don’t. But didn’t you say the poodle was from France?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater. She did wish the obnoxious
fellow would go away and stop interfering.
“And haven’t you been talking to this French poodle in English?” he
demanded further.
“Yes. Well--oh, I see,” cried Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater suddenly.
“Oh!” murmured everybody else. “Of course!”
The dog just then sprang higher against the wee Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater and
began to lick her face. She cast a beseeching look at the Jack.
“_Va te coucher!_” commanded that fine fellow to the dog. The poodle
instantly quieted down at Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater’s feet and began to whine
a little.
“_Veux-tu te taire!_” he demanded further, and the whining stopped at
once.
The Jack of Hearts looked at the abashed Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater and the
rest of the Pudding Laners, who stood there stupefied.
“I guess you wouldn’t understand it either, if somebody talked to you
in another language,” he said crushingly, and walked indolently away,
swinging his cane.
The people of Pudding Lane could have kicked themselves for their
stupidity, they said. Of course, a French poodle straight from Paris
could not understand English. Why had they supposed that he could?
And they were disgusted still more to have been humiliated by the
disagreeable Jack of Hearts.
But kicking themselves wouldn’t do any good now. There was only one
thing left to do, and that was to present the poodle to the Jack,
whether they wanted to or not, for Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater couldn’t learn
French for any dog. And if she could have, she wouldn’t have, for Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater had an idea that foreign languages were an indulgence,
like mince pie at night or two dresses in one year, and she wouldn’t
have yielded to it for anything.
So that’s what they did. They handed the puppy over to the Jack of
Hearts, who could speak to him in his native tongue and make him mind
like an angel.
As for the sparrow, he soon recovered; that is, he learned to walk as
smartly and perkily as ever without a tail; he even learned to fly
without it, which, as any bird will tell you, is quite a feat. He
looked funny, with his swelled-out chest and airy manners and poor
little chopped-off stumpy back view. But the Pumpkin-Eaters didn’t care
how he looked, for he just exactly fitted the pumpkin shell now and at
last they had a pet, did the Pumpkin-Eaters, just exactly suited to
their needs. So that if you ever pass by the pumpkin shell and look in
at the window, you’ll see him there. But if he turns his back, don’t
laugh at the poor little fellow. It might hurt his feelings. He’s never
seen his back and doesn’t know how funny he looks.
VII
BO-PEEP FINDS OUT HOW A DUTCH UNCLE TALKS
Mr. Bo-Peep came home to dinner one hot July day to find his daughter
not there.
“Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find
them,” explained his wife.
“Oh, leave them alone and they’ll come home and bring their tails
behind them,” answered Mr. Bo-Peep, sitting down to his dinner.
“That’s what I told her,” said Mrs. Bo-Peep, “but you know how she is.”
“Yes, I know how she is,” sighed Mr. Bo-Peep.
And indeed he did, as did everybody else in Pudding Lane, for hardly
a week went by in that village that Little Bo-Peep did not lose her
sheep. It was really a wonder that she bothered with sheep at all,
for certainly she had more trouble with her flock than any other
shepherdess did in the whole world. And to-day they were lost again,
and, as usual, Little Bo-Peep was hunting for them.
She walked along Pinafore Pike and passed the Blues’ house, where she
saw Little Boy Blue taking his customary nap under the haystack. She
came to the pickled pepper field where Peter Piper was industriously
picking his peck. She met Old Mother Hubbard’s dog sniffing around a
tree trunk.
But although Little Bo-Peep saw these familiar Pudding Lane scenes, not
a woolly strand did she see of her sheep until, just as she was about
to give up in despair, she turned a corner and plump! she bumped into
the whole flock of them running down the road toward Pudding Lane as
fast as they could run.
But who was that driving them and scolding them? A strange-looking
creature with great billowing trousers and a little blue jacket and the
rosiest--though the crossest--face you ever saw.
“Hey!” called Bo-Peep.
The rosy-faced man looked up, scowling.
“Hey!” he replied. “Stop!” he commanded the sheep. “Stop this minute,
you abominable wretches, you stupid beasts, you--”
“My goodness!” gasped Bo-Peep. “How dare you talk to my sheep like
that? How--”
“Look here,” interrupted the rosy-faced man. “You be still. You don’t
know who I am.”
“Well, you’re not very polite, whoever you are,” replied Bo-Peep
indignantly. “You’re certainly not a gentleman.”
“I am a gentleman!” shouted the man. “And if you were a lady, you’d
know a gentleman when you saw one. Haven’t I got on a gentleman’s
clothes? Haven’t I got a gentleman’s haircut?” He bent down his head
and swept off his hat to show her. “Well, then, I am a gentleman. But
don’t you wish you knew me?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” replied Little Bo-Peep more softly. For after
all, she thought to herself, she need not lose her temper just because
he did. “No, sir, I don’t like you very much, really, and I’m going
home now with my sheep.” Then she added, “But I do thank you, sir,
for bringing my sheep back. How did you do it? They’re usually very
disobedient.”
“How did I do it?” repeated the rosy-cheeked man. “Why, just by talking
to them like a Dutch Uncle. For that’s who I am, my fine young lady. I
am the Dutch Uncle, you know.”
So he was the Dutch Uncle of whom Little Bo-Peep and all the other
children of Pudding Lane had heard so much, the cross old fellow who
scolded everybody he knew, even those people whom he loved the best.
Bo-Peep had never seen him before, for the Dutch Uncle had not been
to Pudding Lane since many years ago, before Mr. and Mrs. Bo-Peep had
been married, ’way back there when the Queen of Hearts was a bride and
Humpty Dumpty was a baby. But the people of Pudding Lane, often, oh,
very often, referred to the Dutch Uncle; and now here he was, and it
was no wonder Bo-Peep stared.
“Whose uncle are you, sir?” she asked in her gentlest tones.
Questions are supposed to be rude, but if you ask them gently, they
somehow don’t sound rude, Bo-Peep had found out.
“Everybody’s, of course!” replied the Dutch Uncle. “My goodness, you
are an ignorant girl. Now if your parents would only put you in my
charge--”
Oh, dear, he was off again! But he finally stopped, so Bo-Peep tried
another question.
“And where is the Dutch Aunt?”
“Dutch Aunt!” exclaimed the Dutch Uncle scornfully. “She asks me where
the Dutch Aunt is! There isn’t any Dutch Aunt. Didn’t you know that?”
“No, sir, I didn’t,” replied Little Bo-Peep. “There ought to be one,
you know. Uncles always do have aunts.”
She didn’t mean that exactly, but you know and the Dutch Uncle knew
what she meant. And now, strangely enough, the Dutch Uncle stopped
frowning at her and smiled.
“I do indeed need a Dutch Aunt,” he agreed. “In fact, that’s just what
I’ve come to Pudding Lane for, Bo-Peep, to find a Dutch Aunt.”
“To take her away from Pudding Lane and back to Dutchland?” asked
Bo-Peep.
“Dutchland!” laughed the Dutch Uncle. “Oh, dear, Bo-Peep, you are an
ignoramus.”
“Holland, I mean,” Little Bo-Peep corrected herself.
Only she did think to herself that Dutchland was a better name for it,
after all, than Holland. And she was thinking, too, what an exceedingly
pleasant fellow the Dutch Uncle was when he forgot to talk like a Dutch
Uncle.
Which is exactly what the people of Pudding Lane had always said about
him; that if only he hadn’t been such an old busybody, attending to
everybody’s affairs, he would have been the nicest uncle in the world.
The Dutch Uncle got a tremendous ovation when he and Bo-Peep got back
to Pudding Lane with the sheep a few minutes later. At least “ovation”
is what the Town Crier called it. Anyway, they made a big fuss over the
Dutch Uncle, for they loved the old fellow, even if they did call him
names, and they were glad to see him after all these years.
As for the Dutch Uncle himself, he was overjoyed to see his old
favorites, and he greeted and scolded them all in the most affectionate
manner possible.
“As I live and breathe, Mrs. Dumpty!” he exclaimed, catching sight of
that fat little lady. “How glad I am to see you. But you ought,” here
he frowned in the midst of his rosy smile, “you ought to take Humpty to
London, you know, to consult the great doctors there.”
“And there’s Mr. Claus! Baker, baker, why will you waste your talents
in Pudding Lane when you might easily be Assistant Chief Currant Bun
Maker to the Lord Mayor of London himself?”
(You would have thought he was the British Uncle the way he talked
about London.)
“Ah, Mrs. Grundy!” He bowed low and kissed that lady’s hand. “How many
moons has it been since I have had this privilege? But that long face
of yours won’t do, my dear old friend. Really, you ought to cheer up,
you know.”
He next spied a young girl.
“Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary!” he cried delightedly. “How does your
garden grow? You were just a baby when I saw you last. But you must
mend your ways, Mistress Mary. Contrary girls, you know--”
And so he went the rounds. He chided Simple Simon for not trying to
improve his wits. He urged Little Miss Muffett to give up her diet and
try green vegetables. He insisted that the Old Woman abandon her Shoe
and go to live in a house like other respectable folk. And he even
rebuked Old King Cole as being far too merry for the dignity of his
position.
Yes, he was just the same. Queer, wasn’t it? But then everybody is
queer in one way or another, and the Dutch Uncle really did have the
softest heart in the world under his little blue jacket, as the people
of Pudding Lane had always suspected and now found out that very day.
For suddenly the Dutch Uncle whirled around and demanded:
“And where is pretty Dolly Daffy-Dill?”
“Pretty Dolly Daffy-Dill?” repeated everybody, and then they all looked
at each other.
Could it be possible that the Dutch Uncle believed that Dolly
Daffy-Dill was still the same girl he had known so many years ago? Did
he not know that she had grown older, just as everybody else had? Had
he not heard how crabbed she had become, so crabbed, indeed, that she
wasn’t even called Dolly any more, but Cross-Patch, which suited her
much better?
It seemed impossible that the Dutch Uncle did not know all these
things, but he didn’t, apparently, so Mr. Horner, the father of Jack,
tried to explain.
“She’s older now, you understand,” he said. “And we call
her--Cross-Patch.”
“Cross-Patch, draw the latch,
Sit by the fire and spin,”
quoted Mrs. Grundy.
Oh, dear, it was too bad that the Dutch Uncle had to find out all this
about Dolly, and they all felt very sympathetic. But was the Dutch
Uncle distressed? No, indeed.
“Of course, she’s older!” he exclaimed. “I had forgotten that, but it’s
all the better. And you say she’s cross? Hurray, what a fine Dutch Aunt
she’ll make!”
With which, to everybody’s astonishment, the Dutch Uncle hastened to
old Cross-Patch’s house, the same little house where he used to call on
her when she was a girl and he a dashing young blade.
And so his courtship commenced, the strangest courtship that Pudding
Lane had ever seen. Isn’t it queer that a cranky old woman like
Cross-Patch should have inspired the tender passion in the hearts of
such hosts of men? First there was the candlestick-maker and now here
was the Dutch Uncle. Well, that’s love, you know, and there’s no doing
anything about it.
But something else happened in Pudding Lane that quickly drove the
Dutch Uncle’s love affair out of everybody’s thoughts. It was really
something so terrible and so sad that nobody would have ever dreamed it
_could_ happen. And this is what it was: Bo-Peep’s sheep came home one
day, after a long absence, and they didn’t have their tails behind them!
Oh, so sad! So sad!
And how Bo-Peep cried, how the lambs bleated, how Mr. Bo-Peep hunted
for the tails, how doleful Old King Cole looked, how frightened
everybody was. But although Little Bo-Peep wept and Mr. Bo-Peep hunted
and Old King Cole worried himself sick, the missing tails were not
returned to their owners and King Cole finally said that everybody,
every single person, would have to go out on a hunt for them. He even
made a speech about it.
“What is a sheep without a tail?” he asked the assemblage.
“Nothing!” he answered himself triumphantly, which wasn’t strictly
true, although it made a profound impression on his hearers.
“Well, then, what is a whole flock of sheep without a tail?” he
finished up in grand climax.
And so, spurred on by Old King Cole’s oratory, all of Pudding Lane
started on the hunt. It did seem as if they were always searching for
something in that town. Once it was Santa Claus, once it was the Pied
Piper, ganders, cats, and now it was tails.
I said all of Pudding Lane went on the hunt, but I forgot the Dutch
Uncle, who was sitting with Cross-Patch in her back garden, sipping a
cup of tea. And he must have been talking awfully loud and drinking tea
awfully hard, for he didn’t seem to hear a bit of the commotion when
the whole town departed on its quest.
But Cross-Patch had sharp ears and she knew what was up, and she said
to her gallant caller:
“Why don’t you help a body who’s in trouble instead of fiddling with a
teacup?”
The Dutch Uncle looked at her amazed, for he had just been telling her
what a sweet creature she was and her remark sounded rather abrupt.
“What is it, my love?” he asked.
“I said why don’t you go out and help a body? Why don’t you join in the
search for the tails of the sheep?”
The Dutch Uncle jumped up, ashamed.
“Oh, I ought to help, I know. I am very fond of Little Bo-Beep and feel
so sorry for her in her trouble.”
“Then go out and show your sympathy,” replied the Dutch Uncle’s lady
love grimly. “I’d go myself if I weren’t so old and crippled.”
“Old, love!” repeated the Dutch Uncle playfully. “Crippled!”
“Go on to your tails,” replied Cross-Patch stolidly.
The Dutch Uncle, looking crestfallen, ceased his gestures, picked up
his hat and started for the gate. Indeed, he looked so wretched that
Cross-Patch relented a bit.
“Look here,” she called after him. “If you find the tails, Dutch Uncle,
I might--in fact I will--consider becoming the Dutch Aunt.”
The Dutch Uncle looked at her beaming, yet almost unbelieving.
“Wonderful woman!” he exclaimed rapturously. “Glorious--”
“Will you get on to those tails?” cried Cross-Patch, exasperated.
She hated foolishness, did Cross-Patch, and the Dutch Uncle was so full
of it. She often wished that he would scold her as he did everybody
else. Being cross herself, she would have enjoyed it.
When the Dutch Uncle got into the street, he found that every single
person was gone. All the houses and shops were closed. Even the palace
at the top of the hill looked deserted.
But the Dutch Uncle could hear a little noise from somewhere or other,
and as he listened intently, he decided that it must be the bleating of
those poor little sheep down in Bo-Peep’s meadow. He then went down to
the meadow and there they were, bleating pitifully, and there was
Bo-Peep too, under a tree and crying as if her heart would break.
[Illustration: _“Look here,” he said to the black sheep. “You’re
responsible for all this.” Page 105._]
She raised herself up when she heard the Dutch Uncle’s step and wiped
her eyes.
“Do you hear them bleating?” she asked him.
“Yes,” replied the Dutch Uncle, “I do.”
The Dutch Uncle then made a discovery; the black sheep of the flock
was not bleating at all, but was frisking around as merrily as could
be, watching the others with wicked glee out of the corner of his
eye. The Dutch Uncle watched him a moment and then, without a word to
Little Bo-Peep, he marched straight up to that black sheep, took hold
of his pink ribbon collar and looked him sternly in the eye. The sheep
squirmed a little and tried to brave it out, but the Dutch Uncle was
too much for him, so he squirmed a great deal more and dropped his eyes
in the most ashamed way.
Whereupon the Dutch Uncle _did_ give him a dose of his best Dutch Uncle
talk--such a dose!
“Look here,” he said to the black sheep. “You’re responsible for all
this. You know exactly where those tails are, and you’ve known all
along, and now right this minute you’re going to take Little Bo-Peep
and me and show us where they are. You are a wicked, wicked sheep, you
are, but we’ve got you this time, you wretch, you--” Well, he couldn’t
think of anything worse than a wretch, so he stopped with that, and
waited for the black sheep to do something.
And the black sheep did something, right enough. He turned around and
walked off, the Dutch Uncle and Little Bo-Peep behind him, and he kept
on walking until at last they came to a wood on the very edge of which
stood a tree. And there the black sheep stopped.
“What’s this?” asked the Dutch Uncle.
“I don’t know,” answered Little Bo-Peep.
Then the sheep raised his eyes, the Dutch Uncle and Bo-Peep raised
theirs, and there on a branch what should they see but ten little white
tails all in a row, hanging like white flowers among the green leaves,
with one little black one in the middle!
“Oh!” shrieked Little Bo-Peep joyfully.
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed the Dutch Uncle.
And the next thing the tails knew, they were being carried back to the
sheep in the meadow at Pudding Lane.
Everybody was overjoyed when it was known that Little Bo-Peep had found
her sheep’s tails, but of course, the next problem was to get them
back on the sheep. The carpenter was all for tacking them on, though
he quickly took back his suggestion when he remembered that it was
sheep they were talking about, not houses or boards. Jack-of-All-Trades
offered to glue them neatly back in their places, and the cobbler said
that if sewing were necessary, he would gladly render his services.
The cobbler’s idea was considered a good one, for the great London
doctors were sewing people now, and if it were good for people, it
would certainly do for sheep. So they called Doctor Foster, who had
just got back from Gloucester, and asked his advice about the sewing.
“No, no, _no_!” said Doctor Foster. “Doctors don’t sew things on, they
just sew things up. But if you just tie these tails to the sheep,
they’ll grow back as nicely as you please.”
So that’s what they did, and the tails did grow back, just as he had
said, as nicely as you please. Only one looked a little different from
its old self, and that was the black sheep’s, which was rather to one
side and at a rakish angle. But then the black sheep deserved it, for
all the trouble he had caused. Because the Dutch Uncle thought that
the black sheep not only knew where the tails were all the time, but
that he himself made the sheep lose their tails. I don’t see how he
could have, really. I think the tails just dropped off. Still, the
Dutch Uncle may be right. We’ll never know, for sheep can’t talk, and
the black sheep wouldn’t tell if he could. Anyway, it all came out all
right.
All but one thing and that concerns the poor Dutch Uncle, who didn’t
get his Cross-Patch, after all. For when he went back to her in high
glee, told her about the tails, and began calling her high-sounding
names, Cross-Patch suddenly became fifty times crosser than she had
ever been before, told him she couldn’t stand his sugarish nonsense and
left the room.
And that was the end of the Dutch Uncle’s romance. All might have been
different if he had only talked to Cross-Patch like a Dutch Uncle,
but that’s so often the way with gentlemen in love; they become such
different creatures. However, he did turn on Cross-Patch just as she
was leaving the room, and then he certainly did talk to her like a
Dutch Uncle, for he was very angry and disappointed.
Too late, though. Cross-Patch drew the latch, sat down to spin and
never for a second regretted her action. She was even glad the old
bother was gone.
Poor Dutch Uncle, having to go back to Holland without the Dutch Aunt
of his dreams. Everybody felt sorry for him, and especially did Little
Bo-Peep, who had come to love him so much.
It was Little Bo-Peep who walked with him down the road when he set
out that day for Banbury Cross. They said good-by and shook hands. The
Dutch Uncle had tears in his eyes and Bo-Peep was sniffling right out.
But the Dutch Uncle soon came to himself.
“Look here, you shouldn’t have come so far with me. The sheep will get
lost and your mother will be worried. Go straight home, you naughty
child.”
But Bo-Peep only smiled at him.
“You’re an old fraud,” she told the Dutch Uncle.
And then it was that the Dutch Uncle knew that she had found him out,
this Little Bo-Peep of Pudding Lane. Yet he wouldn’t give in, even then.
“Go straight home, I tell you!”
But he kissed her, and then was gone.
VIII
THE SAND MAN’S SCARE
Mrs. Blue was busy in her kitchen one August morning when she heard a
racket in the cornfield.
“At it again,” she murmured and ran out to the side fence.
“Little Boy Blue,” she called loudly, “come blow your horn. The sheep’s
in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.”
No answer from the little boy, lying under a near-by haystack. Mrs.
Blue opened her mouth to call again when up popped Farmer Tom from
behind the barn. Farmer Tom was the Blues’ neighbor, and it was Farmer
Tom’s cornfield that the cow was in.
“Where’s the boy that looks after the sheep?” demanded the farmer.
“He’s under the haystack fast asleep,” admitted poor Mrs. Blue.
[Illustration: _What could Mrs. Blue do? She could do nothing but climb
the fence, skirts and all. Page 111._]
Farmer Tom snorted.
“Well, he must get them animals out of my corn,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Blue nervously, and then called again,
“LITTLE BOY BLUE!” so loudly that you would have thought any fellow
might have waked up. Little Boy Blue did almost wake up too. He
grunted, stirred, rubbed his eyes, but then if he didn’t curl down
deeper in the hay and go straight back to sleep.
What could Mrs. Blue do? She could do nothing but climb the fence,
skirts and all--for the gate was a long way off--and go after Little
Boy Blue, so that’s what she did. She climbed the fence, marched over
to the haystack and shook--yes, shook--her sleeping son until at last
he was awake. Then he scuttled away and led the sheep and cow into the
pasture where they belonged.
This was the way things were always going with the Blues. Boy Blue was
forever falling asleep, the cows were forever getting in the corn,
Farmer Tom was always scolding and fussing and Mrs. Blue was always
worrying. Of course, it was worse in summer, when the warm air was
drowsy and the haystack was soft and inviting. But even in winter it
was bad enough, for then Little Boy Blue went to sleep over his books,
over his supper, over his games. He had actually been caught at it
during an exciting game of Hide-and-Go-Seek, when he had hidden behind
the hedge in Mistress Mary’s garden and then promptly gone to sleep
there.
But you cannot sleep all of the time, even if you’re a Little Boy Blue,
and so it was that Little Boy Blue found that he was not sleeping
very well of nights, because he slept all day. It was a dull business
too, lying awake in the dead of the night, with nothing to see except
perhaps a streak of moonlight or the shadow of the pear tree, nothing
to hear except the dickery, dickery, dock, of the kitchen clock,
nothing to do but wait for daylight to come.
And so on this same night, as usual, Little Boy Blue lay stark awake,
even starker awake than he sometimes was, for his naps had been more
frequent and longer that day. It was early still, about eight o’clock,
and although Little Boy Blue had been in bed only half an hour, it
seemed to him that he had been there exactly one hundred years, he was
so tired of it.
He twisted and turned and rolled and kicked. He propped himself up
on his elbows and stared up at the stars: “Twinkle, twinkle, little
star, how I wonder what you are,” and then he almost did go to sleep
wondering just exactly what stars were--fire or silver or flowers or
what. Little Boy Blue had not studied astronomy yet. But just as he
almost fell asleep, clink, clank came a noise, and he came to with a
jerk. What was that noise? It sounded like a milk pail, clink, clank.
He listened hard, but no further sound came. He squirmed and turned
some more. Finally he sat up straight in bed.