THE DANCING ANIMALS
It seemed to be evening again, and, although the Ferryman was nowhere in
sight, Dorothy knew the place the moment she looked up and saw the
peaked roofs outlined against the sky. The houses were quaint,
old-fashioned-looking buildings with the upper parts jutting far out
beyond the lower stories and with dark little doorways almost hidden in
the shadows beneath; and the windows were very small casements filled
with diamond-shaped panes of shining green glass. All the houses were
brilliantly lighted up, and there were great iron lamps swung on chains
across the street, so that the street itself was almost as bright as
day, and Dorothy thought she recognized it as a place she had once read
about where nobody but astrologers lived. There was a confused sound of
fiddling going on somewhere, and as Dorothy walked along she could hear
a scuffling noise inside the houses as if the inhabitants were dancing
about on sanded floors. Presently, as she turned a corner, she came
upon a number of storks who were dancing a sort of solemn quadrille up
and down the middle of the street. They stopped dancing as she came
along, and stood in a row gazing gravely at her as she passed by and
then resumed their quadrille as solemnly as before.
The strangest thing about the fiddling was that it seemed to be going on
somewhere in the air, and the sound appeared to come from all directions
at once. At first the music was soft and rather slow in time, but it
grew louder and louder, and the fiddles played faster and faster, until
presently they were going at such a furious rate that Dorothy stopped
and looked back to see how the storks were getting on in their dancing;
and she could see them in the distance, scampering up and down the
street, and bumping violently against one another in a frantic attempt
to keep time with the music. At any other time she would have been
vastly amused at this spectacle; but just then she was feeling a little
afraid that some of the astrologers might come out to see what was going
on, and she was therefore quite relieved when the storks presently gave
up all hope of finishing their quadrille, and rising in the air with a
tremendous flapping of wings, flew away over the tops of the houses and
disappeared. Strangely enough, the sound of the fiddling followed them
like a traveling band, and grew fainter and fainter until it finally
died away in the distance.
But the scuffling noise in the houses continued, and Dorothy did just
what you'd suppose such a curious little child would have done--that is,
she stole up and peeped in at one of the windows; but she could see
nothing through the thick glass but some strange-looking shadows bobbing
confusedly about inside. Of course you know what she did _then_. In
fact, after hesitating a moment, she softly opened the door of the house
and went in.
The room was full of animals of every description, dancing around in a
ring with the greatest enthusiasm; and as Dorothy appeared they all
shouted, "Here she is!" and, before she could say a single word, the two
nearest to her (they were an elephant and a sheep, by the way) seized
her by the hands, and the next moment she was dancing in the ring. She
was quite surprised to see that the elephant was no bigger than the
sheep; and, as she looked about, it seemed to her, in the confusion,
that all the animals in the room were of precisely the same size.
[Illustration: "AN ELEPHANT AND A SHEEP SEIZED HER BY THE HANDS, AND THE
NEXT MOMENT SHE WAS DANCING IN THE RING."]
"Isn't it rather unusual--" she said to the Sheep (it seemed more
natural, somehow, to speak to the Sheep)--"isn't it rather unusual for
different animals to be so much alike?"
"Not in _our_ set," said the Sheep, conceitedly. "We all know who's who.
Of course we have to mark the pigs, as they're so extremely like the
polar-bears;" and Dorothy noticed that two pigs, who were dancing just
opposite to her, had labels with "PIG" on them hung around their necks
by little chains, as if they had been a couple of decanters--"only," she
thought, "it would have been 'SHERRY' or 'MADEIRA' instead of 'PIG,' you
know."
"I suppose you all came out of a Noah's Ark," she said presently, at a
venture.
"Of course. Largest size, I believe. How _very_ clever you are!" said
the Sheep, admiringly. "By the way," she added, confidentially, "do you
happen to know what a tapir is?"
"I believe it's something to light, like a candle," said Dorothy.
"Does it ever go out of its own accord?" inquired the Sheep.
"It _ought_ not to," said Dorothy.
"Then that accounts for the trouble we've had," said the Sheep, with a
satisfied air. "Those two tapirs dancing over there are always in
everybody's way, and we've had to _put_ them out over and over again."
This sounded like a joke; but the Sheep was so serious that Dorothy
didn't dare to laugh, so she said, by way of continuing the
conversation, "I don't see any birds here."
"Oh dear, no!" exclaimed the Sheep; "you see, this is really a
quadrupedrille. Of course _you're_ all right, because it's precisely as
if you were dancing on your hind feet. In fact," she added, nodding
approvingly, "you look almost as well as if you were."
"Thank you!" said Dorothy, laughing.
"There was a seal that wanted to join," the Sheep went on. "He pressed
us very hard, but he never made the slightest impression on us;" and
there was a twinkle in the Sheep's eyes as she said this, so that
Dorothy felt morally certain it _was_ a joke this time; but, before she
could make any reply, the Elephant called out "Recess!" and the animals
all stopped dancing and began walking about and fanning themselves with
little portfolios which they produced in such a mysterious manner that
Dorothy couldn't see where in the world they came from.
"Now, look here," said the Elephant,--he seemed to be a sort of Master
of Ceremonies, and the animals all clustered about him as he said
this,--"why can't _she_ dance with the Camel?" and he pointed out
Dorothy with his portfolio.
"She can!" shouted the animals in chorus. "Come on, Sarah!"--and the
Camel, who had been moping in a corner with her head against the wall,
came forward with a very sulky expression on her face.
"Her name is Sahara," whispered the Sheep, plucking at Dorothy's frock
to attract her attention, "but we call her Sarah to save time. She's
kind of grumpy now because the other Camel stayed away, but she'll
titter like a turtle when she gets to dancing."
"I don't know what relation she is to Humphrey," thought Dorothy, as the
Camel took her by the hand, "but she's certainly big enough to be his
great-grandmother ten times over." Before she had time to think any more
about it, however, the Elephant called out, "Ladies change!" and the
dancing began again harder than ever.
It was a very peculiar dance this time, and, as near as Dorothy could
make it out, consisted principally in the animals passing her along from
one to another as if they were each anxious to get rid of her; and
presently she discovered that, in some unaccountable manner, she had
been passed directly through the fireplace into the next house; but as
this house was quite as full of dancing animals as the other, this
didn't help matters much except that it got Sarah out of the way--"and
_that_," said poor little Dorothy to herself, "is certainly _something_!"
[Illustration: THE ANIMALS CROSSING OVER.]
Just then the Elephant, who had mysteriously appeared from a pantry in
one corner of the room, shouted out, "All cross over!" and the animals
began to crowd out of the house into the courtyard, and then, pushing
in great confusion through a large gateway, rushed across the street and
into the house on the other side of the way. Dorothy was quite taken off
her feet in the rush, but, watching her chance, she hid behind a large
churn that was standing conveniently in the middle of the street; and
when they had all passed in, she ran away down the street as fast as she
could go.
She ran on until she had got quite out of the Ferryman's street, and was
walking along in the open country, feeling quite pleased with herself
for having so cleverly escaped from the dancing-party without having to
take the trouble of saying "Good night" to the Elephant, when she saw,
in the moonlight, something white lying beside the road, and going up to
it, she discovered it was a letter.