David felt rather hurt at this, for having intended to ask them to tea,
it was vexing to find that they didn’t intend to ask him. But before he
could feel much hurt the window on the third floor was thrown open, and
a giraffe looked out. It bent down to David, and whispered in his ear:
‘They’ll let you in soon. It’s a surprise.’
‘Is it a nice one?’ asked David.
‘That depends on whether you like it. But I’ll stay and talk to you till
they’re ready. You begin.’
David didn’t know what sort of conversation giraffes liked, but he
supposed that, like everybody else, they enjoyed talking about
themselves.
‘How did you get up to the third floor?’ he asked. ‘I should have
thought you were too tall to be able to go upstairs.’
‘I was,’ whispered the giraffe.
‘Then how did you get there?’ said David.
‘I didn’t. I’m on the ground floor all the time, and I can feel them
running about among my legs. Only my head went upstairs in order to
brush its hair. That’s another surprise; you never thought of that! But
I didn’t see you jump when I told you. Shall I jump you?’
‘No. I think I’ll stop where I am,’ said David.
‘Very well. I’ll tell you another thing too. Some animals are so short
that they have to go down to the cellar to tie their bootlaces. I should
think you were one of that sort, aren’t you?’
‘Indeed I’m not,’ said David indignantly. ‘I’m tall enough to tie my
bootlaces anywhere.’
The giraffe’s head gave a great jerk.
‘I jumped at that, you see,’ it said. ‘That was a real jumping surprise.
I should never have guessed it.’
David looked up at the mild silly head above him. Certainly it looked
surprised, but all giraffes did that.
‘I live on surprises,’ said the giraffe. ‘If I can’t get a proper supply
of them my eyebrows come down.’
All the time it spoke it whispered into David’s ear, and tickled it.
‘Could you speak a little louder and a little farther off?’ he asked.
‘No, not possibly,’ said the giraffe. ‘My throat is so long, you see,
that if I speak in the ordinary voice, it gets quite lost before it
comes out of my mouth.’
David guessed this was another surprise, and remembered to jump.
‘That’s a good boy,’ said the giraffe approvingly. ‘Now I’ll tell you
something else. I’ll dance with you when they’re ready.’
‘Oh, is it going to be a dance?’ asked David, who didn’t care about
dancing.
‘Some of it is going to be a dance, and then the happy families give a
concert, and then I should think there would be a battle. One never can
tell for certain, but, with so many soldiers about, something of the
sort is bound to happen. But the dance comes first, and I’ll be your
partner.’
‘Oh, are you a lady?’ asked David.
‘I should think so. You never saw a gentleman like me, I’ll be bound.’
‘Yes, but then I never saw a lady like you either,’ said David.
‘Well, you see one now. I hope you can reverse well, otherwise we shall
get terribly tangled up with the staircase. I feel like a corkscrew
already.’
The door was suddenly thrown open, and David entered. The room seemed to
have grown a good deal, and certainly when he talked to the Mint-man and
the manager not long before, it hadn’t got a gallery at one end, and a
large throne below it, as it had now. It was quite full of animals with
either white ties or tiaras on, talking to each other about the weather.
Up in the gallery were the Noah family, seated side by side at an
immense piano, which they were all playing on simultaneously. All their
heads were close together, for they had only one copy of music to play
from, and they kept knocking off each other’s hats, and quarrelling as
to when it was time to turn over the page. First of all Noah turned
over, and Ham shouted out that he hadn’t got more than half-way down the
page, and turned back again, and his mother said she had finished that
page five minutes ago, and turned over two. Then they all grabbed at the
book together, and tore the pages to bits with one hand while they went
on playing with the other. Just as David came in, the book slipped down
into the inside of the piano, and so they settled to go on playing by
heart. As none of them knew how to read a single note of music, it made
no difference whether there was any music there or not.
Below the gallery was the throne, all covered in chintz, and on the
throne sat the elegant elephant. The legs of the giraffe were planted
about the room, and the body of it went up through the staircase. The
elephant still had the cap of the flying-corps on his head, so that
David had no doubt that it was he who had been the pilot of one of the
aeroplanes.
It seemed evident that the elephant was the host, and as David had been
taught always to shake hands with his host when he went to a party, he
sidled through the crowd of animals up to the throne.
‘How do you do?’ he said to the elephant.
‘I’m not doing anything at present,’ said the elephant, ‘but when I do,
I shall do it very well. Who asked you to come?’
‘Nobody exactly,’ said David, feeling rather uncomfortable. ‘I—I
understood I was to.’
‘Have you brought your card?’ asked the elephant.
David looked down and found he was in his sailor clothes again, and
pulled a handful of cards out of his pocket.
‘Yes, I’ve got lots of them,’ he said, ‘and all yours too.’
‘Then introduce yourself,’ said the elephant.
‘I’m David Blaize,’ said David.
‘I knew that. Now introduce me, and there we are. In order to introduce
me properly, you must say “Elegant Elephant” six times over without
stopping, or squinting, or stuttering. Now begin.’
‘Elegant Elephant, Ephalent Egalent, Egaphent Elelant, Ephagant
Legegant, Ephephant Ephegal, Egantel Ephantel,’ said David all in one
breath.
There was an awful pause; the elephant’s mouth had dropped open, and he
turned quite pale. All the Noahs stopped playing and leaned over the
edge of the gallery, and several of their hats fell on to the floor.
Then there came a dreadful silence, and you could have heard a
pin-partridge drop.
‘Where did you learn to talk?’ asked the elephant in a faint voice.
‘I didn’t learn anywhere particular,’ said David. ‘It happened. But it’s
dreadfully hard to say that six times. I don’t believe you could do it
yourself.’
The elephant looked round in a frightened manner.
‘Change the subject,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Change the object, change
places, change partners, change your money, change your socks, change
the weather, change everything. But, whatever you do, change the
subject.’
He was so distressed at the thought of having to say it, that David felt
it would be very bad manners to insist upon it.
‘I was going to dance with the giraffe,’ he said. ‘Would you tell me how
to do it, and where I’m to begin?’
The elephant grew blue again.
‘That’s a good boy,’ he said. ‘Begin as high up as you can. Take one leg
first, and let the band play as loud as possible.’
This didn’t seem very promising, but David did as he was told, and put
his arm round the foreleg of the giraffe that was nearest him, and began
revolving about it. But he had hardly begun, when he found that he could
shift his hands higher up the leg, and still higher, for he was growing
in the most extraordinary manner. Soon his head began going up through
the staircase, and he felt his arm round the giraffe’s waist. Still he
grew, his head passed the second storey, and came up to the third, where
it went into an attic where his partner’s head was. One foreleg of the
giraffe and his own arm stuck out of the window, and they kept slowly
revolving to the sound of the piano. They were getting fearfully tangled
up with the banisters of the stairs, and presently they began to
reverse, and unwound themselves again.
‘You dear creature,’ said the giraffe, ‘I thought you’d grow, though I
wasn’t sure about it.’
[Illustration: David dances with the giraffe]
‘I don’t feel very comfortable,’ said David. ‘And I’m so afraid we’re
treading on all the animals below.’
‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said the giraffe. ‘Don’t they crowd up
one’s ankles, the rude things. We might stand straight up, I think now.
Butt the roof with your head; that will give us more room.’
David did as he was told, and a shower of tiles fell round them. Some
dropped down his jersey, and he could hear others clattering downstairs.
‘But aren’t we doing a lot of damage?’ asked David.
‘Quantities,’ said the giraffe. ‘Thump! There goes the staircase. I knew
it would.’
They revolved faster and faster, and the stars spun round them. Far
below was the village street, down which David could see all the animals
scampering as hard as they could go from the ruined remains of the bank.
‘Who’ll pay for it?’ asked David breathlessly.
‘Why, you, of course, dear!’ said the giraffe. ‘How much money have you
got?’
‘Four pounds,’ gasped David.
‘That’s plenty, I should think, though I’ve no head for figures,’ said
the giraffe. ‘And you might give me the remainder for a surprise. It
would keep me in hoofs and hoof-laces for weeks.’
‘I’ll give it you all, if we may only stop growing and dancing,’ said
David. ‘And please don’t tickle my ear so when you whisper.’
‘I can’t help _your_ tickling,’ whispered the giraffe. ‘Just as you
couldn’t help _mine_ if I began to tickle. Now I’ll give you a surprise.
If I began tickling, we should both begin littling. But as long as I
don’t tickle, we shan’t little. There!’
David could bear it no longer, and he instantly thrust his fingers into
the giraffe’s ribs, and began tickling her. She gave a loud silly
cackle, and he felt, to his intense joy, that they were getting littler.
‘Stop, stop!’ she whispered, but she couldn’t say much because she was
laughing so, and presently David found himself sliding down the remains
of the staircase, and back into the ballroom. His hands slipped down and
down her foreleg, and soon he was his own size again, with those four
great legs standing among the ruins.
But even as he looked at them, still panting with the exertion of
growing and ungrowing again, he saw that they were not legs any more,
but the four pillars of the porch of the house next door, which had been
the girls’ school and was now the Happy Families’ Institute. As he stood
there, the door was opened a foot or two, and a large mutton bone flew
past his head.
Before it closed again, a hoarse voice from inside said:
‘I’ll just have time to have my second helping before the concert. That
sirloin will do. Chuck it over here, you greedy!’
Now David did not want to intrude again without being definitely asked,
but he had a sort of idea that though nobody had asked him to the
animals’ ball, he had been expected all the same, indeed, that the whole
thing had been got up for him. Probably it was the same case here, for
the giraffe had said that the happy families’ concert was part of the
programme for the evening, and, after all, the fact that quite a short
while ago the High Street had been decorated with banners, on which was
written ‘David Blaize, the fireman’s son,’ was a sort of invitation from
the happy families to become one of them. Also he was tired with growing
and ungrowing, and thought it would be very pleasant to sit down and
listen to a little music.
So, though it was not the sign of great cordiality to be greeted at the
door by a huge mutton bone thrown at your head, he thought it better to
ring the bell—though it wasn’t a bell but a coal-scuttle hung on a
chain, and underneath it was the instruction ‘Knock also.’ So he first
rang the coal-scuttle and then knocked it.
It sounded as if all the dinner bells in the world had been pealed, and
all the postmen in the world had come with letters. He felt quite
ashamed of having made such a tumult, and, with the giraffe still in his
mind, stood on tiptoe to get his mouth close to the bell, and whispered:
‘Hush, please: I had no idea you were so loud.’
The noise ceased at once, and dead silence succeeded. Then David heard a
little clink come from the letter-box in the door, and he saw that the
shutter of it had been raised, and that Mr. Chip the carpenter was
looking at him. Then Master Dose the doctor’s son had a look, and David
heard him giggling as he passed on to make room for Mr. Bones the
butcher. After that there was a sound of whispering inside, and he tried
hard not to hear what was being said. But the harder he tried, the more
distinctly he heard it.
‘It doesn’t look a bit like him. Where’s his fire?’
‘I expect they’ve forgotten to mend it. It’s gone out.’
‘Stuff and nonsense: the fireman’s family put fires out themselves.’
‘But he hasn’t got a ladder or anything to show who he is.’
‘Nor a brass helmet. It can’t be the one.’
David tried to interest himself in other things, while he was being
talked about like this. He found he was dressed in a sort of uniform
with a sword by his side, and knee-breeches and a blue riband over his
shirt, and a quantity of stars and medals on his coat. This discovery
rather consoled him, for he evidently was expected at some party, since
nobody dressed like this except for something grand. On the other hand,
if they were expecting him to look like a fireman, it was no wonder they
had their doubts about him, for he could not imagine putting out fires
in this costume. But he had not long to wait, for the door flew open,
and somebody inside called out in capital letters:
‘DAVID BLAIZE, THE FIREMAN’S SON.’
He entered a room, dazzlingly bright, with a stage at one end, and rows
and rows of chairs, four on one side, and four on the other of a gangway
that led up the centre. All the chairs were occupied, and all the
occupiers had their backs to the stage, and were looking towards the
door when he entered. Over each group of four chairs was suspended a
banner, which bore the name of the happy family which occupied it. And
every member of every happy family looked at him quite steadily.
David bowed a great many times, but nobody took the least notice, and
there was nothing to be done but to stand still until something
happened. Many of the banners were familiar to him: there was the Bones
family of butchers, the Chip family of carpenters, the Bun family of
bakers, the Dose family of doctors, and so on; but these were all in
front rows. Behind them were a quantity of families, of whom he had
never heard before. There was Mr. and Mrs. Funk, the bathers, and Mr.
and Mrs. Fuss, the train-catchers; and Mr. and Mrs. Talk, the tiresomes;
and Mr. and Mrs. Green, the cabbages. All these were complete strangers
to David, and he felt shyer than he had been even when he had to
introduce the elegant elephant to himself.
A heavy sigh came from every member of the old happy families whom David
knew, and they all turned round in their seats and began talking to each
other. On the other hand, the strange families began smiling at him,
and, though he knew none of them, he felt grateful for their sign of
friendliness, for it was a very lonely thing to go to a concert, which
you supposed was given in your honour, and find all the people that you
knew turned their backs on you.
Then a whole family suddenly left their seats and ran up to David, and
began bowing and curtsying. They had come from a set of chairs called
‘Rhyme, the poets,’ and though David felt grateful to them for being so
kind as to notice him, he was rather nervous because they might expect
him to talk about poetry. They had all books under their arms, and
pockets bulging with pencils and pens, and as they sat down round him,
when they had finished bowing and curtsying, Master Rhyme put a large
ink-bottle on the floor, and they all dipped their pens in it.
Then they all looked at each other, frowning, as if they were trying to
think of something, and counting syllables on their fingers.
‘Ahem!’ said Miss Rhyme, clearing her throat. ‘This is the nicest of all
days, because we welcome David Blaize. Go on, Pa.’
As soon as she had spoken, she opened her book, and began writing in it.
The pages were already quite covered up with other writing, but she
seemed not to mind that. She wrote with a pen, and put the tip of it
into her mouth in order to get blacker marks out of it. Very soon her
lips were all covered with ink, which she licked off when she had time.
Usually she hadn’t.
Mr. Rhyme began writing and talking.
‘We saw at once that you were not one of the antiquated lot,’ he said.
‘Your turn, Ma.’
Mrs. Rhyme stopped counting on her fingers and frowning on her face, and
took up a pencil in one hand and a pen in the other, and began writing
with them both in her book. Sometimes she dipped them both in the ink,
and then they both wrote ink, and sometimes she put them both in her
mouth, and then one wrote pencil, the other nothing at all, because she
had sucked the ink off. She seemed to be writing in shorthand, for it
consisted of hooks and dashes and strokes and marks like footsteps in
the snow.
‘It gives us all the utmost joy,’ she said, ‘to welcome here a human
boy. They say your name is David Blaize, but it don’t matter what they
says. The great thing is to stick to rhyme’—
‘And make up verses all the time,’ interrupted Master Rhyme, who began
writing too. ‘We’re very pleased that you have _got_ here.’
‘I’ve made a blot, and want the blotter,’ said Miss Rhyme. ‘Papa, don’t
jog my elbow so, it stops my inspiration’s flow.’
David felt his head going round, and was in a perfect agony lest he
should be expected to make poetry too, which he knew he was quite
incapable of doing. But by this time the whole of the family were all
writing together, and making poetry at the tops of their voices without
paying the least attention to him or to each other. Blobs of ink were
flying about everywhere, for they all tried to dip their pens and
pencils in the ink-bottle together, and they kept stabbing each other’s
fingers with their nibs, and wiping off the blots on to each other’s
sleeves, or on to David’s white stockings, until he thought he had never
seen such a noisy and messy family. Besides, he had come to listen to a
concert, which was probably going on all the time, if only he could hear
it.
[Illustration: David and the Rhyme family]
‘I wonder if we had better talk so much,’ he said. ‘I believe a concert
is going on.’
‘It doesn’t rhyme, you silly ass,’ said Master Rhyme.
‘We couldn’t ever let that pass,’ said his sister.
‘I went and ate a few meringues,’ shouted Mrs. Ryhme, ‘and then threw
twenty boomerangs.’
‘She threw them once, she threw them twice,’ screamed Mr. Rhyme. ‘She
put the others on the ice. The cupboard wouldn’t hold them all, and so
she nailed them on the wall. She put them safe there, all and sundry,
intending to come back on Mondray.’
David couldn’t stand this any more, for there were much more amusing
things going on. The good old families of butchers and doctors and
bakers and sweeps were changing places with each other exactly as if
they were being collected. Some voice said, ‘Mrs. Dose, the doctor’s
wife,’ and Mrs. Dose left her seat and moved somewhere else. Then
somebody said ‘Mr. Dose, the doctor,’ and another voice said, ‘I haven’t
got him. . . . Mrs. Dose, the doctor’s wife. Thank you . . .’
David looked down at his own hand for a moment, and saw that Mr. and
Mrs. Dose were both sitting there, and he supposed it must have been he
who had asked for them. The cork of the bottle that Mrs. Dose carried
was continually coming out, and she kept murmuring to herself, ‘It’s a
glass stopper, I want, it is!’ Miss Bones was sitting there too. She had
nearly finished the sirloin of beef she had asked for, and only a few
shreds of meat were left on it.
‘Then have I collected you?’ asked David. ‘I can ask for all the rest,
can’t I? Is nobody else playing?’
Miss Bones was sitting on his thumb. Somehow she looked quite life-size,
and yet David did not feel any bigger than she. She was still gnawing
her sirloin of beef, and tore off large pieces of gristle with her
hands, just dropping them on David’s knee, or on the note-books of the
Rhyme family who had got a good deal smaller, but were still sitting
round him and writing.
[Illustration: Miss Bones sitting on David’s thumb]
‘Collect yourself,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to collect yourself before you
win. Where’s your father and mother, for instance? Ask for Mrs. Blaize,
the fireman’s wife, and get her, and then we shall begin to believe in
you.’
David felt that it was quite silly to mind whether Miss Bones believed
in him or not. But he knew that if he called out ‘Mother!’ or ‘Mrs.
Blaize, the fireman’s wife,’ nothing whatever would happen. Yet somehow
he had to account for Mrs. Blaize, the fireman’s wife, not being there.
‘My mother isn’t feeling very well,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she may have gone
to sleep, and it would be a pity to disturb her.’
‘Mother malingering,’ announced Miss Bones contemptuously. ‘Where’s your
father, then?’
David suddenly felt that this was a most ridiculous position. Hitherto
he had always played with the happy families, and now they were playing
with him. And they were so fierce and unkind, like wasps.
‘I can’t tell where my father is,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen him all
evening. And I’m getting so tired: mayn’t we stop?’
There was a sudden stir among the newer families, and Mr. Funk, the
bather, ran up to him. He was dressed in a striped bathing-dress, and
all his teeth chattered.
‘I believe you’re a Funk,’ he said. ‘I believe you belong to my family.
I’m collecting you. Come on, Master Funk.’
‘I’m not Master Funk,’ said David indignantly. ‘Haven’t got him. My
turn.’
Miss Bones threw the remains of her sirloin at the Rhymes. It fell in
their ink-bottle and splashed them frightfully, but they were already so
covered with ink that a little more didn’t matter. She wiped her mouth
with the back of her hand, and sidled a little nearer David.
‘That’s right: it’s your turn,’ she whispered. ‘Remember you’ve got me,
Don’t ask for me.’
‘I shouldn’t think of it,’ said David. ‘What I want is the concert. I
came here for a concert. I want to sit down and be quiet a little.
Nobody knows all the things I’ve been doing.’
‘And nobody cares,’ said Miss Bones.
David felt tired of this contemptuous treatment, and stood up.
‘I won’t have any more rudeness,’ he said. ‘I can do what I choose with
you all. I can put you all back in your case, and never open you again
till you get mouldy, like the ones I left in the garden. If there’s no
concert just tell me so, and I’ll go somewhere else.’
Miss Bones shouted out:
‘Mr. Bradshaw, the Time-table,’ and instantly there was a _Bradshaw_ on
her knee. ‘There’s the 11.29,’ she said. ‘You might catch it, or again
you mightn’t. It all depends how you feel. If you feel in a hurry,
you’ll miss it; if you feel calm, you may catch it. Will you have one
taxi or two?’
‘Why should I have two?’ said David. ‘It’s only me.’
‘One taxi goes ten miles an hour, and two go twenty,’ said she. ‘And ten
go a hundred, and a hundred go a thousand. Say what you can afford, and
you can catch any train up, no matter how far it has gone.’
David had not really meant to go away by train at all, but somehow it
seemed all settled for him, and instantly all the happy families began
blowing on things, with piercing shrieks, to summon his taxi, or the
hundred taxis, or however many they thought good for him. Miss Bones
picked up her sirloin, and blew that, Mr. Chip the carpenter blew on his
gimlet, Mrs. Dose blew her bottle, and Miss Bun her bun. Never since the
flame-cats had mewed and squealed to accompany their dances, had David
heard such a deafening noise. Quantities of steam appeared to come out
of their instruments also, and soon the whole room was filled with it
and whistlings. Then the steam began to clear again a little, though the
whistling got no less, and whether or no David had come in a taxi, he
had certainly arrived at a station.