dream; the other life is the real
+life. Be strong, be brave!'
+
+Quentin was not brave. But he shut his eyes. He could not help it. The
+glitter of the bronze knife in the sunlight was too strong for him.
+
+He could not believe that this could really have happened to him. Every
+one had been so kind--so friendly to him. And it was all for this!
+
+Suddenly a sharp touch at his side told him that for this, indeed, it
+had all been. He felt the point of the knife.
+
+'Mother!' he cried. And opened his eyes again.
+
+He always felt quite sure afterwards that 'Mother' was the master-word,
+the spell of spells. For when he opened his eyes there was no priest, no
+white-robed worshippers, no splendour of colour and metal, no Chosen of
+the Gods, no knife--only a little boy with a piece of sacking over him,
+damp with the night dews, lying on a stone amid the grey ruins of
+Stonehenge, and, all about him, a crowd of tourists who had come to see
+the sun's first shaft strike the age-old altar of Stonehenge on
+Midsummer Day in the morning. And instead of a knife point at his side
+there was only the ferrule of the umbrella of an elderly and retired tea
+merchant in a mackintosh and an Alpine hat,--a ferrule which had prodded
+the sleeping boy so unexpectedly surprised on the very altar stone where
+the sun's ray now lingered.
+
+And then, in a moment, he knew that he had not uttered the spell in
+vain, the word of compelling, the word of power: for his mother was
+there kneeling beside him. I am sorry to say that he cried as he clung
+to her. _We_ cannot all of us be brave, always.
+
+The tourists were very kind and interested, and the tea merchant
+insisted on giving Quentin something out of a flask, which was so nasty
+that Quentin only pretended to drink, out of politeness. His mother had
+a carriage waiting, and they escaped to it while the tourists were
+saying, 'How romantic!' and asking each other whatever in the world had
+happened.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'But how _did_ you come to be there, darling?' said his mother with warm
+hands comfortingly round him. 'I've been looking for you all night. I
+went to say good-bye to you yesterday--Oh, Quentin--and I found you'd
+run away. How _could_ you?'
+
+'I'm sorry,' said Quentin, 'if it worried you, I'm sorry. Very, very. I
+was going to telegraph to-day.'
+
+'But where have you been? What have you been doing all night?' she
+asked, caressing him.
+
+'Is it only one night?' said Quentin. 'I don't know exactly what's
+happened. It was accidental magic, I think, mother. I'm glad I thought
+of the right word to get back, though.' And then he told her all about
+it. She held him very tightly and let him talk.
+
+Perhaps she thought that a little boy to whom accidental magic happened
+all in a minute, like that, was not exactly the right little boy for
+that excellent school in Salisbury. Anyhow she took him to Egypt with
+her to meet his father, and, on the way, they happened to see a doctor
+in London who said: 'Nerves' which is a poor name for accidental magic,
+and Quentin does not believe it means the same thing at all.
+
+Quentin's father is well now, and he has left the army, and father and
+mother and Quentin live in a jolly, little, old house in Salisbury, and
+Quentin is a 'day boy' at that very same school. He and Smithson minor
+are the greatest of friends. But he has never told Smithson minor about
+the accidental magic. He has learned now, and learned very thoroughly,
+that it is not always wise to tell all you know. If he had not owned
+that he knew that it was the Stonehenge altar stone!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+You may think that the accidental magic was all a dream, and that
+Quentin dreamed it because his mother had told him so much about
+Atlantis. But then, how do you account for his dreaming so much that his
+mother had never told him? You think that that part wasn't true, well,
+it may have been true for anything I know. And I am sure you don't know
+more about it than I do.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE PRINCESS AND THE HEDGE-PIG
+
+
+'But I don't see what we're to _do_' said the Queen for the twentieth
+time.
+
+'Whatever we do will end in misfortune,' said the King gloomily; 'you'll
+see it will.'
+
+They were sitting in the honeysuckle arbour talking things over, while
+the nurse walked up and down the terrace with the new baby in her arms.
+
+'Yes, dear,' said the poor Queen; 'I've not the slightest doubt I
+shall.'
+
+Misfortune comes in many ways, and you can't always know beforehand that
+a certain way is the way misfortune will come by: but there are things
+misfortune comes after as surely as night comes after day. For instance,
+if you let all the water boil away, the kettle will have a hole burnt in
+it. If you leave the bath taps running and the waste-pipe closed, the
+stairs of your house will, sooner or later, resemble Niagara. If you
+leave your purse at home, you won't have it with you when you want to
+pay your tram-fare. And if you throw lighted wax matches at your muslin
+curtains, your parent will most likely have to pay five pounds to the
+fire engines for coming round and blowing the fire out with a wet hose.
+Also if you are a king and do not invite the wicked fairy to your
+christening parties, she will come all the same. And if you do ask the
+wicked fairy, she will come, and in either case it will be the worse for
+the new princess. So what is a poor monarch to do? Of course there is
+one way out of the difficulty, and that is not to have a christening
+party at all. But this offends all the good fairies, and then where are
+you?
+
+All these reflections had presented themselves to the minds of King
+Ozymandias and his Queen, and neither of them could deny that they were
+in a most awkward situation. They were 'talking it over' for the
+hundredth time on the palace terrace where the pomegranates and
+oleanders grew in green tubs and the marble balustrade is overgrown with
+roses, red and white and pink and yellow. On the lower terrace the royal
+nurse was walking up and down with the baby princess that all the fuss
+was about. The Queen's eyes followed the baby admiringly.
+
+'The darling!' she said. 'Oh, Ozymandias, don't you sometimes wish we'd
+been poor people?'
+
+'Never!' said the King decidedly.
+
+'Well, I do,' said the Queen; 'then we could have had just you and me
+and your sister at the christening, and no fear of--oh! I've thought of
+something.'
+
+The King's patient expression showed that he did not think it likely
+that she would have thought of anything useful; but at the first five
+words his expression changed. You would have said that he pricked up his
+ears, if kings had ears that could be pricked up. What she said was--
+
+'Let's have a secret christening.'
+
+'How?' asked the King.
+
+The Queen was gazing in the direction of the baby with what is called a
+'far away look' in her eyes.
+
+'Wait a minute,' she said slowly. 'I see it all--yes--we'll have the
+party in the cellars--you know they're splendid.'
+
+'My great-grandfather had them built by Lancashire men, yes,'
+interrupted the King.
+
+[Illustration: On the lower terrace the royal nurse was walking up and
+down with the baby princess that all the fuss was about.]
+
+'We'll send out the invitations to look like bills. The baker's boy can
+take them. He's a very nice boy. He made baby laugh yesterday when I was
+explaining to him about the Standard Bread. We'll just put "1 loaf 3. A
+remittance at your earliest convenience will oblige." That'll mean that
+1 person is invited for 3 o'clock, and on the back we'll write where and
+why in invisible ink. Lemon juice, you know. And the baker's boy shall
+be told to ask to see the people--just as they do when they _really_
+mean earliest convenience--and then he shall just whisper: "Deadly
+secret. Lemon juice. Hold it to the fire," and come away. Oh, dearest,
+do say you approve!'
+
+The King laid down his pipe, set his crown straight, and kissed the
+Queen with great and serious earnestness.
+
+'You are a wonder,' he said. 'It is the very thing. But the baker's boy
+is very small. Can we trust him?'
+
+'He is nine,' said the Queen, 'and I have sometimes thought that he must
+be a prince in disguise. He is so very intelligent.'
+
+The Queen's plan was carried out. The cellars, which were really
+extraordinarily fine, were secretly decorated by the King's confidential
+man and the Queen's confidential maid and a few of _their_ confidential
+friends whom they knew they could really trust. You would never have
+thought they were cellars when the decorations were finished. The walls
+were hung with white satin and white velvet, with wreaths of white
+roses, and the stone floors were covered with freshly cut turf with
+white daisies, brisk and neat, growing in it.
+
+The invitations were duly delivered by the baker's boy. On them was
+written in plain blue ink,
+
+                      'The Royal Bakeries
+                           1 loaf 3d.
+               An early remittance will oblige.'
+
+And when the people held the letter to the fire, as they were
+whisperingly instructed to do by the baker's boy, they read in a faint
+brown writing:--
+
+'King Ozymandias and Queen Eliza invite you to the christening of their
+daughter Princess Ozyliza at three on Wednesday in the Palace cellars.
+
+'_P.S._--We are obliged to be very secret and careful because of wicked
+fairies, so please come disguised as a tradesman with a bill, calling
+for the last time before it leaves your hands.'
+
+You will understand by this that the King and Queen were not as well off
+as they could wish; so that tradesmen calling at the palace with that
+sort of message was the last thing likely to excite remark. But as most
+of the King's subjects were not very well off either, this was merely a
+bond between the King and his people. They could sympathise with each
+other, and understand each other's troubles in a way impossible to most
+kings and most nations.
+
+You can imagine the excitement in the families of the people who were
+invited to the christening party, and the interest they felt in their
+costumes. The Lord Chief Justice disguised himself as a shoemaker; he
+still had his old blue brief-bag by him, and a brief-bag and a boot-bag
+are very much alike. The Commander-in-Chief dressed as a dog's meat man
+and wheeled a barrow. The Prime Minister appeared as a tailor; this
+required no change of dress and only a slight change of expression. And
+the other courtiers all disguised themselves perfectly. So did the good
+fairies, who had, of course, been invited first of all. Benevola, Queen
+of the Good Fairies, disguised herself as a moonbeam, which can go into
+any palace and no questions asked. Serena, the next in command, dressed
+as a butterfly, and all the other fairies had disguises equally pretty
+and tasteful.
+
+The Queen looked most kind and beautiful, the King very handsome and
+manly, and all the guests agreed that the new princess was the most
+beautiful baby they had ever seen in all their born days.
+
+Everybody brought the most charming christening presents concealed
+beneath their disguises. The fairies gave the usual gifts, beauty,
+grace, intelligence, charm, and so on.
+
+Everything seemed to be going better than well. But of course you know
+it wasn't. The Lord High Admiral had not been able to get a cook's dress
+large enough completely to cover his uniform; a bit of an epaulette had
+peeped out, and the wicked fairy, Malevola, had spotted it as he went
+past her to the palace back door, near which she had been sitting
+disguised as a dog without a collar hiding from the police, and enjoying
+what she took to be the trouble the royal household were having with
+their tradesmen.
+
+Malevola almost jumped out of her dog-skin when she saw the glitter of
+that epaulette.
+
+'Hullo?' she said, and sniffed quite like a dog. 'I must look into
+this,' said she, and disguising herself as a toad, she crept unseen into
+the pipe by which the copper emptied itself into the palace moat--for of
+course there was a copper in one of the palace cellars as there always
+is in cellars in the North Country.
+
+Now this copper had been a great trial to the decorators. If there is
+anything you don't like about your house, you can either try to conceal
+it or 'make a feature of it.' And as concealment of the copper was
+impossible, it was decided to 'make it a feature' by covering it with
+green moss and planting a tree in it, a little apple tree all in bloom.
+It had been very much admired.
+
+Malevola, hastily altering her disguise to that of a mole, dug her way
+through the earth that the copper was full of, got to the top and put
+out a sharp nose just as Benevola was saying in that soft voice which
+Malevola always thought so affected,--
+
+'The Princess shall love and be loved all her life long.'
+
+'So she shall,' said the wicked fairy, assuming her own shape amid the
+screams of the audience. 'Be quiet, you silly cuckoo,' she said to the
+Lord Chamberlain, whose screams were specially piercing, 'or I'll give
+_you_ a christening present too.'
+
+Instantly there was a dreadful silence. Only Queen Eliza, who had caught
+up the baby at Malevola's first word, said feebly,--
+
+'Oh, _don't_, dear Malevola.'
+
+And the King said, 'It isn't exactly a party, don't you know. Quite
+informal. Just a few friends dropped in, eh, what?'
+
+'So I perceive,' said Malevola, laughing that dreadful laugh of hers
+which makes other people feel as though they would never be able to
+laugh any more. 'Well, I've dropped in too. Let's have a look at the
+child.'
+
+The poor Queen dared not refuse. She tottered forward with the baby in
+her arms.
+
+'Humph!' said Malevola, 'your precious daughter will have beauty and
+grace and all the rest of the tuppenny halfpenny rubbish those
+niminy-piminy minxes have given her. But she will be turned out of her
+kingdom. She will have to face her enemies without a single human being
+to stand by her, and she shall never come to her own again until she
+finds----' Malevola hesitated. She could not think of anything
+sufficiently unlikely--'until she finds,' she repeated----
+
+'A thousand spears to follow her to battle,' said a new voice, 'a
+thousand spears devoted to her and to her alone.'
+
+A very young fairy fluttered down from the little apple tree where she
+had been hiding among the pink and white blossom.
+
+'I am very young, I know,' she said apologetically, 'and I've only just
+finished my last course of Fairy History. So I know that if a fairy
+stops more than half a second in a curse she can't go on, and some one
+else may finish it for her. That is so, Your Majesty, isn't it?' she
+said, appealing to Benevola. And the Queen of the Fairies said Yes, that
+was the law, only it was such an old one most people had forgotten it.
+
+'You think yourself very clever,' said Malevola, 'but as a matter of
+fact you're simply silly. That's the very thing I've provided against.
+She _can't_ have any one to stand by her in battle, so she'll lose her
+kingdom and every one will be killed, and I shall come to the funeral.
+It will be enormous,' she added rubbing her hands at the joyous thought.
+
+'If you've quite finished,' said the King politely, 'and if you're sure
+you won't take any refreshment, may I wish you a very good afternoon?'
+He held the door open himself, and Malevola went out chuckling. The
+whole of the party then burst into tears.
+
+'Never mind,' said the King at last, wiping his eyes with the tails of
+his ermine. 'It's a long way off and perhaps it won't happen after all.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But of course it did.
+
+The King did what he could to prepare his daughter for the fight in
+which she was to stand alone against her enemies. He had her taught
+fencing and riding and shooting, both with the cross bow and the long
+bow, as well as with pistols, rifles, and artillery. She learned to dive
+and to swim, to run and to jump, to box and to wrestle, so that she grew
+up as strong and healthy as any young man, and could, indeed, have got
+the best of a fight with any prince of her own age. But the few princes
+who called at the palace did not come to fight the Princess, and when
+they heard that the Princess had no dowry except the gifts of the
+fairies, and also what Malevola's gift had been, they all said they had
+just looked in as they were passing and that they must be going now,
+thank you. And went.
+
+And then the dreadful thing happened. The tradesmen, who had for years
+been calling for the last time before, etc., really decided to place the
+matter in other hands. They called in a neighbouring king who marched
+his army into Ozymandias's country, conquered the army--the soldiers'
+wages hadn't been paid for years--turned out the King and Queen, paid
+the tradesmen's bills, had most of the palace walls papered with the
+receipts, and set up housekeeping there himself.
+
+Now when this happened the Princess was away on a visit to her aunt, the
+Empress of Oricalchia, half the world away, and there is no regular post
+between the two countries, so that when she came home, travelling with
+a train of fifty-four camels, which is rather slow work, and arrived at
+her own kingdom, she expected to find all the flags flying and the bells
+ringing and the streets decked in roses to welcome her home.
+
+Instead of which nothing of the kind. The streets were all as dull as
+dull, the shops were closed because it was early-closing day, and she
+did not see a single person she knew.
+
+She left the fifty-four camels laden with the presents her aunt had
+given her outside the gates, and rode alone on her own pet camel to the
+palace, wondering whether perhaps her father had not received the letter
+she had sent on ahead by carrier pigeon the day before.
+
+And when she got to the palace and got off her camel and went in, there
+was a strange king on her father's throne and a strange queen sat in her
+mother's place at his side.
+
+'Where's my father?' said the Princess, bold as brass, standing on the
+steps of the throne. 'And what are you doing there?'
+
+'I might ask you that,' said the King. 'Who are you, anyway?'
+
+'I am the Princess Ozyliza,' said she.
+
+'Oh, I've heard of you,' said the King. 'You've been expected for some
+time. Your father's been evicted, so now you know. No, I can't give you
+his address.'
+
+Just then some one came and whispered to the Queen that fifty-four
+camels laden with silks and velvets and monkeys and parakeets and the
+richest treasures of Oricalchia were outside the city gate. She put two
+and two together, and whispered to the King, who nodded and said:
+
+'I wish to make a new law.'
+
+Every one fell flat on his face. The law is so much respected in that
+country.
+
+'No one called Ozyliza is allowed to own property in this kingdom,' said
+the King. 'Turn out that stranger.'
+
+So the Princess was turned out of her father's palace, and went out and
+cried in the palace gardens where she had been so happy when she was
+little.
+
+And the baker's boy, who was now the baker's young man, came by with the
+standard bread and saw some one crying among the oleanders, and went to
+say, 'Cheer up!' to whoever it was. And it was the Princess. He knew her
+at once.
+
+'Oh, Princess,' he said, 'cheer up! Nothing is ever so bad as it seems.'
+
+'Oh, Baker's Boy,' said she, for she knew him too, 'how can I cheer up?
+I am turned out of my kingdom. I haven't got my father's address, and I
+have to face my enemies without a single human being to stand by me.'
+
+[Illustration: Instantly a flight of winged arrows crossed the garden.]
+
+'That's not true, at any rate,' said the baker's boy, whose name was
+Erinaceus, 'you've got me. If you'll let me be your squire, I'll follow
+you round the world and help you to fight your enemies.'
+
+'You won't be let,' said the Princess sadly, 'but I thank you very much
+all the same.'
+
+She dried her eyes and stood up.
+
+'I must go,' she said, 'and I've nowhere to go to.'
+
+Now as soon as the Princess had been turned out of the palace, the Queen
+said, 'You'd much better have beheaded her for treason.' And the King
+said, 'I'll tell the archers to pick her off as she leaves the grounds.'
+
+So when she stood up, out there among the oleanders, some one on the
+terrace cried, 'There she is!' and instantly a flight of winged arrows
+crossed the garden. At the cry Erinaceus flung himself in front of her,
+clasping her in his arms and turning his back to the arrows. The Royal
+Archers were a thousand strong and all excellent shots. Erinaceus felt a
+thousand arrows sticking into his back.
+
+'And now my last friend is dead,' cried the Princess. But being a very
+strong princess, she dragged him into the shrubbery out of sight of the
+palace, and then dragged him into the wood and called aloud on Benevola,
+Queen of the Fairies, and Benevola came.
+
+'They've killed my only friend,' said the Princess, 'at least.... Shall
+I pull out the arrows?'
+
+'If you do,' said the Fairy, 'he'll certainly bleed to death.'
+
+'And he'll die if they stay in,' said the Princess.
+
+'Not necessarily,' said the Fairy; 'let me cut them a little shorter.'
+She did, with her fairy pocket-knife. 'Now,' she said, 'I'll do what I
+can, but I'm afraid it'll be a disappointment to you both. Erinaceus,'
+she went on, addressing the unconscious baker's boy with the stumps of
+the arrows still sticking in him, 'I command you, as soon as I have
+vanished, to assume the form of a hedge-pig. The hedge-pig,' she
+exclaimed to the Princess, 'is the only nice person who can live
+comfortably with a thousand spikes sticking out of him. Yes, I know
+there are porcupines, but porcupines are vicious and ill-mannered.
+Good-bye!'
+
+And with that she vanished. So did Erinaceus, and the Princess found
+herself alone among the oleanders; and on the green turf was a small and
+very prickly brown hedge-pig.
+
+'Oh, dear!' she said, 'now I'm all alone again, and the baker's boy has
+given his life for mine, and mine isn't worth having.'
+
+'It's worth more than all the world,' said a sharp little voice at her
+feet.
+
+'Oh, can you talk?' she said, quite cheered.
+
+'Why not?' said the hedge-pig sturdily; 'it's only the _form_ of the
+hedge-pig I've assumed. I'm Erinaceus inside, all right enough. Pick me
+up in a corner of your mantle so as not to prick your darling hands.'
+
+'You mustn't call names, you know,' said the Princess, 'even your
+hedge-pigginess can't excuse such liberties.'
+
+'I'm sorry, Princess,' said the hedge-pig, 'but I can't help it. Only
+human beings speak lies; all other creatures tell the truth. Now I've
+got a hedge-pig's tongue it won't speak anything but the truth. And the
+truth is that I love you more than all the world.'
+
+'Well,' said the Princess thoughtfully, 'since you're a hedge-pig I
+suppose you may love me, and I may love you. Like pet dogs or gold-fish.
+Dear little hedge-pig, then!'
+
+'Don't!' said the hedge-pig, 'remember I'm the baker's boy in my mind
+and soul. My hedge-pigginess is only skin-deep. Pick me up, dearest of
+Princesses, and let us go to seek our fortunes.'
+
+'I think it's my parents I ought to seek,' said the Princess.
+'However...'
+
+She picked up the hedge-pig in the corner of her mantle and they went
+away through the wood.
+
+They slept that night at a wood-cutter's cottage. The wood-cutter was
+very kind, and made a nice little box of beech-wood for the hedge-pig to
+be carried in, and he told the Princess that most of her father's
+subjects were still loyal, but that no one could fight for him because
+they would be fighting for the Princess too, and however much they might
+wish to do this, Malevola's curse assured them that it was impossible.
+
+So the Princess put her hedge-pig in its little box and went on, looking
+everywhere for her father and mother, and, after more adventures than I
+have time to tell you, she found them at last, living in quite a poor
+way in a semi-detached villa at Tooting. They were very glad to see her,
+but when they heard that she meant to try to get back the kingdom, the
+King said:
+
+'I shouldn't bother, my child, I really shouldn't. We are quite happy
+here. I have the pension always given to Deposed Monarchs, and your
+mother is becoming a really economical manager.'
+
+The Queen blushed with pleasure, and said, 'Thank you, dear. But if you
+should succeed in turning that wicked usurper out, Ozyliza, I hope I
+shall be a better queen than I used to be. I am learning housekeeping at
+an evening class at the Crown-maker's Institute.'
+
+The Princess kissed her parents and went out into the garden to think it
+over. But the garden was small and quite full of wet washing hung on
+lines. So she went into the road, but that was full of dust and
+perambulators. Even the wet washing was better than that, so she went
+back and sat down on the grass in a white alley of tablecloths and
+sheets, all marked with a crown in indelible ink. And she took the
+hedge-pig out of the box. It was rolled up in a ball, but she stroked
+the little bit of soft forehead that you can always find if you look
+carefully at a rolled-up hedge-pig, and the hedge-pig uncurled and said:
+
+'I am afraid I was asleep, Princess dear. Did you want me?'
+
+'You're the only person who knows all about everything,' said she. 'I
+haven't told father and mother about the arrows. Now what do you
+advise?'
+
+Erinaceus was flattered at having his advice asked, but unfortunately he
+hadn't any to give.
+
+'It's your work, Princess,' he said. 'I can only promise to do anything
+a hedge-pig _can_ do. It's not much. Of course I could die for you, but
+that's so useless.'
+
+'Quite,' said she.
+
+'I wish I were invisible,' he said dreamily.
+
+'Oh, where are you?' cried Ozyliza, for the hedge-pig had vanished.
+
+'Here,' said a sharp little voice. 'You can't see me, but I can see
+everything I want to see. And I can see what to do. I'll crawl into my
+box, and you must disguise yourself as an old French governess with the
+best references and answer the advertisement that the wicked king put
+yesterday in the "Usurpers Journal."'
+
+The Queen helped the Princess to disguise herself, which, of course, the
+Queen would never have done if she had known about the arrows; and the
+King gave her some of his pension to buy a ticket with, so she went back
+quite quickly, by train, to her own kingdom.
+
+The usurping King at once engaged the French governess to teach his cook
+to read French cookery books, because the best recipes are in French. Of
+course he had no idea that there was a princess, _the_ Princess, beneath
+the governessial disguise. The French lessons were from 6 to 8 in the
+morning and from 2 to 4 in the afternoon, and all the rest of the time
+the governess could spend as she liked. She spent it walking about the
+palace gardens and talking to her invisible hedge-pig. They talked about
+everything under the sun, and the hedge-pig was the best of company.
+
+'How did you become invisible?' she asked one day, and it said, 'I
+suppose it was Benevola's doing. Only I think every one gets _one_ wish
+granted if they only wish hard enough.'
+
+On the fifty-fifth day the hedge-pig said, 'Now, Princess dear, I'm
+going to begin to get you back your kingdom.'
+
+And next morning the King came down to breakfast in a dreadful rage with
+his face covered up in bandages.
+
+'This palace is haunted,' he said. 'In the middle of the night a
+dreadful spiked ball was thrown in my face. I lighted a match. There was
+nothing.'
+
+The Queen said, 'Nonsense! You must have been dreaming.'
+
+But next morning it was her turn to come down with a bandaged face. And
+the night after, the King had the spiky ball thrown at him again. And
+then the Queen had it. And then they both had it, so that they couldn't
+sleep at all, and had to lie awake with nothing to think of but their
+wickedness. And every five minutes a very little voice whispered:
+
+'Who stole the kingdom? Who killed the Princess?' till the King and
+Queen could have screamed with misery.
+
+And at last the Queen said, 'We needn't have killed the Princess.'
+
+And the King said, 'I've been thinking that, too.'
+
+And next day the King said, 'I don't know that we ought to have taken
+this kingdom. We had a really high-class kingdom of our own.'
+
+'I've been thinking that too,' said the Queen.
+
+By this time their hands and arms and necks and faces and ears were very
+sore indeed, and they were sick with want of sleep.
+
+'Look here,' said the King, 'let's chuck it. Let's write to Ozymandias
+and tell him he can take over his kingdom again. I've had jolly well
+enough of this.'
+
+'Let's,' said the Queen, 'but we can't bring the Princess to life again.
+I do wish we could,' and she cried a little through her bandages into
+her egg, for it was breakfast time.
+
+'Do you mean that,' said a little sharp voice, though there was no one
+to be seen in the room. The King and Queen clung to each other in
+terror, upsetting the urn over the toast-rack.
+
+'Do you mean it?' said the voice again; 'answer, yes or no.'
+
+'Yes,' said the Queen, 'I don't know who you are, but, yes, yes, yes. I
+can't _think_ how we could have been so wicked.'
+
+'Nor I,' said the King.
+
+'Then send for the French governess,' said the voice.
+
+'Ring the bell, dear,' said the Queen. 'I'm sure what it says is right.
+It is the voice of conscience. I've often heard _of_ it, but I never
+heard it before.'
+
+The King pulled the richly-jewelled bell-rope and ten magnificent green
+and gold footmen appeared.
+
+'Please ask Mademoiselle to step this way,' said the Queen.
+
+The ten magnificent green and gold footmen found the governess beside
+the marble basin feeding the gold-fish, and, bowing their ten green
+backs, they gave the Queen's message. The governess who, every one
+agreed, was always most obliging, went at once to the pink satin
+breakfast-room where the King and Queen were sitting, almost
+unrecognisable in their bandages.
+
+'Yes, Your Majesties?' said she curtseying.
+
+'The voice of conscience,' said the Queen, 'told us to send for you. Is
+there any recipe in the French books for bringing shot princesses to
+life? If so, will you kindly translate it for us?'
+
+'There is _one_,' said the Princess thoughtfully, 'and it is quite
+simple. Take a king and a queen and the voice of conscience. Place them
+in a clean pink breakfast-room with eggs, coffee, and toast. Add a
+full-sized French governess. The king and queen must be thoroughly
+pricked and bandaged, and the voice of conscience must be very
+distinct.'
+
+'Is that all?' asked the Queen.
+
+'That's all,' said the governess, 'except that the king and queen must
+have two more bandages over their eyes, and keep them on till the voice
+of conscience has counted fifty-five very slowly.'
+
+'If you would be so kind,' said the Queen, 'as to bandage us with our
+table napkins? Only be careful how you fold them, because our faces are
+very sore, and the royal monogram is very stiff and hard owing to its
+being embroidered in seed pearls by special command.'
+
+'I will be very careful,' said the governess kindly.
+
+The moment the King and Queen were blindfolded, the 'voice of
+conscience' began, 'one, two, three,' and Ozyliza tore off her
+disguise, and under the fussy black-and-violet-spotted alpaca of the
+French governess was the simple slim cloth-of-silver dress of the
+Princess. She stuffed the alpaca up the chimney and the grey wig into
+the tea-cosy, and had disposed of the mittens in the coffee-pot and the
+elastic-side boots in the coal-scuttle, just as the voice of conscience
+said--
+
+'Fifty-three, fifty-four, fifty-five!' and stopped.
+
+The King and Queen pulled off the bandages, and there, alive and well,
+with bright clear eyes and pinky cheeks and a mouth that smiled, was the
+Princess whom they supposed to have been killed by the thousand arrows
+of their thousand archers.
+
+Before they had time to say a word the Princess said:
+
+'Good morning, Your Majesties. I am afraid you have had bad dreams. So
+have I. Let us all try to forget them. I hope you will stay a little
+longer in my palace. You are very welcome. I am so sorry you have been
+hurt.'
+
+'We deserved it,' said the Queen, 'and we want to say we have heard the
+voice of conscience, and do please forgive us.'
+
+'Not another word,' said the Princess, '_do_ let me have some fresh tea
+made. And some more eggs. These are quite cold. And the urn's been
+upset. We'll have a new breakfast. And I _am_ so sorry your faces are
+so sore.'
+
+'If you kissed them,' said the voice which the King and Queen called the
+voice of conscience, 'their faces would not be sore any more.'
+
+'May I?' said Ozyliza, and kissed the King's ear and the Queen's nose,
+all she could get at through the bandages.
+
+And instantly they were quite well.
+
+They had a delightful breakfast. Then the King caused the royal
+household to assemble in the throne-room, and there announced that, as
+the Princess had come to claim the kingdom, they were returning to their
+own kingdom by the three-seventeen train on Thursday.
+
+Every one cheered like mad, and the whole town was decorated and
+illuminated that evening. Flags flew from every house, and the bells all
+rang, just as the Princess had expected them to do that day when she
+came home with the fifty-five camels. All the treasure these had carried
+was given back to the Princess, and the camels themselves were restored
+to her, hardly at all the worse for wear.
+
+The usurping King and Queen were seen off at the station by the
+Princess, and parted from her with real affection. You see they weren't
+completely wicked in their hearts, but they had never had time to think
+before. And being kept awake at night forced them to think. And the
+'voice of conscience' gave them something to think about.
+
+They gave the Princess the receipted bills, with which most of the
+palace was papered, in return for board and lodging.
+
+When they were gone a telegram was sent off.
+
+
+                        Ozymandias Rex, Esq.,
+                            Chatsworth,
+                                Delamere Road,
+                                    Tooting,
+                                        England.
+
+  Please come home at once. Palace vacant. Tenants have
+  left.--Ozyliza P.
+
+
+And they came immediately.
+
+When they arrived the Princess told them the whole story, and they
+kissed and praised her, and called her their deliverer and the saviour
+of her country.
+
+'_I_ haven't done anything,' she said. 'It was Erinaceus who did
+everything, and....'
+
+'But the fairies said,' interrupted the King, who was never clever at
+the best of times, 'that you couldn't get the kingdom back till you had
+a thousand spears devoted to you, to you alone.'
+
+'There are a thousand spears in my back,' said a little sharp voice,
+'and they are all devoted to the Princess and to her alone.'
+
+'Don't!' said the King irritably. 'That voice coming out of nothing
+makes me jump.'
+
+'I can't get used to it either,' said the Queen. 'We must have a gold
+cage built for the little animal. But I must say I wish it was visible.'
+
+'So do I,' said the Princess earnestly. And instantly it was. I suppose
+the Princess wished it very hard, for there was the hedge-pig with its
+long spiky body and its little pointed face, its bright eyes, its small
+round ears, and its sharp, turned-up nose.
+
+It looked at the Princess but it did not speak.
+
+'Say something _now_,' said Queen Eliza. 'I should like to _see_ a
+hedge-pig speak.'
+
+'The truth is, if speak I must, I must speak the truth,' said Erinaceus.
+'The Princess has thrown away her life-wish to make me visible. I wish
+she had wished instead for something nice for herself.'
+
+'Oh, was that my life-wish?' cried the Princess. 'I didn't know, dear
+Hedge-pig, I didn't know. If I'd only known, I would have wished you
+back into your proper shape.'
+
+'If you had,' said the hedge-pig, 'it would have been the shape of a
+dead man. Remember that I have a thousand spears in my back, and no man
+can carry those and live.'
+
+The Princess burst into tears.
+
+[Illustration: 'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,'
+she said, 'to give you what you wish.']
+
+'Oh, you can't go on being a hedge-pig for ever,' she said, 'it's not
+fair. I can't bear it. Oh Mamma! Oh Papa! Oh Benevola!'
+
+And there stood Benevola before them, a little dazzling figure with blue
+butterfly's wings and a wreath of moonshine.
+
+'Well?' she said, 'well?'
+
+'Oh, you know,' said the Princess, still crying. 'I've thrown away my
+life-wish, and he's still a hedge-pig. Can't you do _anything_!'
+
+'_I_ can't,' said the Fairy, 'but you can. Your kisses are magic kisses.
+Don't you remember how you cured the King and Queen of all the wounds
+the hedge-pig made by rolling itself on to their faces in the night?'
+
+'But she can't go kissing hedge-pigs,' said the Queen, 'it would be most
+unsuitable. Besides it would hurt her.'
+
+But the hedge-pig raised its little pointed face, and the Princess took
+it up in her hands. She had long since learned how to do this without
+hurting either herself or it. She looked in its little bright eyes.
+
+'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to
+give you what you wish.'
+
+'Kiss me once,' it said, 'where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and
+enough to live and die for.'
+
+She stooped her head and kissed it on its forehead where the fur is
+soft, just where the prickles begin.
+
+And instantly she was standing with her hands on a young man's shoulders
+and her lips on a young man's face just where the hair begins and the
+forehead leaves off. And all round his feet lay a pile of fallen arrows.
+
+She drew back and looked at him.
+
+'Erinaceus,' she said, 'you're different--from the baker's boy I mean.'
+
+'When I was an invisible hedge-pig,' he said, 'I knew everything. Now I
+have forgotten all that wisdom save only two things. One is that I am a
+king's son. I was stolen away in infancy by an unprincipled baker, and I
+am really the son of that usurping King whose face I rolled on in the
+night. It is a painful thing to roll on your father's face when you are
+all spiky, but I did it, Princess, for your sake, and for my father's
+too. And now I will go to him and tell him all, and ask his
+forgiveness.'
+
+'You won't go away?' said the Princess. 'Ah! don't go away. What shall I
+do without my hedge-pig?'
+
+Erinaceus stood still, looking very handsome and like a prince.
+
+'What is the other thing that you remember of your hedge-pig wisdom?'
+asked the Queen curiously. And Erinaceus answered, not to her but to the
+Princess:
+
+'The other thing, Princess, is that I love you.'
+
+'Isn't there a third thing, Erinaceus?' said the Princess, looking down.
+
+'There is, but you must speak that, not I.'
+
+'Oh,' said the Princess, a little disappointed, 'then you knew that I
+loved you?'
+
+'Hedge-pigs are very wise little beasts,' said Erinaceus, 'but I only
+knew that when you told it me.'
+
+'I--told you?'
+
+'When you kissed my little pointed face, Princess,' said Erinaceus, 'I
+knew then.'
+
+'My goodness gracious me,' said the King.
+
+'Quite so,' said Benevola, 'and I wouldn't ask _any one_ to the
+wedding.'
+
+'Except you, dear,' said the Queen.
+
+'Well, as I happened to be passing ... there's no time like the
+present,' said Benevola briskly. 'Suppose you give orders for the
+wedding bells to be rung now, at once!'
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+SEPTIMUS SEPTIMUSSON
+
+
+The wind was screaming over the marsh. It shook the shutters and rattled
+the windows, and the little boy lay awake in the bare attic. His mother
+came softly up the ladder stairs shading the flame of the tallow candle
+with her hand.
+
+'I'm not asleep, mother,' said he. And she heard the tears in his voice.
+
+'Why, silly lad,' she said, sitting down on the straw-bed beside him and
+putting the candle on the floor, 'what are you crying for?'
+
+'It's the wind keeps calling me, mother,' he said. 'It won't let me
+alone. It never has since I put up the little weather-cock for it to
+play with. It keeps saying, "Wake up, Septimus Septimusson, wake up,
+you're the seventh son of a seventh son. You can see the fairies and
+hear the beasts speak, and you must go out and seek your fortune." And
+I'm afraid, and I don't want to go.'
+
+'I should think not indeed,' said his mother. 'The wind doesn't talk,
+Sep, not really. You just go to sleep like a good boy, and I'll get
+father to bring you a gingerbread pig from the fair to-morrow.'
+
+But Sep lay awake a long time listening to what the wind really did keep
+on saying, and feeling ashamed to think how frightened he was of going
+out all alone to seek his fortune--a thing all the boys in books were
+only too happy to do.
+
+Next evening father brought home the loveliest gingerbread pig with
+currant eyes. Sep ate it, and it made him less anxious than ever to go
+out into the world where, perhaps, no one would give him gingerbread
+pigs ever any more.
+
+Before he went to bed he ran down to the shore where a great new harbour
+was being made. The workmen had been blasting the big rocks, and on one
+of the rocks a lot of mussels were sticking. He stood looking at them,
+and then suddenly he heard a lot of little voices crying, 'Oh Sep, we're
+so frightened, we're choking.'
+
+The voices were thin and sharp as the edges of mussel shells. They were
+indeed the voices of the mussels themselves.
+
+'Oh dear,' said Sep, 'I'm so sorry, but I can't move the rock back into
+the sea, you know. Can I now?'
+
+'No,' said the mussels, 'but if you speak to the wind,--you know his
+language and he's very fond of you since you made that toy for
+him,--he'll blow the sea up till the waves wash us back into deep
+water.'
+
+'But I'm afraid of the wind,' said Sep, 'it says things that frighten
+me.'
+
+'Oh very well,' said the mussels, 'we don't want you to be afraid. We
+can die all right if necessary.'
+
+Then Sep shivered and trembled.
+
+'Go away,' said the thin sharp voices. 'We'll die--but we'd rather die
+in our own brave company.'
+
+'I know I'm a coward,' said Sep. 'Oh, wait a minute.'
+
+'Death won't wait,' said the little voices.
+
+'I can't speak to the wind, I won't,' said Sep, and almost at the same
+moment he heard himself call out, 'Oh wind, please come and blow up the
+waves to save the poor mussels.'
+
+The wind answered with a boisterous shout--
+
+'All right, my boy,' it shrieked, 'I'm coming.' And come it did. And
+when it had attended to the mussels it came and whispered to Sep in his
+attic. And to his great surprise, instead of covering his head with the
+bed-clothes, as usual, and trying not to listen, he found himself
+sitting up in bed and talking to the wind, man to man.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'I'm not afraid of you any more.'
+
+'Of course not, we're friends now,' said the wind. 'That's because we
+joined together to do a kindness to some one. There's nothing like that
+for making people friends.'
+
+'Oh,' said Sep.
+
+'Yes,' said the wind, 'and now, old chap, when will you go out and seek
+your fortune? Remember how poor your father is, and the fortune, if you
+find it, won't be just for you, but for your father and mother and the
+others.'
+
+'Oh,' said Sep, 'I didn't think of that.'
+
+'Yes,' said the wind, 'really, my dear fellow, I do hate to bother you,
+but it's better to fix a time. Now when shall we start?'
+
+'We?' said Sep. 'Are you going with me?'
+
+'I'll see you a bit of the way,' said the wind. 'What do you say now?
+Shall we start to-night? There's no time like the present.'
+
+'I do hate going,' said Sep.
+
+'Of course you do!' said the wind, cordially. 'Come along. Get into your
+things, and we'll make a beginning.'
+
+So Sep dressed, and he wrote on his slate in very big letters, 'Gone to
+seek our fortune,' and he put it on the table so that his mother should
+see it when she came down in the morning. And he went out of the cottage
+and the wind kindly shut the door after him.
+
+The wind gently pushed him down to the shore, and there he got into his
+father's boat, which was called the _Septimus and Susie_, after his
+father and mother, and the wind carried him across to another country
+and there he landed.
+
+'Now,' said the wind, clapping him on the back, 'off you go, and good
+luck to you!'
+
+And it turned round and took the boat home again.
+
+When Sep's mother found the writing on the slate, and his father found
+the boat gone they feared that Sep was drowned, but when the wind
+brought the boat back wrong way up, they were quite sure, and they both
+cried for many a long day.
+
+The wind tried to tell them that Sep was all right, but they couldn't
+understand wind-talk, and they only said, 'Drat the wind,' and fastened
+the shutters up tight, and put wedges in the windows.
+
+Sep walked along the straight white road that led across the new
+country. He had no more idea how to look for _his_ fortune than you
+would have if you suddenly left off reading this and went out of your
+front door to seek _yours_.
+
+However, he had made a start, and that is always something. When he had
+gone exactly seven miles on that straight foreign road, between strange
+trees, and bordered with flowers he did not know the names of, he heard
+a groaning in the wood, and some one sighing and saying, 'Oh, how hard
+it is, to have to die and never see my wife and the little cubs again.'
+
+The voice was rough as a lion's mane, and strong as a lion's claws, and
+Sep was very frightened. But he said, 'I'm not afraid,' and then oddly
+enough he found he had spoken the truth--he wasn't afraid.
+
+He broke through the bushes and found that the person who had spoken was
+indeed a lion. A javelin had pierced its shoulder and fastened it to a
+great tree.
+
+'All right,' cried Sep, 'hold still a minute, sir.'
+
+He got out his knife and cut and cut at the shaft of the javelin till he
+was able to break it off. Then the lion drew back and the broken shaft
+passed through the wound and the broken javelin was left sticking in the
+tree.
+
+'I'm really extremely obliged, my dear fellow,' said the lion warmly.
+'Pray command me, if there's any little thing I can do for you at any
+time.'
+
+'Don't mention it,' said Sep with proper politeness, 'delighted to have
+been of use to you, I'm sure.'
+
+So they parted. As Sep scrambled through the bushes back to the road he
+kicked against an axe that lay on the ground.
+
+'Hullo,' said he, 'some poor woodman's dropped this, and not been able
+to find it. I'll take it along--perhaps I may meet him.'
+
+He was getting very tired and very hungry, and presently he sat down to
+rest under a chestnut-tree, and he heard two little voices talking in
+the branches, voices soft as a squirrel's fur, and bright as a
+squirrel's eyes. They were, indeed, the voices of two squirrels.
+
+'Hush,' said one, 'there's some one below.'
+
+'Oh,' said the other, 'it's a horrid boy. Let's scurry away.'
+
+'I'm not a horrid boy,' said Sep. 'I'm the seventh son of a seventh
+son.'
+
+'Oh,' said Mrs. Squirrel, 'of course that makes all the difference. Have
+some nuts?'
+
+'Rather,' said Sep. 'At least I mean, yes, if you please.'
+
+So the squirrels brought nuts down to him, and when he had eaten as many
+as he wanted they filled his pockets, and then in return he chopped all
+the lower boughs off the chestnut-tree, so that boys who were _not_
+seventh sons could not climb up and interfere with the squirrels'
+housekeeping arrangements.
+
+Then they parted, the best of friends, and Sep went on.
+
+'I haven't found my fortune yet,' said he, 'but I've made a friend or
+two.'
+
+And just as he was saying that, he turned a corner of the road and met
+an old gentleman in a fur-lined coat riding a fine, big, grey horse.
+
+'Hullo!' said the gentleman. 'Who are you, and where are you off to so
+bright and early?'
+
+'I'm Septimus Septimusson,' said Sep, 'and I'm going to seek my
+fortune.'
+
+'And you've taken an axe to help you carve your way to glory?'
+
+'No,' said Sep, 'I found it, and I suppose some one lost it. So I'm
+bringing it along in case I meet him.'
+
+'Heavy, isn't it?' said the old gentleman.
+
+'Yes,' said Sep.
+
+'Then I'll carry it for you,' said the old gentleman, 'for it's one that
+my head forester lost yesterday. And now come along with me, for you're
+the boy I've been looking for for seven years--an honest boy and the
+seventh son of a seventh son.'
+
+So Sep went home with the gentleman, who was a great lord in that
+country, and he lived in that lord's castle and was taught everything
+that a gentleman ought to know. And in return he told the lord all about
+the ways of birds and beasts--for as he understood their talk he knew
+more about them than any one else in that country. And the lord wrote it
+all down in a book, and half the people said it was wonderfully clever,
+and the other half said it was nonsense, and how could he know. This was
+fame, and the lord was very pleased. But though the old lord was so
+famous he would not leave his castle, for he had a hump that an
+enchanter had fastened on to him, and he couldn't bear to be seen with
+it.
+
+'But you'll get rid of it for me some day, my boy,' he used to say. 'No
+one but the seventh son of a seventh son and an honest boy can do it. So
+all the doctors say.'
+
+So Sep grew up. And when he was twenty-one--straight as a lance and
+handsome as a picture--the old lord said to him.
+
+'My boy, you've been like a son to me, but now it's time you got married
+and had sons of your own. Is there any girl you'd like to marry?'
+
+'No,' said Sep, 'I never did care much for girls.'
+
+The old lord laughed.
+
+'Then you must set out again and seek your fortune once more,' he said,
+'because no man has really found his fortune till he's found the lady
+who is his heart's lady. Choose the best horse in the stable, and off
+you go, lad, and my blessing go with you.'
+
+So Sep chose a good red horse and set out, and he rode straight to the
+great city, that shone golden across the plain, and when he got there he
+found every one crying.
+
+'Why, whatever is the matter?' said Sep, reining in the red horse in
+front of a smithy, where the apprentices were crying on to the fires,
+and the smith was dropping tears on the anvil.
+
+'Why the Princess is dying,' said the blacksmith blowing his nose. 'A
+nasty, wicked magician--he had a spite against the King, and he got at
+the Princess when she was playing ball in the garden, and now she's
+blind and deaf and dumb. And she won't eat.'
+
+'And she'll die,' said the first apprentice.
+
+'And she _is_ such a dear,' said the other apprentice.
+
+Sep sat still on the red horse thinking.
+
+'Has anything been done?' he asked.
+
+'Oh yes,' said the blacksmith. 'All the doctors have seen her, but they
+can't do anything. And the King has advertised in the usual way, that
+any one who can cure her may marry her. But it's no good. King's sons
+aren't what they used to be. A silly lot they are nowadays, all taken up
+with football and cricket and golf.'
+
+'Humph,' said Sep, 'thank you. Which is the way to the palace?'
+
+The blacksmith pointed, and then burst into tears again. Sep rode on.
+
+When he got to the palace he asked to see the King. Every one there was
+crying too, from the footman who opened the door to the King, who was
+sitting upon his golden throne and looking at his fine collection of
+butterflies through floods of tears.
+
+'Oh dear me yes, young man,' said the King, 'you may _see_ her and
+welcome, but it's no good.'
+
+'We can but try,' said Sep. So he was taken to the room where the
+Princess sat huddled up on her silver throne among the white velvet
+cushions with her crown all on one side, crying out of her poor blind
+eyes, so that the tears ran down over her green gown with the red roses
+on it.
+
+And directly he saw her he knew that she was the only girl, Princess as
+she was, with a crown and a throne, who could ever be his heart's lady.
+He went up to her and kneeled at her side and took her hand and kissed
+it. The Princess started. She could not see or hear him, but at the
+touch of his hand and his lips she knew that he was her heart's lord,
+and she threw her arms round his neck, and cried more than ever.
+
+He held her in his arms and stroked her hair till she stopped crying,
+and then he called for bread and milk. This was brought in a silver
+basin, and he fed her with it as you feed a little child.
+
+The news ran through the city, 'The Princess has eaten,' and all the
+bells were set ringing. Sep said good-night to his Princess and went to
+bed in the best bedroom of the palace. Early in the grey morning he got
+up and leaned out of the open window and called to his old friend the
+wind.
+
+And the wind came bustling in and clapped him on the back, crying,
+'Well, my boy, and what can I do for you? Eh?'
+
+Sep told him all about the Princess.
+
+'Well,' said the wind, 'you've not done so badly. At any rate you've got
+her love. And you couldn't have got that with anybody's help but your
+own. Now, of course, the thing to do is to find the wicked Magician.'
+
+'Of course,' said Sep.
+
+'Well--I travel a good deal--I'll keep my eyes open, and let you know
+if I hear anything.'
+
+Sep spent the day holding the Princess's hand, and feeding her at meal
+times; and that night the wind rattled his window and said, 'Let me in.'
+
+It came in very noisily, and said, 'Well, I've found your Magician, he's
+in the forest pretending to be a mole.'
+
+'How can I find him?' said Sep.
+
+'Haven't you any friends in the forest?' asked the wind.
+
+Then Sep remembered his friends the squirrels, and he mounted his horse
+and rode away to the chestnut-tree where they lived. They were charmed
+to see him grown so tall and strong and handsome, and when he had told
+them his story they said at once--
+
+'Oh yes! delighted to be of any service to you.' And they called to all
+their little brothers and cousins, and uncles and nephews to search the
+forest for a mole that wasn't really a mole, and quite soon they found
+him, and hustled and shoved him along till he was face to face with Sep,
+in a green glade. The glade was green, but all the bushes and trees
+around were red-brown with squirrel fur, and shining bright with
+squirrel eyes.
+
+Then Sep said, 'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her
+voice.'
+
+But the mole would not.
+
+'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her voice,' said
+Sep again. But the mole only gnashed his wicked teeth and snarled.
+
+And then in a minute the squirrels fell on the mole and killed it, and
+Sep thanked them and rode back to the palace, for, of course, he knew
+that when a magician is killed, all his magic unworks itself instantly.
+
+But when he got to his Princess she was still as deaf as a post and as
+dumb as a stone, and she was still crying bitterly with her poor blind
+eyes, till the tears ran down her grass-green gown with the red roses on
+it.
+
+'Cheer up, my sweetheart,' he said, though he knew she couldn't hear
+him, and as he spoke the wind came in at the open window, and spoke very
+softly, because it was in the presence of the Princess.
+
+'All right,' it whispered, 'the old villain gave us the slip that
+journey. Got out of the mole-skin in the very nick of time. He's a wild
+boar now.'
+
+'Come,' said Sep, fingering his sword-hilt, 'I'll kill that myself
+without asking it any questions.'
+
+So he went and fought it. But it was a most uncommon boar, as big as a
+horse, with tusks half a yard long; and although Sep wounded it it
+jerked the sword out of his hand with its tusk, and was just going to
+trample him out of life with its hard, heavy pigs'-feet, when a great
+roar sounded through the forest.
+
+'Ah! would ye?' said the lion, and fastened teeth and claws in the great
+boar's back. The boar turned with a scream of rage, but the lion had got
+a good grip, and it did not loosen teeth or claws till the boar lay
+quiet.
+
+'Is he dead?' asked Sep when he came to himself.
+
+'Oh yes, he's _dead_ right enough,' said the lion; but the wind came up
+puffing and blowing, and said:
+
+'It's no good, he's got away again, and now he's a fish. I was just a
+minute too late to see _what_ fish. An old oyster told me about it, only
+he hadn't the wit to notice what particular fish the scoundrel changed
+into.'
+
+So then Sep went back to the palace, and he said to the King:
+
+'Let me marry the dear Princess, and we'll go out and seek our fortune.
+I've got to kill that Magician, and I'll do it too, or my name's not
+Septimus Septimusson. But it may take years and years, and I can't be
+away from the Princess all that time, because she won't eat unless I
+feed her. You see the difficulty, Sire?'
+
+The King saw it. And that very day Sep was married to the Princess in
+her green gown with the red roses on it, and they set out together.
+
+The wind went with them, and the wind, or something else, seemed to say
+to Sep, 'Go home, take your wife home to your mother.'
+
+So he did. He crossed the land and he crossed the sea, and he went up
+the red-brick path to his father's cottage, and he peeped in at the door
+and said:
+
+'Father, mother, here's my wife.'
+
+They were so pleased to see him--for they had thought him dead, that
+they didn't notice the Princess at first, and when they did notice her
+they wondered at her beautiful face and her beautiful gown--but it
+wasn't till they had all settled down to supper--boiled rabbit it
+was--and they noticed Sep feeding his wife as one feeds a baby that they
+saw that she was blind.
+
+And then all the story had to be told.
+
+'Well, well,' said the fisherman, 'you and your wife bide here with us.
+I daresay I'll catch that old sinner in my nets one of these fine days.'
+But he never did. And Sep and his wife lived with the old people. And
+they were happy after a fashion--but of an evening Sep used to wander
+and wonder, and wonder and wander by the sea-shore, wondering as he
+wandered whether he wouldn't ever have the luck to catch that fish.
+
+And one evening as he wandered wondering he heard a little, sharp, thin
+voice say:
+
+'Sep. I've got it.'
+
+'What?' asked Sep, forgetting his manners.
+
+'I've got it,' said a big mussel on a rock close by him, 'the magic
+stone that the Magician does his enchantments with. He dropped it out of
+his mouth and I shut my shells on it--and now he's sweeping up and down
+the sea like a mad fish, looking for it--for he knows he can never
+change into anything else unless he gets it back. Here, take the nasty
+thing, it's making me feel quite ill.'
+
+It opened its shells wide, and Sep saw a pearl. He reached out his hand
+and took it.
+
+'That's better,' said the mussel, washing its shells out with salt
+water.
+
+'Can _I_ do magic with it?' Sep eagerly asked.
+
+'No,' said the mussel sadly, 'it's of no use to any one but the owner.
+Now, if I were you, I'd get into a boat, and if your friend the wind
+will help us, I believe we really can do the trick.'
+
+'I'm at your service, of course,' said the wind, getting up instantly.
+
+The mussel whispered to the wind, who rushed off at once; and Sep
+launched his boat.
+
+'Now,' said the mussel, 'you get into the very middle of the sea--or as
+near as you can guess it. The wind will warn all the other fishes.' As
+he spoke he disappeared in the dark waters.
+
+Sep got the boat into the middle of the sea--as near as he could guess
+it--and waited.
+
+After a long time he saw something swirling about in a sort of whirlpool
+about a hundred yards from his boat, but when he tried to move the boat
+towards it her bows ran on to something hard.
+
+'Keep still, keep still, keep still,' cried thousands and thousands of
+sharp, thin, little voices. 'You'll kill us if you move.'
+
+Then he looked over the boat side, and saw that the hard something was
+nothing but thousands and thousands of mussels all jammed close
+together, and through the clear water more and more were coming and
+piling themselves together. Almost at once his boat was slowly
+lifted--the top of the mussel heap showed through the water, and there
+he was, high and dry on a mussel reef.
+
+And in all that part of the sea the water was disappearing, and as far
+as the eye could reach stretched a great plain of purple and gray--the
+shells of countless mussels.
+
+Only at one spot there was still a splashing.
+
+Then a mussel opened its shell and spoke.
+
+'We've got him,' it said. 'We've piled our selves up till we've filled
+this part of the sea. The wind warned all the good fishes--and we've got
+the old traitor in a little pool over there. Get out and walk over our
+backs--we'll all lie sideways so as not to hurt you. You must catch the
+fish--but whatever you do don't kill it till we give the word.'
+
+Sep promised, and he got out and walked over the mussels to the pool,
+and when he saw the wicked soul of the Magician looking out through the
+round eyes of a big finny fish he remembered all that his Princess had
+suffered, and he longed to draw his sword and kill the wicked thing then
+and there.
+
+But he remembered his promise. He threw a net about it, and dragged it
+back to the boat.
+
+The mussels dispersed and let the boat down again into the water--and he
+rowed home, towing the evil fish in the net by a line.
+
+He beached the boat, and looked along the shore. The shore looked a very
+odd colour. And well it might, for every bit of the sand was covered
+with purple-gray mussels. They had all come up out of the sea--leaving
+just one little bit of real yellow sand for him to beach the boat on.
+
+'Now,' said millions of sharp thin little voices, 'Kill him, kill him!'
+
+Sep drew his sword and waded into the shallow surf and killed the evil
+fish with one strong stroke.
+
+Then such a shout went up all along the shore as that shore had never
+heard; and all along the shore where the mussels had been, stood men in
+armour and men in smock-frocks and men in leather aprons and huntsmen's
+coats and women and children--a whole nation of people. Close by the
+boat stood a King and Queen with crowns upon their heads.
+
+'Thank you, Sep,' said the King, 'you've saved us all. I am the King
+Mussel, doomed to be a mussel so long as that wretch lived. You have set
+us all free. And look!'
+
+Down the path from the shore came running his own Princess, who hung
+round his neck crying his name and looking at him with the most
+beautiful eyes in the world.
+
+'Come,' said the Mussel King, 'we have no son. You shall be our son and
+reign after us.'
+
+'Thank you,' said Sep, 'but _this_ is my father,' and he presented the
+old fisherman to His Majesty.
+
+'Then let him come with us,' said the King royally, 'he can help me
+reign, or fish in the palace lake, whichever he prefers.'
+
+'Thankee,' said Sep's father, 'I'll come and fish.'
+
+'Your mother too,' said the Mussel Queen, kissing Sep's mother.
+
+'Ah,' said Sep's mother, 'you're a lady, every inch. I'll go to the
+world's end with you.'
+
+So they all went back by way of the foreign country where Sep had found
+his Princess, and they called on the old lord. He had lost his hump, and
+they easily persuaded him to come with them.
+
+'You can help me reign if you like, or we have a nice book or two in the
+palace library,' said the Mussel King.
+
+'Thank you,' said the old lord, 'I'll come and be your librarian if I
+may. Reigning isn't at all in my line.'
+
+Then they went on to Sep's father-in-law, and when he saw how happy they
+all were together he said:
+
+'Bless my beard but I've half a mind to come with you.'
+
+'Come along,' said the Mussel King, 'you shall help me reign if you
+like ... or....'
+
+'No, thank you,' said the other King very quickly, 'I've had enough of
+reigning. My kingdom can buy a President and be a republic if it likes.
+I'm going to catch butterflies.'
+
+And so he does, most happily, up to this very minute.
+
+And Sep and his dear Princess are as happy as they deserve to be. Some
+people say we are all as happy as we deserve to be--but I am not sure.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE WHITE CAT
+
+
+The White Cat lived at the back of a shelf at the darkest end of the
+inside attic which was nearly dark all over. It had lived there for
+years, because one of its white china ears was chipped, so that it was
+no longer a possible ornament for the spare bedroom.
+
+Tavy found it at the climax of a wicked and glorious afternoon. He had
+been left alone. The servants were the only other people in the house.
+He had promised to be good. He had meant to be good. And he had not
+been. He had done everything you can think of. He had walked into the
+duck pond, and not a stitch of his clothes but had had to be changed.
+He had climbed on a hay rick and fallen off it, and had not broken his
+neck, which, as cook told him, he richly deserved to do. He had found a
+mouse in the trap and put it in the kitchen tea-pot, so that when cook
+went to make tea it jumped out at her, and affected her to screams
+followed by tears. Tavy was sorry for this, of course, and said so like
+a man. He had only, he explained, meant to give her a little start. In
+the confusion that followed the mouse, he had eaten all the
+black-currant jam that was put out for kitchen tea, and for this too, he
+apologised handsomely as soon as it was pointed out to him. He had
+broken a pane of the greenhouse with a stone and.... But why pursue the
+painful theme? The last thing he had done was to explore the attic,
+where he was never allowed to go, and to knock down the White Cat from
+its shelf.
+
+The sound of its fall brought the servants. The cat was not broken--only
+its other ear was chipped. Tavy was put to bed. But he got out as soon
+as the servants had gone downstairs, crept up to the attic, secured the
+Cat, and washed it in the bath. So that when mother came back from
+London, Tavy, dancing impatiently at the head of the stairs, in a very
+wet night-gown, flung himself upon her and cried, 'I've been awfully
+naughty, and I'm frightfully sorry, and please may I have the White Cat
+for my very own?'
+
+He was much sorrier than he had expected to be when he saw that mother
+was too tired even to want to know, as she generally did, exactly how
+naughty he had been. She only kissed him, and said:
+
+'I am sorry you've been naughty, my darling. Go back to bed now.
+Good-night.'
+
+Tavy was ashamed to say anything more about the China Cat, so he went
+back to bed. But he took the Cat with him, and talked to it and kissed
+it, and went to sleep with its smooth shiny shoulder against his cheek.
+
+In the days that followed, he was extravagantly good. Being good seemed
+as easy as being bad usually was. This may have been because mother
+seemed so tired and ill; and gentlemen in black coats and high hats came
+to see mother, and after they had gone she used to cry. (These things
+going on in a house sometimes make people good; sometimes they act just
+the other way.) Or it may have been because he had the China Cat to talk
+to. Anyhow, whichever way it was, at the end of the week mother said:
+
+'Tavy, you've been a dear good boy, and a great comfort to me. You must
+have tried very hard to be good.'
+
+It was difficult to say, 'No, I haven't, at least not since the first
+day,' but Tavy got it said, and was hugged for his pains.
+
+'You wanted,' said mother, 'the China Cat. Well, you may have it.'
+
+'For my very own?'
+
+'For your very own. But you must be very careful not to break it. And
+you mustn't give it away. It goes with the house. Your Aunt Jane made me
+promise to keep it in the family. It's very, very old. Don't take it out
+of doors for fear of accidents.'
+
+'I love the White Cat, mother,' said Tavy. 'I love it better'n all my
+toys.'
+
+Then mother told Tavy several things, and that night when he went to bed
+Tavy repeated them all faithfully to the China Cat, who was about six
+inches high and looked very intelligent.
+
+'So you see,' he ended, 'the wicked lawyer's taken nearly all mother's
+money, and we've got to leave our own lovely big White House, and go and
+live in a horrid little house with another house glued on to its side.
+And mother does hate it so.'
+
+'I don't wonder,' said the China Cat very distinctly.
+
+'_What!_' said Tavy, half-way into his night-shirt.
+
+'I said, I don't wonder, Octavius,' said the China Cat, and rose from
+her sitting position, stretched her china legs and waved her white china
+tail.
+
+'You can speak?' said Tavy.
+
+'Can't you see I can?--hear I mean?' said the Cat. 'I belong to you now,
+so I can speak to you. I couldn't before. It wouldn't have been
+manners.'
+
+Tavy, his night-shirt round his neck, sat down on the edge of the bed
+with his mouth open.
+
+'Come, don't look so silly,' said the Cat, taking a walk along the high
+wooden mantelpiece, 'any one would think you didn't _like_ me to talk to
+you.'
+
+'I _love_ you to,' said Tavy recovering himself a little.
+
+'Well then,' said the Cat.
+
+'May I touch you?' Tavy asked timidly.
+
+'Of course! I belong to you. Look out!' The China Cat gathered herself
+together and jumped. Tavy caught her.
+
+It was quite a shock to find when one stroked her that the China Cat,
+though alive, was still china, hard, cold, and smooth to the touch, and
+yet perfectly brisk and absolutely bendable as any flesh and blood cat.
+
+'Dear, dear white pussy,' said Tavy, 'I do love you.'
+
+'And I love you,' purred the Cat, 'otherwise I should never have lowered
+myself to begin a conversation.'
+
+'I wish you were a real cat,' said Tavy.
+
+'I am,' said the Cat. 'Now how shall we amuse ourselves? I suppose you
+don't care for sport--mousing, I mean?'
+
+'I never tried,' said Tavy, 'and I think I rather wouldn't.'
+
+'Very well then, Octavius,' said the Cat. 'I'll take you to the White
+Cat's Castle. Get into bed. Bed makes a good travelling carriage,
+especially when you haven't any other. Shut your eyes.'
+
+Tavy did as he was told. Shut his eyes, but could not keep them shut. He
+opened them a tiny, tiny chink, and sprang up. He was not in bed. He was
+on a couch of soft beast-skin, and the couch stood in a splendid hall,
+whose walls were of gold and ivory. By him stood the White Cat, no
+longer china, but real live cat--and fur--as cats should be.
+
+'Here we are,' she said. 'The journey didn't take long, did it? Now
+we'll have that splendid supper, out of the fairy tale, with the
+invisible hands waiting on us.'
+
+She clapped her paws--paws now as soft as white velvet--and a
+table-cloth floated into the room; then knives and forks and spoons and
+glasses, the table was laid, the dishes drifted in, and they began to
+eat. There happened to be every single thing Tavy liked best to eat.
+After supper there was music and singing, and Tavy, having kissed a
+white, soft, furry forehead, went to bed in a gold four-poster with a
+counterpane of butterflies' wings. He awoke at home. On the mantelpiece
+sat the White Cat, looking as though butter would not melt in her mouth.
+And all her furriness had gone with her voice. She was silent--and
+china.
+
+Tavy spoke to her. But she would not answer. Nor did she speak all day.
+Only at night when he was getting into bed she suddenly mewed,
+stretched, and said:
+
+'Make haste, there's a play acted to-night at my castle.'
+
+Tavy made haste, and was rewarded by another glorious evening in the
+castle of the White Cat.
+
+And so the weeks went on. Days full of an ordinary little boy's joys and
+sorrows, goodnesses and badnesses. Nights spent by a little Prince in
+the Magic Castle of the White Cat.
+
+Then came the day when Tavy's mother spoke to him, and he, very scared
+and serious, told the China Cat what she had said.
+
+'I knew this would happen,' said the Cat. 'It always does. So you're to
+leave your house next week. Well, there's only one way out of the
+difficulty. Draw your sword, Tavy, and cut off my head and tail.'
+
+'And then will you turn into a Princess, and shall I have to marry you?'
+Tavy asked with horror.
+
+'No, dear--no,' said the Cat reassuringly. 'I sha'n't turn into
+anything. But you and mother will turn into happy people. I shall just
+not _be_ any more--for you.'
+
+'Then I won't do it,' said Tavy.
+
+'But you must. Come, draw your sword, like a brave fairy Prince, and cut
+off my head.'
+
+The sword hung above his bed, with the helmet and breast-plate Uncle
+James had given him last Christmas.
+
+'I'm not a fairy Prince,' said the child. 'I'm Tavy--and I love you.'
+
+'You love your mother better,' said the Cat. 'Come cut my head off. The
+story always ends like that. You love mother best. It's for her sake.'
+
+'Yes.' Tavy was trying to think it out. 'Yes, I love mother best. But I
+love _you_. And I won't cut off your head,--no, not even for mother.'
+
+'Then,' said the Cat, 'I must do what I can!'
+
+She stood up, waving her white china tail, and before Tavy could stop
+her she had leapt, not, as before, into his arms, but on to the wide
+hearthstone.
+
+It was all over--the China Cat lay broken inside the high brass fender.
+The sound of the smash brought mother running.
+
+'What is it?' she cried. 'Oh, Tavy--the China Cat!'
+
+'She would do it,' sobbed Tavy. 'She wanted me to cut off her head'n I
+wouldn't.'
+
+'Don't talk nonsense, dear,' said mother sadly. 'That only makes it
+worse. Pick up the pieces.'
+
+'There's only two pieces,' said Tavy. 'Couldn't you stick her together
+again?'
+
+'Why,' said mother, holding the pieces close to the candle. 'She's been
+broken before. And mended.'
+
+'I knew that,' said Tavy, still sobbing. 'Oh, my dear White Cat, oh, oh,
+oh!' The last 'oh' was a howl of anguish.
+
+'Come, crying won't mend her,' said mother. 'Look, there's another piece
+of her, close to the shovel.'
+
+Tavy stooped.
+
+'That's not a piece of cat,' he said, and picked it up.
+
+It was a pale parchment label, tied to a key. Mother held it to the
+candle and read: '_Key of the lock behind the knot in the mantelpiece
+panel in the white parlour._'
+
+'Tavy! I wonder! But ... where did it come from?'
+
+'Out of my White Cat, I s'pose,' said Tavy, his tears stopping. 'Are you
+going to see what's in the mantelpiece panel, mother? Are you? Oh, do
+let me come and see too!'
+
+'You don't deserve,' mother began, and ended,--'Well, put your
+dressing-gown on then.'
+
+They went down the gallery past the pictures and the stuffed birds and
+tables with china on them and downstairs on to the white parlour. But
+they could not see any knot in the mantelpiece panel, because it was all
+painted white. But mother's fingers felt softly all over it, and found a
+round raised spot. It was a knot, sure enough. Then she scraped round it
+with her scissors, till she loosened the knot, and poked it out with the
+scissors point.
+
+'I don't suppose there's any keyhole there really,' she said. But there
+was. And what is more, the key fitted. The panel swung open, and inside
+was a little cupboard with two shelves. What was on the shelves? There
+were old laces and old embroideries, old jewelry and old silver; there
+was money, and there were dusty old papers that Tavy thought most
+uninteresting. But mother did not think them uninteresting. She laughed,
+and cried, or nearly cried, and said:
+
+'Oh, Tavy, this was why the China Cat was to be taken such care of!'
+Then she told him how, a hundred and fifty years before, the Head of the
+House had gone out to fight for the Pretender, and had told his daughter
+to take the greatest care of the China Cat. 'I will send you word of the
+reason by a sure hand,' he said, for they parted on the open square,
+where any spy might have overheard anything. And he had been killed by
+an ambush not ten miles from home,--and his daughter had never known.
+But she had kept the Cat.
+
+'And now it has saved us,' said mother. 'We can stay in the dear old
+house, and there are two other houses that will belong to us too, I
+think. And, oh, Tavy, would you like some pound-cake and ginger-wine,
+dear?'
+
+Tavy did like. And had it.
+
+The China Cat was mended, but it was put in the glass-fronted corner
+cupboard in the drawing-room, because it had saved the House.
+
+Now I dare say you'll think this is all nonsense, and a made-up story.
+Not at all. If it were, how would you account for Tavy's finding, the
+very next night, fast asleep on his pillow, his own white Cat--the furry
+friend that the China Cat used to turn into every evening--the dear
+hostess who had amused him so well in the White Cat's fairy Palace?
+
+It was she, beyond a doubt, and that was why Tavy didn't mind a bit
+about the China Cat being taken from him and kept under glass. You may
+think that it was just any old stray white cat that had come in by
+accident. Tavy knows better. It has the very same tender tone in its
+purr that the magic White Cat had. It will not talk to Tavy, it is true;
+but Tavy can and does talk to it. But the thing that makes it perfectly
+certain that it is the White Cat is that the tips of its two ears are
+missing--just as the China Cat's ears were. If you say that it might
+have lost its ear-tips in battle you are the kind of person who always
+_makes_ difficulties, and you may be quite sure that the kind of
+splendid magics that happened to Tavy will never happen to _you_.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+BELINDA AND BELLAMANT; OR THE BELLS OF CARRILLON-LAND
+
+
+There is a certain country where a king is never allowed to reign while
+a queen can be found. They like queens much better than kings in that
+country. I can't think why. If some one has tried to teach you a little
+history, you will perhaps think that this is the Salic law. But it
+isn't. In the biggest city of that odd country there is a great
+bell-tower (higher than the clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament,
+where they put M.P.'s who forget their manners). This bell-tower had
+seven bells in it, very sweet-toned splendid bells, made expressly to
+ring on the joyful occasions when a princess was born who would be queen
+some day. And the great tower was built expressly for the bells to ring
+in. So you see what a lot they thought of queens in that country. Now in
+all the bells there are bell-people--it is their voices that you hear
+when the bells ring. All that about its being the clapper of the bell is
+mere nonsense, and would hardly deceive a child. I don't know why people
+say such things. Most Bell-people are very energetic busy folk, who love
+the sound of their own voices, and hate being idle, and when nearly two
+hundred years had gone by, and no princesses had been born, they got
+tired of living in bells that were never rung. So they slipped out of
+the belfry one fine frosty night, and left the big beautiful bells
+empty, and went off to find other homes. One of them went to live in a
+dinner-bell, and one in a school-bell, and the rest all found
+homes--they did not mind where--just anywhere, in fact, where they could
+find any Bell-person kind enough to give them board and lodging. And
+every one was surprised at the increased loudness in the voices of these
+hospitable bells. For, of course, the Bell-people from the belfry did
+their best to help in the housework as polite guests should, and always
+added their voices to those of their hosts on all occasions when
+bell-talk was called for. And the seven big beautiful bells in the
+belfry were left hollow and dark and quite empty, except for the
+clappers who did not care about the comforts of a home.
+
+Now of course a good house does not remain empty long, especially when
+there is no rent to pay, and in a very short time the seven bells all
+had tenants, and they were all the kind of folk that no respectable
+Bell-people would care to be acquainted with.
+
+They had been turned out of other bells--cracked bells and broken bells,
+the bells of horses that had been lost in snowstorms or of ships that
+had gone down at sea. They hated work, and they were a glum, silent,
+disagreeable people, but as far as they could be pleased about anything
+they were pleased to live in bells that were never rung, in houses where
+there was nothing to do. They sat hunched up under the black domes of
+their houses, dressed in darkness and cobwebs, and their only pleasure
+was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy
+in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even
+to each other, and in the whispers that good Bell-people talk in among
+themselves, and that no one can hear but the bat whose ear for music is
+very fine and who has himself a particularly high voice, and when they
+did speak they quarrelled.
+
+And when at last the bells _were_ rung for the birth of a Princess the
+wicked Bell-people were furious. Of course they had to _ring_--a bell
+can't help that when the rope is pulled--but their voices were so ugly
+that people were quite shocked.
+
+'What poor taste our ancestors must have had,' they said, 'to think
+these were good bells!'
+
+(You remember the bells had not rung for nearly two hundred years.)
+
+'Dear me,' said the King to the Queen, 'what odd ideas people had in the
+old days. I always understood that these bells had beautiful voices.'
+
+'They're quite hideous,' said the Queen. And so they were. Now that
+night the lazy Bell-folk came down out of the belfry full of anger
+against the Princess whose birth had disturbed their idleness. There is
+no anger like that of a lazy person who is made to work against his
+will.
+
+And they crept out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in
+their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where
+every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the
+mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they
+reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin
+coverlet, and the oldest and hoarsest and laziest said:
+
+'She shall grow uglier every day, except Sundays, and every Sunday she
+shall be seven times prettier than the Sunday before.'
+
+'Why not uglier every day, and a double dose on Sunday?' asked the
+youngest and spitefullest of the wicked Bell-people.
+
+'Because there's no rule without an exception,' said the eldest and
+hoarsest and laziest, 'and she'll feel it all the more if she's pretty
+once a week. And,' he added, 'this shall go on till she finds a bell
+that doesn't ring, and can't ring, and never will ring, and wasn't made
+to ring.'
+
+'Why not for ever?' asked the young and spiteful.
+
+'Nothing goes on for ever,' said the eldest Bell-person, 'not even
+ill-luck. And we have to leave her a way out. It doesn't matter. She'll
+never know what it is. Let alone finding it.'
+
+Then they went back to the belfry and rearranged as well as they could
+the comfortable web-and-owls' nest furniture of their houses which had
+all been shaken up and disarranged by that absurd ringing of bells at
+the birth of a Princess that nobody could really be pleased about.
+
+When the Princess was two weeks old the King said to the Queen:
+
+'My love--the Princess is not so handsome as I thought she was.'
+
+'Nonsense, Henry,' said the Queen, 'the light's not good, that's all.'
+
+Next day--it was Sunday--the King pulled back the lace curtains of the
+cradle and said:
+
+'The light's good enough now--and you see she's----'
+
+He stopped.
+
+'It _must_ have been the light,' he said, 'she looks all right to-day.'
+
+'Of course she does, a precious,' said the Queen.
+
+But on Monday morning His Majesty was quite sure really that the
+Princess was rather plain, for a Princess. And when Sunday came, and the
+Princess had on her best robe and the cap with the little white ribbons
+in the frill, he rubbed his nose and said there was no doubt dress did
+make a great deal of difference. For the Princess was now as pretty as a
+new daisy.
+
+The Princess was several years old before her mother could be got to see
+that it really was better for the child to wear plain clothes and a veil
+on week days. On Sundays, of course she could wear her best frock and a
+clean crown just like anybody else.
+
+Of course nobody ever told the Princess how ugly she was. She wore a
+veil on week-days, and so did every one else in the palace, and she was
+never allowed to look in the glass except on Sundays, so that she had no
+idea that she was not as pretty all the week as she was on the first day
+of it. She grew up therefore quite contented. But the parents were in
+despair.
+
+'Because,' said King Henry, 'it's high time she was married. We ought to
+choose a king to rule the realm--I have always looked forward to her
+marrying at twenty-one--and to our retiring on a modest competence to
+some nice little place in the country where we could have a few pigs.'
+
+'And a cow,' said the Queen, wiping her eyes.
+
+'And a pony and trap,' said the King.
+
+'And hens,' said the Queen, 'yes. And now it can never, never be. Look
+at the child! I just ask you! Look at her!'
+
+'_No_,' said the King firmly, 'I haven't done that since she was ten,
+except on Sundays.'
+
+'Couldn't we get a prince to agree to a "Sundays only" marriage--not let
+him see her during the week?'
+
+'Such an unusual arrangement,' said the King, 'would involve very
+awkward explanations, and I can't think of any except the true ones,
+which would be quite impossible to give. You see, we should want a
+first-class prince, and no really high-toned Highness would take a wife
+on those terms.'
+
+'It's a thoroughly comfortable kingdom,' said the Queen doubtfully. 'The
+young man would be handsomely provided for for life.'
+
+'I couldn't marry Belinda to a time-server or a place-worshipper,' said
+the King decidedly.
+
+Meanwhile the Princess had taken the matter into her own hands. She had
+fallen in love.
+
+You know, of course, that a handsome book is sent out every year to all
+the kings who have daughters to marry. It is rather like the illustrated
+catalogues of Liberty's or Peter Robinson's, only instead of
+illustrations showing furniture or ladies' cloaks and dresses, the
+pictures are all of princes who are of an age to be married, and are
+looking out for suitable wives. The book is called the 'Royal Match
+Catalogue Illustrated,'--and besides the pictures of the princes it has
+little printed bits about their incomes, accomplishments, prospects, and
+tempers, and relations.
+
+Now the Princess saw this book--which is never shown to princesses, but
+only to their parents--it was carelessly left lying on the round table
+in the parlour. She looked all through it, and she hated each prince
+more than the one before till she came to the very end, and on the last
+page of all, screwed away in a corner, was the picture of a prince who
+was quite as good-looking as a prince has any call to be.
+
+'I like _you_,' said Belinda softly. Then she read the little bit of
+print underneath.
+
+_Prince Bellamant, aged twenty-four. Wants Princess who doesn't object
+to a christening curse. Nature of curse only revealed in the strictest
+confidence. Good tempered. Comfortably off. Quiet habits. No relations._
+
+'Poor dear,' said the Princess. 'I wonder what the curse is! I'm sure
+_I_ shouldn't mind!'
+
+The blue dusk of evening was deepening in the garden outside. The
+Princess rang for the lamp and went to draw the curtain. There was a
+rustle and a faint high squeak--and something black flopped on to the
+floor and fluttered there.
+
+'Oh--it's a bat,' cried the Princess, as the lamp came in. 'I don't like
+bats.'
+
+'Let me fetch a dust-pan and brush and sweep the nasty thing away,' said
+the parlourmaid.
+
+'No, no,' said Belinda, 'it's hurt, poor dear,' and though she hated
+bats she picked it up. It was horribly cold to touch, one wing dragged
+loosely. 'You can go, Jane,' said the Princess to the parlourmaid.
+
+Then she got a big velvet-covered box that had had chocolate in it, and
+put some cotton wool in it and said to the Bat--
+
+'You poor dear, is that comfortable?' and the Bat said:
+
+'Quite, thanks.'
+
+'Good gracious,' said the Princess jumping. 'I didn't know bats could
+talk.'
+
+'Every one can talk,' said the Bat, 'but not every one can hear other
+people talking. You have a fine ear as well as a fine heart.'
+
+'Will your wing ever get well?' asked the Princess.
+
+'I hope so,' said the Bat. 'But let's talk about you. Do you know why you
+wear a veil every day except Sundays?'
+
+'Doesn't everybody?' asked Belinda.
+
+'Only here in the palace,' said the Bat, 'that's on your account.'
+
+'But why?' asked the Princess.
+
+'Look in the glass and you'll know.'
+
+'But it's wicked to look in the glass except on Sundays--and besides
+they're all put away,' said the Princess.
+
+'If I were you,' said the Bat, 'I should go up into the attic where the
+youngest kitchenmaid sleeps. Feel between the thatch and the wall just
+above her pillow, and you'll find a little round looking-glass. But come
+back here before you look at it.'
+
+The Princess did exactly what the Bat told her to do, and when she had
+come back into the parlour and shut the door she looked in the little
+round glass that the youngest kitchen-maid's sweetheart had given her.
+And when she saw her ugly, ugly, ugly face--for you must remember she
+had been growing uglier every day since she was born--she screamed and
+then she said:
+
+'That's not me, it's a horrid picture.'
+
+'It _is_ you, though,' said the Bat firmly but kindly; 'and now you see
+why you wear a veil all the week--and only look in the glass on Sunday.'
+
+'But why,' asked the Princess in tears, 'why don't I look like that in
+the Sunday looking-glasses?'
+
+'Because you aren't like that on Sundays,' the Bat replied. 'Come,' it
+went on, 'stop crying. I didn't tell you the dread secret of your
+ugliness just to make you cry--but because I know the way for you to be
+as pretty all the week as you are on Sundays, and since you've been so
+kind to me I'll tell you. Sit down close beside me, it fatigues me to
+speak loud.'
+
+The Princess did, and listened through her veil and her tears, while the
+Bat told her all that I began this story by telling you.
+
+'My great-great-great-great-grandfather heard the tale years ago,' he
+said, 'up in the dark, dusty, beautiful, comfortable, cobwebby belfry,
+and I have heard scraps of it myself when the evil Bell-people were
+quarrelling, or talking in their sleep, lazy things!'
+
+'It's very good of you to tell me all this,' said Belinda, 'but what am
+I to do?'
+
+'You must find the bell that doesn't ring, and can't ring, and never
+will ring, and wasn't made to ring.'
+
+'If I were a prince,' said the Princess, 'I could go out and seek my
+fortune.'
+
+'Princesses have fortunes as well as princes,' said the Bat.
+
+'But father and mother would never let me go and look for mine.'
+
+'Think!' said the Bat, 'perhaps you'll find a way.'
+
+So Belinda thought and thought. And at last she got the book that had
+the portraits of eligible princes in it, and she wrote to the prince who
+had the christening curse--and this is what she said:
+
+    'Princess Belinda of Carrillon-land is not afraid of christening
+    curses. If Prince Bellamant would like to marry her he had better
+    apply to her Royal Father in the usual way.
+
+    '_P.S._--I have seen your portrait.'
+
+When the Prince got this letter he was very pleased, and wrote at once
+for Princess Belinda's likeness. Of course they sent him a picture of
+her Sunday face, which was the most beautiful face in the world. As soon
+as he saw it he knew that this was not only the most beautiful face in
+the world, but the dearest, so he wrote to her father by the next
+post--applying for her hand in the usual way and enclosing the most
+respectable references. The King told the Princess.
+
+'Come,' said he, 'what do you say to this young man?'
+
+And the Princess, of course, said, 'Yes, please.'
+
+So the wedding-day was fixed for the first Sunday in June.
+
+But when the Prince arrived with all his glorious following of courtiers
+and men-at-arms, with two pink peacocks and a crown-case full of
+diamonds for his bride, he absolutely refused to be married on a Sunday.
+Nor would he give any reason for his refusal. And then the King lost his
+temper and broke off the match, and the Prince went away.
+
+But he did not go very far. That night he bribed a page-boy to show him
+which was the Princess's room, and he climbed up by the jasmine through
+the dark rose-scented night, and tapped at the window.
+
+'Who's dhere?' said the Princess inside in the dark.
+
+'Me,' said the Prince in the dark outside.
+
+'Thed id wasnd't true?' said the Princess. 'They toad be you'd ridded
+away.'
+
+'What a cold you've got, my Princess,' said the Prince hanging on by the
+jasmine boughs.
+
+'It's not a cold,' sniffed the Princess.
+
+'Then ... oh you dear ... were you crying because you thought I'd gone?'
+he said.
+
+'I suppose so,' said she.
+
+He said, 'You dear!' again, and kissed her hands.
+
+'_Why_ wouldn't you be married on a Sunday?' she asked.
+
+'It's the curse, dearest,' he explained, 'I couldn't tell any one but
+you. The fact is Malevola wasn't asked to my christening so she doomed
+me to be ... well, she said "moderately good-looking all the week, and
+too ugly for words on Sundays." So you see! You _will_ be married on a
+week-day, won't you?'
+
+'But I can't,' said the Princess, 'because I've got a curse too--only
+I'm ugly all the week and pretty on Sundays.'
+
+'How extremely tiresome,' said the Prince, 'but can't you be cured?'
+
+'Oh yes,' said the Princess, and told him how. 'And you,' she asked, 'is
+yours quite incurable?'
+
+'Not at all,' he answered, 'I've only got to stay under water for five
+minutes and the spell will be broken. But you see, beloved, the
+difficulty is that I can't do it. I've practised regularly, from a boy,
+in the sea, and in the swimming bath, and even in my wash-hand
+basin--hours at a time I've practised--but I never can keep under more
+than two minutes.'
+
+'Oh dear,' said the Princess, 'this is dreadful.'
+
+'It is rather trying,' the Prince answered.
+
+'You're sure you like me,' she asked suddenly, 'now you know that I'm
+only pretty once a week?'
+
+'I'd die for you,' said he.
+
+'Then I'll tell you what. Send all your courtiers away, and take a
+situation as under-gardener here--I know we want one. And then every
+night I'll climb down the jasmine and we'll go out together and seek our
+fortune. I'm sure we shall find it.'
+
+And they did go out. The very next night, and the next, and the next,
+and the next, and the next, and the next. And they did not find their
+fortunes, but they got fonder and fonder of each other. They could not
+see each other's faces, but they held hands as they went along through
+the dark.
+
+And on the seventh night, as they passed by a house that showed chinks
+of light through its shutters, they heard a bell being rung outside for
+supper, a bell with a very loud and beautiful voice. But instead of
+saying--
+
+'Supper's ready,' as any one would have expected, the bell was saying--
+
+    Ding dong dell!
+    _I_ could tell
+    Where you ought to go
+    To break the spell.
+
+Then some one left off ringing the bell, so of course it couldn't say
+any more. So the two went on. A little way down the road a cow-bell
+tinkled behind the wet hedge of the lane. And it said--not, 'Here I am,
+quite safe,' as a cow-bell should, but--
+
+    Ding dong dell
+    All will be well
+    If you...
+
+Then the cow stopped walking and began to eat, so the bell couldn't say
+any more. The Prince and Princess went on, and you will not be surprised
+to hear that they heard the voices of five more bells that night. The
+next was a school-bell. The schoolmaster's little boy thought it would
+be fun to ring it very late at night--but his father came and caught him
+before the bell could say any more than--
+
+    Ding a dong dell
+    You can break up the spell
+    By taking...
+
+So that was no good.
+
+Then there were the three bells that were the sign over the door of an
+inn where people were happily dancing to a fiddle, because there was a
+wedding. These bells said:
+
+    We are the
+    Merry three
+    Bells, bells, bells.
+    You are two
+    To undo
+    Spells, spells, spells...
+
+Then the wind who was swinging the bells suddenly thought of an
+appointment he had made with a pine forest, to get up an entertaining
+imitation of sea-waves for the benefit of the forest nymphs who had
+never been to the seaside, and he went off--so, of course, the bells
+couldn't ring any more, and the Prince and Princess went on down the
+dark road.
+
+There was a cottage and the Princess pulled her veil closely over her
+face, for yellow light streamed from its open door--and it was a
+Wednesday.
+
+Inside a little boy was sitting on the floor--quite a little boy--he
+ought to have been in bed long before, and I don't know why he wasn't.
+And he was ringing a little tinkling bell that had dropped off a sleigh.
+
+And this little bell said:
+
+    Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, I'm a little sleigh-bell,
+    But I know what I know, and I'll tell, tell, tell.
+    Find the Enchanter of the Ringing Well,
+    He will show you how to break the spell, spell, spell.
+    Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, I'm a little sleigh-bell,
+    But I know what I know....
+
+And so on, over and over, again and again, because the little boy was
+quite contented to go on shaking his sleigh-bell for ever and ever.
+
+'So now we know,' said the Prince, 'isn't that glorious?'
+
+'Yes, very, but where's the Enchanter of the Ringing Well?' said the
+Princess doubtfully.
+
+'Oh, I've got _his_ address in my pocket-book,' said the Prince. 'He's
+my god-father. He was one of the references I gave your father.'
+
+So the next night the Prince brought a horse to the garden, and he and
+the Princess mounted, and rode, and rode, and rode, and in the grey dawn
+they came to Wonderwood, and in the very middle of that the Magician's
+Palace stands.
+
+The Princess did not like to call on a perfect stranger so very early in
+the morning, so they decided to wait a little and look about them.
+
+The castle was very beautiful, decorated with a conventional design of
+bells and bell ropes, carved in white stone.
+
+Luxuriant plants of American bell-vine covered the drawbridge and
+portcullis. On a green lawn in front of the castle was a well, with a
+curious bell-shaped covering suspended over it. The lovers leaned over
+the mossy fern-grown wall of the well, and, looking down, they could see
+that the narrowness of the well only lasted for a few feet, and below
+that it spread into a cavern where water lay in a big pool.
+
+'What cheer?' said a pleasant voice behind them. It was the Enchanter,
+an early riser, like Darwin was, and all other great scientific men.
+
+They told him what cheer.
+
+'But,' Prince Bellamant ended, 'it's really no use. I can't keep under
+water more than two minutes however much I try. And my precious
+Belinda's not likely to find any silly old bell that doesn't ring, and
+can't ring, and never will ring, and was never made to ring.'
+
+'Ho, ho,' laughed the Enchanter with the soft full laughter of old age.
+'You've come to the right shop. Who told you?'
+
+'The bells,' said Belinda.
+
+'Ah, yes.' The old man frowned kindly upon them. 'You must be very fond
+of each other?'
+
+'We are,' said the two together.
+
+'Yes,' the Enchanter answered, 'because only true lovers can hear the
+true speech of the bells, and then only when they're together. Well,
+there's the bell!'
+
+He pointed to the covering of the well, went forward, and touched some
+lever or spring. The covering swung out from above the well, and hung
+over the grass grey with the dew of dawn.
+
+'_That?_' said Bellamant.
+
+'That,' said his god-father. 'It doesn't ring, and it can't ring, and it
+never will ring, and it was never made to ring. Get into it.'
+
+'Eh?' said Bellamant forgetting his manners.
+
+The old man took a hand of each and led them under the bell.
+
+They looked up. It had windows of thick glass, and high seats about
+four feet from its edge, running all round inside.
+
+'Take your seats,' said the Enchanter.
+
+Bellamant lifted his Princess to the bench and leaped up beside her.
+
+'Now,' said the old man, 'sit still, hold each other's hands, and for
+your lives don't move.'
+
+He went away, and next moment they felt the bell swing in the air. It
+swung round till once more it was over the well, and then it went down,
+down, down.
+
+'I'm not afraid, with you,' said Belinda, because she was, dreadfully.
+
+Down went the bell. The glass windows leaped into light, looking through
+them the two could see blurred glories of lamps in the side of the cave,
+magic lamps, or perhaps merely electric, which, curiously enough have
+ceased to seem magic to us nowadays. Then with a plop the lower edge of
+the bell met the water, the water rose inside it, a little, then not any
+more. And the bell went down, down, and above their heads the green
+water lapped against the windows of the bell.
+
+'You're under water--if we stay five minutes,' Belinda whispered.
+
+'Yes, dear,' said Bellamant, and pulled out his ruby-studded
+chronometer.
+
+'It's five minutes for you, but oh!' cried Belinda, 'it's _now_ for me.
+For I've found the bell that doesn't ring, and can't ring, and never
+will ring, and wasn't made to ring. Oh Bellamant dearest, it's Thursday.
+_Have_ I got my Sunday face?'
+
+She tore away her veil, and his eyes, fixed upon her face, could not
+leave it.
+
+'Oh dream of all the world's delight,' he murmured, 'how beautiful you
+are.'
+
+Neither spoke again till a sudden little shock told them that the bell
+was moving up again.
+
+'Nonsense,' said Bellamant, 'it's not five minutes.'
+
+But when they looked at the ruby-studded chronometer, it was nearly
+three-quarters of an hour. But then, of course, the well was enchanted!
+
+'Magic? Nonsense,' said the old man when they hung about him with thanks
+and pretty words. 'It's only a diving-bell. My own invention.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So they went home and were married, and the Princess did not wear a veil
+at the wedding. She said she had had enough veils to last her time.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And a year and a day after that a little daughter was born to them.
+
+'Now sweetheart,' said King Bellamant--he was king now because the old
+king and queen had retired from the business, and were keeping pigs and
+hens in the country as they had always planned to do--'dear sweetheart
+and life's love, I am going to ring the bells with my own hands, to show
+how glad I am for you, and for the child, and for our good life
+together.'
+
+So he went out. It was very dark, because the baby princess had chosen
+to be born at midnight.
+
+The King went out to the belfry, that stood in the great, bare, quiet,
+moonlit square, and he opened the door. The furry-pussy bell-ropes, like
+huge caterpillars, hung on the first loft. The King began to climb the
+curly-wurly stone stair. And as he went up he heard a noise, the
+strangest noises, stamping and rustling and deep breathings.
+
+He stood still in the ringers' loft where the pussy-furry caterpillary
+bell-robes hung, and from the belfry above he heard the noise of strong
+fighting, and mixed with it the sound of voices angry and desperate, but
+with a noble note that thrilled the soul of the hearer like the sound of
+the trumpet in battle. And the voices cried:
+
+    Down, down--away, away,
+    When good has come ill may not stay,
+    Out, out, into the night,
+    The belfry bells are ours by right!
+
+And the words broke and joined again, like water when it flows against
+the piers of a bridge. 'Down, down----.' 'Ill may not stay----.' 'Good
+has come----.' 'Away, away----.' And the joining came like the sound of
+the river that flows free again.
+
+    Out, out, into the night,
+    The belfry bells are ours by right!
+
+And then, as King Bellamant stood there, thrilled and yet, as it were,
+turned to stone, by the magic of this conflict that raged above him,
+there came a sweeping rush down the belfry ladder. The lantern he
+carried showed him a rout of little, dark, evil people, clothed in dust
+and cobwebs, that scurried down the wooden steps gnashing their teeth
+and growling in the bitterness of a deserved defeat. They passed and
+there was silence. Then the King flew from rope to rope pulling lustily,
+and from above, the bells answered in their own clear beautiful
+voices--because the good Bell-folk had driven out the usurpers and had
+come to their own again.
+
+    Ring-a-ring-a-ring-a-ring-a-ring! Ring, bell!
+    A little baby comes on earth to dwell. Ring, bell!
+    Sound, bell! Sound! Swell!
+    Ring for joy and wish her well!
+    May her life tell
+    No tale of ill-spell!
+    Ring, bell! Joy, bell! Love, bell! Ring!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'But I don't see,' said King Bellamant, when he had told Queen Belinda
+all about it, 'how it was that I came to hear them. The Enchanter of the
+Ringing Well said that only lovers could hear what the bells had to say,
+and then only when they were together.'
+
+'You silly dear boy,' said Queen Belinda, cuddling the baby princess
+close under her chin, 'we _are_ lovers, aren't we? And you don't suppose
+I wasn't with you when you went to ring the bells for our baby--my heart
+and soul anyway--all of me that matters!'
+
+'Yes,' said the King, 'of course you were. That accounts!'
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+JUSTNOWLAND
+
+
+'Auntie! No, no, no! I will be good. Oh, I will!' The little weak voice
+came from the other side of the locked attic door.
+
+'You should have thought of that before,' said the strong, sharp voice
+outside.
+
+'I didn't mean to be naughty. I didn't, truly.'
+
+'It's not what you mean, miss, it's what you do. I'll teach you not to
+mean, my lady.'
+
+The bitter irony of the last words dried the child's tears. 'Very well,
+then,' she screamed, 'I won't be good; I won't try to be good. I thought
+you'd like your nasty old garden weeded. I only did it to please you.
+How was I to know it was turnips? It looked just like weeds.' Then came
+a pause, then another shriek. 'Oh, Auntie, don't! Oh, let me out--let me
+out!'
+
+'I'll not let you out till I've broken your spirit, my girl; you may
+rely on that.'
+
+The sharp voice stopped abruptly on a high note; determined feet in
+strong boots sounded on the stairs--fainter, fainter; a door slammed
+below with a dreadful definiteness, and Elsie was left alone, to wonder
+how soon her spirit would break--for at no less a price, it appeared,
+could freedom be bought.
+
+The outlook seemed hopeless. The martyrs and heroines, with whom Elsie
+usually identified herself, _their_ spirit had never been broken; not
+chains nor the rack nor the fiery stake itself had even weakened them.
+Imprisonment in an attic would to them have been luxury compared with
+the boiling oil and the smoking faggots and all the intimate cruelties
+of mysterious instruments of steel and leather, in cold dungeons, lit
+only by the dull flare of torches and the bright, watchful eyes of
+inquisitors.
+
+A month in the house of 'Auntie' self-styled, and really only an
+unrelated Mrs. Staines, paid to take care of the child, had held but one
+interest--Foxe's Book of Martyrs. It was a horrible book--the thick
+oleographs, their guarding sheets of tissue paper sticking to the prints
+like bandages to a wound.... Elsie knew all about wounds: she had had
+one herself. Only a scalded hand, it is true, but a wound is a wound,
+all the world over. It was a book that made you afraid to go to bed; but
+it was a book you could not help reading. And now it seemed as though it
+might at last help, and not merely sicken and terrify. But the help was
+frail, and broke almost instantly on the thought--'_They_ were brave
+because they were good: how can I be brave when there's nothing to be
+brave about except me not knowing the difference between turnips and
+weeds?'
+
+She sank down, a huddled black bunch on the bare attic floor, and called
+wildly to some one who could not answer her. Her frock was black because
+the one who always used to answer could not answer any more. And her
+father was in India, where you cannot answer, or even hear, your little
+girl, however much she cries in England.
+
+'I won't cry,' said Elsie, sobbing as violently as ever. 'I can be
+brave, even if I'm not a saint but only a turnip-mistaker. I'll be a
+Bastille prisoner, and tame a mouse!' She dried her eyes, though the
+bosom of the black frock still heaved like the sea after a storm, and
+looked about for a mouse to tame. One could not begin too soon. But
+unfortunately there seemed to be no mouse at liberty just then. There
+were mouse-holes right enough, all round the wainscot, and in the broad,
+time-worn boards of the old floor. But never a mouse.
+
+'Mouse, mouse!' Elsie called softly. 'Mousie, mousie, come and be
+tamed!'
+
+Not a mouse replied.
+
+The attic was perfectly empty and dreadfully clean. The other attic,
+Elsie knew, had lots of interesting things in it--old furniture and
+saddles, and sacks of seed potatoes,--but in this attic nothing. Not so
+much as a bit of string on the floor that one could make knots in, or
+twist round one's finger till it made the red ridges that are so
+interesting to look at afterwards; not even a piece of paper in the
+draughty, cold fireplace that one could make paper boats of, or prick
+letters in with a pin or the tag of one's shoe-laces.
+
+As she stooped to see whether under the grate some old match-box or bit
+of twig might have escaped the broom, she saw suddenly what she had
+wanted most--a mouse. It was lying on its side. She put out her hand
+very slowly and gently, and whispered in her softest tones, 'Wake up,
+Mousie, wake up, and come and be tamed.' But the mouse never moved. And
+when she took it in her hand it was cold.
+
+'Oh,' she moaned, 'you're dead, and now I can never tame you'; and she
+sat on the cold hearth and cried again, with the dead mouse in her lap.
+
+'Don't cry,' said somebody. 'I'll find you something to tame--if you
+really want it.'
+
+Elsie started and saw the head of a black bird peering at her through
+the square opening that leads to the chimney. The edges of him looked
+ragged and rainbow-coloured, but that was because she saw him through
+tears. To a tearless eye he was black and very smooth and sleek.
+
+'Oh!' she said, and nothing more.
+
+'Quite so,' said the bird politely. 'You are surprised to hear me speak,
+but your surprise will be, of course, much less when I tell you that I
+am really a Prime Minister condemned by an Enchanter to wear the form of
+a crow till ... till I can get rid of it.'
+
+'Oh!' said Elsie.
+
+'Yes, indeed,' said the Crow, and suddenly grew smaller till he could
+come comfortably through the square opening. He did this, perched on the
+top bar, and hopped to the floor. And there he got bigger and bigger,
+and bigger and bigger and bigger. Elsie had scrambled to her feet, and
+then a black little girl of eight and of the usual size stood face to
+face with a crow as big as a man, and no doubt as old. She found words
+then.
+
+'Oh, don't!' she cried. 'Don't get any bigger. I can't bear it.'
+
+'_I_ can't _do_ it,' said the Crow kindly, 'so that's all right. I
+thought you'd better get used to seeing rather large crows before I take
+you to Crownowland. We are all life-size there.'
+
+'But a crow's life-size isn't a man's life-size,' Elsie managed to say.
+
+'Oh yes, it is--when it's an enchanted Crow,' the bird replied. 'That
+makes all the difference. Now you were saying you wanted to tame
+something. If you'll come with me to Crownowland I'll show you something
+worth taming.'
+
+'Is Crow-what's-its-name a nice place?' Elsie asked cautiously. She was,
+somehow, not so very frightened now.
+
+'Very,' said the Crow.
+
+'Then perhaps I shall like it so much I sha'n't want to be taming
+things.'
+
+'Oh yes, you will, when you know how much depends on it.'
+
+'But I shouldn't like,' said Elsie, 'to go up the chimney. This isn't my
+best frock, of course, but still....'
+
+'Quite so,' said the Crow. 'I only came that way for fun, and because I
+can fly. You shall go in by the chief gate of the kingdom, like a lady.
+Do come.'
+
+But Elsie still hesitated. 'What sort of thing is it you want me to
+tame?' she said doubtfully.
+
+The enormous crow hesitated. 'A--a sort of lizard,' it said at last.
+'And if you can only tame it so that it will do what you tell it to,
+you'll save the whole kingdom, and we'll put up a statue to you; but not
+in the People's Park, unless they wish it,' the bird added mysteriously.
+
+'I should like to save a kingdom,' said Elsie, 'and I like lizards. I've
+seen lots of them in India.'
+
+'Then you'll come?' said the Crow.
+
+'Yes. But how do we go?'
+
+'There are only two doors out of this world into another,' said the
+Crow. 'I'll take you through the nearest. Allow me!' It put its wing
+round her so that her face nestled against the black softness of the
+under-wing feathers. It was warm and dark and sleepy there, and very
+comfortable. For a moment she seemed to swim easily in a soft sea of
+dreams. Then, with a little shock, she found herself standing on a
+marble terrace, looking out over a city far more beautiful and
+wonderful than she had ever seen or imagined. The great man-sized Crow
+was by her side.
+
+'Now,' it said, pointing with the longest of its long black
+wing-feathers, 'you see this beautiful city?'
+
+'Yes,' said Elsie, 'of course I do.'
+
+'Well ... I hardly like to tell you the story,' said the Crow, 'but it's
+a long time ago, and I hope you won't think the worse of us--because
+we're really very sorry.'
+
+'If you're really sorry,' said Elsie primly, 'of course it's all right.'
+
+'Unfortunately it isn't,' said the Crow. 'You see the great square down
+there?'
+
+Elsie looked down on a square of green trees, broken a little towards
+the middle.
+
+'Well, that's where the ... where _it_ is--what you've got to tame, you
+know.'
+
+'But what did you do that was wrong?'
+
+'We were unkind,' said the Crow slowly, 'and unjust, and ungenerous. We
+had servants and workpeople doing everything for us; we had nothing to
+do _but_ be kind. And we weren't.'
+
+'Dear me,' said Elsie feebly.
+
+'We had several warnings,' said the Crow. 'There was an old parchment,
+and it said just how you ought to behave and all that. But we didn't
+care what it said. I was Court Magician as well as Prime Minister, and I
+ought to have known better, but I didn't. We all wore frock-coats and
+high hats then,' he added sadly.
+
+'Go on,' said Elsie, her eyes wandering from one beautiful building to
+another of the many that nestled among the trees of the city.
+
+'And the old parchment said that if we didn't behave well our bodies
+would grow like our souls. But we didn't think so. And then all in a
+minute they _did_--and we were crows, and our bodies were as black as
+our souls. Our souls are quite white now,' it added reassuringly.
+
+'But what was _the_ dreadful thing you'd done?'
+
+'We'd been unkind to the people who worked for us--not given them enough
+food or clothes or fire, and at last we took away even their play. There
+was a big park that the people played in, and we built a wall round it
+and took it for ourselves, and the King was going to set a statue of
+himself up in the middle. And then before we could begin to enjoy it we
+were turned into big black crows; and the working people into big white
+pigeons--and _they_ can go where they like, but we have to stay here
+till we've tamed the.... We never can go into the park, until we've
+settled the thing that guards it. And that thing's a big big lizard--in
+fact ... it's a _dragon_!'
+
+'_Oh!_' cried Elsie; but she was not as frightened as the Crow seemed to
+expect. Because every now and then she had felt sure that she was really
+safe in her own bed, and that this was a dream. It was not a dream, but
+the belief that it was made her very brave, and she felt quite sure that
+she could settle a dragon, if necessary--a dream dragon, that is. And
+the rest of the time she thought about Foxe's Book of Martyrs and what a
+heroine she now had the chance to be.
+
+'You want me to kill it?' she asked.
+
+'Oh no! To tame it,' said the Crow.
+
+'We've tried all sorts of means--long whips, like people tame horses
+with, and red-hot bars, such as lion-tamers use--and it's all been
+perfectly useless; and there the dragon lives, and will live till some
+one can tame him and get him to follow them like a tame fawn, and eat
+out of their hand.'
+
+'What does the dragon _like_ to eat?' Elsie asked.
+
+'_Crows_,' replied the other in an uncomfortable whisper. 'At least
+_I've_ never known it eat anything else!'
+
+'Am I to try to tame it _now_?' Elsie asked.
+
+'Oh dear no,' said the Crow. 'We'll have a banquet in your honour, and
+you shall have tea with the Princess.'
+
+'How do you know who is a princess and who's not, if you're all crows?'
+Elsie cried.
+
+'How do you know one human being from another?' the Crow replied.
+'Besides ... Come on to the Palace.'
+
+It led her along the terrace, and down some marble steps to a small
+arched door. 'The tradesmen's entrance,' it explained. 'Excuse it--the
+courtiers are crowding in by the front door.' Then through long
+corridors and passages they went, and at last into the throne-room. Many
+crows stood about in respectful attitudes. On the golden throne, leaning
+a gloomy head upon the first joint of his right wing, the Sovereign of
+Crownowland was musing dejectedly. A little girl of about Elsie's age
+sat on the steps of the throne nursing a handsome doll.
+
+'Who is the little girl?' Elsie asked.
+
+'_Curtsey!_ That's the Princess,' the Prime Minister Crow whispered; and
+Elsie made the best curtsey she could think of in such a hurry. 'She
+wasn't wicked enough to be turned into a crow, or poor enough to be
+turned into a pigeon, so she remains a dear little girl, just as she
+always was.'
+
+The Princess dropped her doll and ran down the steps of the throne to
+meet Elsie.
+
+'You dear!' she said. 'You've come to play with me, haven't you? All
+the little girls I used to play with have turned into crows, and their
+beaks are _so_ awkward at doll's tea-parties, and wings are no good to
+nurse dollies with. Let's have a doll's tea-party _now_, shall we?'
+
+'May we?' Elsie looked at the Crow King, who nodded his head hopelessly.
+So, hand in hand, they went.
+
+I wonder whether you have ever had the run of a perfectly beautiful
+palace and a nursery absolutely crammed with all the toys you ever had
+or wanted to have: dolls' houses, dolls' china tea-sets, rocking-horses,
+bricks, nine-pins, paint-boxes, conjuring tricks, pewter
+dinner-services, and any number of dolls--all most agreeable and
+distinguished. If you have, you may perhaps be able faintly to imagine
+Elsie's happiness. And better than all the toys was the Princess
+Perdona--so gentle and kind and jolly, full of ideas for games, and
+surrounded by the means for playing them. Think of it, after that bare
+attic, with not even a bit of string to play with, and no company but
+the poor little dead mouse!
+
+There is no room in this story to tell you of all the games they had. I
+can only say that the time went by so quickly that they never noticed it
+going, and were amazed when the Crown nursemaid brought in the royal
+tea-tray. Tea was a beautiful meal--with pink iced cake in it.
+
+Now, all the time that these glorious games had been going on, and this
+magnificent tea, the wisest crows of Crownowland had been holding a
+council. They had decided that there was no time like the present, and
+that Elsie had better try to tame the dragon soon as late. 'But,' the
+King said, 'she mustn't run any risks. A guard of fifty stalwart crows
+must go with her, and if the dragon shows the least temper, fifty crows
+must throw themselves between her and danger, even if it cost fifty-one
+crow-lives. For I myself will lead that band. Who will volunteer?'
+
+Volunteers, to the number of some thousands, instantly stepped forward,
+and the Field Marshal selected fifty of the strongest crows.
+
+And then, in the pleasant pinkness of the sunset, Elsie was led out on
+to the palace steps, where the King made a speech and said what a
+heroine she was, and how like Joan of Arc. And the crows who had
+gathered from all parts of the town cheered madly. Did you ever hear
+crows cheering? It is a wonderful sound.
+
+Then Elsie got into a magnificent gilt coach, drawn by eight white
+horses, with a crow at the head of each horse. The Princess sat with her
+on the blue velvet cushions and held her hand.
+
+'I _know_ you'll do it,' said she; 'you're so brave and clever, Elsie!'
+
+And Elsie felt braver than before, although now it did not seem so like
+a dream. But she thought of the martyrs, and held Perdona's hand very
+tight.
+
+At the gates of the green park the Princess kissed and hugged her new
+friend--her state crown, which she had put on in honour of the occasion,
+got pushed quite on one side in the warmth of her embrace--and Elsie
+stepped out of the carriage. There was a great crowd of crows round the
+park gates, and every one cheered and shouted 'Speech, speech!'
+
+Elsie got as far as 'Ladies and gentlemen--Crows, I mean,' and then she
+could not think of anything more, so she simply added, 'Please, I'm
+ready.'
+
+I wish you could have heard those crows cheer.
+
+But Elsie wouldn't have the escort.
+
+'It's very kind,' she said, 'but the dragon only eats crows, and I'm not
+a crow, thank goodness--I mean I'm not a crow--and if I've got to be
+brave I'd like to _be_ brave, and none of you to get eaten. If only some
+one will come with me to show me the way and then run back as hard as he
+can when we get near the dragon. _Please!_'
+
+'If only one goes _I_ shall be the one,' said the King. And he and Elsie
+went through the great gates side by side. She held the end of his wing,
+which was the nearest they could get to hand in hand.
+
+The crowd outside waited in breathless silence. Elsie and the King went
+on through the winding paths of the People's Park. And by the winding
+paths they came at last to the Dragon. He lay very peacefully on a great
+stone slab, his enormous bat-like wings spread out on the grass and his
+goldy-green scales glittering in the pretty pink sunset light.
+
+'Go back!' said Elsie.
+
+'No,' said the King.
+
+'If you don't,' said Elsie, '_I_ won't go _on_. Seeing a crow might
+rouse him to fury, or give him an appetite, or something. Do--do go!'
+
+So he went, but not far. He hid behind a tree, and from its shelter he
+watched.
+
+Elsie drew a long breath. Her heart was thumping under the black frock.
+'Suppose,' she thought, 'he takes me for a crow!' But she thought how
+yellow her hair was, and decided that the dragon would be certain to
+notice that.
+
+'Quick march!' she said to herself, 'remember Joan of Arc,' and walked
+right up to the dragon. It never moved, but watched her suspiciously out
+of its bright green eyes.
+
+'Dragon dear!' she said in her clear little voice.
+
+'_Eh?_' said the dragon, in tones of extreme astonishment.
+
+'Dragon dear,' she repeated, 'do you like sugar?'
+
+'_Yes_,' said the dragon.
+
+'Well, I've brought you some. You won't hurt me if I bring it to you?'
+
+The dragon violently shook its vast head.
+
+'It's not much,' said Elsie, 'but I saved it at tea-time. Four lumps.
+Two for each of my mugs of milk.'
+
+She laid the sugar on the stone slab by the dragon's paw.
+
+It turned its head towards the sugar. The pinky sunset light fell on its
+face, and Elsie saw that it was weeping! Great fat tears as big as prize
+pears were coursing down its wrinkled cheeks.
+
+'Oh, don't,' said Elsie, '_don't_ cry! Poor dragon, what's the matter?'
+
+'Oh!' sobbed the dragon, 'I'm only so glad you've come. I--I've been so
+lonely. No one to love me. You _do_ love me, don't you?'
+
+'I--I'm sure I shall when I know you better,' said Elsie kindly.
+
+'Give me a kiss, dear,' said the dragon, sniffing.
+
+It is no joke to kiss a dragon. But Elsie did it--somewhere on the hard
+green wrinkles of its forehead.
+
+'Oh, _thank_ you,' said the dragon, brushing away its tears with the tip
+of its tail. 'That breaks the charm. I can move now. And I've got back
+all my lost wisdom. Come along--I _do_ want my tea!'
+
+So, to the waiting crowd at the gate came Elsie and the dragon side by
+side. And at sight of the dragon, tamed, a great shout went up from the
+crowd; and at that shout each one in the crowd turned quickly to the
+next one--for it was the shout of men, and not of crows. Because at the
+first sight of the dragon, tamed, they had left off being crows for ever
+and ever, and once again were men.
+
+The King came running through the gates, his royal robes held high, so
+that he shouldn't trip over them, and he too was no longer a crow, but a
+man.
+
+And what did Elsie feel after being so brave? Well, she felt that she
+would like to cry, and also to laugh, and she felt that she loved not
+only the dragon, but every man, woman, and child in the whole
+world--even Mrs. Staines.
+
+She rode back to the Palace on the dragon's back.
+
+And as they went the crowd of citizens who had been crows met the crowd
+of citizens who had been pigeons, and these were poor men in poor
+clothes.
+
+It would have done you good to see how the ones who had been rich and
+crows ran to meet the ones who had been pigeons and poor.
+
+'Come and stay at my house, brother,' they cried to those who had no
+homes. 'Brother, I have many coats, come and choose some,' they cried to
+the ragged. 'Come and feast with me!' they cried to all. And the rich
+and the poor went off arm in arm to feast and be glad that night, and
+the next day to work side by side. 'For,' said the King, speaking with
+his hand on the neck of the tamed dragon, 'our land has been called
+Crownowland. But we are no longer crows. We are men: and we will be Just
+men. And our country shall be called Justnowland for ever and ever. And
+for the future we shall not be rich and poor, but fellow-workers, and
+each will do his best for his brothers and his own city. And your King
+shall be your servant!'
+
+I don't know how they managed this, but no one seemed to think that
+there would be any difficulty about it when the King mentioned it; and
+when people really make up their minds to do anything, difficulties do
+most oddly disappear.
+
+Wonderful rejoicings there were. The city was hung with flags and lamps.
+Bands played--the performers a little out of practice, because, of
+course, crows can't play the flute or the violin or the trombone--but
+the effect was very gay indeed. Then came the time--it was quite
+dark--when the King rose up on his throne and spoke; and Elsie, among
+all her new friends, listened with them to his words.
+
+'Our deliverer Elsie,' he said, 'was brought hither by the good magic of
+our Chief Mage and Prime Minister. She has removed the enchantment that
+held us; and the dragon, now that he has had his tea and recovered from
+the shock of being kindly treated, turns out to be the second strongest
+magician in the world,--and he will help us and advise us, so long as we
+remember that we are all brothers and fellow-workers. And now comes the
+time when our Elsie must return to her own place, or another go in her
+stead. But we cannot send back our heroine, our deliverer.' (_Long, loud
+cheering._) 'So one shall take her place. My daughter----'
+
+The end of the sentence was lost in shouts of admiration. But Elsie
+stood up, small and white in her black frock, and said, 'No thank you.
+Perdona would simply hate it. And she doesn't know my daddy. He'll fetch
+me away from Mrs. Staines some day....'
+
+The thought of her daddy, far away in India, of the loneliness of Willow
+Farm, where now it would be night in that horrible bare attic where the
+poor dead untameable little mouse was, nearly choked Elsie. It was so
+bright and light and good and kind here. And India was so far away. Her
+voice stayed a moment on a broken note.
+
+'I--I....' Then she spoke firmly.
+
+'Thank you all so much,' she said--'so very much. I do love you all, and
+it's lovely here. But, please, I'd like to go home now.'
+
+The Prime Minister, in a silence full of love and understanding, folded
+his dark cloak round her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was dark in the attic. Elsie crouching alone in the blackness by the
+fireplace where the dead mouse had been, put out her hand to touch its
+cold fur.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were wheels on the gravel outside--the knocker swung
+strongly--'_Rat_-tat-tat-tat--_Tat_! _Tat_!' A pause--voices--hasty feet
+in strong boots sounded on the stairs, the key turned in the lock. The
+door opened a dazzling crack, then fully, to the glare of a lamp
+carried by Mrs. Staines.
+
+'Come down at once. I'm sure you're good now,' she said, in a great
+hurry and in a new honeyed voice.
+
+But there were other feet on the stairs--a step that Elsie knew.
+'Where's my girl?' the voice she knew cried cheerfully. But under the
+cheerfulness Elsie heard something other and dearer. 'Where's my girl?'
+
+After all, it takes less than a month to come from India to the house in
+England where one's heart is.
+
+Out of the bare attic and the darkness Elsie leapt into light, into arms
+she knew. 'Oh, my daddy, my daddy!' she cried. 'How glad I am I came
+back!'
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE RELATED MUFF
+
+
+We had never seen our cousin Sidney till that Christmas Eve, and we
+didn't want to see him then, and we didn't like him when we did see
+him. He was just dumped down into the middle of us by mother, at a time
+when it would have been unkind to her to say how little we wanted him.
+
+We knew already that there wasn't to be any proper Christmas for us,
+because Aunt Ellie--the one who always used to send the necklaces and
+carved things from India, and remembered everybody's birthday--had come
+home ill. Very ill she was, at a hotel in London, and mother had to go
+to her, and, of course, father was away with his ship.
+
+And then after we had said good-bye to mother, and told her how sorry we
+were, we were left to ourselves, and told each other what a shame it
+was, and no presents or anything. And then mother came suddenly back in
+a cab, and we all shouted 'Hooray' when we saw the cab stop, and her get
+out of it. And then we saw she was getting something out of the cab, and
+our hearts leapt up like the man's in the piece of school poetry when he
+beheld a rainbow in the sky--because we thought she had remembered about
+the presents, and the thing she was getting out of the cab was _them_.
+
+Of course it was not--it was Sidney, very thin and yellow, and looking
+as sullen as a pig.
+
+We opened the front door. Mother didn't even come in. She just said,
+'Here's your Cousin Sidney. Be nice to him and give him a good time,
+there's darlings. And don't forget he's your visitor, so be very extra
+nice to him.'
+
+I have sometimes thought it was the fault of what mother said about the
+visitor that made what did happen happen, but I am almost sure really
+that it was the fault of us, though I did not see it at the time, and
+even now I'm sure we didn't mean to be unkind. Quite the opposite. But
+the events of life are very confusing, especially when you try to think
+what made you do them, and whether you really meant to be naughty or
+not. Quite often it is not--but it turns out just the same.
+
+When the cab had carried mother away--Hilda said it was like a dragon
+carrying away a queen--we said, 'How do you do' to our Cousin Sidney,
+who replied, 'Quite well, thank you.'
+
+And then, curiously enough, no one could think of anything more to say.
+
+Then Rupert--which is me--remembered that about being a visitor, and he
+said:
+
+'Won't you come into the drawing-room?'
+
+He did when he had taken off his gloves and overcoat. There was a fire
+in the drawing-room, because we had been going to have games there with
+mother, only the telegram came about Aunt Ellie.
+
+So we all sat on chairs in the drawing-room, and thought of nothing to
+say harder than ever.
+
+Hilda did say, 'How old are you?' but, of course, we knew the answer to
+that. It was ten.
+
+And Hugh said, 'Do you like England or India best?'
+
+And our cousin replied, 'India ever so much, thank you.'
+
+I never felt such a duffer. It was awful. With all the millions of
+interesting things that there are to say at other times, and I couldn't
+think of one. At last I said, 'Do you like games?'
+
+[Illustration: So we all sat on chairs in the drawing-room, and thought
+of nothing to say harder than ever.]
+
+And our cousin replied, 'Some games I do,' in a tone that made me sure
+that the games he liked wouldn't be our kind, but some wild Indian sort
+that we didn't know.
+
+I could see that the others were feeling just like me, and I knew we
+could not go on like this till tea-time. And yet I didn't see any other
+way to go on in. It was Hilda who cut the Gorgeous knot at last. She
+said:
+
+'Hugh, let you and I go and make a lovely surprise for Rupert and
+Sidney.'
+
+And before I could think of any way of stopping them without being
+downright rude to our new cousin, they had fled the scene, just like any
+old conspirators. Rupert--me, I mean--was left alone with the stranger.
+I said:
+
+'Is there anything you'd like to do?'
+
+And he said, 'No, thank you.'
+
+Then neither of us said anything for a bit--and I could hear the others
+shrieking with laughter in the hall.
+
+I said, 'I wonder what the surprise will be like.'
+
+He said, 'Yes, I wonder'; but I could tell from his tone that he did not
+wonder a bit.
+
+The others were yelling with laughter. Have you ever noticed how very
+amused people always are when you're not there? If you're in bed--ill,
+or in disgrace, or anything--it always sounds like far finer jokes than
+ever occur when you are not out of things.
+
+'Do you like reading?' said I--who am Rupert--in the tones of despair.
+
+'Yes,' said the cousin.
+
+'Then take a book,' I said hastily, for I really could not stand it
+another second, 'and you just read till the surprise is ready. I think I
+ought to go and help the others. I'm the eldest, you know.'
+
+I did not wait--I suppose if you're ten you can choose a book for
+yourself--and I went.
+
+Hilda's idea was just Indians, but I thought a wigwam would be nice. So
+we made one with the hall table and the fur rugs off the floor. If
+everything had been different, and Aunt Ellie hadn't been ill, we were
+to have had turkey for dinner. The turkey's feathers were splendid for
+Indians, and the striped blankets off Hugh's and my beds, and all
+mother's beads. The hall is big like a room, and there was a fire. The
+afternoon passed like a beautiful dream. When Rupert had done his own
+feathering and blanketing, as well as brown paper moccasins, he helped
+the others. The tea-bell rang before we were quite dressed. We got
+Louisa to go up and tell our cousin that the surprise was ready, and we
+all got inside the wigwam. It was a very tight fit, with the feathers
+and the blankets.
+
+He came down the stairs very slowly, reading all the time, and when he
+got to the mat at the bottom of the stairs we burst forth in all our
+war-paint from the wigwam. It upset, because Hugh and Hilda stuck
+between the table's legs, and it fell on the stone floor with quite a
+loud noise. The wild Indians picked themselves up out of the ruins and
+did the finest war-dance I've ever seen in front of my cousin Sidney.
+
+He gave one little scream, and then sat down suddenly on the bottom
+steps. He leaned his head against the banisters and we thought he was
+admiring the war-dance, till Eliza, who had been laughing and making as
+much noise as any one, suddenly went up to him and shook him.
+
+'Stop that noise,' she said to us, 'he's gone off into a dead faint.'
+
+He had.
+
+Of course we were very sorry and all that, but we never thought he'd be
+such a muff as to be frightened of three Red Indians and a wigwam that
+happened to upset. He was put to bed, and we had our teas.
+
+'I wish we hadn't,' Hilda said.
+
+'So do I,' said Hugh.
+
+But Rupert said, 'No one _could_ have expected a cousin of ours to be a
+chicken-hearted duffer. He's a muff. It's bad enough to have a muff in
+the house at all, and at Christmas time, too. But a related muff!'
+
+Still the affair had cast a gloom, and we were glad when it was
+bed-time.
+
+Next day was Christmas Day, and no presents, and nobody but the servants
+to wish a Merry Christmas to.
+
+Our cousin Sidney came down to breakfast, and as it was Christmas Day
+Rupert bent his proud spirit to own he was sorry about the Indians.
+
+Sidney said, 'It doesn't matter. I'm sorry too. Only I didn't expect
+it.'
+
+We suggested two or three games, such as Parlour Cricket, National
+Gallery, and Grab--but Sidney said he would rather read. So we said
+would he mind if we played out the Indian game which we had dropped, out
+of politeness, when he fainted.
+
+He said:
+
+'I don't mind at all, now I know what it is you're up to. No, thank you,
+I'd rather read,' he added, in reply to Rupert's unselfish offer to
+dress him for the part of Sitting Bull.
+
+So he read _Treasure Island_, and we fought on the stairs with no
+casualties except the gas globes, and then we scalped all the
+dolls--putting on paper scalps first because Hilda wished it--and we
+scalped Eliza as she passed through the hall--hers was a white scalp
+with lacey stuff on it and long streamers.
+
+[Illustration: 'We scalped Eliza as she passed through the hall.']
+
+And when it was beginning to get dark we thought of flying machines. Of
+course Sidney wouldn't play at that either, and Hilda and Hugh were
+contented with paper wings--there were some rolls of rather decent
+yellow and pink crinkled paper that mother had bought to make lamp
+shades of. They made wings of this, and then they played at fairies up
+and down the stairs, while Sidney sat at the bottom of the stairs and
+went on reading _Treasure Island_. But Rupert was determined to have a
+flying machine, with real flipper-flappery wings, like at Hendon. So he
+got two brass fire-guards out of the spare room and mother's bedroom,
+and covered them with newspapers fastened on with string. Then he got a
+tea-tray and fastened it on to himself with rug-straps, and then he
+slipped his arms in between the string and the fire-guards, and went to
+the top of the stairs and shouting, 'Look out below there! Beware Flying
+Machines!' he sat down suddenly on the tray, and tobogganed gloriously
+down the stairs, flapping his fire-guard wings. It was a great success,
+and felt more like flying than anything he ever played at. But Hilda had
+not had time to look out thoroughly, because he did not wait any time
+between his warning and his descent. So that she was still fluttering,
+in the character of Queen of the Butterfly Fairies, about half-way down
+the stairs when the flying machine, composed of the two guards, the
+tea-tray, and Rupert, started from the top of them, and she could only
+get out of the way by standing back close against the wall. Unluckily
+the place where she was, was also the place where the gas was burning in
+a little recess. You remember we had broken the globe when we were
+playing Indians.
+
+Now, of course, you know what happened, because you have read _Harriett
+and the Matches_, and all the rest of the stories that have been written
+to persuade children not to play with fire. No one was playing with fire
+that day, it is true, or doing anything really naughty at all--but
+however naughty we had been the thing that happened couldn't have been
+much worse. For the flying machine as it came rushing round the curve of
+the staircase banged against the legs of Hilda. She screamed and
+stumbled back. Her pink paper wings went into the gas that hadn't a
+globe. They flamed up, her hair frizzled, and her lace collar caught
+fire. Rupert could not do anything because he was held fast in his
+flying machine, and he and it were rolling painfully on the mat at the
+bottom of the stairs.
+
+[Illustration: Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and
+over.]
+
+Hilda screamed.
+
+I have since heard that a great yellow light fell on the pages of
+_Treasure Island_.
+
+Next moment _Treasure Island_ went spinning across the room. Sidney
+caught up the fur rug that was part of the wigwam, and as Hilda,
+screaming horribly, and with wings not of paper but of flames, rushed
+down the staircase, and stumbled over the flying machine, Sidney threw
+the rug over her, and rolled her over and over on the floor.
+
+'Lie down!' he cried. 'Lie down! It's the only way.'
+
+But somehow people never will lie down when their clothes are on fire,
+any more than they will lie still in the water if they think they are
+drowning, and some one is trying to save them. It came to something very
+like a fight. Hilda fought and struggled. Rupert got out of his
+fire-guards and added himself and his tea-tray to the scrimmage. Hugh
+slid down to the knob of the banisters and sat there yelling. The
+servants came rushing in.
+
+But by that time the fire was out. And Sidney gasped out, 'It's all
+right. You aren't burned, Hilda, are you?'
+
+Hilda was much too frightened to know whether she was burnt or not, but
+Eliza looked her over, and it turned out that only her neck was a little
+scorched, and a good deal of her hair frizzled off short.
+
+Every one stood, rather breathless and pale, and every one's face was
+much dirtier than customary, except Hugh's, which he had, as usual,
+dirtied thoroughly quite early in the afternoon. Rupert felt perfectly
+awful, ashamed and proud and rather sick. 'You're a regular hero,
+Sidney,' he said--and it was not easy to say--'and yesterday I said you
+were a related muff. And I'm jolly sorry I did. Shake hands, won't you?'
+
+Sidney hesitated.
+
+'Too proud?' Rupert's feelings were hurt, and I should not wonder if he
+spoke rather fiercely.
+
+'It's--it's a little burnt, I think,' said Sidney, 'don't be angry,' and
+he held out the left hand.
+
+Rupert grasped it.
+
+'I do beg your pardon,' he said, 'you _are_ a hero!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Sidney's hand was bad for ever so long, but we were tremendous chums
+after that.
+
+It was when they'd done the hand up with scraped potato and salad oil--a
+great, big, fat, wet plaster of it--that I said to him:
+
+'I don't care if you don't like games. Let's be pals.'
+
+And he said, 'I do like games, but I couldn't care about anything with
+mother so ill. I know you'll think I'm a muff, but I'm not really, only
+I do love her so.'
+
+And with that he began to cry, and I thumped him on the back, and told
+him exactly what a beast I knew I was, to comfort him.
+
+When Aunt Ellie was well again we kept Christmas on the 6th of January,
+which used to be Christmas Day in middle-aged times.
+
+Father came home before New Year, and he had a silver medal made, with a
+flame on one side, and on the other Sidney's name, and 'For Bravery.'
+
+If I had not been tied up in fire-guards and tea-trays perhaps I should
+have thought of the rug and got the medal. But I do not grudge it to
+Sidney. He deserved it. And he is not a muff. I see now that a person
+might very well be frightened at finding Indians in the hall of a
+strange house, especially if the person had just come from the kind of
+India where the Indians are quite a different sort, and much milder,
+with no feathers and wigwams and war-dances, but only dusky features and
+University Degrees.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+THE AUNT AND AMABEL
+
+
+It is not pleasant to be a fish out of water. To be a cat in water is
+not what any one would desire. To be in a temper is uncomfortable. And
+no one can fully taste the joys of life if he is in a Little Lord
+Fauntleroy suit. But by far the most uncomfortable thing to be in is
+disgrace, sometimes amusingly called Coventry by the people who are not
+in it.
+
+We have all been there. It is a place where the heart sinks and aches,
+where familiar faces are clouded and changed, where any remark that one
+may tremblingly make is received with stony silence or with the
+assurance that nobody wants to talk to such a naughty child. If you are
+only in disgrace, and not in solitary confinement, you will creep about
+a house that is like the one you have had such jolly times in, and yet
+as unlike it as a bad dream is to a June morning. You will long to speak
+to people, and be afraid to speak. You will wonder whether there is
+anything you can do that will change things at all. You have said you
+are sorry, and that has changed nothing. You will wonder whether you are
+to stay for ever in this desolate place, outside all hope and love and
+fun and happiness. And though it has happened before, and has always, in
+the end, come to an end, you can never be quite sure that this time it
+is not going to last for ever.
+
+'It _is_ going to last for ever,' said Amabel, who was eight. 'What
+shall I do? Oh whatever shall I do?'
+
+What she _had_ done ought to have formed the subject of her
+meditations. And she had done what had seemed to her all the time, and
+in fact still seemed, a self-sacrificing and noble act. She was staying
+with an aunt--measles or a new baby, or the painters in the house, I
+forget which, the cause of her banishment. And the aunt, who was really
+a great-aunt and quite old enough to know better, had been grumbling
+about her head gardener to a lady who called in blue spectacles and a
+beady bonnet with violet flowers in it.
+
+'He hardly lets me have a plant for the table,' said the aunt, 'and that
+border in front of the breakfast-room window--it's just bare earth--and
+I expressly ordered chrysanthemums to be planted there. He thinks of
+nothing but his greenhouse.'
+
+The beady-violet-blue-glassed lady snorted, and said she didn't know
+what we were coming to, and she would have just half a cup, please, with
+not quite so much milk, thank you very much.
+
+Now what would you have done? Minded your own business most likely, and
+not got into trouble at all. Not so Amabel. Enthusiastically anxious to
+do something which should make the great-aunt see what a thoughtful,
+unselfish, little girl she really was (the aunt's opinion of her being
+at present quite otherwise), she got up very early in the morning and
+took the cutting-out scissors from the work-room table drawer and stole,
+'like an errand of mercy,' she told herself, to the greenhouse where she
+busily snipped off every single flower she could find. MacFarlane was at
+his breakfast. Then with the points of the cutting-out scissors she made
+nice deep little holes in the flower-bed where the chrysanthemums ought
+to have been, and struck the flowers in--chrysanthemums, geraniums,
+primulas, orchids, and carnations. It would be a lovely surprise for
+Auntie.
+
+Then the aunt came down to breakfast and saw the lovely surprise.
+Amabel's world turned upside down and inside out suddenly and
+surprisingly, and there she was, in Coventry, and not even the housemaid
+would speak to her. Her great-uncle, whom she passed in the hall on her
+way to her own room, did indeed, as he smoothed his hat, murmur, 'Sent
+to Coventry, eh? Never mind, it'll soon be over,' and went off to the
+City banging the front door behind him.
+
+He meant well, but he did not understand.
+
+Amabel understood, or she thought she did, and knew in her miserable
+heart that she was sent to Coventry for the last time, and that this
+time she would stay there.
+
+'I don't care,' she said quite untruly. 'I'll never try to be kind to
+any one again.' And that wasn't true either. She was to spend the whole
+day alone in the best bedroom, the one with the four-post bed and the
+red curtains and the large wardrobe with a looking-glass in it that you
+could see yourself in to the very ends of your strap-shoes.
+
+The first thing Amabel did was to look at herself in the glass. She was
+still sniffing and sobbing, and her eyes were swimming in tears, another
+one rolled down her nose as she looked--that was very interesting.
+Another rolled down, and that was the last, because as soon as you get
+interested in watching your tears they stop.
+
+Next she looked out of the window, and saw the decorated flower-bed,
+just as she had left it, very bright and beautiful.
+
+'Well, it _does_ look nice,' she said. 'I don't care what they say.'
+
+Then she looked round the room for something to read; there was nothing.
+The old-fashioned best bedrooms never did have anything. Only on the
+large dressing-table, on the left-hand side of the oval swing-glass,
+was one book covered in red velvet, and on it, very twistily
+embroidered in yellow silk and mixed up with misleading leaves and
+squiggles were the letters, A.B.C.
+
+'Perhaps it's a picture alphabet,' said Mabel, and was quite pleased,
+though of course she was much too old to care for alphabets. Only when
+one is very unhappy and very dull, anything is better than nothing. She
+opened the book.
+
+'Why, it's only a time-table!' she said. 'I suppose it's for people when
+they want to go away, and Auntie puts it here in case they suddenly make
+up their minds to go, and feel that they can't wait another minute. I
+feel like that, only it's no good, and I expect other people do too.'
+
+She had learned how to use the dictionary, and this seemed to go the
+same way. She looked up the names of all the places she knew.--Brighton
+where she had once spent a month, Rugby where her brother was at school,
+and Home, which was Amberley--and she saw the times when the trains left
+for these places, and wished she could go by those trains.
+
+And once more she looked round the best bedroom which was her prison,
+and thought of the Bastille, and wished she had a toad to tame, like the
+poor Viscount, or a flower to watch growing, like Picciola, and she was
+very sorry for herself, and very angry with her aunt, and very grieved
+at the conduct of her parents--she had expected better things from
+them--and now they had left her in this dreadful place where no one
+loved her, and no one understood her.
+
+There seemed to be no place for toads or flowers in the best room, it
+was carpeted all over even in its least noticeable corners. It had
+everything a best room ought to have--and everything was of dark shining
+mahogany. The toilet-table had a set of red and gold glass things--a
+tray, candlesticks, a ring-stand, many little pots with lids, and two
+bottles with stoppers. When the stoppers were taken out they smelt very
+strange, something like very old scent, and something like cold cream
+also very old, and something like going to the dentist's.
+
+I do not know whether the scent of those bottles had anything to do with
+what happened. It certainly was a very extraordinary scent. Quite
+different from any perfume that I smell nowadays, but I remember that
+when I was a little girl I smelt it quite often. But then there are no
+best rooms now such as there used to be. The best rooms now are gay with
+chintz and mirrors, and there are always flowers and books, and little
+tables to put your teacup on, and sofas, and armchairs. And they smell
+of varnish and new furniture.
+
+When Amabel had sniffed at both bottles and looked in all the pots,
+which were quite clean and empty except for a pearl button and two pins
+in one of them, she took up the A.B.C. again to look for Whitby, where
+her godmother lived. And it was then that she saw the extraordinary name
+'_Whereyouwantogoto._' This was odd--but the name of the station from
+which it started was still more extraordinary, for it was not Euston or
+Cannon Street or Marylebone.
+
+The name of the station was '_Bigwardrobeinspareroom._' And below this
+name, really quite unusual for a station, Amabel read in small letters:
+
+'Single fares strictly forbidden. Return tickets No Class Nuppence.
+Trains leave _Bigwardrobeinspareroom_ all the time.'
+
+And under that in still smaller letters--
+
+'_You had better go now._'
+
+What would you have done? Rubbed your eyes and thought you were
+dreaming? Well, if you had, nothing more would have happened. Nothing
+ever does when you behave like that. Amabel was wiser. She went straight
+to the Big Wardrobe and turned its glass handle.
+
+'I expect it's only shelves and people's best hats,' she said. But she
+only said it. People often say what they don't mean, so that if things
+turn out as they don't expect, they can say 'I told you so,' but this is
+most dishonest to one's self, and being dishonest to one's self is
+almost worse than being dishonest to other people. Amabel would never
+have done it if she had been herself. But she was out of herself with
+anger and unhappiness.
+
+Of course it wasn't hats. It was, most amazingly, a crystal cave, very
+oddly shaped like a railway station. It seemed to be lighted by stars,
+which is, of course, unusual in a booking office, and over the station
+clock was a full moon. The clock had no figures, only _Now_ in shining
+letters all round it, twelve times, and the _Nows_ touched, so the clock
+was bound to be always right. How different from the clock you go to
+school by!
+
+A porter in white satin hurried forward to take Amabel's luggage. Her
+luggage was the A.B.C. which she still held in her hand.
+
+'Lots of time, Miss,' he said, grinning in a most friendly way, 'I _am_
+glad you're going. You _will_ enjoy yourself! What a nice little girl
+you are!'
+
+This was cheering. Amabel smiled.
+
+At the pigeon-hole that tickets come out of, another person, also in
+white satin, was ready with a mother-of-pearl ticket, round, like a card
+counter.
+
+'Here you are, Miss,' he said with the kindest smile, 'price nothing,
+and refreshments free all the way. It's a pleasure,' he added, 'to issue
+a ticket to a nice little lady like you.' The train was entirely of
+crystal, too, and the cushions were of white satin. There were little
+buttons such as you have for electric bells, and on them
+'_Whatyouwantoeat_,' '_Whatyouwantodrink_,' '_Whatyouwantoread_,' in
+silver letters.
+
+Amabel pressed all the buttons at once, and instantly felt obliged to
+blink. The blink over, she saw on the cushion by her side a silver tray
+with vanilla ice, boiled chicken and white sauce, almonds (blanched),
+peppermint creams, and mashed potatoes, and a long glass of
+lemonade--beside the tray was a book. It was Mrs. Ewing's _Bad-tempered
+Family_, and it was bound in white vellum.
+
+There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read--unless it be
+reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as
+you will see if you think the matter over.
+
+And just as the last thrill of the last spoonful of ice died away, and
+the last full stop of the _Bad-tempered Family_ met Amabel's eye, the
+train stopped, and hundreds of railway officials in white velvet
+shouted, '_Whereyouwantogoto!_ Get out!'
+
+A velvety porter, who was somehow like a silkworm as well as like a
+wedding handkerchief sachet, opened the door.
+
+'Now!' he said, 'come on out, Miss Amabel, unless you want to go to
+_Whereyoudon'twantogoto_.'
+
+She hurried out, on to an ivory platform.
+
+'Not on the ivory, if you please,' said the porter, 'the white Axminster
+carpet--it's laid down expressly for you.'
+
+Amabel walked along it and saw ahead of her a crowd, all in white.
+
+'What's all that?' she asked the friendly porter.
+
+'It's the Mayor, dear Miss Amabel,' he said, 'with your address.'
+
+'My address is The Old Cottage, Amberley,' she said, 'at least it used
+to be'--and found herself face to face with the Mayor. He was very like
+Uncle George, but he bowed low to her, which was not Uncle George's
+habit, and said:
+
+'Welcome, dear little Amabel. Please accept this admiring address from
+the Mayor and burgesses and apprentices and all the rest of it, of
+Whereyouwantogoto.'
+
+The address was in silver letters, on white silk, and it said:
+
+'Welcome, dear Amabel. We know you meant to please your aunt. It was
+very clever of you to think of putting the greenhouse flowers in the
+bare flower-bed. You couldn't be expected to know that you ought to ask
+leave before you touch other people's things.'
+
+'Oh, but,' said Amabel quite confused. 'I did....'
+
+But the band struck up, and drowned her words. The instruments of the
+band were all of silver, and the bandsmen's clothes of white leather.
+The tune they played was 'Cheero!'
+
+Then Amabel found that she was taking part in a procession, hand in hand
+with the Mayor, and the band playing like mad all the time. The Mayor
+was dressed entirely in cloth of silver, and as they went along he kept
+saying, close to her ear.
+
+'You have our sympathy, you have our sympathy,' till she felt quite
+giddy.
+
+There was a flower show--all the flowers were white. There was a
+concert--all the tunes were old ones. There was a play called _Put
+yourself in her place_. And there was a banquet, with Amabel in the
+place of honour.
+
+They drank her health in white wine whey, and then through the Crystal
+Hall of a thousand gleaming pillars, where thousands of guests, all in
+white, were met to do honour to Amabel, the shout went up--'Speech,
+speech!'
+
+I cannot explain to you what had been going on in Amabel's mind. Perhaps
+you know. Whatever it was it began like a very tiny butterfly in a box,
+that could not keep quiet, but fluttered, and fluttered, and fluttered.
+And when the Mayor rose and said:
+
+'Dear Amabel, you whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who
+were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive
+aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering
+Amabel, we await your words,' that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing
+inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a
+fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of honour on the
+throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and
+extremely red about the ears--
+
+'Ladies and gentlemen, I don't want to make a speech, I just want to
+say, "Thank you," and to say--to say--to say....'
+
+She stopped, and all the white crowd cheered.
+
+'To say,' she went on as the cheers died down, 'that I wasn't blameless,
+and innocent, and all those nice things. I ought to have thought. And
+they _were_ Auntie's flowers. But I did want to please her. It's all so
+mixed. Oh, I wish Auntie was here!'
+
+And instantly Auntie _was_ there, very tall and quite nice-looking, in a
+white velvet dress and an ermine cloak.
+
+'Speech,' cried the crowd. 'Speech from Auntie!'
+
+Auntie stood on the step of the throne beside Amabel, and said:
+
+'I think, perhaps, I was hasty. And I think Amabel meant to please me.
+But all the flowers that were meant for the winter ... well--I was
+annoyed. I'm sorry.'
+
+'Oh, Auntie, so am I--so am I,' cried Amabel, and the two began to hug
+each other on the ivory step, while the crowd cheered like mad, and the
+band struck up that well-known air, 'If you only understood!'
+
+'Oh, Auntie,' said Amabel among hugs, 'This is such a lovely place, come
+and see everything, we may, mayn't we?' she asked the Mayor.
+
+'The place is yours,' he said, 'and now you can see many things that
+you couldn't see before. We are The People who Understand. And now you
+are one of Us. And your aunt is another.'
+
+I must not tell you all that they saw because these things are secrets
+only known to The People who Understand, and perhaps you do not yet
+belong to that happy nation. And if you do, you will know without my
+telling you.
+
+And when it grew late, and the stars were drawn down, somehow, to hang
+among the trees, Amabel fell asleep in her aunt's arms beside a white
+foaming fountain on a marble terrace, where white peacocks came to
+drink.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She awoke on the big bed in the spare room, but her aunt's arms were
+still round her.
+
+'Amabel,' she was saying, 'Amabel!'
+
+'Oh, Auntie,' said Amabel sleepily, 'I am so sorry. It _was_ stupid of
+me. And I did mean to please you.'
+
+'It _was_ stupid of you,' said the aunt, 'but I am sure you meant to
+please me. Come down to supper.' And Amabel has a confused recollection
+of her aunt's saying that she was sorry, adding, 'Poor little Amabel.'
+
+If the aunt really did say it, it was fine of her. And Amabel is quite
+sure that she did say it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Amabel and her great-aunt are now the best of friends. But neither of
+them has ever spoken to the other of the beautiful city called
+'_Whereyouwantogoto._' Amabel is too shy to be the first to mention it,
+and no doubt the aunt has her own reasons for not broaching the subject.
+
+But of course they both know that they have been there together, and it
+is easy to get on with people when you and they alike belong to the
+_Peoplewhounderstand_.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If you look in the A.B.C. that your people have you will not find
+'_Whereyouwantogoto._' It is only in the red velvet bound copy that
+Amabel found in her aunt's best bedroom.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+KENNETH AND THE CARP
+
+
+Kenneth's cousins had often stayed with him, but he had never till now
+stayed with them. And you know how different everything is when you are
+in your own house. You are certain exactly what games the grown-ups
+dislike and what games they will not notice; also what sort of mischief
+is looked over and what sort is not. And, being accustomed to your own
+sort of grown-ups, you can always be pretty sure when you are likely to
+catch it. Whereas strange houses are, in this matter of catching it,
+full of the most unpleasing surprises.
+
+You know all this. But Kenneth did not. And still less did he know what
+were the sort of things which, in his cousins' house, led to
+disapproval, punishment, scoldings; in short, to catching it. So that
+that business of cousin Ethel's jewel-case, which is where this story
+ought to begin, was really not Kenneth's fault at all. Though for a
+time.... But I am getting on too fast.
+
+Kenneth's cousins were four,--Conrad, Alison, George, and Ethel. The
+three first were natural sort of cousins somewhere near his own age, but
+Ethel was hardly like a cousin at all, more like an aunt. Because she
+was grown-up. She wore long dresses and all her hair on the top of her
+head, a mass of combs and hairpins; in fact she had just had her
+twenty-first birthday with iced cakes and a party and lots of presents,
+most of them jewelry. And that brings me again to that affair of the
+jewel-case, or would bring me if I were not determined to tell things in
+their proper order, which is the first duty of a story-teller.
+
+Kenneth's home was in Kent, a wooden house among cherry orchards, and
+the nearest river five miles away. That was why he looked forward in
+such a very extra and excited way to his visit to his cousins. Their
+house was very old, red brick with ivy all over it. It had a secret
+staircase, only the secret was not kept any longer, and the housemaids
+carried pails and brooms up and down the staircase. And the house was
+surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds
+and water-lilies and fish--the gold and the silver and the everyday
+kinds.
+
+[Illustration: Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several
+pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin.]
+
+The first evening of Kenneth's visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom
+window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch
+fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly
+lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly
+because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed
+off.
+
+'Besides, fish hate soap,' Conrad told him, 'and that hook of yours
+would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don't stock our moat with whales.
+But I'll ask father to lend you his rod, it's a spiffing one, much
+jollier than ours. And I won't tell the kids because they'd never let it
+down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!'
+
+'Thank you very much,' said Kenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man
+and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he
+was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one
+of the kids was a girl.
+
+'Alison's a bit of a sneak,' Conrad used to say when anger overcome
+politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone
+and the other things left, he would say, 'You see she went to a beastly
+school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must
+have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.'
+
+But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally
+hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind
+if you got into a row over anything.
+
+George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was
+foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot
+it. Which fortunately happened quite often.
+
+The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real
+bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children
+fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach
+and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two
+caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a
+picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.
+
+In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in
+her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and
+turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.
+
+You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups
+have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you
+like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage
+wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels
+always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was
+extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the
+kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.
+
+'It's two hours at least to bedtime,' said Alison. 'What shall we do?'
+Alison always began by saying 'What shall we do?' and always ended by
+deciding what should be done. 'You all say what you think,' she went
+on, 'and then we'll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you're the
+visitor.'
+
+'Fishing,' said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think
+of.
+
+'Make toffee,' said Conrad.
+
+'Build a great big house with all the bricks,' said George.
+
+'We can't make toffee,' Alison explained gently but firmly, 'because you
+know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, "never again, not
+much." And it's no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out
+of doors. And fishing's simply rotten when we've been at it all day.
+I've thought of something.'
+
+So of course all the others said, 'What?'
+
+'We'll have a pageant, a river pageant, on the moat. We'll all dress up
+and hang Chinese lanterns in the trees. I'll be the Sunflower lady that
+the Troubadour came all across the sea, because he loved her so, for,
+and one of you can be the Troubadour, and the others can be sailors or
+anything you like.'
+
+'I shall be the Troubadour,' said Conrad with decision.
+
+'I think you ought to let Kenneth because he's the visitor,' said
+George, who would have liked to be it immensely himself, or anyhow did
+not see why Conrad should be a troubadour if _he_ couldn't.
+
+Conrad said what manners required, which was:
+
+'Oh! all right, I don't care about being the beastly Troubadour.'
+
+'You might be the Princess's brother,' Alison suggested.
+
+'Not me,' said Conrad scornfully, 'I'll be the captain of the ship.'
+
+'In a turban the brother would be, with the Benares cloak, and the
+Persian dagger out of the cabinet in the drawing-room,' Alison went on
+unmoved.
+
+'I'll be that,' said George.
+
+'No, you won't, I shall, so there,' said Conrad. 'You can be the captain
+of the ship.'
+
+(But in the end both boys were captains, because that meant being on the
+boat, whereas being the Princess's brother, however turbanned, only
+meant standing on the bank. And there is no rule to prevent captains
+wearing turbans and Persian daggers, except in the Navy where, of
+course, it is not done.)
+
+So then they all tore up to the attic where the dressing-up trunk was,
+and pulled out all the dressing-up things on to the floor. And all the
+time they were dressing, Alison was telling the others what they were to
+say and do. The Princess wore a white satin skirt and a red flannel
+blouse and a veil formed of several motor scarves of various colours.
+Also a wreath of pink roses off one of Ethel's old hats, and a pair of
+pink satin slippers with sparkly buckles.
+
+Kenneth wore a blue silk dressing-jacket and a yellow sash, a lace
+collar, and a towel turban. And the others divided between them an
+eastern dressing-gown, once the property of their grandfather, a black
+spangled scarf, very holey, a pair of red and white football stockings,
+a Chinese coat, and two old muslin curtains, which, rolled up, made
+turbans of enormous size and fierceness.
+
+On the landing outside cousin Ethel's open door Alison paused and said,
+'I say!'
+
+'Oh! come on,' said Conrad, 'we haven't fixed the Chinese lanterns yet,
+and it's getting dark.'
+
+'You go on,' said Alison, 'I've just thought of something.'
+
+The children were allowed to play in the boat so long as they didn't
+loose it from its moorings. The painter was extremely long, and quite
+the effect of coming home from a long voyage was produced when the three
+boys pushed the boat out as far as it would go among the boughs of the
+beech-tree which overhung the water, and then reappeared in the circle
+of red and yellow light thrown by the Chinese lanterns.
+
+'What ho! ashore there!' shouted the captain.
+
+'What ho!' said a voice from the shore which, Alison explained, was
+disguised.
+
+'We be three poor mariners,' said Conrad by a happy effort of memory,
+'just newly come to shore. We seek news of the Princess of Tripoli.'
+
+'She's in her palace,' said the disguised voice, 'wait a minute, and
+I'll tell her you're here. But what do you want her for? ("A poor
+minstrel of France") go on, Con.'
+
+'A poor minstrel of France,' said Conrad, '(all right! I remember,) who
+has heard of the Princess's beauty has come to lay, to lay----'
+
+'His heart,' said Alison.
+
+[Illustration: A radiant vision stepped into the circle of light.]
+
+'All right, I know. His heart at her something or other feet.'
+
+'Pretty feet,' said Alison. 'I go to tell the Princess.'
+
+Next moment from the shadows on the bank a radiant vision stepped into
+the circle of light, crying--
+
+'Oh! Rudel, is it indeed thou? Thou art come at last. O welcome to the
+arms of the Princess!'
+
+'What do I do now?' whispered Rudel (who was Kenneth) in the boat, and
+at the same moment Conrad and George said, as with one voice--
+
+'My hat! Alison, won't you catch it!'
+
+For at the end of the Princess's speech she had thrown back her veils
+and revealed a blaze of splendour. She wore several necklaces, one of
+seed pearls, one of topazes, and one of Australian shells, besides a
+string of amber and one of coral. And the front of the red flannel
+blouse was studded with brooches, in one at least of which diamonds
+gleamed. Each arm had one or two bracelets and on her clenched hands
+glittered as many rings as any Princess could wish to wear.
+
+So her brothers had some excuse for saying, 'You'll catch it.'
+
+'No, I sha'n't. It's my look out, anyhow. Do shut up,' said the
+Princess, stamping her foot. 'Now then, Ken, go ahead. Ken, you say, "Oh
+Lady, I faint with rapture!"'
+
+'I faint with rapture,' said Kenneth stolidly. 'Now I land, don't I?'
+
+He landed and stared at the jewelled hand the Princess held out.
+
+'At last, at last,' she said, 'but you ought to say that, Ken. I say, I
+think I'd better be an eloping Princess, and then I can come in the
+boat. Rudel dies really, but that's so dull. Lead me to your ship, oh
+noble stranger! for you have won the Princess, and with you I will live
+and die. Give me your hand, can't you, silly, and do mind my train.'
+
+So Kenneth led her to the boat, and with some difficulty, for the satin
+train got between her feet, she managed to flounder into the punt.
+
+'Now you stand and bow,' she said. 'Fair Rudel, with this ring I thee
+wed,' she pressed a large amethyst ring into his hand, 'remember that
+the Princess of Tripoli is yours for ever. Now let's sing _Integer
+Vitae_ because it's Latin.'
+
+So they sat in the boat and sang. And presently the servants came out to
+listen and admire, and at the sound of the servants' approach the
+Princess veiled her shining splendour.
+
+'It's prettier than wot the Coventry pageant was, so it is,' said the
+cook, 'but it's long past your bed times. So come on out of that there
+dangerous boat, there's dears.'
+
+So then the children went to bed. And when the house was quiet again,
+Alison slipped down and put back Ethel's jewelry, fitting the things
+into their cases and boxes as correctly as she could. 'Ethel won't
+notice,' she thought, but of course Ethel did.
+
+So that next day each child was asked separately by Ethel's mother who
+had been playing with Ethel's jewelry. And Conrad and George said they
+would rather not say. This was a form they always used in that family
+when that sort of question was asked, and it meant, 'It wasn't me, and I
+don't want to sneak.'
+
+And when it came to Alison's turn, she found to her surprise and horror
+that instead of saying, 'I played with them,' she had said, 'I would
+rather not say.'
+
+Of course the mother thought that it was Kenneth who had had the jewels
+to play with. So when it came to his turn he was not asked the same
+question as the others, but his aunt said:
+
+'Kenneth, you are a very naughty little boy to take your cousin Ethel's
+jewelry to play with.'
+
+'I didn't,' said Kenneth.
+
+'Hush! hush!' said the aunt, 'do not make your fault worse by
+untruthfulness. And what have you done with the amethyst ring?'
+
+Kenneth was just going to say that he had given it back to Alison, when
+he saw that this would be sneakish. So he said, getting hot to the ears,
+'You don't suppose I've stolen your beastly ring, do you, Auntie?'
+
+'Don't you dare to speak to me like that,' the aunt very naturally
+replied. 'No, Kenneth, I do not think you would steal, but the ring is
+missing and it must be found.'
+
+Kenneth was furious and frightened. He stood looking down and kicking
+the leg of the chair.
+
+'You had better look for it. You will have plenty of time, because I
+shall not allow you to go to the picnic with the others. The mere taking
+of the jewelry was wrong, but if you had owned your fault and asked
+Ethel's pardon, I should have overlooked it. But you have told me an
+untruth and you have lost the ring. You are a very wicked child, and it
+will make your dear mother very unhappy when she hears of it. That her
+boy should be a liar. It is worse than being a thief!'
+
+At this Kenneth's fortitude gave way, and he lost his head. 'Oh, don't,'
+he said, 'I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. Oh! don't tell mother I'm a
+thief and a liar. Oh! Aunt Effie, please, _please_ don't.' And with that
+he began to cry.
+
+Any doubts Aunt Effie might have had were settled by this outbreak. It
+was now quite plain to her that Kenneth had really intended to keep the
+ring.
+
+'You will remain in your room till the picnic party has started,' the
+aunt went on, 'and then you must find the ring. Remember I expect it to
+be found when I return. And I hope you will be in a better frame of mind
+and really sorry for having been so wicked.'
+
+'Mayn't I see Alison?' was all he found to say.
+
+And the answer was, 'Certainly not. I cannot allow you to associate with
+your cousins. You are not fit to be with honest, truthful children.'
+
+So they all went to the picnic, and Kenneth was left alone. When they
+had gone he crept down and wandered furtively through the empty rooms,
+ashamed to face the servants, and feeling almost as wicked as though he
+had really done something wrong. He thought about it all, over and over
+again, and the more he thought the more certain he was that he _had_
+handed back the ring to Alison last night when the voices of the
+servants were first heard from the dark lawn.
+
+But what was the use of saying so? No one would believe him, and it
+would be sneaking anyhow. Besides, perhaps he _hadn't_ handed it back to
+her. Or rather, perhaps he had handed it and she hadn't taken it.
+Perhaps it had slipped into the boat. He would go and see.
+
+But he did not find it in the boat, though he turned up the carpet and
+even took up the boards to look. And then an extremely miserable little
+boy began to search for an amethyst ring in all sorts of impossible
+places, indoors and out. You know the hopeless way in which you look for
+things that you know perfectly well you will never find, the borrowed
+penknife that you dropped in the woods, for instance, or the week's
+pocket-money which slipped through that hole in your pocket as you went
+to the village to spend it.
+
+The servants gave him his meals and told him to cheer up. But cheering
+up and Kenneth were, for the time, strangers. People in books never can
+eat when they are in trouble, but I have noticed myself that if the
+trouble has gone on for some hours, eating is really rather a comfort.
+You don't enjoy eating so much as usual, perhaps, but at any rate it is
+something to do, and takes the edge off your sorrow for a short time.
+And cook was sorry for Kenneth and sent him up a very nice dinner and a
+very nice tea. Roast chicken and gooseberry pie the dinner was, and for
+tea there was cake with almond icing on it.
+
+The sun was very low when he went back wearily to have one more look in
+the boat for that detestable amethyst ring. Of course it was not there.
+And the picnic party would be home soon. And he really did not know what
+his aunt would do to him.
+
+'Shut me up in a dark cupboard, perhaps,' he thought gloomily, 'or put
+me to bed all day to-morrow. Or give me lines to write out, thousands,
+and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, of them.'
+
+The boat, set in motion by his stepping into it, swung out to the full
+length of its rope. The sun was shining almost level across the water.
+It was a very still evening, and the reflections of the trees and of the
+house were as distinct as the house and the trees themselves. And the
+water was unusually clear. He could see the fish swimming about, and the
+sand and pebbles at the bottom of the moat. How clear and quiet it
+looked down there, and what fun the fishes seemed to be having.
+
+'I wish I was a fish,' said Kenneth. 'Nobody punishes _them_ for taking
+rings they _didn't_ take.'
+
+And then suddenly he saw the ring itself, lying calm, and quiet, and
+round, and shining, on the smooth sand at the bottom of the moat.
+
+He reached for the boat-hook and leaned over the edge of the boat trying
+to get up the ring on the boat-hook's point. Then there was a splash.
+
+'Good gracious! I wonder what that is?' said cook in the kitchen, and
+dropped the saucepan with the welsh rabbit in it which she had just made
+for kitchen supper.
+
+Kenneth had leaned out too far over the edge of the boat, the boat had
+suddenly decided to go the other way, and Kenneth had fallen into the
+water.
+
+The first thing he felt was delicious coolness, the second that his
+clothes had gone, and the next thing he noticed was that he was swimming
+quite easily and comfortably under water, and that he had no trouble
+with his breathing, such as people who tell you not to fall into water
+seem to expect you to have. Also he could see quite well, which he had
+never been able to do under water before.
+
+'I can't think,' he said to himself, 'why people make so much fuss about
+your falling into the water. I sha'n't be in a hurry to get out. I'll
+swim right round the moat while I'm about it.'
+
+[Illustration: There was a splash.]
+
+It was a very much longer swim than he expected, and as he swam he
+noticed one or two things that struck him as rather odd. One was that he
+couldn't see his hands. And another was that he couldn't feel his feet.
+And he met some enormous fishes, like great cod or halibut, they seemed.
+He had had no idea that there were fresh-water fish of that size.
+
+They towered above him more like men-o'-war than fish, and he was
+rather glad to get past them. There were numbers of smaller fishes, some
+about his own size, he thought. They seemed to be enjoying themselves
+extremely, and he admired the clever quickness with which they darted
+out of the way of the great hulking fish.
+
+And then suddenly he ran into something hard and very solid, and a voice
+above him said crossly:
+
+'Now then, who are you a-shoving of? Can't you keep your eyes open, and
+keep your nose out of gentlemen's shirt fronts?'
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said Kenneth, trying to rub his nose, and not being
+able to. 'I didn't know people could talk under water,' he added very
+much astonished to find that talking under water was as easy to him as
+swimming there.
+
+'Fish can talk under water, of course,' said the voice, 'if they didn't,
+they'd never talk at all: they certainly can't talk _out_ of it.'
+
+'But I'm not a fish,' said Kenneth, and felt himself grin at the absurd
+idea.
+
+'Yes, you are,' said the voice, 'of course you're a fish,' and Kenneth,
+with a shiver of certainty, felt that the voice spoke the truth. He
+_was_ a fish. He must have become a fish at the very moment when he fell
+into the water. That accounted for his not being able to see his hands
+or feel his feet. Because of course his hands were fins and his feet
+were a tail.
+
+'Who are you?' he asked the voice, and his own voice trembled.
+
+'I'm the Doyen Carp,' said the voice. 'You must be a very new fish
+indeed or you'd know that. Come up, and let's have a look at you.'
+
+Kenneth came up and found himself face to face with an enormous fish who
+had round staring eyes and a mouth that opened and shut continually. It
+opened square like a kit-bag, and it shut with an extremely sour and
+severe expression like that of an offended rhinoceros.
+
+'Yes,' said the Carp, 'you _are_ a new fish. Who put you in?'
+
+'I fell in,' said Kenneth, 'out of the boat, but I'm not a fish at all,
+really I'm not. I'm a boy, but I don't suppose you'll believe me.'
+
+'Why shouldn't I believe you?' asked the Carp wagging a slow fin.
+'Nobody tells untruths under water.'
+
+And if you come to think of it, no one ever does.
+
+'Tell me your true story,' said the Carp very lazily. And Kenneth told
+it.
+
+'Ah! these humans!' said the Carp when he had done. 'Always in such a
+hurry to think the worst of everybody!' He opened his mouth squarely and
+shut it contemptuously. 'You're jolly lucky, you are. Not one boy in a
+million turns into a fish, let me tell you.'
+
+'Do you mean that I've got to _go on_ being a fish?' Kenneth asked.
+
+'Of course you'll go on being a fish as long as you stop in the water.
+You couldn't live here, you know, if you weren't.'
+
+'I might if I was an eel,' said Kenneth, and thought himself very
+clever.
+
+'Well, _be_ an eel then,' said the Carp, and swam away sneering and
+stately. Kenneth had to swim his hardest to catch up.
+
+'Then if I get out of the water, shall I be a boy again?' he asked
+panting.
+
+'Of course, silly,' said the Carp, 'only you can't get out.'
+
+'Oh! can't I?' said Kenneth the fish, whisked his tail and swam off. He
+went straight back to the amethyst ring, picked it up in his mouth, and
+swam into the shallows at the edge of the moat. Then he tried to climb
+up the slanting mud and on to the grassy bank, but the grass hurt his
+fins horribly, and when he put his nose out of the water, the air
+stifled him, and he was glad to slip back again. Then he tried to jump
+out of the water, but he could only jump straight up into the air, so of
+course he fell straight down again into the water. He began to be
+afraid, and the thought that perhaps he was doomed to remain for ever a
+fish was indeed a terrible one. He wanted to cry, but the tears would
+not come out of his eyes. Perhaps there was no room for any more water
+in the moat.
+
+The smaller fishes called to him in a friendly jolly way to come and
+play with them--they were having a quite exciting game of
+follow-my-leader among some enormous water-lily stalks that looked like
+trunks of great trees. But Kenneth had no heart for games just then.
+
+He swam miserably round the moat looking for the old Carp, his only
+acquaintance in this strange wet world. And at last, pushing through a
+thick tangle of water weeds he found the great fish.
+
+'Now then,' said the Carp testily, 'haven't you any better manners than
+to come tearing a gentleman's bed-curtains like that?'
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said Kenneth Fish, 'but I know how clever you are.
+Do please help me.'
+
+'What do you want now?' said the Carp, and spoke a little less crossly.
+
+'I want to get out. I want to go and be a boy again.'
+
+'But you must have said you wanted to be a fish.'
+
+'I didn't mean it, if I did.'
+
+'You shouldn't say what you don't mean.'
+
+'I'll try not to again,' said Kenneth humbly, 'but how can I get out?'
+
+'There's only one way,' said the Carp rolling his vast body over in his
+watery bed, 'and a jolly unpleasant way it is. Far better stay here and
+be a good little fish. On the honour of a gentleman that's the best
+thing you can do.'
+
+'I want to get out,' said Kenneth again.
+
+'Well then, the only way is ... you know we always teach the young fish
+to look out for hooks so that they may avoid them. _You_ must look out
+for a hook and _take it_. Let them catch you. On a hook.'
+
+The Carp shuddered and went on solemnly, 'Have you strength? Have you
+patience? Have you high courage and determination? You will want them
+all. Have you all these?'
+
+'I don't know what I've got,' said poor Kenneth, 'except that I've got a
+tail and fins, and I don't know a hook when I see it. Won't you come
+with me? Oh! dear Mr. Doyen Carp, _do_ come and show me a hook.'
+
+'It will hurt you,' said the Carp, 'very much indeed. You take a
+gentleman's word for it.'
+
+'I know,' said Kenneth, 'you needn't rub it in.'
+
+The Carp rolled heavily out of his bed.
+
+'Come on then,' he said, 'I don't admire your taste, but if you _want_ a
+hook, well, the gardener's boy is fishing in the cool of the evening.
+Come on.'
+
+He led the way with a steady stately movement.
+
+'I want to take the ring with me,' said Kenneth, 'but I can't get hold
+of it. Do you think you could put it on my fin with your snout?'
+
+'My what!' shouted the old Carp indignantly and stopped dead.
+
+'Your nose, I meant,' said Kenneth. 'Oh! please don't be angry. It would
+be so kind of you if you would. Shove the ring on, I mean.'
+
+'That will hurt too,' said the Carp, and Kenneth thought he seemed not
+altogether sorry that it should.
+
+It did hurt very much indeed. The ring was hard and heavy, and somehow
+Kenneth's fin would not fold up small enough for the ring to slip over
+it, and the Carp's big mouth was rather clumsy at the work. But at last
+it was done. And then they set out in search of a hook for Kenneth to be
+caught with.
+
+'I wish we could find one! I wish we could!' Kenneth Fish kept saying.
+
+'You're just looking for trouble,' said the Carp. 'Well, here you are!'
+
+Above them in the clear water hung a delicious-looking worm. Kenneth Boy
+did not like worms any better than you do, but to Kenneth Fish that worm
+looked most tempting and delightful.
+
+'Just wait a sec.,' he said, 'till I get that worm.'
+
+'You little silly,' said the Carp, '_that's the hook_. Take it.'
+
+'Wait a sec.,' said Kenneth again.
+
+His courage was beginning to ooze out of his fin tips, and a shiver ran
+down him from gills to tail.
+
+'If you once begin to think about a hook you never take it,' said the
+Carp.
+
+'_Never?_' said Kenneth 'Then ... oh! good-bye!' he cried desperately,
+and snapped at the worm. A sharp pain ran through his head and he felt
+himself drawn up into the air, that stifling, choking, husky, thick
+stuff in which fish cannot breathe. And as he swung in the air the
+dreadful thought came to him, 'Suppose I don't turn into a boy again?
+Suppose I keep being a fish?' And then he wished he hadn't. But it was
+too late to wish that.
+
+Everything grew quite dark, only inside his head there seemed to be a
+light. There was a wild, rushing, buzzing noise, then something in his
+head seemed to break and he knew no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When presently he knew things again, he was lying on something hard. Was
+he Kenneth Fish lying on a stone at the bottom of the moat, or Kenneth
+Boy lying somewhere out of the water? His breathing was all right, so he
+wasn't a fish out of water or a boy under it.
+
+'He's coming to,' said a voice. The Carp's he thought it was. But next
+moment he knew it to be the voice of his aunt, and he moved his hand and
+felt grass in it. He opened his eyes and saw above him the soft gray of
+the evening sky with a star or two.
+
+'Here's the ring, Aunt,' he said.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+[Illustration: 'Oh, good-bye!' he cried desperately, and snapped at the
+worm.]
+
+The cook had heard a splash and had run out just as the picnic party
+arrived at the front door. They had all rushed to the moat, and the
+uncle had pulled Kenneth out with the boat-hook. He had not been in the
+water more than three minutes, they said. But Kenneth knew better.
+
+They carried him in, very wet he was, and laid him on the breakfast-room
+sofa, where the aunt with hurried thoughtfulness had spread out the
+uncle's mackintosh.
+
+'Get some rough towels, Jane,' said the aunt. 'Make haste, do.'
+
+'I got the ring,' said Kenneth.
+
+'Never mind about the ring, dear,' said the aunt, taking his boots off.
+
+'But you said I was a thief and a liar,' Kenneth said feebly, 'and it
+was in the moat all the time.'
+
+'_Mother!_' it was Alison who shrieked. 'You didn't say that to him?'
+
+'Of course I didn't,' said the aunt impatiently. She thought she hadn't,
+but then Kenneth thought she had.
+
+'It was _me_ took the ring,' said Alison, 'and I dropped it. I didn't
+say I hadn't. I only said I'd rather not say. Oh Mother! poor Kenneth!'
+
+The aunt, without a word, carried Kenneth up to the bath-room and turned
+on the hot-water tap. The uncle and Ethel followed.
+
+'Why didn't you own up, you sneak?' said Conrad to his sister with
+withering scorn.
+
+'Sneak,' echoed the stout George.
+
+'I meant to. I was only getting steam up,' sobbed Alison. 'I didn't
+know. Mother only told us she wasn't pleased with Ken, and so he wasn't
+to go to the picnic. Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?'
+
+'Sneak!' said her brothers in chorus, and left her to her tears of shame
+and remorse.
+
+It was Kenneth who next day begged every one to forgive and forget. And
+as it was _his_ day--rather like a birthday, you know--when no one could
+refuse him anything, all agreed that the whole affair should be buried
+in oblivion. Every one was tremendously kind, the aunt more so than any
+one. But Alison's eyes were still red when in the afternoon they all
+went fishing once more. And before Kenneth's hook had been two minutes
+in the water there was a bite, a very big fish, the uncle had to be
+called from his study to land it.
+
+'Here's a magnificent fellow,' said the uncle. 'Not an ounce less than
+two pounds, Ken. I'll have it stuffed for you.'
+
+And he held out the fish and Kenneth found himself face to face with the
+Doyen Carp. There was no mistaking that mouth that opened like a
+kit-bag, and shut in a sneer like a rhinoceros's. Its eye was most
+reproachful.
+
+'Oh! no,' cried Kenneth, 'you helped me back and I'll help you back,'
+and he caught the Carp from the hands of the uncle and flung it out in
+the moat.
+
+'Your head's not quite right yet, my boy,' said the uncle kindly.
+'Hadn't you better go in and lie down a bit?'
+
+But Alison understood, for he had told her the whole story. He had told
+her that morning before breakfast while she was still in deep disgrace;
+to cheer her up, he said. And, most disappointingly, it made her cry
+more than ever.
+
+'Your poor little fins,' she had said, 'and having your feet tied up in
+your tail. And it was all my fault.'
+
+'I liked it,' Kenneth had said with earnest politeness, 'it was a most
+awful lark.' And he quite meant what he said.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+THE MAGICIAN'S HEART
+
+
+We all have our weaknesses. Mine is mulberries. Yours, perhaps, motor
+cars. Professor Taykin's was christenings--royal christenings. He always
+expected to be asked to the christening parties of all the little royal
+babies, and of course he never was, because he was not a lord, or a
+duke, or a seller of bacon and tea, or anything really high-class, but
+merely a wicked magician, who by economy and strict attention to
+customers had worked up a very good business of his own. He had not
+always been wicked. He was born quite good, I believe, and his old
+nurse, who had long since married a farmer and retired into the calm of
+country life, always used to say that he was the duckiest little boy in
+a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs. But he had changed since
+he was a boy, as a good many other people do--perhaps it was his trade.
+I dare say you've noticed that cobblers are usually thin, and brewers
+are generally fat, and magicians are almost always wicked.
+
+Well, his weakness (for christenings) grew stronger and stronger because
+it was never indulged, and at last he 'took the bull into his own
+hands,' as the Irish footman at the palace said, and went to a
+christening without being asked. It was a very grand party given by the
+King of the Fortunate Islands, and the little prince was christened
+Fortunatus. No one took any notice of Professor Taykin. They were too
+polite to turn him out, but they made him wish he'd never come. He felt
+quite an outsider, as indeed he was, and this made him furious. So that
+when all the bright, light, laughing, fairy godmothers were crowding
+round the blue satin cradle, and giving gifts of beauty and strength and
+goodness to the baby, the Magician suddenly did a very difficult charm
+(in his head, like you do mental arithmetic), and said:
+
+'Young Forty may be all that, but _I_ say he shall be the stupidest
+prince in the world,' and on that he vanished in a puff of red smoke
+with a smell like the Fifth of November in a back garden on Streatham
+Hill, and as he left no address the King of the Fortunate Islands
+couldn't prosecute him for high treason.
+
+Taykin was very glad to think that he had made such a lot of people
+unhappy--the whole Court was in tears when he left, including the
+baby--and he looked in the papers for another royal christening, so that
+he could go to that and make a lot more people miserable. And there was
+one fixed for the very next Wednesday. The Magician went to that, too,
+disguised as a wealthy.
+
+This time the baby was a girl. Taykin kept close to the pink velvet
+cradle, and when all the nice qualities in the world had been given to
+the Princess he suddenly said, 'Little Aura may be all that, but _I_ say
+she shall be the ugliest princess in all the world.'
+
+And instantly she was. It was terrible. And she had been such a
+beautiful baby too. Every one had been saying that she was the most
+beautiful baby they had ever seen. This sort of thing is often said at
+christenings.
+
+Having uglified the unfortunate little Princess the Magician did the
+spell (in his mind, just as you do your spelling) to make himself
+vanish, but to his horror there was no red smoke and no smell of
+fireworks, and there he was, still, where he now very much wished not to
+be. Because one of the fairies there had seen, just one second too late
+to save the Princess, what he was up to, and had made a strong little
+charm in a great hurry to prevent his vanishing. This Fairy was a White
+Witch, and of course you know that White Magic is much stronger than
+Black Magic, as well as more suited for drawing-room performances. So
+there the Magician stood, 'looking like a thunder-struck pig,' as some
+one unkindly said, and the dear White Witch bent down and kissed the
+baby princess.
+
+'There!' she said, 'you can keep that kiss till you want it. When the
+time comes you'll know what to do with it. The Magician can't vanish,
+Sire. You'd better arrest him.'
+
+'Arrest that person,' said the King, pointing to Taykin. 'I suppose your
+charms are of a permanent nature, madam.'
+
+'Quite,' said the Fairy, 'at least they never go till there's no longer
+any use for them.'
+
+So the Magician was shut up in an enormously high tower, and allowed to
+play with magic; but none of his spells could act outside the tower so
+he was never able to pass the extra double guard that watched outside
+night and day. The King would have liked to have the Magician executed
+but the White Witch warned him that this would never do.
+
+'Don't you see,' she said, 'he's the only person who can make the
+Princess beautiful again. And he'll do it some day. But don't you go
+_asking_ him to do it. He'll never do anything to oblige you. He's that
+sort of man.'
+
+So the years rolled on. The Magician stayed in the tower and did magic
+and was very bored,--for it is dull to take white rabbits out of your
+hat, and your hat out of nothing when there's no one to see you.
+
+Prince Fortunatus was such a stupid little boy that he got lost quite
+early in the story, and went about the country saying his name was
+James, which it wasn't. A baker's wife found him and adopted him, and
+sold the diamond buttons of his little overcoat, for three hundred
+pounds, and as she was a very honest woman she put two hundred away for
+James to have when he grew up.
+
+The years rolled on. Aura continued to be hideous, and she was very
+unhappy, till on her twentieth birthday her married cousin Belinda came
+to see her. Now Belinda had been made ugly in her cradle too, so she
+could sympathise as no one else could.
+
+'But _I_ got out of it all right, and so will you,' said Belinda. 'I'm
+sure the first thing to do is to find a magician.'
+
+'Father banished them all twenty years ago,' said Aura behind her veil,
+'all but the one who uglified me.'
+
+'Then I should go to _him_,' said beautiful Belinda. 'Dress up as a
+beggar maid, and give him fifty pounds to do it. Not more, or he may
+suspect that you're not a beggar maid. It will be great fun. I'd go with
+you only I promised Bellamant faithfully that I'd be home to lunch.' And
+off she went in her mother-of-pearl coach, leaving Aura to look through
+the bound volumes of _The Perfect Lady_ in the palace library, to find
+out the proper costume for a beggar maid.
+
+Now that very morning the Magician's old nurse had packed up a ham, and
+some eggs, and some honey, and some apples, and a sweet bunch of
+old-fashioned flowers, and borrowed the baker's boy to hold the horse
+for her, and started off to see the Magician. It was forty years since
+she'd seen him, but she loved him still, and now she thought she could
+do him a good turn. She asked in the town for his address, and learned
+that he lived in the Black Tower.
+
+'But you'd best be careful,' the townsfolk said, 'he's a spiteful chap.'
+
+'Bless you,' said the old nurse, 'he won't hurt me as nursed him when he
+was a babe, in a plaid frock with the dearest little fat legs ever you
+see.'
+
+So she got to the tower, and the guards let her through. Taykin was
+almost pleased to see her--remember he had had no visitors for twenty
+years--and he was quite pleased to see the ham and the honey.
+
+'But where did I put them _h_eggs?' said the nurse, 'and the apples--I
+must have left them at home after all.'
+
+She had. But the Magician just waved his hand in the air, and there was
+a basket of apples that hadn't been there before. The eggs he took out
+of her bonnet, the folds of her shawl, and even from his own mouth, just
+like a conjurer does. Only of course he was a real Magician.
+
+'Lor!' said she, 'it's like magic.'
+
+'It _is_ magic,' said he. 'That's my trade. It's quite a pleasure to
+have an audience again. I've lived here alone for twenty years. It's
+very lonely, especially of an evening.'
+
+'Can't you get out?' said the nurse.
+
+'No. King's orders must be respected, but it's a dog's life.' He
+sniffed, made himself a magic handkerchief out of empty air, and wiped
+his eyes.
+
+'Take an apprentice, my dear,' said the nurse.
+
+'And teach him my magic? Not me.'
+
+'Suppose you got one so stupid he _couldn't_ learn?'
+
+'That would be all right--but it's no use advertising for a stupid
+person--you'd get no answers.'
+
+'You needn't advertise,' said the nurse; and she went out and brought in
+James, who was really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and also the
+baker's boy she had brought with her to hold the horse's head.
+
+'Now, James,' she said, 'you'd like to be apprenticed, wouldn't you?'
+
+'Yes,' said the poor stupid boy.
+
+'Then give the gentleman your money, James.'
+
+James did.
+
+'My last doubts vanish,' said the Magician, 'he _is_ stupid. Nurse, let
+us celebrate the occasion with a little drop of something. Not before
+the boy because of setting an example. James, wash up. Not here, silly;
+in the back kitchen.'
+
+So James washed up, and as he was very clumsy he happened to break a
+little bottle of essence of dreams that was on the shelf, and instantly
+there floated up from the washing-up water the vision of a princess more
+beautiful than the day--so beautiful that even James could not help
+seeing how beautiful she was, and holding out his arms to her as she
+came floating through the air above the kitchen sink. But when he held
+out his arms she vanished. He sighed and washed up harder than ever.
+
+'I wish I wasn't so stupid,' he said, and then there was a knock at the
+door. James wiped his hands and opened. Some one stood there in very
+picturesque rags and tatters. 'Please,' said some one, who was of course
+the Princess, 'is Professor Taykin at home?'
+
+'Walk in, please,' said James.
+
+'My snakes alive!' said Taykin, 'what a day we're having. Three
+visitors in one morning. How kind of you to call. Won't you take a
+chair?'
+
+'I hoped,' said the veiled Princess, 'that you'd give me something else
+to take.'
+
+'A glass of wine,' said Taykin. 'You'll take a glass of wine?'
+
+'No, thank you,' said the beggar maid who was the Princess.
+
+'Then take ... take your veil off,' said the nurse, 'or you won't feel
+the benefit of it when you go out.'
+
+'I can't,' said Aura, 'it wouldn't be safe.'
+
+'Too beautiful, eh?' said the Magician. 'Still--you're quite safe here.'
+
+'Can you do magic?' she abruptly asked.
+
+'A little,' said he ironically.
+
+'Well,' said she, 'it's like this. I'm so ugly no one can bear to look
+at me. And I want to go as kitchenmaid to the palace. They want a cook
+and a scullion and a kitchenmaid. I thought perhaps you'd give me
+something to make me pretty. I'm only a poor beggar maid.... It would be
+a great thing to me if....'
+
+'Go along with you,' said Taykin, very cross indeed. 'I never give to
+beggars.'
+
+'Here's twopence,' whispered poor James, pressing it into her hand,
+'it's all I've got left.'
+
+'Thank you,' she whispered back. 'You _are_ good.'
+
+And to the Magician she said:
+
+'I happen to have fifty pounds. I'll give it you for a new face.'
+
+'Done,' cried Taykin. 'Here's another stupid one!' He grabbed the money,
+waved his wand, and then and there before the astonished eyes of the
+nurse and the apprentice the ugly beggar maid became the loveliest
+princess in the world.
+
+'Lor!' said the nurse.
+
+'My dream!' cried the apprentice.
+
+'Please,' said the Princess, 'can I have a looking-glass?' The
+apprentice ran to unhook the one that hung over the kitchen sink, and
+handed it to her. 'Oh,' she said, 'how _very_ pretty I am. How can I
+thank you?'
+
+'Quite easily,' said the Magician, 'beggar maid as you are, I hereby
+offer you my hand and heart.'
+
+He put his hand into his waistcoat and pulled out his heart. It was fat
+and pink, and the Princess did not like the look of it.
+
+'Thank you very much,' said she, 'but I'd rather not.'
+
+'But I insist,' said Taykin.
+
+'But really, your offer....'
+
+'Most handsome, I'm sure,' said the nurse.
+
+'My affections are engaged,' said the Princess, looking down. 'I can't
+marry you.'
+
+'Am I to take this as a refusal?' asked Taykin; and the Princess said
+she feared that he was.
+
+'Very well, then,' he said, 'I shall see you home, and ask your father
+about it. He'll not let you refuse an offer like this. Nurse, come and
+tie my necktie.'
+
+So he went out, and the nurse with him.
+
+Then the Princess told the apprentice in a very great hurry who she was.
+
+'It would never do,' she said, 'for him to see me home. He'd find out
+that I was the Princess, and he'd uglify me again in no time.'
+
+'He sha'n't see you home,' said James. 'I may be stupid but I'm strong
+too.'
+
+'How brave you are,' said Aura admiringly, 'but I'd rather slip away
+quietly, without any fuss. Can't you undo the patent lock of that door?'
+The apprentice tried but he was too stupid, and the Princess was not
+strong enough.
+
+'I'm sorry,' said the apprentice who was a Prince. 'I can't undo the
+door, but when _he_ does I'll hold him and you can get away. I dreamed
+of you this morning,' he added.
+
+'I dreamed of you too,' said she, 'but you were different.'
+
+'Perhaps,' said poor James sadly, 'the person you dreamed about wasn't
+stupid, and I am.'
+
+'Are you _really_?' cried the Princess. 'I _am_ so glad!'
+
+'That's rather unkind, isn't it?' said he.
+
+'No; because if _that's_ all that makes you different from the man I
+dreamed about I can soon make _that_ all right.'
+
+And with that she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. And at
+her kiss his stupidness passed away like a cloud, and he became as
+clever as any one need be; and besides knowing all the ordinary lessons
+he would have learned if he had stayed at home in his palace, he knew
+who he was, and where he was, and why, and he knew all the geography of
+his father's kingdom, and the exports and imports and the condition of
+politics. And he knew also that the Princess loved him.
+
+So he caught her in his arms and kissed her, and they were very happy,
+and told each other over and over again what a beautiful world it was,
+and how wonderful it was that they should have found each other, seeing
+that the world is not only beautiful but rather large.
+
+'That first one was a magic kiss, you know,' said she. 'My fairy
+godmother gave it to me, and I've been keeping it all these years for
+you. You must get away from here, and come to the palace. Oh, you'll
+manage it--you're clever now.'
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'I _am_ clever now. I can undo the lock for you. Go, my
+dear, go before he comes back.'
+
+So the Princess went. And only just in time; for as she went out of one
+door Taykin came in at the other.
+
+He was furious to find her gone; and I should not like to write down the
+things he said to his apprentice when he found that James had been so
+stupid as to open the door for her. They were not polite things at all.
+
+He tried to follow her. But the Princess had warned the guards, and he
+could not get out.
+
+'Oh,' he cried, 'if only my old magic would work outside this tower. I'd
+soon be even with her.'
+
+And then in a strange, confused, yet quite sure way, he felt that the
+spell that held him, the White Witch's spell, was dissolved.
+
+'To the palace!' he cried; and rushing to the cauldron that hung over
+the fire he leaped into it, leaped out in the form of a red lion, and
+disappeared.
+
+Without a moment's hesitation the Prince, who was his apprentice,
+followed him, calling out the same words and leaping into the same
+cauldron, while the poor nurse screamed and wrung her hands. As he
+touched the liquor in the cauldron he felt that he was not quite
+himself. He was, in fact, a green dragon. He felt himself vanish--a most
+uncomfortable sensation--and reappeared, with a suddenness that took his
+breath away, in his own form and at the back door of the palace.
+
+The time had been short, but already the Magician had succeeded in
+obtaining an engagement as palace cook. How he did it without references
+I don't know. Perhaps he made the references by magic as he had made the
+eggs, and the apples, and the handkerchief.
+
+Taykin's astonishment and annoyance at being followed by his faithful
+apprentice were soon soothed, for he saw that a stupid scullion would be
+of great use. Of course he had no idea that James had been made clever
+by a kiss.
+
+'But how are you going to cook?' asked the apprentice. 'You don't know
+how!'
+
+'I shall cook,' said Taykin, 'as I do everything else--by magic.' And he
+did. I wish I had time to tell you how he turned out a hot dinner of
+seventeen courses from totally empty saucepans, how James looked in a
+cupboard for spices and found it empty, and how next moment the nurse
+walked out of it. The Magician had been so long alone that he seemed to
+revel in the luxury of showing off to some one, and he leaped about from
+one cupboard to another, produced cats and cockatoos out of empty jars,
+and made mice and rabbits disappear and reappear till James's head was
+in a whirl, for all his cleverness; and the nurse, as she washed up,
+wept tears of pure joy at her boy's wonderful skill.
+
+'All this excitement's bad for my heart, though,' Taykin said at last,
+and pulling his heart out of his chest, he put it on a shelf, and as he
+did so his magic note-book fell from his breast and the apprentice
+picked it up. Taykin did not see him do it; he was busy making the
+kitchen lamp fly about the room like a pigeon.
+
+It was just then that the Princess came in, looking more lovely than
+ever in a simple little morning frock of white chiffon and diamonds.
+
+'The beggar maid,' said Taykin, 'looking like a princess! I'll marry her
+just the same.'
+
+'I've come to give the orders for dinner,' she said; and then she saw
+who it was, and gave one little cry and stood still, trembling.
+
+'To order the dinner,' said the nurse. 'Then you're----'
+
+'Yes,' said Aura, 'I'm the Princess.'
+
+'You're the Princess,' said the Magician. 'Then I'll marry you all the
+more. And if you say no I'll uglify you as the word leaves your lips.
+Oh, yes--you think I've just been amusing myself over my cooking--but
+I've really been brewing the strongest spell in the world. Marry me--or
+drink----'
+
+The Princess shuddered at these dreadful words.
+
+'Drink, or marry me,' said the Magician. 'If you marry me you shall be
+beautiful for ever.'
+
+'Ah,' said the nurse, 'he's a match even for a Princess.'
+
+'I'll tell papa,' said the Princess, sobbing.
+
+'No, you won't,' said Taykin. 'Your father will never know. If you won't
+marry me you shall drink this and become my scullery maid--my hideous
+scullery maid--and wash up for ever in the lonely tower.'
+
+He caught her by the wrist.
+
+'Stop,' cried the apprentice, who was a Prince.
+
+'Stop? _Me?_ Nonsense! Pooh!' said the Magician.
+
+'Stop, I say!' said James, who was Fortunatus. '_I've got your heart!_'
+He had--and he held it up in one hand, and in the other a cooking knife.
+
+'One step nearer that lady,' said he, 'and in goes the knife.'
+
+The Magician positively skipped in his agony and terror.
+
+'I say, look out!' he cried. 'Be careful what you're doing. Accidents
+happen so easily! Suppose your foot slipped! Then no apologies would
+meet the case. That's my heart you've got there. My life's bound up in
+it.'
+
+'I know. That's often the case with people's hearts,' said Fortunatus.
+'We've got you, my dear sir, on toast. My Princess, might I trouble you
+to call the guards.'
+
+The Magician did not dare to resist, so the guards arrested him. The
+nurse, though in floods of tears, managed to serve up a very good plain
+dinner, and after dinner the Magician was brought before the King.
+
+Now the King, as soon as he had seen that his daughter had been made so
+beautiful, had caused a large number of princes to be fetched by
+telephone. He was anxious to get her married at once in case she turned
+ugly again. So before he could do justice to the Magician he had to
+settle which of the princes was to marry the Princess. He had chosen the
+Prince of the Diamond Mountains, a very nice steady young man with a
+good income. But when he suggested the match to the Princess she
+declined it, and the Magician, who was standing at the foot of the
+throne steps loaded with chains, clattered forward and said:
+
+'Your Majesty, will you spare my life if I tell you something you don't
+know?'
+
+The King, who was a very inquisitive man, said 'Yes.'
+
+'Then know,' said Taykin, 'that the Princess won't marry _your_ choice,
+because she's made one of her own--my apprentice.'
+
+The Princess meant to have told her father this when she had got him
+alone and in a good temper. But now he was in a bad temper, and in full
+audience.
+
+The apprentice was dragged in, and all the Princess's agonized pleadings
+only got this out of the King--
+
+'All right. I won't hang him. He shall be best man at your wedding.'
+
+Then the King took his daughter's hand and set her in the middle of the
+hall, and set the Prince of the Diamond Mountains on her right and the
+apprentice on her left. Then he said:
+
+'I will spare the life of this aspiring youth on your left if you'll
+promise never to speak to him again, and if you'll promise to marry the
+gentleman on your right before tea this afternoon.'
+
+The wretched Princess looked at her lover, and his lips formed the word
+'Promise.'
+
+So she said: 'I promise never to speak to the gentleman on my left and
+to marry the gentleman on my right before tea to-day,' and held out her
+hand to the Prince of the Diamond Mountains.
+
+Then suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, the Prince of the Diamond
+Mountains was on her left, and her hand was held by her own Prince, who
+stood at her right hand. And yet nobody seemed to have moved. It was the
+purest and most high-class magic.
+
+'Dished,' cried the King, 'absolutely dished!'
+
+'A mere trifle,' said the apprentice modestly. 'I've got Taykin's magic
+recipe book, as well as his heart.'
+
+'Well, we must make the best of it, I suppose,' said the King crossly.
+'Bless you, my children.'
+
+He was less cross when it was explained to him that the apprentice was
+really the Prince of the Fortunate Islands, and a much better match than
+the Prince of the Diamond Mountains, and he was quite in a good temper
+by the time the nurse threw herself in front of the throne and begged
+the King to let the Magician off altogether--chiefly on the ground that
+when he was a baby he was the dearest little duck that ever was, in the
+prettiest plaid frock, with the loveliest fat legs.
+
+The King, moved by these arguments, said:
+
+'I'll spare him if he'll promise to be good.'
+
+'You will, ducky, won't you?' said the nurse, crying.
+
+'No,' said the Magician, 'I won't; and what's more, I can't.'
+
+The Princess, who was now so happy that she wanted every one else to be
+happy too, begged her lover to make Taykin good 'by magic.'
+
+'Alas, my dearest Lady,' said the Prince, 'no one can be made good by
+magic. I could take the badness out of him--there's an excellent recipe
+in this note-book--but if I did that there'd be so very little left.'
+
+'Every little helps,' said the nurse wildly.
+
+Prince Fortunatus, who was James, who was the apprentice, studied the
+book for a few moments, and then said a few words in a language no one
+present had ever heard before.
+
+And as he spoke the wicked Magician began to tremble and shrink.
+
+'Oh, my boy--be good! Promise you'll be good,' cried the nurse, still
+in tears.
+
+The Magician seemed to be shrinking inside his clothes. He grew smaller
+and smaller. The nurse caught him in her arms, and still he grew less
+and less, till she seemed to be holding nothing but a bundle of clothes.
+Then with a cry of love and triumph she tore the Magician's clothes away
+and held up a chubby baby boy, with the very plaid frock and fat legs
+she had so often and so lovingly described.
+
+'I said there wouldn't be much of him when the badness was out,' said
+the Prince Fortunatus.
+
+'I will be good; oh, I will,' said the baby boy that had been the
+Magician.
+
+'I'll see to that,' said the nurse. And so the story ends with love and
+a wedding, and showers of white roses.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magic World, by Edith Nesbit
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