Which he did. He groped in the dim light for his clothes and put them
on--his blue suit, his shoes and stockings, his favorite blue cap with
the red button on top. Then he tiptoed softly out of his room, through
the kitchen and into the yard.
Oh, Little Boy Blue, what would your mother say if she knew you were
not in bed and asleep? What would your father say if somebody should
tell him that his little boy was out in the middle of the night like
this, walking around? But they didn’t know it, those two good souls
nodding by their candle in the second-best parlor, which is probably
a good thing, as it would have distressed them. Not that Little Boy
Blue meant the least harm in the world. He had just thought he’d
take “a bit of a turn” and try that way to get sleepy. He had heard
the candlestick-maker say once that he always took “a bit of a turn”
before he went to bed, which made him sleep like a top. As if tops did
sleep--the funny old candlestick-maker.
Little Boy Blue had hardly taken three steps when clink, clank, his
foot bumped against something which made that same noise he had heard
a few moments before in bed. He stooped down. It looked like a bucket,
but it wasn’t one of his mother’s milk pails. What could it be? He put
his hands into it. There was something inside that felt gritty and
sticky and damp. He looked closer and felt it again. It was sand.
But what on earth was a bucket of sand doing on the Blues’ side stoop,
and who in the world had left it there? Little Boy Blue did not know.
Perhaps his father had forgotten it, he thought. Perhaps Farmer Tom
had put it there. He and Mr. Blue were always lending each other
things--bags of gravel, baskets of chips, nails and bridles and chicken
feed.
Well, whatever it was, this was not the place for it, Little Boy Blue
knew that. So he picked it up and carried it back to the tool house,
and there he put it in a corner out of harm’s way, like the careful
little boy that he was. And then he went away to take his bit of a turn.
Little did Boy Blue know what he had really done by hiding that bucket
of sand, though the fact was that he had done something epoch-making in
Pudding Lane. Epoch-making is a big word, but then Little Boy Blue had
done a big thing. For whom do you suppose that sand belonged to?
It belonged to the Sand Man, that fellow who slips along by our windows
at night, throws his handfuls of sand in our eyes and makes us feel
heavy in our eyelids and sleepy all over. He had left his sand for the
least little while on the Blues’ side stoop, while he went up to the
palace to put the King and Queen to sleep, and now Boy Blue had hidden
it. Think of it! The Sand Man without his sand!
Do you wonder that when he came back, he wrung his sandy hands and
beat his breast in frenzied despair? Do you wonder that he trembled
all over? Poor Sand Man! It did look bad for him. Never before had he
failed to do his work. Every single night, for years and years and
years, he had gone on his circuit from house to house, and put folks
to sleep, first the children, then the grandfathers, and after that,
sometimes quite late, the mothers and fathers and big sisters in the
parlor.
And now on this night, his sand was gone, everybody would stay wide
awake, and goodness knows what angry message Old King Cole would send
him. That merry old soul might even deprive him of his job, and then
what would he do for a living, and what would the Sand Woman do, and
all the little Sand Children? It was a sad thought, and the Sand
Man shuddered as he stood there in the shadow of the Blues’ house,
wondering what to do next.
As Little Boy Blue walked down Pudding Lane, he wondered why the Shoe
was lighted up so brilliantly, and as he passed the Dumpties’ he
thought it strange indeed that the candle in Humpty’s room was still
burning. It was late. What should children be doing awake at such an
hour? They hadn’t slept all day to make them wakeful, like Boy Blue
himself. The Clauses’ house was brightly lighted too, and he could see
the Flinderses’ fine new lamp from London burning gayly in Polly’s room.
Now, of course, we know exactly what was happening, even though Little
Boy Blue did not. We know and the Sand Man knew, but Little Boy Blue
did not know, and certainly the distracted mothers of Pudding Lane did
not know what was the matter with their children that night. And how
exasperated they were too, those mothers.
“What does _ail_ you, Santa Claus?” asked his mother of that little
boy, who was sitting up in bed with not a sign of sleep about him.
“I don’t know,” answered Santa Claus, much puzzled himself. “Only I
just can’t sleep, and I don’t believe I ever will sleep again.”
“Mercy on us!” breathed Mrs. Claus fearfully.
“Humpty, darling, are you ill?” asked Mrs. Dumpty anxiously. “You’ve
never been wakeful like this before.”
“No, not ill, just wide awake,” answered Humpty.
“Children, will you get into your beds and go to sleep?” demanded the
Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, beside herself with impatience at all
these dozens of children scampering around the Shoe at the impossible
hour of nine o’clock.
“But we’re not a bit sleepy,” spoke up Judy.
“Not a single bit!” echoed Polly and Jumbo and Jocko and all the rest.
That was the way it was in every house in Pudding Lane that night. The
mothers tried spanking, and it didn’t work. Spanking really doesn’t
make you sleepy, though sometimes it makes you try harder to get
sleepy. They tried bread and milk. They tried lullabies. They tried
everything, and still the children of Pudding Lane were as wide awake
as could be until finally, when they all begged their mothers to let
them go out and play, those frantic women, wondering what Old King
Cole would say to such a performance, consented. And with a whoop loud
enough to be heard in Banbury Cross, the children of Pudding Lane
rushed outdoors for a glorious romp in the moonlight.
What a night that was! Everybody was up, even Humpty Dumpty, looking
on from his window. Little Boy Blue had joined them, of course.
Polly Flinders, Little Bo-Peep, all the Old Woman’s children, Jack
Horner--not a single child in Pudding Lane was missing, for even that
baby, The Little Girl Who Had a Little Curl, was brought out and dumped
in the midst of the fun. You know her. She was only three, but already
she was a well-known character in the village. A changeable child. One
minute she would be very good indeed, and the next she would be--simply
horrid. But she was very pretty, and she had a little curl right down
in the middle of her forehead.
Unless you have played outdoors in the moonlight yourself, you can
never imagine how much fun it is. There’s something about it that makes
mere playing in the daylight and sunshine seem very ordinary. Perhaps
it’s the shadows. You’re always mistaking them for something else,
which is very funny. Little Bo-Peep actually tagged the shadow of the
Clauses’ gate once, thinking it was Jumbo! Perhaps it’s the moonlight
itself, thin and gleaming and rare. Perhaps it’s the jolly little
stars, kicking up their heels there in the sky. Anyway, it’s pure
delight to be out on such a night, and the children of Pudding Lane
thought they simply never had had such a good time as they were having
that night.
They played Tag and Blind Man’s Buff and Ring-Around-a-Rosy. Oh, yes,
I forgot to say that singing on such a night seems to be music of a
special sort. Even Simple Simon’s poor cracked voice did not sound bad
that night as they sang “Ring Around a Rosy, Pocket Full of Posies.”
They played Drop-the-Handkerchief, too, which is particularly good at
night, for the handkerchief is so hard to see.
Well, they played on and on, while the mothers looked at them
round-eyed from the windows and wondered if their darling children
would ever, ever, ever get sleepy and come in to bed like good and
law-abiding citizens. They played on and on and on, while the Sand Man
crouched in a corner of the Blues’ side stoop and pondered desperately
on his fate. And they might have been playing yet if the Little Girl
with the Curl had not suddenly cut up one of her capers.
But she did. She cut up a terrible caper. She cried and kicked and
jumped up and down. She screamed and howled and made faces. Oh, she was
_horrid_!
At first, the children tried to pacify her by ordinary means.
“Come ride on my back, Little Girl,” invited Santa Claus. “I’ll be the
horse and you can be the rider.”
But the Little Girl only stamped her foot at him.
“Little Girl, look here, I’ve got a top!” called out Tom, Tom, the
piper’s son.
But the Little Girl only stuck out her tongue at him!
“Little Girl, look at me!” cried Jack-Be-Nimble, jumping over a
candlestick for her benefit.
But the Little Girl only lay down on the ground and kicked and screamed
some more.
The Little Girl’s mother came out, and the Little Girl’s father came
out, and they spanked her. But even that did not do any good on this
terrible night.
They were all perfectly desperate. What could they do with such a
child? The party was spoiled. The fun was over. The beautiful midsummer
night’s dream was broken. And all because of that horrid Little Girl.
At last, however, in the midst of her caper, Little Boy Blue had a
sudden idea. He didn’t say a word to anybody, but he ran back to his
father’s tool house, picked up the pail of sand and brought it to the
Little Girl. And lo, when the Little Girl saw that bucketful of lovely
sand, she stopped right in the middle of a howl, sat down and began to
dig in it as hard as she could dig. She dug with both fists and sent
the sand flying. She loved sand to play in, the Little Girl did, and
Pudding Lane had so little sand, being far from the sea.
The children, breathing sighs of relief, began to play again.
But the next moment, the games and the night and the whole beautiful
party began to seem rather stupid. First it was Jill who yawned.
“Oh, dear, I’m really getting sleepy,” she confessed.
Whereupon Jack said that he was really getting sleepy too. Humpty
Dumpty was seen nodding at the window. The Little Girl with the Curl
had fallen over on her pail, fast asleep. Simple Simon had one eye
closed. Santa Claus had both eyes closed. The Old Woman’s children were
blinking like lazy little pussy cats and Little Boy Blue had gone to
sleep standing up.
And the next thing they knew it was to-morrow. How surprised they were
to find themselves in bed exactly as if nothing had happened.
“What did happen?” they asked their mothers.
“Why, you just got sleepy,” answered the mothers.
But of course, that really wasn’t it at all, and I think it’s funny
that nobody guessed that the sand belonged to the Sand Man. Nobody did,
however, and they don’t know it to this day.
And one thing you may be sure of and that is that the Sand Man was
never so careless as to leave his sand bucket around any place again.
That night, when the children had all been carried in to their beds,
he sneaked quietly down from the Blues’, snatched his precious bucket
quickly under his arm and, after putting the grown-ups to sleep, ran
for home.
“Look here,” he said to the Sand Woman, after he had told her his
exciting story, “I want you to sew a button on my jacket for me to hang
the sand pail on, so that I shall never, never, never forget and leave
it any place again.”
So the Sand Woman sewed a large button on the Sand Man’s coat, and ever
after that the Sand Man kept his pail right with him wherever he was,
and never, never, never forgot and left it any place again.
IX
WHY TAFFY THE WELSHMAN STOLE MEAT
Taffy the Welshman had come to Pudding Lane and that quiet village was
in a turmoil. For Taffy was not only a Welshman but Taffy was a thief.
Perhaps you have heard of him. He specialized in meat.
Some thieves go in for gold watches, some deal in silver spoons. Taffy
confined himself to meat. Once in a while he descended to bones, but
usually it was meat, here a knuckle of veal, there a shoulder of lamb,
yonder a round of beef. If ever a man knew how to steal meat, Taffy
was that man. He could nip off a roast as you or I couldn’t nip off a
feather, airily, easily, with jaunty grace. He could nip it when you
weren’t looking or when you were. He could nip ten pounds or one pound
with equal art. A born genius was Taffy, and he loved his work and
pursued it diligently.
Thus it was that every morning Mrs. Dumpty, Mrs. Claus, the Old Woman
Who Lived in a Shoe, Mrs. Jack Spratt and all the other women of
Pudding Lane would trot to the butcher’s and buy meat; every afternoon
Taffy would steal it, and every night--no meat for supper. And the men
were getting tired of it. Especially Jack Spratt.
“It’s all very well,” he said to Mrs. Spratt one day, “it’s all very
well for these foreigners to come swarming into our fair city, but I
must have lean meat soon, or I don’t guarantee, Mrs. Spratt, I don’t
guarantee that nothing will happen.”
Mrs. Spratt quailed. Her husband’s was a delicate constitution and she
well knew what the effect would be if he were deprived of meat much
longer. He would probably slam doors and kick things. He might even
hurl his shoe. Once he had hurled his shoe when there was a shortage of
lean meat in Pudding Lane. Awful to think of it, but he did do it.
“Yes,” repeated Jack Spratt, “it’s all very well for foreign robbers to
come swarming--”
Really though, Jack Spratt was talking nonsense. In the first place,
poor Taffy hadn’t “swarmed” into Pudding Lane. If there’s only one of
you, you can’t swarm; there was only one of Taffy. In the second place,
Jack Spratt needn’t have laid down the law like that to his wife.
She couldn’t help it if Taffy was a thief. She was tired of eggs and
lettuce herself, and thought yearningly of her own favorite fat meat.
At night she dreamed of it, juicy, dripping chunks of it.
It was like that in every house in Pudding Lane, the men demanding
meat, the women buying it, and then losing it that way. It did seem
rather queer that the women couldn’t keep their meat once they had
bought it, but they couldn’t. Even the Queen of Hearts couldn’t keep
her meat, and the unfortunate lady had many a scene with Old King Cole
over the disappearance of the royal chops.
“I can’t help it,” she told him, “if your friend Taffy steals meat all
over the place. But if I were the King--of course, I’m only a woman, a
mere Queen--but if I were the King, I’d soon fix that fellow. I’d take
it up with the Welsh ambassador.” Which shows how much she knew about
diplomatic matters. And it wasn’t any use talking to her, for if Old
King Cole had said there wasn’t any Welsh ambassador, the Queen would
have demanded, “Well, why isn’t there one?” and a long argument would
have ensued. Some women are like that.
Only two people in Pudding Lane did not suffer from the ravages of the
thieving Taffy. One was Little Miss Muffett, who was quite content now,
as always, with her curds and whey; and the other was the butcher. For
the more meat Taffy stole, the more meat the butcher sold. He was doing
a rushing business and he was very happy. Furiously he bought pigs and
sheep and beeves at the big market in Banbury Cross, and brought them
back on loads and droves to Pudding Lane. Furiously the women bought
his meat butchered from these pigs and sheep and beeves. Furiously
Taffy nipped the meat from their cupboards and cellars and shelves.
Yes, the butcher was very happy.
But as Jack Spratt had intimated, this state of affairs could not go on
forever. The men were getting worse. They stalked savagely; they had
glitterings in their eyes; they gathered in the candlestick-maker’s
shop and muttered together. Even that mild husband and father, Mr.
Claus, was a changed man, and one day, as he eyed his wife in an odd,
bloodthirsty way, Mrs. Claus spoke her mind.
“Look here, Mr. Claus,” said she, “I’m not a roast of mutton, sir.”
Mr. Claus gaped.
“Nor am I a leg of pork,” went on the extraordinary woman.
Mr. Claus gaped wider.
“So you needn’t look at me like a cannibal,” she told him. “I won’t be
cooked and eaten, even by you. Pray don’t delude yourself.”
“My dear--” remonstrated the baker with a ghastly smile.
“No,” continued Mrs. Claus, “nor shall you cast your eyes upon my
children in that fashion. No doubt Santa Claus would make a delicious
meal, Mr. Claus, but you shall not feast yourself upon him. Yes, and
the twins would probably be as tender flesh as a man could taste, but
you are not the man who will taste it. I am surprised at you, Mr.
Claus, that you should turn heathen like this and want to eat your
family alive; I really am.”
Oh, what a woman she was! Had Mr. Claus mentioned eating his family?
Had he even thought of such an atrocious thing? Yet on and on rattled
Mrs. Claus, and she probably would have been rattling on yet, if just
then the Town Crier had not come along, ringing his bell and shouting
something. What was he saying?
“Make your sandwiches! Bake your cakes! To-morrow is picnic day!”
[Illustration: _The next morning at nine o’clock the whole town started
out for Honeysuckle Hill. Page 129._]
Picnic day, oh, yes, so it was. To-morrow was picnic day; Mrs. Claus
had quite forgotten it.
Now the picnic that the Town Crier was calling was the picnic that
Pudding Lane had been talking about all summer, but never, until
now, had really got around to. It was a bit late for picnics, being
September, but you have to have at least one picnic a year, and if
it won’t come off early in the season, it just has to come off late,
that’s all. And to-morrow, finally, Pudding Lane’s annual picnic was to
come off.
But how can you have a picnic without ham? Mrs. Claus wanted to know.
And what is a picnic without cold tongue? demanded Mrs. Dumpty.
Nevertheless, the women went ahead making their sandwiches just the
same, cheese sandwiches and currant jam sandwiches, and sandwiches of
watercress. They baked their cakes and stuffed their eggs and fished
out their pickles and collected their bananas and packed their baskets
with all these things. And the next morning at nine o’clock the whole
town started out for Honeysuckle Hill.
The picnic went off with a bang, despite the meat crisis. Indeed, so
successful an affair was that picnic that Old King Cole felt moved
to make a formal statement, and he did so, saying that it was very
gratifying to him as king for a picnic to attain such heights as this.
Although just why he should have been gratified, I don’t know, since
all he did for the picnic was to come to it and eat at it. Still, his
statement made the women very happy; it’s a great thing to please a
king.
And so everything was going as smoothly as you please--until something
happened to Miss Muffett.
It was this way. Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her curds
and whey. She was talking and smiling and having a lovely time when
along came a spider and sat down beside her. Oh, dear, how she jumped
and screamed. For if there was anything in the world that Little Miss
Muffett was afraid of, it was a spider. And yet spiders were always
pursuing her. Every time that girl sat down on a tuffet to enjoy her
repast of curds and whey, along would come a spider and sit down
beside her, just as that spider did to-day. It may be that spiders are
particularly fond of curds and whey, or perhaps Miss Muffett herself
had a fatal fascination for spiders. Anyway, wherever she went she was
pursued by spiders, an unhappy fortune, surely, for a little girl as
timid as Miss Muffett.
To-day, however, the courtly Mr. Horner, always the man to assist
a lady in distress, rose up heroically and chased the spider off.
At least, he thought he chased the spider off, and everybody else,
including Miss Muffett, thought so too, when suddenly the spider
appeared again beside Miss Muffett and this time frightened Miss
Muffett away.
One look at the hideous creature sitting there so calmly beside her,
and overboard went the bowl of curds and whey, up flew Miss Muffett
shrieking, and away she was gone, down Pinafore Pike in a cloud of dust.
Mr. Horner, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker and all the
other men let out great roars, the women screamed, the children cried.
What a scene, where all had been sweet peace before. And then, away
leaped Mr. Horner down the road after Miss Muffett, away leaped Mr.
Spratt after him, and in another moment every man, woman and child in
Pudding Lane was tearing madly down Pinafore Pike behind the flying
skirts and scampering feet of Little Miss Muffett.
And the spider? Well, the spider with one look at the empty havoc
around him, legged it off to Mrs. Spider and the children, sighing as
he went. It was too bad, he was thinking to himself. He adored Little
Miss Muffett with all the fervor of his spiderish heart, yet every time
he went near her, she squealed and pulled up her skirt and ran away
from him.
Perhaps she didn’t like him, he thought. Oh, dear, it’s a hard world
for spiders. Nobody really likes them, even when they are as faithful
and devoted as this old fellow was. Well, Mrs. Spider liked him anyway,
he reflected, and the spider children liked him too. Home was the place
for spiders, so home he would go and there in the bosom of his family
console himself as best he could.
For ten good minutes the people of Pudding Lane kept their furious pace
down Pinafore Pike. They panted and heaved and got red in the face,
especially Mrs. Dumpty; their knees wobbled and waggled, especially
the candlestick-maker’s; their tongues hung out, particularly Simple
Simon’s; their arms flapped, Mr. Claus’s most of all. But still they
kept on.
Old King Cole lost his best ruby crown and never looked back after it.
Polly Flinders stubbed her pretty toes and bore the pain unflinchingly.
Mrs. Claus’s back hair went streaming in the wind, and she didn’t even
know it.
What they were running for, I don’t know, and they didn’t know
themselves, I’m afraid. Why they didn’t stop, I can’t say. But they
didn’t, until they turned the corner toward Banbury Cross and there
they did stop, suddenly and stock-still.
And it was no wonder they stopped, for the most astonishing sight
confronted them. Indeed, it was so astonishing they couldn’t believe
they were seeing aright. It didn’t seem possible that they _could_ be
seeing hundreds of cats and hundreds of dogs like that.
For that’s just what they saw: hundreds of cats and hundreds of dogs,
all there together, with hundreds of bones and hundreds of chunks of
meat. And in the midst of that mass of fur and sharp eyes and wagging
tails and crunching jaws stood Taffy the Welshman, smiling happily at
the scene.
The people of Pudding Lane blinked; they rubbed their eyes. Surely
something was the matter with their eyesight. But Taffy himself looked
natural enough, and his voice when he spoke, sounded natural too. Taffy
was speaking; he addressed himself, very properly, to Old King Cole.
“Welcome, sir,” said he graciously. “Welcome to Your Majesty, welcome
to the Queen of Hearts, and heartiest greetings to all your people
here.”
But Old King Cole couldn’t answer, for staring at the cats and dogs.
“I knew you would come some day,” went on Taffy smoothly, “and
now--here you are. We welcome you, sir, cats, dogs and Taffy himself.”
No answer from Old King Cole, glaring angrily now at the cats and dogs.
“You must understand, sir,” began Taffy.
“But that’s just it,” burst out Old King Cole, “I don’t understand at
all. I tell you, Welshman, this is a serious thing. You break the law,
you defy punishment, you steal meat from my people day in and day out,
and now I find you here, consorting with hundreds of dogs and hundreds
of cats on the public highway. Can it be, sir, that you have robbed us
of beef and mutton only to feed these beasts?”
“That is the truth, Your Majesty,” answered Taffy softly. “I spend my
life stealing meat for these poor creatures. Is it so wrong of me?”
“Wrong? Of course it’s wrong,” thundered Old King Cole. “Don’t you know
wrong from right, Welshman? Didn’t your mother teach you that it was
wrong to steal?”
“Ah,” replied Taffy, “but you don’t know about these cats and dogs,
King Cole. These are special cats and dogs, sir.”
“Special cats and dogs?”
“Yes, sir, stray cats from London and Banbury Cross, the loneliest
cats in the world; dogs without owners, the most miserable dogs there
ever were. Oh, you should have seen them when they first came to me.
They would have broken your heart. Seedy, dingy, scrawny, all of them,
sad-eyed and starving.”