The Book of Dragons
kingdom it is, of course, much worse. The things that were missed were
nothing much at first--a few little elephants, a hippopotamus or two,
and some giraffes, and things like that. It was nothing much, as I say,
but it made people feel uncomfortable. Then one day a favorite rabbit of
the Princess's, called Frederick, mysteriously disappeared, and then
came a terrible morning when the Mexican lapdog was missing. He had
barked ever since the dragon came to the island, and people had grown
quite used to the noise. So when his barking suddenly ceased it woke
everybody up--and they all went out to see what was the matter. And the
lapdog was gone!
A boy was sent to wake the army, so that it might look for him. But the
army was gone too! And now the people began to be frightened. Then Uncle
James came out onto the terrace of the palace, and he made the people a
speech. He said: "Friends--fellow citizens--I cannot disguise from
myself or from you that this purple dragon is a poor penniless exile, a
helpless alien in our midst, and, besides, he is a--is no end of a
dragon."
The people thought of the dragon's tail and said, "Hear, hear."
Uncle James went on: "Something has happened to a gentle and defenseless
member of our community. We don't know what has happened."
Everyone thought of the rabbit named Frederick, and groaned.
"The defenses of our country have been swallowed up," said Uncle James.
Everyone thought of the poor army.
"There is only one thing to be done." Uncle James was warming to his
subject. "Could we ever forgive ourselves if by neglecting a simple
precaution we lost more rabbits--or even, perhaps, our navy, our police,
and our fire brigade? For I warn you that the purple dragon will respect
nothing, however sacred."
Everyone thought of themselves--and they said, "What is the simple
precaution?"
Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday. He is
accustomed to have a present on his birthday. If he gets a nice present
he will be in a hurry to take it away and show it to his friends, and he
will fly off and never come back."
The crowd cheered wildly--and the Princess from her balcony clapped her
hands.
"The present the dragon expects," said Uncle James, cheerfully, "is
rather an expensive one. But, when we give, it should not be in a
grudging spirit, especially to visitors. What the dragon wants is a
Princess. We have only one Princess, it is true; but far be it from us
to display a miserly temper at such a moment. And the gift is worthless
that costs the giver nothing. Your readiness to give up your Princess
will only show how generous you are."
The crowd began to cry, for they loved their Princess, though they quite
saw that their first duty was to be generous and give the poor dragon
what it wanted.
The Princess began to cry, for she did not want to be anybody's birthday
present--especially a purple dragon's. And Tom began to cry because he
was so angry.
He went straight home and told his little elephant; and the elephant
cheered him up so much that presently the two grew quite absorbed in a
top that the elephant was spinning with his little trunk.
Early in the morning Tom went to the palace. He looked out across the
downs--there were hardly any rabbits playing there now--and then he
gathered white roses and threw them at the Princess's window till she
woke up and looked out.
"Come up and kiss me," she said.
So Tom climbed up the white rosebush and kissed the Princess through the
window, and said: "Many happy returns of the day."
Then Mary Ann began to cry, and said: "Oh, Tom--how can you? When you
know quite well--"
"Oh, don't," said Tom. "Why, Mary Ann, my precious, my Princess--what do
you think I should be doing while the dragon was getting his birthday
present? Don't cry, my own little Mary Ann! Fido and I have arranged
everything. You've only got to do as you are told."
"Is that all?" said the Princess. "Oh--that's easy--I've often done
that!"
Then Tom told her what she was to do. And she kissed him again and
again. "Oh, you dear, good, clever Tom," she said. "How glad I am that I
gave you Fido. You two have saved me. You dears!"
The next morning Uncle James put on his best coat and hat and the vest
with the gold snakes on it--he was a magician, and he had a bright taste
in vests--and he called with a cab to take the Princess out.
"Come, little birthday present," he said tenderly. "The dragon will be
so pleased. And I'm glad to see you're not crying. You know, my child,
we cannot begin too young to learn to think of the happiness of others
rather than our own. I should not like my dear little niece to be
selfish, or to wish to deny a trivial pleasure to a poor, sick dragon,
far from his home and friends."
The Princess said she would try not to be selfish.
Presently the cab drew up near the pillar, and there was the dragon, his
ugly purple head shining in the sun, and his ugly purple mouth half
open.
Uncle James said: "Good morning, sir. We have brought you a small
present for your birthday. We do not like to let such an anniversary go
by without some suitable testimonial, especially to one who is a
stranger in our midst. Our means are small, but our hearts are large. We
have but one Princess, but we give her freely--do we not, my child?"
The Princess said she supposed so, and the dragon came a little nearer.
Suddenly a voice cried: "Run!" and there was Tom, and he had brought the
Zoological guinea pig and a pair of Belgian hares with him. "Just to see
fair," said Tom.
Uncle James was furious. "What do you mean, sir," he cried, "by
intruding on a State function with your common rabbits and things? Go
away, naughty little boy, and play with them somewhere else."
But while he was speaking the rabbits had come up one on each side of
him, their great sides towering ever so high, and now they pressed him
between them so that he was buried in their thick fur and almost choked.
The Princess, meantime, had run to the other side of the pillar and was
peeping around it to see what was going on. A crowd had followed the cab
out of the town; now they reached the scene of the "State Function"--and
they all cried out: "Fair play--play fair! We can't go back on our word
like this. Give a thing and take a thing? Why, it's never done. Let the
poor exiled stranger dragon have his birthday present." And they tried
to get at Tom--but the guinea pig stood in the way.
"Yes," Tom cried. "Fair play is a jewel. And your helpless exile shall
have the Princess--if he can catch her. Now then, Mary Ann."
Mary Ann looked around the big pillar and called to the dragon: "Bo! you
can't catch me," and began to run as fast as ever she could, and the
dragon ran after her. When the Princess had run a half mile she stopped,
dodged around a tree, and ran back to the pillar and around it, and the
dragon after her. You see, he was so long he could not turn as quickly
as she could. Around and around the pillar ran the Princess. The first
time she ran around a long way from the pillar, and then nearer and
nearer--with the dragon after her all the time; and he was so busy
trying to catch her that he never noticed that Tom had tied the very end
of his long, tight, whipcordy tail to the rock, so that the more the
dragon ran around, the more times he twisted his tail around the pillar.
It was exactly like winding a top--only the peg was the pillar, and the
dragon's tail was the string. And the magician was safe between the
Belgian hares, and couldn't see anything but darkness, or do anything
but choke.
When the dragon was wound onto the pillar as much as he possibly could
be, and as tight--like cotton on a reel--the Princess stopped running,
and though she had very little breath left, she managed to say,
"Yah--who's won now?"
This annoyed the dragon so much that he put out all his strength--spread
his great purple wings, and tried to fly at her. Of course this pulled
his tail, and pulled it very hard, so hard that as he pulled the tail
_had_ to come, and the pillar _had_ to come around with the tail, and
the island _had_ to come around with the pillar, and in another minute
the tail was loose, and the island was spinning around exactly like a
top. It spun so fast that everyone fell flat on their faces and held on
tight to themselves, because they felt something was going to happen.
All but the magician, who was choking between the Belgian hares, and
felt nothing but fur and fury.
And something did happen. The dragon had sent the kingdom of Rotundia
spinning the way it ought to have gone at the beginning of the world,
and as it spun around, all the animals began to change sizes. The guinea
pigs got small, and the elephants got big, and the men and women and
children would have changed sizes too, if they had not had the sense to
hold on to themselves, very tight indeed, with both hands; which, of
course, the animals could not be expected to know how to do. And the
best of it was that when the small beasts got big and the big beasts got
small the dragon got small too, and fell at the Princess's feet--a
little, crawling, purple newt with wings.
"Funny little thing," said the Princess, when she saw it. "I will take
it for a birthday present."
But while all the people were still on their faces, holding on tight to
themselves, Uncle James, the magician, never thought of holding
tight--he only thought of how to punish Belgian hares and the sons of
gardeners; so when the big beasts grew small, he grew small with the
other beasts, and the little purple dragon, when he fell at the
Princess's feet, saw there a very small magician named Uncle James. And
the dragon took him because it wanted a birthday present.
So now all the animals were new sizes--and at first it seemed very
strange to everyone to have great lumbering elephants and a tiny little
dormouse, but they have gotten used to it now, and think no more of it
than we do.
All this happened several years ago, and the other day I saw in the
_Rotundia Times_ an account of the wedding of the Princess with Lord
Thomas Gardener, K.C.D., and I knew she could not have married anyone
but Tom, so I suppose they made him a Lord on purpose for the
wedding--and _K.C.D._, of course, means Clever Conqueror of the Dragon.
If you think that is wrong it is only because you don't know how they
spell in Rotundia. The paper said that among the beautiful presents of
the bridegroom to the bride was an enormous elephant, on which the
bridal pair made their wedding tour. This must have been Fido. You
remember Tom promised to give him back to the Princess when they were
married. The _Rotundia Times_ called the married couple "the happy
pair." It was clever of the paper to think of calling them that--it is
such a pretty and novel expression, and I think it is truer than many of
the things you see in papers.
Because, you see, the Princess and the gardener's son were so fond of
each other they could not help being happy--and besides, they had an
elephant of their very own to ride on. If that is not enough to make
people happy, I should like to know what is. Though, of course, I know
there are some people who could not be happy unless they had a whale to
sail on, and perhaps not even then. But they are greedy, grasping
people, the kind who would take four helps of pudding, as likely as not,
which neither Tom nor Mary Ann ever did.
III. The Deliverers of Their Country
It all began with Effie's getting something in her eye. It hurt very
much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark--only it seemed
to have legs as well, and wings like a fly. Effie rubbed and cried--not