The last dragon
and then he did cartwheels again. Every one became so interested in
this dancing knight, dancing so gracefully in heavy armor, that they
concentrated all their attention on him, and when he had finished, they
cheered mightily and threw all their flowers and all their coins at his
feet.
Breathless, Peter stood, the coins hitting his armor, until Beppo took
him by the shoulders and shaking him a little said, “Wake up, boy,
those coins are for you. Pick them up before the thieves get them, and
the next time, don’t tell us you can’t dance!”
“But--but I can’t, really,” said poor Peter, stooping to pick up the
coins. He waited only long enough to find some gold ones and then he
ran for the street of tents with all his might. With time so strange
here, it might be Easter already, for all he knew.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PRINCESS WITH TOES OF SILVER
On the way he kept saying, “Suppose it’s the same one? Suppose it’s the
dwagon’s princess? What will I do then? I’m glad I’ve got my sword,
but I wouldn’t want to hurt the little old man. It wouldn’t be right
to harm a little old man not even as big as I am. I wonder who he is
and I wonder how he found the princess? He must have stolen her from
Dallahan, the Irish dwagon!”
And reasoning thus to himself, he arrived at the bright scarlet tent,
and there was the little man with the long braided beard, in two
braids, mind you, still rubbing his hands together, sounding just
like sandpaper. “How would you like to see”--he began to whisper, but
recognizing Peter he said, “Well, did you find a golden ducat?”
“Yes,” said Peter, trying to make his voice sound very gruff although
it was trembling from excitement, and he held up the gold piece between
his thumb and first finger.
“Give it to me!” squealed the little man, holding out his hand with the
palm up, his bright eyes sending out sparks.
“Let me in the tent _first_,” said Peter.
The man looked very much offended. “Oh, very well, if you don’t trust
me!” And up he got, wrapping his moldy, green cloak about him and stuck
his head through the door of the tent, motioning for Peter to follow
him. Peter, hand on the hilt of his sword, went in behind him.
The sunlight, falling through the canvas of the tent, became as red as
blood and changed all the grass to the color of blood, and made the odd
little man turn the color of blood also. Peter looked all about him.
Where was the princess? All he could see in the tent were two large
boxes, both colored blue, with locks of gold, and both exactly the same
size; and over in a corner were some red sacks about as large as flour
sacks, filled with something that made them very round and fat. But
where was the princess? Peter held tightly to the golden coin. The old
man couldn’t fool him like this and then expect to be paid. No, indeed!
The odd old man stopped before the big blue boxes and held out his hand
again, palm up--“The ducat, and you shall see her,” he croaked.
“No.” Peter shook his curly head. “Show me the princess first,” he
replied.
“But then you won’t pay me,” whined the stranger, “and I need the money
very badly. My wife has the measles and my children have the mumps.”
And tears came out of his eyes and ran down his beard.
Peter was quite firm. He did not believe the story about the measles
and the mumps, and at last the old man had to call shrilly for some one
named Riggy who came shuffling through a hole in the rear of the tent.
Riggy was a very sad looking lad with a long pair of thin legs and
long, dangling arms and hair as yellow as a buttercup with a little of
it spread like butter on his cheeks and chin, and he looked as sad as
the dragon had looked when Peter first saw him, way, way ahead, in the
woodlot.
“Yes, sir?” he said meekly, glancing at Peter with sad admiration, for
deep down in his heart, this poor slavey wanted to be a knight and wear
shining armor too.
“Help me lift up the princess,” snarled the odd old man, “and be
careful, this time, or I’ll tweak your nose and box your ears.”
They each took a corner of one of the blue boxes and lifted it up on
end, after which, the little man told Peter to sit down on the ground
and count ten and then add six and subtract six, and when Peter had
done that, though he didn’t know what difference it made, the box
was unlocked and there stood the most beautiful girl Peter had ever
seen,--of course, she wasn’t as beautiful as Peter’s mother, but she
was the next most beautiful thing with her long, long golden hair
hanging down over a red robe encrusted with magic moonstones. That
robe was enough to convince Peter that this was the dragon’s princess,
standing there so straight with her enchanted eyes closed, but he
wanted to make sure so he said, “Show me her toes.” They were covered
up with tiny red slippers, you see.
Again the little man asked Peter for the golden ducat, and again Peter
refused until he saw the real silver toes, so there was nothing else
left for the old man to do, and slowly he uncovered the feet of the
beautiful princess, and sure enough, her toes were bright silver, like
the best knives and forks and the best teaspoons. Peter stared at them,
trying to figure out just what he should do next. Should he accuse this
little man or should he remain quiet and wait his chance? Should he
kill the little man with his sword, right now, and run away with the
princess? No, he couldn’t do that. The odd old man was so very, very
little. Yes, the best thing to do would be to keep still and wait.
“Well, have you seen enough?” demanded the little man, showing his
yellow teeth like an ugly water rat. “If so, please turn over the
golden ducat because I want to go to bed.”
“Go to bed?” said Peter. “Why it’s daytime.”
“I always go to bed in the daytime,” he snarled. “Stop sticking your
silly little nose into my business! Give me the money and then get out!”
He stooped over to put back the red slippers on the enchanted girl’s
feet, and so missed seeing what Peter and Riggy saw. The eyes of
the princess slowly opened and she looked at Peter with the saddest
expression, and although she could not seem to speak it was as if she
said: “Oh, Peter, Peter, help me to get away--help me to get away”--And
then her eyes closed again and her face became as pale as a white
jasmine flower. Peter looked at Riggy and Riggy looked at Peter, and
they both understood each other, right away.
So Peter gave the golden ducat to the old man who took it greedily and
carefully examined it before he put it away, somewhere in the moldy
folds of the green cloak. Then he bowed Peter out of the tent, mumbling
strange things.
Peter walked up and down, outside the tent, wondering and wondering,
until the old man yelled, “Stop walking up and down like that. Go away.
I’m trying to get some sleep.”
“I’m sorry,” said Peter, and walked away down the street of tents. When
he reached the very end of the street and paused by a sky-blue canvas,
the canvas shook a little and out popped a round head as yellow as a
buttercup. It was Riggy. He put his long finger over his wide mouth and
said, “Shh!” and pulled Peter in behind the blue canvas.
Riggy stuttered when he talked but I’m not going to try and put that
stutter down on paper because stutters get embarrassed and because it
would take up a whole page to make a stutter say yes or no. So you’ll
have to imagine the stutter and put it in when you think it should be
there.
“Oh, brave and noble knight,” cried Riggy, falling down on his sharp
knees before Peter and catching his hand, “you must do a noble deed
today and help me!”
Peter had never felt so manly or so thrilled or so brave in his whole
life before. Oh, wouldn’t he have something to tell Johnathan when
Johnathan talked about good deeds! “I’ll try my best to help, Riggy,”
he said, “but first you must tell me about that odd old man.”
“He’s Mig, the magic magician,” stuttered Riggy, having an awful time
with all those Ms, “and all his brothers and sisters and cousins are
magicians too.”
“I don’t want to go into his family history,” Peter said. “How did he
get the princess, that’s all I’d like to know.”
Riggy looked all around him and then began to whisper, cautiously.
“That’s what I want to tell you. His old aunt--aunt Thissy, the witch
of the forest, first enchanted the Princess Silver Toes, and then when
Thissy was killed, the cave dragon found the enchanted girl and kept
her in his cave until she was stolen by Dallahan, the Irish dragon,
when the cave dragon left her all alone to go wandering in the future.”
“But how did _Mig_ get her?” Peter asked, impatiently.
“Give me time,” begged poor Riggy, because the more excited he became
the more he stuttered. “You see, Mig is the worst sort of an old miser.
All he cares about is gold, gold, gold--those sacks you saw in the tent
are filled with gold, and in his home at the top of the world he has
deep, deep cellars all filled with gold. So he knew if he owned the
princess, enchanted as she was and with silver toes, he could make more
gold, so he had an idea. He knew he couldn’t fight Dallahan because the
Irish dragon is too big and powerful, so he waited until the time of
the new moon.”
“Why?” asked Peter, breathlessly.
“Because at the time of the new moon, the Irish dragon changes himself
into a big black spider.”
“Why?” again asked Peter, amazed.
“Because he can’t help himself--just as snakes can’t help changing
their skins and green worms can’t help changing into butterflies, and
pollywogs into frogs,--that’s the way Dallahan was made. Mig, the
magician knew this, so he waited his chance--”
“And then he captured him!” cried Peter, jumping ahead of Riggy’s story.
“Yes, he captured him and put him in a box and nailed it down tight so
that when Dallahan became a dragon again he grew just as big as the box
and couldn’t grow any bigger, and there he is, still a prisoner.”
“The poor fellow must be awfully cramped,” said Peter.
“Cramped is no word for it,--he’s downright miserable,” said Riggy. “I
can hear him groaning at night. He’s in there so tight that if ever the
lid of the box is lifted, he’ll leap out like a spring from a clock.”
“And so Mig took the princess, did he?”
“Yes. He took the princess and has been showing her about at fairs and
carnivals ever since. Now, this is how you must help, Sir Knight. You
saw the princess open her eyes a little while ago, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did,” said Peter, “and how sad she looked.”
“She is dying of a breaking heart,” Riggy said, tearfully, “and _you_
must save her!”
“H-how?” asked Peter, swallowing with difficulty.
Riggy rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s for you to figure out,” he said.
“I’m rather stupid when it comes to figuring things out. You can do it
lots better than I can, I’m sure.”
“Oh, but this is such a _hard_ thing to figure out,” Peter returned.
“Did you ever kill a dragon?” asked Riggy.
“N-no,” admitted Peter, “I--I never did.”
“A knight in beautiful armor and never killed a dragon? That’s
strange,” said Riggy, quite disappointed. “I was under the impression
that you had killed many of them, seeing all those dents in your armor.”
Peter didn’t want to tell him that those dents were caused by falling
down, so he just said, “N-no.”
“Are you an English knight?” questioned Riggy.
“N-no.”
“A French knight?”
“No.”
“What kind then?”
“An American knight.”
“An American knight? I never heard of that.”
“Well, it’s a great country up the road someplace,” Peter explained,
awkwardly, “but let’s not talk about that. Let’s think real hard about
the princess.”
“All right,” agreed Riggy, but he was interrupted by a sharp voice that
called, “Riggy! Riggy!”
The tall boy started and turned pale. “That’s Mig calling me,” he