The Book of Dragons
real crying, but the kind your eye does all by itself without your being
miserable inside your mind--and then she went to her father to have the
thing in her eye taken out. Effie's father was a doctor, so of course he
knew how to take things out of eyes--he did it very cleverly with a soft
paintbrush dipped in castor oil.
When he had gotten the thing out, he said: "This is very curious." Effie
had often got things in her eye before, and her father had always seemed
to think it was natural--rather tiresome and naughty perhaps, but still
natural. He had never before thought it curious.
Effie stood holding her handkerchief to her eye, and said: "I don't
believe it's out." People always say this when they have had something
in their eyes.
"Oh, yes--it's out," said the doctor. "Here it is, on the brush. This is
very interesting."
Effie had never heard her father say that about anything that she had
any share in. She said: "What?"
The doctor carried the brush very carefully across the room, and held
the point of it under his microscope--then he twisted the brass screws
of the microscope, and looked through the top with one eye.
"Dear me," he said. "Dear, dear me! Four well-developed limbs; a long
caudal appendage; five toes, unequal in lengths, almost like one of the
_Lacertidae_, yet there are traces of wings." The creature under his eye
wriggled a little in the castor oil, and he went on: "Yes; a batlike
wing. A new specimen, undoubtedly. Effie, run round to the professor and
ask him to be kind enough to step in for a few minutes."
"You might give me sixpence, Daddy," said Effie, "because I did bring
you the new specimen. I took great care of it inside my eye, and my eye
_does_ hurt."
The doctor was so pleased with the new specimen that he gave Effie a
shilling, and presently the professor stepped round. He stayed to lunch,
and he and the doctor quarreled very happily all the afternoon about the
name and the family of the thing that had come out of Effie's eye.
But at teatime another thing happened. Effie's brother Harry fished
something out of his tea, which he thought at first was an earwig. He
was just getting ready to drop it on the floor, and end its life in the
usual way, when it shook itself in the spoon--spread two wet wings, and
flopped onto the tablecloth. There it sat, stroking itself with its feet
and stretching its wings, and Harry said: "Why, it's a tiny newt!"
The professor leaned forward before the doctor could say a word. "I'll
give you half a crown for it, Harry, my lad," he said, speaking very
fast; and then he picked it up carefully on his handkerchief.
"It is a new specimen," he said, "and finer than yours, Doctor."
It was a tiny lizard, about half an inch long--with scales and wings.
So now the doctor and the professor each had a specimen, and they were
both very pleased. But before long these specimens began to seem less
valuable. For the next morning, when the knife-boy was cleaning the
doctor's boots, he suddenly dropped the brushes and the boot and the
blacking, and screamed out that he was burnt.
And from inside the boot came crawling a lizard as big as a kitten, with
large, shiny wings.
"Why," said Effie, "I know what it is. It is a dragon like the one St.
George killed."
And Effie was right. That afternoon Towser was bitten in the garden by a
dragon about the size of a rabbit, which he had tried to chase, and the
next morning all the papers were full of the wonderful "winged lizards"
that were appearing all over the country. The papers would not call them
dragons, because, of course, no one believes in dragons nowadays--and at
any rate the papers were not going to be so silly as to believe in fairy
stories. At first there were only a few, but in a week or two the
country was simply running alive with dragons of all sizes, and in the
air you could sometimes see them as thick as a swarm of bees. They all
looked alike except as to size. They were green with scales, and they
had four legs and a long tail and great wings like bats' wings, only the
wings were a pale, half-transparent yellow, like the gear-boxes on
bicycles.
They breathed fire and smoke, as all proper dragons must, but still the
newspapers went on pretending they were lizards, until the editor of the
_Standard_ was picked up and carried away by a very large one, and then
the other newspaper people had not anyone left to tell them what they
ought not to believe. So when the largest elephant in the Zoo was
carried off by a dragon, the papers gave up pretending--and put ALARMING
PLAGUE OF DRAGONS at the top of the paper.
You have no idea how alarming it was, and at the same time how
aggravating. The large-size dragons were terrible certainly, but when
once you had found out that the dragons always went to bed early because
they were afraid of the chill night air, you had only to stay indoors
all day, and you were pretty safe from the big ones. But the smaller
sizes were a perfect nuisance. The ones as big as earwigs got in the
soap, and they got in the butter. The ones as big as dogs got in the
bath, and the fire and smoke inside them made them steam like anything
when the cold water tap was turned on, so that careless people were
often scalded quite severely. The ones that were as large as pigeons
would get into workbaskets or corner drawers and bite you when you were
in a hurry to get a needle or a handkerchief. The ones as big as sheep
were easier to avoid, because you could see them coming; but when they
flew in at the windows and curled up under your eiderdown, and you did
not find them till you went to bed, it was always a shock. The ones this
size did not eat people, only lettuce, but they always scorched the
sheets and pillowcases dreadfully.
Of course, the County Council and the police did everything that could
be done: It was no use offering the hand of the Princess to anyone who
killed a dragon. This way was all very well in olden times--when there
was only one dragon and one Princess; but now there were far more
dragons than Princesses--although the Royal Family was a large one. And
besides, it would have been a mere waste of Princesses to offer rewards
for killing dragons, because everybody killed as many dragons as they
could quite out of their own heads and without rewards at all, just to
get the nasty things out of the way. The County Council undertook to
cremate all dragons delivered at their offices between the hours of ten
and two, and whole wagonloads and cartloads and truckloads of dead
dragons could be seen any day of the week standing in a long line in the
street where the County Council had their offices. Boys brought
barrowloads of dead dragons, and children on their way home from morning
school would call in to leave the handful or two of little dragons they
had brought in their satchels, or carried in their knotted pocket
handkerchiefs. And yet there seemed to be as many dragons as ever. Then
the police stuck up great wood and canvas towers covered with patent
glue. When the dragons flew against these towers, they stuck fast, as
flies and wasps do on the sticky papers in the kitchen; and when the
towers were covered all over with dragons, the police inspector used to
set fire to the towers, and burnt them and dragons and all.
And yet there seemed to be more dragons than ever. The shops were full
of patent dragon poison and anti-dragon soap, and dragonproof curtains
for the windows; and indeed, everything that could be done was done.
And yet there seemed to be more dragons than ever.
It was not very easy to know what would poison a dragon, because, you
see, they ate such different things. The largest kind ate elephants as
long as there were any, and then went on with horses and cows. Another
size ate nothing but lilies of the valley, and a third size ate only
Prime Ministers if they were to be had, and, if not, would feed freely
on servants in livery. Another size lived on bricks, and three of them
ate two thirds of the South Lambeth Infirmary in one afternoon.
But the size Effie was most afraid of was about as big as your dining
room, and that size ate little girls and boys.
At first Effie and her brother were quite pleased with the change in
their lives. It was so amusing to sit up all night instead of going to
sleep, and to play in the garden lighted by electric lamps. And it
sounded so funny to hear Mother say, when they were going to bed: "Good
night, my darlings, sleep sound all day, and don't get up too soon. You
must not get up before it's quite dark. You wouldn't like the nasty
dragons to catch you."
But after a time they got very tired of it all: They wanted to see the
flowers and trees growing in the fields, and to see the pretty sunshine
out of doors, and not just through glass windows and patent dragonproof
curtains. And they wanted to play on the grass, which they were not
allowed to do in the electric lamp-lighted garden because of the
night-dew.
And they wanted so much to get out, just for once, in the beautiful,
bright, dangerous daylight, that they began to try and think of some
reason why they ought to go out. Only they did not like to disobey their
mother.
But one morning their mother was busy preparing some new dragon poison
to lay down in the cellars, and their father was bandaging the hand of
the boot boy, which had been scratched by one of the dragons who liked
to eat Prime Ministers when they were to be had, so nobody remembered to
say to the children: "Don't get up till it is quite dark!"
"Go now," said Harry. "It would not be disobedient to go. And I know
exactly what we ought to do, but I don't know how we ought to do it."
"What ought we to do?" said Effie.
"We ought to wake St. George, of course," said Harry. "He was the only
person in his town who knew how to manage dragons; the people in the
fairy tales don't count. But St. George is a real person, and he is only
asleep, and he is waiting to be waked up. Only nobody believes in St.
George now. I heard father say so."
"We do," said Effie.
"Of course we do. And don't you see, Ef, that's the very reason why we
could wake him? You can't wake people if you don't believe in them, can
you?"
Effie said no, but where could they find St. George?
"We must go and look," said Harry boldly. "You shall wear a dragonproof
frock, made of stuff like the curtains. And I will smear myself all over
with the best dragon poison, and--"
Effie clasped her hands and skipped with joy and cried: "Oh, Harry! I
know where we can find St. George! In St. George's Church, of course."
"Um," said Harry, wishing he had thought of it for himself, "you have a
little sense sometimes, for a girl."
So the next afternoon, quite early, long before the beams of sunset
announced the coming night, when everybody would be up and working, the
two children got out of bed. Effie wrapped herself in a shawl of
dragonproof muslin--there was no time to make the frock--and Harry made
a horrid mess of himself with the patent dragon poison. It was warranted
harmless to infants and invalids, so he felt quite safe.
Then they joined hands and set out to walk to St. George's Church. As
you know, there are many St. George's churches, but fortunately they
took the turning that leads to the right one, and went along in the
bright sunlight, feeling very brave and adventurous.
There was no one about in the streets except dragons, and the place was
simply swarming with them. Fortunately none of the dragons were just the
right size for eating little boys and girls, or perhaps this story might
have had to end here. There were dragons on the pavement, and dragons on