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Music transcribed by Linda Cantoni.
Transcriber's note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. Printer
errors have been changed and are listed at the end. All other
inconsistencies are as in the original.
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A TANGLED TALE
[Decoration]
[Illustration: "AT A PACE OF SIX MILES IN THE HOUR."
_Frontispiece._]
A TANGLED TALE
BY
LEWIS CARROLL
_WITH SIX ILLUSTRATIONS_
BY
ARTHUR B. FROST
Hoc meum tale quale est accipe.
_SECOND THOUSAND._
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1885
[_All Rights Reserved_]
RICHARD CLAY & SONS,
BREAD STREET HILL, LONDON, E.C.
_And Bungay, Suffolk_.
To My Pupil.
Beloved pupil! Tamed by thee,
Addish-, Subtrac-, Multiplica-tion,
Division, Fractions, Rule of Three,
Attest thy deft manipulation!
Then onward! Let the voice of Fame
From Age to Age repeat thy story,
Till thou hast won thyself a name
Exceeding even Euclid's glory!
PREFACE.
This Tale originally appeared as a serial in _The Monthly Packet_,
beginning in April, 1880. The writer's intention was to embody in each
Knot (like the medicine so dexterously, but ineffectually, concealed in
the jam of our early childhood) one or more mathematical questions--in
Arithmetic, Algebra, or Geometry, as the case might be--for the
amusement, and possible edification, of the fair readers of that
Magazine.
L. C.
_October, 1885._
CONTENTS.
KNOT PAGE
I. EXCELSIOR 1
II. ELIGIBLE APARTMENTS 4
III. MAD MATHESIS 13
IV. THE DEAD RECKONING 19
V. OUGHTS AND CROSSES 27
VI. HER RADIANCY 34
VII. PETTY CASH 43
VIII. DE OMNIBUS REBUS 52
IX. A SERPENT WITH CORNERS 58
X. CHELSEA BUNS 66
ANSWERS TO KNOT I. 77
" " II. 84
" " III. 90
" " IV. 96
" " V. 102
" " VI. 106
" " VII. 112
" " VIII. 132
" " IX. 135
" " X. 142
A TANGLED TALE.
KNOT I.
EXCELSIOR.
"Goblin, lead them up and down."
The ruddy glow of sunset was already fading into the sombre shadows of
night, when two travellers might have been observed swiftly--at a pace
of six miles in the hour--descending the rugged side of a mountain; the
younger bounding from crag to crag with the agility of a fawn, while his
companion, whose aged limbs seemed ill at ease in the heavy chain armour
habitually worn by tourists in that district, toiled on painfully at his
side.
As is always the case under such circumstances, the younger knight was
the first to break the silence.
"A goodly pace, I trow!" he exclaimed. "We sped not thus in the ascent!"
"Goodly, indeed!" the other echoed with a groan. "We clomb it but at
three miles in the hour."
"And on the dead level our pace is----?" the younger suggested; for he
was weak in statistics, and left all such details to his aged companion.
"Four miles in the hour," the other wearily replied. "Not an ounce
more," he added, with that love of metaphor so common in old age, "and
not a farthing less!"
"'Twas three hours past high noon when we left our hostelry," the young
man said, musingly. "We shall scarce be back by supper-time. Perchance
mine host will roundly deny us all food!"
"He will chide our tardy return," was the grave reply, "and such a
rebuke will be meet."
"A brave conceit!" cried the other, with a merry laugh. "And should we
bid him bring us yet another course, I trow his answer will be tart!"
"We shall but get our deserts," sighed the elder knight, who had never
seen a joke in his life, and was somewhat displeased at his companion's
untimely levity. "'Twill be nine of the clock," he added in an
undertone, "by the time we regain our hostelry. Full many a mile shall
we have plodded this day!"
"How many? How many?" cried the eager youth, ever athirst for knowledge.
The old man was silent.
"Tell me," he answered, after a moment's thought, "what time it was when
we stood together on yonder peak. Not exact to the minute!" he added
hastily, reading a protest in the young man's face. "An' thy guess be
within one poor half-hour of the mark, 'tis all I ask of thy mother's
son! Then will I tell thee, true to the last inch, how far we shall have
trudged betwixt three and nine of the clock."
A groan was the young man's only reply; while his convulsed features and
the deep wrinkles that chased each other across his manly brow, revealed
the abyss of arithmetical agony into which one chance question had
plunged him.
KNOT II.
ELIGIBLE APARTMENTS.
"Straight down the crooked lane,
And all round the square."
"Let's ask Balbus about it," said Hugh.
"All right," said Lambert.
"_He_ can guess it," said Hugh.
"Rather," said Lambert.
No more words were needed: the two brothers understood each other
perfectly.
[Illustration: "BALBUS WAS ASSISTING HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW TO CONVINCE THE
DRAGON."]
Balbus was waiting for them at the hotel: the journey down had tired
him, he said: so his two pupils had been the round of the place, in
search of lodgings, without the old tutor who had been their inseparable
companion from their childhood. They had named him after the hero of
their Latin exercise-book, which overflowed with anecdotes of that
versatile genius--anecdotes whose vagueness in detail was more than
compensated by their sensational brilliance. "Balbus has overcome all
his enemies" had been marked by their tutor, in the margin of the book,
"Successful Bravery." In this way he had tried to extract a moral from
every anecdote about Balbus--sometimes one of warning, as in "Balbus had
borrowed a healthy dragon," against which he had written "Rashness in
Speculation"--sometimes of encouragement, as in the words "Influence of
Sympathy in United Action," which stood opposite to the anecdote "Balbus
was assisting his mother-in-law to convince the dragon"--and sometimes
it dwindled down to a single word, such as "Prudence," which was all he
could extract from the touching record that "Balbus, having scorched the
tail of the dragon, went away." His pupils liked the short morals best,
as it left them more room for marginal illustrations, and in this
instance they required all the space they could get to exhibit the
rapidity of the hero's departure.
Their report of the state of things was discouraging. That most
fashionable of watering-places, Little Mendip, was "chockfull" (as the
boys expressed it) from end to end. But in one Square they had seen no
less than four cards, in different houses, all announcing in flaming
capitals "ELIGIBLE APARTMENTS." "So there's plenty of choice, after all,
you see," said spokesman Hugh in conclusion.
"That doesn't follow from the data," said Balbus, as he rose from the
easy chair, where he had been dozing over _The Little Mendip Gazette_.
"They may be all single rooms. However, we may as well see them. I shall
be glad to stretch my legs a bit."
An unprejudiced bystander might have objected that the operation was
needless, and that this long, lank creature would have been all the
better with even shorter legs: but no such thought occurred to his
loving pupils. One on each side, they did their best to keep up with his
gigantic strides, while Hugh repeated the sentence in their father's
letter, just received from abroad, over which he and Lambert had been
puzzling. "He says a friend of his, the Governor of----_what_ was that
name again, Lambert?" ("Kgovjni," said Lambert.) "Well, yes. The
Governor of----what-you-may-call-it----wants to give a _very_ small
dinner-party, and he means to ask his father's brother-in-law, his
brother's father-in-law, his father-in-law's brother, and his
brother-in-law's father: and we're to guess how many guests there will
be."
There was an anxious pause. "_How_ large did he say the pudding was to
be?" Balbus said at last. "Take its cubical contents, divide by the
cubical contents of what each man can eat, and the quotient----"
"He didn't say anything about pudding," said Hugh, "--and here's the
Square," as they turned a corner and came into sight of the "eligible
apartments."
"It _is_ a Square!" was Balbus' first cry of delight, as he gazed around
him. "Beautiful! Beau-ti-ful! Equilateral! _And_ rectangular!"
The boys looked round with less enthusiasm. "Number nine is the first
with a card," said prosaic Lambert; but Balbus would not so soon awake
from his dream of beauty.
"See, boys!" he cried. "Twenty doors on a side! What symmetry! Each side
divided into twenty-one equal parts! It's delicious!"
"Shall I knock, or ring?" said Hugh, looking in some perplexity at a
square brass plate which bore the simple inscription "RING ALSO."
"Both," said Balbus. "That's an Ellipsis, my boy. Did you never see an
Ellipsis before?"
"I couldn't hardly read it," said Hugh, evasively. "It's no good having
an Ellipsis, if they don't keep it clean."
"Which there is _one_ room, gentlemen," said the smiling landlady. "And
a sweet room too! As snug a little back-room----"
"We will see it," said Balbus gloomily, as they followed her in. "I knew
how it would be! One room in each house! No view, I suppose?"
"Which indeed there _is_, gentlemen!" the landlady indignantly
protested, as she drew up the blind, and indicated the back garden.
"Cabbages, I perceive," said Balbus. "Well, they're green, at any rate."
"Which the greens at the shops," their hostess explained, "are by no
means dependable upon. Here you has them on the premises, _and_ of the
best."
"Does the window open?" was always Balbus' first question in testing a
lodging: and "Does the chimney smoke?" his second. Satisfied on all
points, he secured the refusal of the room, and they moved on to Number
Twenty-five.
This landlady was grave and stern. "I've nobbut one room left," she
told them: "and it gives on the back-gyardin."
"But there are cabbages?" Balbus suggested.
The landlady visibly relented. "There is, sir," she said: "and good
ones, though I say it as shouldn't. We can't rely on the shops for
greens. So we grows them ourselves."
"A singular advantage," said Balbus: and, after the usual questions,
they went on to Fifty-two.
"And I'd gladly accommodate you all, if I could," was the greeting that
met them. "We are but mortal," ("Irrelevant!" muttered Balbus) "and I've
let all my rooms but one."
"Which one is a back-room, I perceive," said Balbus: "and looking out
on--on cabbages, I presume?"
"Yes, indeed, sir!" said their hostess. "Whatever _other_ folks may do,
_we_ grows our own. For the shops----"
"An excellent arrangement!" Balbus interrupted. "Then one can really
depend on their being good. Does the window open?"
The usual questions were answered satisfactorily: but this time Hugh
added one of his own invention--"Does the cat scratch?"
The landlady looked round suspiciously, as if to make sure the cat was
not listening, "I will not deceive you, gentlemen," she said. "It _do_
scratch, but not without you pulls its whiskers! It'll never do it," she
repeated slowly, with a visible effort to recall the exact words of some
written agreement between herself and the cat, "without you pulls its
whiskers!"
"Much may be excused in a cat so treated," said Balbus, as they left the
house and crossed to Number Seventy-three, leaving the landlady
curtseying on the doorstep, and still murmuring to herself her parting
words, as if they were a form of blessing, "---- not without you pulls
its whiskers!"
At Number Seventy-three they found only a small shy girl to show the
house, who said "yes'm" in answer to all questions.
"The usual room," said Balbus, as they marched in: "the usual
back-garden, the usual cabbages. I suppose you can't get them good at
the shops?"
"Yes'm," said the girl.
"Well, you may tell your mistress we will take the room, and that her
plan of growing her own cabbages is simply _admirable_!"
"Yes'm," said the girl, as she showed them out.
"One day-room and three bed-rooms," said Balbus, as they returned to the
hotel. "We will take as our day-room the one that gives us the least
walking to do to get to it."
"Must we walk from door to door, and count the steps?" said Lambert.
"No, no! Figure it out, my boys, figure it out!" Balbus gaily exclaimed,
as he put pens, ink, and paper before his hapless pupils, and left the
room.
"I say! It'll be a job!" said Hugh.
"Rather!" said Lambert.
KNOT III.
MAD MATHESIS.
"I waited for the train."
"Well, they call me so because I _am_ a little mad, I suppose," she
said, good-humouredly, in answer to Clara's cautiously-worded question
as to how she came by so strange a nick-name. "You see, I never do what
sane people are expected to do now-a-days. I never wear long trains,
(talking of trains, that's the Charing Cross Metropolitan Station--I've
something to tell you about _that_), and I never play lawn-tennis. I
can't cook an omelette. I can't even set a broken limb! _There's_ an
ignoramus for you!"
Clara was her niece, and full twenty years her junior; in fact, she was
still attending a High School--an institution of which Mad Mathesis
spoke with undisguised aversion. "Let a woman be meek and lowly!" she
would say. "None of your High Schools for me!" But it was vacation-time
just now, and Clara was her guest, and Mad Mathesis was showing her the
sights of that Eighth Wonder of the world--London.
"The Charing Cross Metropolitan Station!" she resumed, waving her hand
towards the entrance as if she were introducing her niece to a friend.
"The Bayswater and Birmingham Extension is just completed, and the
trains now run round and round continuously--skirting the border of
Wales, just touching at York, and so round by the east coast back to
London. The way the trains run is _most_ peculiar. The westerly ones go
round in two hours; the easterly ones take three; but they always manage
to start two trains from here, opposite ways, punctually every
quarter-of-an-hour."
"They part to meet again," said Clara, her eyes filling with tears at
the romantic thought.
"No need to cry about it!" her aunt grimly remarked. "They don't meet on
the same line of rails, you know. Talking of meeting, an idea strikes
me!" she added, changing the subject with her usual abruptness. "Let's
go opposite ways round, and see which can meet most trains. No need for
a chaperon--ladies' saloon, you know. You shall go whichever way you
like, and we'll have a bet about it!"
"I never make bets," Clara said very gravely. "Our excellent preceptress
has often warned us----"
"You'd be none the worse if you did!" Mad Mathesis interrupted. "In
fact, you'd be the better, I'm certain!"
"Neither does our excellent preceptress approve of puns," said Clara.
"But we'll have a match, if you like. Let me choose my train," she added
after a brief mental calculation, "and I'll engage to meet exactly half
as many again as you do."
"Not if you count fair," Mad Mathesis bluntly interrupted. "Remember, we
only count the trains we meet _on the way_. You mustn't count the one
that starts as you start, nor the one that arrives as you arrive."
"That will only make the difference of _one_ train," said Clara, as they
turned and entered the station. "But I never travelled alone before.
There'll be no one to help me to alight. However, I don't mind. Let's
have a match."
A ragged little boy overheard her remark, and came running after her.
"Buy a box of cigar-lights, Miss!" he pleaded, pulling her shawl to
attract her attention. Clara stopped to explain.
"I never smoke cigars," she said in a meekly apologetic tone. "Our
excellent preceptress----," but Mad Mathesis impatiently hurried her on,
and the little boy was left gazing after her with round eyes of
amazement.
The two ladies bought their tickets and moved slowly down the central
platform, Mad Mathesis prattling on as usual--Clara silent, anxiously
reconsidering the calculation on which she rested her hopes of winning
the match.
"Mind where you go, dear!" cried her aunt, checking her just in time.
"One step more, and you'd have been in that pail of cold water!"
"I know, I know," Clara said, dreamily. "The pale, the cold, and the
moony----"
"Take your places on the spring-boards!" shouted a porter.
"What are _they_ for!" Clara asked in a terrified whisper.
"Merely to help us into the trains." The elder lady spoke with the
nonchalance of one quite used to the process. "Very few people can get
into a carriage without help in less than three seconds, and the trains
only stop for one second." At this moment the whistle was heard, and two
trains rushed into the station. A moment's pause, and they were gone
again; but in that brief interval several hundred passengers had been
shot into them, each flying straight to his place with the accuracy of a
Minie bullet--while an equal number were showered out upon the
side-platforms.
Three hours had passed away, and the two friends met again on the
Charing Cross platform, and eagerly compared notes. Then Clara turned
away with a sigh. To young impulsive hearts, like hers, disappointment
is always a bitter pill. Mad Mathesis followed her, full of kindly
sympathy.
"Try again, my love!" she said, cheerily. "Let us vary the experiment.
We will start as we did before, but not to begin counting till our
trains meet. When we see each other, we will say 'One!' and so count on
till we come here again."
Clara brightened up. "I shall win _that_," she exclaimed eagerly, "if I
may choose my train!"
Another shriek of engine whistles, another upheaving of spring-boards,
another living avalanche plunging into two trains as they flashed by:
and the travellers were off again.
Each gazed eagerly from her carriage window, holding up her handkerchief
as a signal to her friend. A rush and a roar. Two trains shot past each
other in a tunnel, and two travellers leaned back in their corners with
a sigh--or rather with _two_ sighs--of relief. "One!" Clara murmured to
herself. "Won! It's a word of good omen. _This_ time, at any rate, the
victory will be mine!"
But _was_ it?
KNOT IV.
THE DEAD RECKONING.
"I did dream of money-bags to-night."
Noonday on the open sea within a few degrees of the Equator is apt to be
oppressively warm; and our two travellers were now airily clad in suits
of dazzling white linen, having laid aside the chain-armour which they
had found not only endurable in the cold mountain air they had lately
been breathing, but a necessary precaution against the daggers of the
banditti who infested the heights. Their holiday-trip was over, and they
were now on their way home, in the monthly packet which plied between
the two great ports of the island they had been exploring.
Along with their armour, the tourists had laid aside the antiquated
speech it had pleased them to affect while in knightly disguise, and
had returned to the ordinary style of two country gentlemen of the
Twentieth Century.
Stretched on a pile of cushions, under the shade of a huge umbrella,
they were lazily watching some native fishermen, who had come on board
at the last landing-place, each carrying over his shoulder a small but
heavy sack. A large weighing-machine, that had been used for cargo at
the last port, stood on the deck; and round this the fishermen had
gathered, and, with much unintelligible jabber, seemed to be weighing
their sacks.
"More like sparrows in a tree than human talk, isn't it?" the elder
tourist remarked to his son, who smiled feebly, but would not exert
himself so far as to speak. The old man tried another listener.
"What have they got in those sacks, Captain?" he inquired, as that great
being passed them in his never ending parade to and fro on the deck.
The Captain paused in his march, and towered over the travellers--tall,
grave, and serenely self-satisfied.
"Fishermen," he explained, "are often passengers in My ship. These five
are from Mhruxi--the place we last touched at--and that's the way they
carry their money. The money of this island is heavy, gentlemen, but it
costs little, as you may guess. We buy it from them by weight--about
five shillings a pound. I fancy a ten pound-note would buy all those
sacks."
By this time the old man had closed his eyes--in order, no doubt, to
concentrate his thoughts on these interesting facts; but the Captain
failed to realise his motive, and with a grunt resumed his monotonous
march.
Meanwhile the fishermen were getting so noisy over the weighing-machine
that one of the sailors took the precaution of carrying off all the
weights, leaving them to amuse themselves with such substitutes in the
form of winch-handles, belaying-pins, &c., as they could find. This
brought their excitement to a speedy end: they carefully hid their sacks
in the folds of the jib that lay on the deck near the tourists, and
strolled away.
When next the Captain's heavy footfall passed, the younger man roused
himself to speak.
"_What_ did you call the place those fellows came from, Captain?" he
asked.
"Mhruxi, sir."
"And the one we are bound for?"
The Captain took a long breath, plunged into the word, and came out of
it nobly. "They call it Kgovjni, sir."
"K--I give it up!" the young man faintly said.
He stretched out his hand for a glass of iced water which the
compassionate steward had brought him a minute ago, and had set down,
unluckily, just outside the shadow of the umbrella. It was scalding hot,
and he decided not to drink it. The effort of making this resolution,
coming close on the fatiguing conversation he had just gone through, was
too much for him: he sank back among the cushions in silence.
His father courteously tried to make amends for his _nonchalance_.
"Whereabouts are we now, Captain?" said he, "Have you any idea?"
The Captain cast a pitying look on the ignorant landsman. "I could tell
you _that_, sir," he said, in a tone of lofty condescension, "to an
inch!"
"You don't say so!" the old man remarked, in a tone of languid surprise.
"And mean so," persisted the Captain. "Why, what do you suppose would
become of My ship, if I were to lose My Longitude and My Latitude?
Could _you_ make anything of My Dead Reckoning?"
"Nobody could, I'm sure!" the other heartily rejoined.
But he had overdone it.
"It's _perfectly_ intelligible," the Captain said, in an offended tone,
"to any one that understands such things." With these words he moved
away, and began giving orders to the men, who were preparing to hoist
the jib.
Our tourists watched the operation with such interest that neither of
them remembered the five money-bags, which in another moment, as the
wind filled out the jib, were whirled overboard and fell heavily into
the sea.
But the poor fishermen had not so easily forgotten their property. In a
moment they had rushed to the spot, and stood uttering cries of fury,
and pointing, now to the sea, and now to the sailors who had caused the
disaster.
The old man explained it to the Captain.
"Let us make it up among us," he added in conclusion. "Ten pounds will
do it, I think you said?"
[Illustration]
But the Captain put aside the suggestion with a wave of the hand.
"No, sir!" he said, in his grandest manner. "You will excuse Me, I am
sure; but these are My passengers. The accident has happened on board My
ship, and under My orders. It is for Me to make compensation." He
turned to the angry fishermen. "Come here, my men!" he said, in the
Mhruxian dialect. "Tell me the weight of each sack. I saw you weighing
them just now."
Then ensued a perfect Babel of noise, as the five natives explained, all
screaming together, how the sailors had carried off the weights, and
they had done what they could with whatever came handy.
Two iron belaying-pins, three blocks, six holystones, four
winch-handles, and a large hammer, were now carefully weighed, the
Captain superintending and noting the results. But the matter did not
seem to be settled, even then: an angry discussion followed, in which
the sailors and the five natives all joined: and at last the Captain
approached our tourists with a disconcerted look, which he tried to
conceal under a laugh.
"It's an absurd difficulty," he said. "Perhaps one of you gentlemen can
suggest something. It seems they weighed the sacks two at a time!"
"If they didn't have five separate weighings, of course you can't value
them separately," the youth hastily decided.
"Let's hear all about it," was the old man's more cautious remark.
"They _did_ have five separate weighings," the Captain said, "but--Well,
it beats _me_ entirely!" he added, in a sudden burst of candour. "Here's
the result. First and second sack weighed twelve pounds; second and
third, thirteen and a half; third and fourth, eleven and a half; fourth
and fifth, eight: and then they say they had only the large hammer left,
and it took _three_ sacks to weigh it down--that's the first, third and
fifth--and _they_ weighed sixteen pounds. There, gentlemen! Did you ever
hear anything like _that_?"
The old man muttered under his breath "If only my sister were here!" and
looked helplessly at his son. His son looked at the five natives. The
five natives looked at the Captain. The Captain looked at nobody: his
eyes were cast down, and he seemed to be saying softly to himself
"Contemplate one another, gentlemen, if such be your good pleasure. _I_
contemplate _Myself_!"
KNOT V.
OUGHTS AND CROSSES.
"Look here, upon this picture, and on this."
"And what made you choose the first train, Goosey?" said Mad Mathesis,
as they got into the cab. "Couldn't you count better than _that_?"
"I took an extreme case," was the tearful reply. "Our excellent
preceptress always says 'When in doubt, my dears, take an extreme case.'
And I _was_ in doubt."
"Does it always succeed?" her aunt enquired.
Clara sighed. "Not _always_," she reluctantly admitted. "And I can't
make out why. One day she was telling the little girls--they make such a
noise at tea, you know--'The more noise you make, the less jam you will
have, and _vice versa_.' And I thought they wouldn't know what '_vice
versa_' meant: so I explained it to them. I said 'If you make an
infinite noise, you'll get no jam: and if you make no noise, you'll get
an infinite lot of jam.' But our excellent preceptress said that wasn't
a good instance. _Why_ wasn't it?" she added plaintively.
Her aunt evaded the question. "One sees certain objections to it," she
said. "But how did you work it with the Metropolitan trains? None of
them go infinitely fast, I believe."
"I called them hares and tortoises," Clara said--a little timidly, for
she dreaded being laughed at. "And I thought there couldn't be so many
hares as tortoises on the Line: so I took an extreme case--one hare and
an infinite number of tortoises."
"An extreme case, indeed," her aunt remarked with admirable gravity:
"and a most dangerous state of things!"
"And I thought, if I went with a tortoise, there would be only _one_
hare to meet: but if I went with the hare--you know there were _crowds_
of tortoises!"
"It wasn't a bad idea," said the elder lady, as they left the cab, at
the entrance of Burlington House. "You shall have another chance to-day.
We'll have a match in marking pictures."
Clara brightened up. "I should like to try again, very much," she said.
"I'll take more care this time. How are we to play?"
To this question Mad Mathesis made no reply: she was busy drawing lines
down the margins of the catalogue. "See," she said after a minute, "I've
drawn three columns against the names of the pictures in the long room,
and I want you to fill them with oughts and crosses--crosses for good
marks and oughts for bad. The first column is for choice of subject, the
second for arrangement, the third for colouring. And these are the
conditions of the match. You must give three crosses to two or three
pictures. You must give two crosses to four or five----"
"Do you mean _only_ two crosses?" said Clara. "Or may I count the
three-cross pictures among the two-cross pictures?"
"Of course you may," said her aunt. "Any one, that has _three_ eyes, may
be said to have _two_ eyes, I suppose?"
Clara followed her aunt's dreamy gaze across the crowded gallery,
half-dreading to find that there was a three-eyed person in sight.
"And you must give one cross to nine or ten."
"And which wins the match?" Clara asked, as she carefully entered these
conditions on a blank leaf in her catalogue.
"Whichever marks fewest pictures."
"But suppose we marked the same number?"
"Then whichever uses most marks."
Clara considered. "I don't think it's much of a match," she said. "I
shall mark nine pictures, and give three crosses to three of them, two
crosses to two more, and one cross each to all the rest."
"Will you, indeed?" said her aunt. "Wait till you've heard all the
conditions, my impetuous child. You must give three oughts to one or two
pictures, two oughts to three or four, and one ought to eight or nine. I
don't want you to be _too_ hard on the R.A.'s."
Clara quite gasped as she wrote down all these fresh conditions. "It's a
great deal worse than Circulating Decimals!" she said. "But I'm
determined to win, all the same!"
Her aunt smiled grimly. "We can begin _here_," she said, as they paused
before a gigantic picture, which the catalogue informed them was the
"Portrait of Lieutenant Brown, mounted on his favorite elephant."
"He looks awfully conceited!" said Clara. "I don't think he was the
elephant's favorite Lieutenant. What a hideous picture it is! And it
takes up room enough for twenty!"
"Mind what you say, my dear!" her aunt interposed. "It's by an R.A.!"
But Clara was quite reckless. "I don't care who it's by!" she cried.
"And I shall give it three bad marks!"
Aunt and niece soon drifted away from each other in the crowd, and for
the next half-hour Clara was hard at work, putting in marks and rubbing
them out again, and hunting up and down for suitable pictures. This she
found the hardest part of all. "I _can't_ find the one I want!" she
exclaimed at last, almost crying with vexation.
"What is it you want to find, my dear?" The voice was strange to Clara,
but so sweet and gentle that she felt attracted to the owner of it, even
before she had seen her; and when she turned, and met the smiling looks
of two little old ladies, whose round dimpled faces, exactly alike,
seemed never to have known a care, it was as much as she could do--as
she confessed to Aunt Mattie afterwards--to keep herself from hugging
them both.
"I was looking for a picture," she said, "that has a good subject--and
that's well arranged--but badly coloured."
The little old ladies glanced at each other in some alarm. "Calm
yourself, my dear," said the one who had spoken first, "and try to
remember which it was. What _was_ the subject?"
"Was it an elephant, for instance?" the other sister suggested. They
were still in sight of Lieutenant Brown.
"I don't know, indeed!" Clara impetuously replied. "You know it doesn't
matter a bit what the subject _is_, so long as it's a good one!"
Once more the sisters exchanged looks of alarm, and one of them
whispered something to the other, of which Clara caught only the one
word "mad."
"They mean Aunt Mattie, of course," she said to herself--fancying, in
her innocence, that London was like her native town, where everybody
knew everybody else. "If you mean my aunt," she added aloud, "she's
_there_--just three pictures beyond Lieutenant Brown."
"Ah, well! Then you'd better go to her, my dear!" her new friend said,
soothingly. "_She'll_ find you the picture you want. Good-bye, dear!"
"Good-bye, dear!" echoed the other sister, "Mind you don't lose sight of
your aunt!" And the pair trotted off into another room, leaving Clara
rather perplexed at their manner.
"They're real darlings!" she soliloquised. "I wonder why they pity me
so!" And she wandered on, murmuring to herself "It must have two good
marks, and----"
KNOT VI.
HER RADIANCY.
"One piecee thing that my have got,
Maskee[A] that thing my no can do.
You talkee you no sabey what?
Bamboo."
They landed, and were at once conducted to the Palace. About half way
they were met by the Governor, who welcomed them in English--a great
relief to our travellers, whose guide could speak nothing but Kgovjnian.
"I don't half like the way they grin at us as we go by!" the old man
whispered to his son. "And why do they say 'Bamboo!' so often?"
"It alludes to a local custom," replied the Governor, who had overheard
the question. "Such persons as happen in any way to displease Her
Radiancy are usually beaten with rods."
[Illustration: "WHY DO THEY SAY 'BAMBOO!' SO OFTEN?"]
The old man shuddered. "A most objectional local custom!" he remarked
with strong emphasis. "I wish we had never landed! Did you notice that
black fellow, Norman, opening his great mouth at us? I verily believe he
would like to eat us!"
Norman appealed to the Governor, who was walking at his other side. "Do
they often eat distinguished strangers here?" he said, in as indifferent
a tone as he could assume.
"Not often--not ever!" was the welcome reply. "They are not good for it.
Pigs we eat, for they are fat. This old man is thin."
"And thankful to be so!" muttered the elder traveller. "Beaten we shall
be without a doubt. It's a comfort to know it won't be Beaten without
the B! My dear boy, just look at the peacocks!"
They were now walking between two unbroken lines of those gorgeous
birds, each held in check, by means of a golden collar and chain, by a
black slave, who stood well behind, so as not to interrupt the view of
the glittering tail, with its network of rustling feathers and its
hundred eyes.
The Governor smiled proudly. "In your honour," he said, "Her Radiancy
has ordered up ten thousand additional peacocks. She will, no doubt,
decorate you, before you go, with the usual Star and Feathers."
"It'll be Star without the S!" faltered one of his hearers.
"Come, come! Don't lose heart!" said the other. "All this is full of
charm for me."
"You are young, Norman," sighed his father; "young and light-hearted.
For me, it is Charm without the C."
"The old one is sad," the Governor remarked with some anxiety. "He has,
without doubt, effected some fearful crime?"
"But I haven't!" the poor old gentleman hastily exclaimed. "Tell him I
haven't, Norman!"
"He has not, as yet," Norman gently explained. And the Governor
repeated, in a satisfied tone, "Not as yet."
"Yours is a wondrous country!" the Governor resumed, after a pause. "Now
here is a letter from a friend of mine, a merchant, in London. He and
his brother went there a year ago, with a thousand pounds apiece; and on
New-Year's-day they had sixty thousand pounds between them!"
"How did they do it?" Norman eagerly exclaimed. Even the elder traveller
looked excited.
The Governor handed him the open letter. "Anybody can do it, when once
they know how," so ran this oracular document. "We borrowed nought: we
stole nought. We began the year with only a thousand pounds apiece: and
last New-Year's-day we had sixty thousand pounds between us--sixty
thousand golden sovereigns!"
Norman looked grave and thoughtful as he handed back the letter. His
father hazarded one guess. "Was it by gambling?"
"A Kgovjnian never gambles," said the Governor gravely, as he ushered
them through the palace gates. They followed him in silence down a long
passage, and soon found themselves in a lofty hall, lined entirely with
peacocks' feathers. In the centre was a pile of crimson cushions, which
almost concealed the figure of Her Radiancy--a plump little damsel, in a
robe of green satin dotted with silver stars, whose pale round face lit
up for a moment with a half-smile as the travellers bowed before her,
and then relapsed into the exact expression of a wax doll, while she
languidly murmured a word or two in the Kgovjnian dialect.
The Governor interpreted. "Her Radiancy welcomes you. She notes the
Impenetrable Placidity of the old one, and the Imperceptible Acuteness
of the youth."
Here the little potentate clapped her hands, and a troop of slaves
instantly appeared, carrying trays of coffee and sweetmeats, which they
offered to the guests, who had, at a signal from the Governor, seated
themselves on the carpet.
"Sugar-plums!" muttered the old man. "One might as well be at a
confectioner's! Ask for a penny bun, Norman!"
"Not so loud!" his son whispered. "Say something complimentary!" For the
Governor was evidently expecting a speech.
"We thank Her Exalted Potency," the old man timidly began. "We bask in
the light of her smile, which----"
"The words of old men are weak!" the Governor interrupted angrily. "Let
the youth speak!"
"Tell her," cried Norman, in a wild burst of eloquence, "that, like two
grasshoppers in a volcano, we are shrivelled up in the presence of Her
Spangled Vehemence!"
"It is well," said the Governor, and translated this into Kgovjnian. "I
am now to tell you," he proceeded, "what Her Radiancy requires of you
before you go. The yearly competition for the post of Imperial
Scarf-maker is just ended; you are the judges. You will take account of
the rate of work, the lightness of the scarves, and their warmth.
Usually the competitors differ in one point only. Thus, last year, Fifi
and Gogo made the same number of scarves in the trial-week, and they
were equally light; but Fifi's were twice as warm as Gogo's and she was
pronounced twice as good. But this year, woe is me, who can judge it?
Three competitors are here, and they differ in all points! While you
settle their claims, you shall be lodged, Her Radiancy bids me say, free
of expense--in the best dungeon, and abundantly fed on the best bread
and water."
The old man groaned. "All is lost!" he wildly exclaimed. But Norman
heeded him not: he had taken out his note-book, and was calmly jotting
down the particulars.
"Three they be," the Governor proceeded, "Lolo, Mimi, and Zuzu. Lolo
makes 5 scarves while Mimi makes 2; but Zuzu makes 4 while Lolo makes 3!
Again, so fairylike is Zuzu's handiwork, 5 of her scarves weigh no more
than one of Lolo's; yet Mimi's is lighter still--5 of hers will but
balance 3 of Zuzu's! And for warmth one of Mimi's is equal to 4 of
Zuzu's; yet one of Lolo's is as warm as 3 of Mimi's!"
Here the little lady once more clapped her hands.
"It is our signal of dismissal!" the Governor hastily said. "Pay Her
Radiancy your farewell compliments--and walk out backwards."
The walking part was all the elder tourist could manage. Norman simply
said "Tell Her Radiancy we are transfixed by the spectacle of Her Serene
Brilliance, and bid an agonized farewell to her Condensed Milkiness!"
"Her Radiancy is pleased," the Governor reported, after duly translating
this. "She casts on you a glance from Her Imperial Eyes, and is
confident that you will catch it!"
"That I warrant we shall!" the elder traveller moaned to himself
distractedly.
Once more they bowed low, and then followed the Governor down a winding
staircase to the Imperial Dungeon, which they found to be lined with
coloured marble, lighted from the roof, and splendidly though not
luxuriously furnished with a bench of polished malachite. "I trust you
will not delay the calculation," the Governor said, ushering them in
with much ceremony. "I have known great inconvenience--great and serious
inconvenience--result to those unhappy ones who have delayed to execute
the commands of Her Radiancy! And on this occasion she is resolute: she
says the thing must and shall be done: and she has ordered up ten
thousand additional bamboos!" With these words he left them, and they
heard him lock and bar the door on the outside.
"I told you how it would end!" moaned the elder traveller, wringing his
hands, and quite forgetting in his anguish that he had himself proposed
the expedition, and had never predicted anything of the sort. "Oh that
we were well out of this miserable business!"
"Courage!" cried the younger cheerily. "_Haec olim meminisse juvabit!_
The end of all this will be glory!"
"Glory without the L!" was all the poor old man could say, as he rocked
himself to and fro on the malachite bench. "Glory without the L!"
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: "_Maskee_," in Pigeon-English, means "_without_."]
KNOT VII.
PETTY CASH.
"Base is the slave that pays."
"Aunt Mattie!"
"My child?"
"_Would_ you mind writing it down at once? I shall be quite _certain_ to
forget it if you don't!"
"My dear, we really must wait till the cab stops. How can I possibly
write anything in the midst of all this jolting?"
"But _really_ I shall be forgetting it!"
Clara's voice took the plaintive tone that her aunt never knew how to
resist, and with a sigh the old lady drew forth her ivory tablets and
prepared to record the amount that Clara had just spent at the
confectioner's shop. Her expenditure was always made out of her aunt's
purse, but the poor girl knew, by bitter experience, that sooner or
later "Mad Mathesis" would expect an exact account of every penny that
had gone, and she waited, with ill-concealed impatience, while the old
lady turned the tablets over and over, till she had found the one headed
"PETTY CASH."
"Here's the place," she said at last, "and here we have yesterday's
luncheon duly entered. _One glass lemonade_ (Why can't you drink water,
like me?) _three sandwiches_ (They never put in half mustard enough. I
told the young woman so, to her face; and she tossed her head--like her
impudence!) _and seven biscuits_. _Total one-and-two-pence._ Well, now
for to-day's?"
"One glass of lemonade----" Clara was beginning to say, when suddenly
the cab drew up, and a courteous railway-porter was handing out the
bewildered girl before she had had time to finish her sentence.
Her aunt pocketed the tablets instantly. "Business first," she said:
"petty cash--which is a form of pleasure, whatever _you_ may
think--afterwards." And she proceeded to pay the driver, and to give
voluminous orders about the luggage, quite deaf to the entreaties of her
unhappy niece that she would enter the rest of the luncheon account.
"My dear, you really must cultivate a more capacious mind!" was all the
consolation she vouchsafed to the poor girl. "Are not the tablets of
your memory wide enough to contain the record of one single luncheon?"
"Not wide enough! Not half wide enough!" was the passionate reply.
The words came in aptly enough, but the voice was not that of Clara, and
both ladies turned in some surprise to see who it was that had so
suddenly struck into their conversation. A fat little old lady was
standing at the door of a cab, helping the driver to extricate what
seemed an exact duplicate of herself: it would have been no easy task to
decide which was the fatter, or which looked the more good-humoured of
the two sisters.
"I tell you the cab-door isn't half wide enough!" she repeated, as her
sister finally emerged, somewhat after the fashion of a pellet from a
pop-gun, and she turned to appeal to Clara. "Is it, dear?" she said,
trying hard to bring a frown into a face that dimpled all over with
smiles.
"Some folks is too wide for 'em," growled the cab-driver.
[Illustration: "I TELL YOU THE CAB-DOOR ISN'T HALF WIDE ENOUGH!"]
"Don't provoke me, man!" cried the little old lady, in what she meant
for a tempest of fury. "Say another word and I'll put you into the
County Court, and sue you for a _Habeas Corpus_!" The cabman touched his
hat, and marched off, grinning.
"Nothing like a little Law to cow the ruffians, my dear!" she remarked
confidentially to Clara. "You saw how he quailed when I mentioned the
_Habeas Corpus_? Not that I've any idea what it means, but it sounds
very grand, doesn't it?"
"It's very provoking," Clara replied, a little vaguely.
"Very!" the little old lady eagerly repeated. "And we're very much
provoked indeed. Aren't we, sister?"
"I never was so provoked in all my life!" the fatter sister assented,
radiantly.
By this time Clara had recognised her picture-gallery acquaintances,
and, drawing her aunt aside, she hastily whispered her reminiscences. "I
met them first in the Royal Academy--and they were very kind to me--and
they were lunching at the next table to us, just now, you know--and they
tried to help me to find the picture I wanted--and I'm sure they're dear
old things!"
"Friends of yours, are they?" said Mad Mathesis. "Well, I like their
looks. You can be civil to them, while I get the tickets. But do try and
arrange your ideas a little more chronologically!"
And so it came to pass that the four ladies found themselves seated side
by side on the same bench waiting for the train, and chatting as if they
had known one another for years.
"Now this I call quite a remarkable coincidence!" exclaimed the smaller
and more talkative of the two sisters--the one whose legal knowledge had
annihilated the cab-driver. "Not only that we should be waiting for the
same train, and at the same station--_that_ would be curious enough--but
actually on the same day, and the same hour of the day! That's what
strikes _me_ so forcibly!" She glanced at the fatter and more silent
sister, whose chief function in life seemed to be to support the family
opinion, and who meekly responded--
"And me too, sister!"
"Those are not _independent_ coincidences----" Mad Mathesis was just
beginning, when Clara ventured to interpose.
"There's no jolting here," she pleaded meekly. "_Would_ you mind writing
it down now?"
Out came the ivory tablets once more. "What was it, then?" said her
aunt.
"One glass of lemonade, one sandwich, one biscuit--Oh dear me!" cried
poor Clara, the historical tone suddenly changing to a wail of agony.
"Toothache?" said her aunt calmly, as she wrote down the items. The two
sisters instantly opened their reticules and produced two different
remedies for neuralgia, each marked "unequalled."
"It isn't that!" said poor Clara. "Thank you very much. It's only that I
_can't_ remember how much I paid!"
"Well, try and make it out, then," said her aunt. "You've got
yesterday's luncheon to help you, you know. And here's the luncheon we
had the day before--the first day we went to that shop--_one
glass lemonade_, _four sandwiches_, _ten biscuits_. _Total,
one-and-fivepence._" She handed the tablets to Clara, who gazed at them
with eyes so dim with tears that she did not at first notice that she
was holding them upside down.
The two sisters had been listening to all this with the deepest
interest, and at this juncture the smaller one softly laid her hand on
Clara's arm.
"Do you know, my dear," she said coaxingly, "my sister and I are in the
very same predicament! Quite identically the very same predicament!
Aren't we, sister?"
"Quite identically and absolutely the very----" began the fatter sister,
but she was constructing her sentence on too large a scale, and the
little one would not wait for her to finish it.
"Yes, my dear," she resumed; "we were lunching at the very same shop as
you were--and we had two glasses of lemonade and three sandwiches and
five biscuits--and neither of us has the least idea what we paid. Have
we, sister?"
"Quite identically and absolutely----" murmured the other, who evidently
considered that she was now a whole sentence in arrears, and that she
ought to discharge one obligation before contracting any fresh
liabilities; but the little lady broke in again, and she retired from
the conversation a bankrupt.
"_Would_ you make it out for us, my dear?" pleaded the little old lady.
"You can do Arithmetic, I trust?" her aunt said, a little anxiously, as
Clara turned from one tablet to another, vainly trying to collect her
thoughts. Her mind was a blank, and all human expression was rapidly
fading out of her face.
A gloomy silence ensued.
KNOT VIII.
DE OMNIBUS REBUS.
"This little pig went to market:
This little pig staid at home."
"By Her Radiancy's express command," said the Governor, as he conducted
the travellers, for the last time, from the Imperial presence, "I shall
now have the ecstasy of escorting you as far as the outer gate of the
Military Quarter, where the agony of parting--if indeed Nature can
survive the shock--must be endured! From that gate grurmstipths start
every quarter of an hour, both ways----"
"Would you mind repeating that word?" said Norman. "Grurm----?"
"Grurmstipths," the Governor repeated. "You call them omnibuses in
England. They run both ways, and you can travel by one of them all the
way down to the harbour."
The old man breathed a sigh of relief; four hours of courtly ceremony
had wearied him, and he had been in constant terror lest something
should call into use the ten thousand additional bamboos.