David was completely out of breath, and leaned against the wall to
recover, while his pursuer did the same. He remembered who it was now.
‘Oh, it’s you, Noah!’ he panted. ‘I couldn’t remember who you were. Why
did you run after me?’
Noah wiped his face with the edge of his ulster.
‘To catch you,’ said he. ‘What else should I run after you for? The
point is: Why did you run away?’
David didn’t see why he should tell Noah that his legs had been running
away from the pike, and his mind from being married. It had got nothing
to do with Noah, and besides it was a slightly undignified confession.
‘I like running,’ he said. ‘I shall walk and run, and fly and swim, just
as I choose.’
‘Hoity-toity!’ said Noah. ‘I expect that’ll be as _she_ chooses.’
‘Whom do you mean by “she”?’ asked David quite cheerfully, for he had
escaped from the awful meadow without being caught, and all risk of
being married was over.
‘I can’t tell you yet,’ said Noah, ‘but you’ll soon know. I’m not
certain who we have on our books this morning. Hark! There are the
church-bells beginning. That’s for you.’
This all sounded rather mysterious, but he couldn’t ask Noah any more
questions this moment, for he had gone inside a big cupboard in the
wall, where he appeared to be dressing-up. While he was doing this,
David had a look round the room. There was a row of chairs against the
wall and a big open fire-place, and in the centre a table on which were
all sorts of writing materials, a large book on which was printed
‘Female Register,’ and a bottle of water and a glass. At each corner of
the room was a pillar that looked as if it didn’t support the roof
exactly, but went through it. Somehow this made David feel a little
uncomfortable, for it reminded him of the giraffe at the animals’ ball.
Also he saw that on the top of the paper in the writing-case were
printed the words ‘Registry Office.’ He did not know what it meant, but
it and the pillars in the corners of the room made him feel uneasy, as
he felt before a thunderstorm.
There was a sound of whispering in the cupboard, and he heard Noah’s
voice say:
‘I go in first: wait till I call you. One of you announce me.’
There was a short pause, and David distinctly heard the noise of
somebody eating. Then a rather hoarse voice said:
‘I’ll have finished in a moment. I call that a good bit of meat.’
David guessed that this must be Miss Bones, though he could not imagine
what she was doing here. It sounded like Miss Bones’s voice, and it also
sounded like the sort of thing that Miss Bones said. Then the same voice
said, just as if its mouth was full:
‘The Registrar,’ and a rude swallowing sound followed.
Noah came out of the cupboard. He had got a wig on, and some false
whiskers and a lawyer’s gown. He seemed to have taken off his stand, for
instead of sliding he stalked along with a very important air.
‘Oh, is it charades?’ said David. ‘Have I got to guess? I bet you I
guess. It’s——’
‘Silence!’ said Noah very severely.
He came and sat down at the table, and began turning over the leaves of
the book called ‘Female Register.’ Then he took a sip of water and
spoke:
‘David Blaize, I believe,’ he said, ‘charged with trespass in the
marriage-meadow. Speak up.’
‘I haven’t spoken at all yet,’ said David.
‘Then you’ve got nothing to say for yourself, I suppose?’ said Noah.
A brilliant idea struck David.
‘I’m not in the marriage-meadow now,’ he said. ‘How do you intend to
prove I was there at all? It was only you who say you saw me, and you
are only a person out of my own ark.’
Noah got up, and opened the door into the meadow. David could hear the
pike still calling ‘Coward!’ He was coughing violently, having been so
long in the air.
‘Pike!’ shouted Noah. ‘Come in, pike!’
David’s legs began to want to run somewhere.
‘No! shut the door,’ he said. ‘I was in the marriage-meadow, but I
didn’t know.’
‘Go away, pike,’ said Noah, and shut the door. ‘Very well, then, that’s
proved,’ he said. ‘The next thing to do is to see who’s on the books.’
He turned over the leaves.
‘Very small selection to-day,’ he said to David, ‘but some very pleasant
clients among them. The names are as follows:
‘Number one, giraffe.’
‘Here,’ said a silly whisper from the top storey.
‘You’ve got to come in,’ said Noah.
The pillars at the corners of the room stirred uneasily, and David saw
what they really were. Then there came a sound from upstairs as if
banisters were breaking, and the mild surprised-looking face came down
the chimney, upside-down, and covered with soot.
‘That’s all I can do at present unless I begin to walk,’ she whispered.
‘Why, it’s that boy again. I am surprised. May I jump?’
‘No, certainly not,’ said Noah. ‘Stop quite still, or you shan’t be
married.’
The giraffe winked at David, and extended her neck a little, till her
mouth was close to his ear.
‘Can you grow again?’ she asked. ‘If you can’t, it’s all rather
ridiculous. You would always be in the cellar, and I in the attic. We
should never meet, which would be so sad for you.’
‘Silence,’ said Noah. ‘Number two, Miss Bones, the butcher’s daughter.’
‘Here,’ said Miss Bones, coming out of the cupboard.
She had got something that looked like an ox-tail, and was munching it.
She sat down on one of the chairs by the wall, and pointed with the end
of the ox-tail at David.
[Illustration: David in the registry office]
‘Is that it?’ she said in a tone of disgust. ‘Why, he’s a mere upstart.
None of us know him.’
David felt furious at this.
‘If you don’t take care, I shall collect you,’ he said.
‘Silence,’ said Noah. ‘Number three, Miss Muffet.’
There was a rustling in the cupboard, and out came Miss Muffet.
‘Well, I never!’ she said. ‘If it isn’t the cheeky little rascal who
tried to keep my kind good spider from me last night, thinking he was a
pike. But as I’m on the books, I suppose there’s no help for it.’
‘That’s all,’ said Noah, closing the book with such a bang that Miss
Bones dropped her ox-tail. ‘Now, David Blaize, it’s for you to choose.’
‘But I don’t choose any of them,’ said David, in a sort of agony. ‘I’m
sure they’re all delightful, but I don’t want to be married. I didn’t
come here for that; nobody understands. My house wouldn’t hold a giraffe
to begin with——’
‘Build another storey,’ whispered the giraffe in his ear, ‘and you can
probably grow. You did before. I don’t mind marrying you.’
‘But I mind marrying you very much,’ said David. ‘You can’t do anything
but whisper and waltz.’
‘No, but I can learn,’ whispered the giraffe. ‘I was always considered
the cleverest of the family.’
‘Then they must have been a very stupid family,’ said David.
‘Hush!’ said Noah severely.
‘I shan’t hush,’ said David.
The giraffe began to cry.
‘I thought you had such a kind face,’ she whispered, ‘but you don’t seem
to care for me. If you only built a storey or two on to your house, and
took out the staircase, and grew a great deal, we might be quite happy.
You must be patient and grow.’
‘Oh, shut up,’ said Miss Bones, seizing the water-bottle on the table.
She drank out of the mouth of it in a very rude manner, and spilt a
quantity of it. ‘He doesn’t want you, and you don’t want him, and you’re
only shamming. But what’s the matter with me?’
David turned on her.
‘The matter with you is,’ he said, ‘that you’re always eating raw meat.
I’d sooner be eaten by the pike than see you eat all day and night.’
Miss Bones put the ox-tail into her mouth again.
‘So that’s that,’ she mumbled. ‘There’s no accounting for tastes.’
Miss Muffet cleared her throat and coughed, holding her hand up to her
mouth in the most genteel way.
‘That leaves me,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to be married, as I told you
before. But if you’ll beg my dear spider’s pardon, and he says there’s
room for you on the tuffet, I’ll forgive you, and you may sleep in the
bathing-machine. There! And you can ride the stuffed horse whenever you
like.’
The registrar had been drawing pictures of David on the blotting-paper.
‘When I have counted ten,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to choose. If you don’t,
I shall choose for you. What’s that?’ he added, looking up at the
window.
A large mild face was pressed against the glass, and there was the cow
outside, moving her mouth round and round, and breathing so heavily
against the window that it was almost impossible to see out. Then the
glass gave way under the pressure of her nose, and she put her head into
the room.
‘Moo! Put my name down,’ she said. ‘I’m incognito, so call me a porter.’
‘You’re too late for this morning,’ said Noah.
‘No, I’m not,’ said the cow.
‘You are,’ said Noah angrily. ‘Don’t interrupt.
One—two—three—four——’
The cow breathed heavily into the room.
‘Why, it’s the boy who went Anywhere,’ she said, seeing David. ‘I never
thought the express called here, dearie.’
David ran across to that kind, mild creature.
‘Oh, do knock the whole place down,’ he said. ‘They want to marry me,
and it’s all so beastly. Butt at it, as you did at my luggage.’
‘Five—six,’ said Noah.
‘All right, dearie,’ said the cow, shaking bits of broken glass from her
ears. ‘You just get behind the door, and I’ll see to them all. But you
must promise not to go milking me again.’
‘Never, never,’ shrieked David. ‘But be quick; he’s counted six
already.’
‘Seven—eight,’ said Noah.
The cow backed into the village street, and David saw her tail fly up
with a spring. She put her head down, and came galloping towards the
house, and he ran behind the door.
‘Nine—ten!’ said Noah. ‘Choose, or be chosen for.’
At that moment the cow’s head crashed into the wall below the window.
Miss Muffet gave one faint scream, and said, ‘Spider, dear!’ Miss Bones
whirled her ox-tail round her head like a sling, and, intending to hit
the cow, hit Noah the most awful slap on his false whiskers, which fell
off. The giraffe’s head went up the chimney with a pop and a shower of
soot descended into the room.
‘Now, run, dearie,’ said the cow to David. ‘Run for your life. The whole
lot of them will be after you.’
David had no thought but to get back to the blue door, and into his
bedroom again, and as the shortest way was across the marriage-meadow,
and over the bridge, and up the garden path, and in at the garden door,
and up the stairs, and past the game-cupboard, he no longer cared what
enemies he might meet on his way. The pike might have come up into the
meadow, and the soldiers might be on the lawn, but nothing mattered
except to get back to the blue door by the shortest possible route.
All the adventure of being a Field-Marshal was nothing to this.
So out he ran, and there, on the threshold, was the pike, which had
flopped its way all across the meadow when Noah called it, and it gave a
fearful snap at David, and pulled off one of his shoes. The other stuck
in a piece of marshy land near the bridge, but he didn’t stop for that,
and just ran and ran.
Behind him he heard a noise growing louder every minute: there were
lions roaring and elephants trumpeting, and marbles rolling, and sounds
of gimlets and hammers that showed the happy families were on his track,
and whistles from engines, and bells ringing as if the whole village had
caught fire, or was just going to have dinner; and when he came to the
bridge, he heard bugles and drums in the camp, and the fat voice of the
Brigadier-General giving orders. The stupid trout had put its head
through the ice, and was shouting, ‘Here he comes,’ and a machine-gun
began peppering away, and a huge cannon-ball flew by him. Mixed up in
this he heard the canter of the spider, and the parrot sneezing, and the
hoarse voice of Miss Bones shrieking ‘My papa will make cutlets of him,
and I’ll eat him.’
Then from the elms there came a sound of cawing, and from the bushes a
sound of twittering, and chirping from the long garden wall. He had
never heard so much bird-noise, even at the meeting of the flying
committee.
‘It’s the birds,’ thought David. ‘If they’re against me, I’m done!’
For one moment he stood quite still, feeling that it was no use to go on
if the birds, too, were his enemies. But then he heard a whistle of
wings close above him, and a voice said:
‘Fly in their faces, and confuse them. There’s a trout down there,
kingfisher, giving the alarm. Go and peck him.’
[Illustration: David runs for home]
David wasted no more time, except to call out, ‘Thanks awfully, birds,’
and ran on up the garden-path. He could see jays settling on the tents,
and woodpeckers tapping to see if they had come to the right place, and
on he ran till he came to the garden door. It was open, and he rushed up
the stairs, and felt his way past the game-cupboard, for it was quite
dark here, and turned the corner into the nursery passage where the
flame-cats had danced.
But now there were no flame-cats here, unless one tiny glimmer of light
on the wall was the remains of one, and he had to grope his way—and,
oh, how long it seemed—to the end of the passage, where he remembered
that the blue door was. He had left the key hanging up on a nail beside
it, but now he could not remember which side it was, and as he groped
for it, he knocked down the bottle which had something to do with the
electric light. As it gurgled away on the floor, he remembered that he
had shaken it, to shock the flame-cats and made them stop dancing, and
now he felt for it at his feet, meaning to shake it, and get the
electric light to flare out again, so that he might find the key of the
blue door. But the stopper had come out, and it was empty, and when he
shook it nothing whatever happened.
Meantime the pursuit had got much nearer, and he could hear that a lion
or two, and some soldiers had come to the garden door.
‘He went in here,’ roared a lion. ‘I can smell him.’
Then the Brigadier-General spoke.
‘Bring up the machine-guns,’ he said, ‘and rake the passage from end to
end. Then advance in open order.’
David heard the bullets rattling against the wall of the passage at the
corner, and knew that when they had turned that, he would be exposed to
their full fire again. There was no cover of any sort or kind; when once
they had advanced to the corner, he had nowhere left to go, unless he
could find the key of the door.
Then he heard the voice of the Brigadier-General when the firing
stopped.
‘Up the stairs and right turn,’ he said. ‘Then open fire again. I’m
behind you, so don’t be afraid.’
David pressed his hands to his head, and squeezed it to see if there was
a single idea left in it. There was just one.
‘Oh, flame-cats,’ he said. ‘I _did_ stop shocking you when you asked me.
Do show a light just for a minute.’
Then the one little glimmer on the wall began to grow brighter, and he
saw it was the eye of a flame-cat. Then another eye lit up, as if a
gas-lighter in the street had turned it on, and after that the
apricot-and-poppy-coloured tabby appeared. ‘Set to partners,’ it said,
and disappeared again, like water running out of the hole at the bottom
of a basin. But in that moment’s light, David had found the key and
fitted it into the lock of the blue door.
‘There’s just time to take the key with me,’ he said, and pulled the
door open. Before he had shut it after him, and locked it again, he
heard a voice say ‘Fire,’ and there was a tremendous explosion.
* * * * *
He had fallen forward on his bed, and the pillow went with a soft thump
on to the floor. But tight clenched in his hand was the golden key, and
the door was shut and locked behind him.
[Illustration: David reaches home]
David didn’t remember having taken off his sailor clothes and put on his
pyjamas, but here he was in them now, and his sailor clothes were in a
heap on the floor, and the light of the dawn was coming in through his
windows. He felt tremendously sleepy, but before he turned round to get
under his bed-clothes, he opened his hand to look at the golden key. But
there was no key there: it was only the pin-partridge.
For the moment he was horribly disappointed, but almost instantly he
cheered up again.
‘It doesn’t matter a bit!’ he said. ‘I know how to get through the door
now. Oh, what an exciting night. I wonder——’
But before he knew what he wondered he fell fast asleep.
* * * * *
When he went down to breakfast next morning, he found his father and
mother already there. One was munching toast, and the other was reading
the paper, in their dull way.
‘Good morning, David,’ said his mother. ‘You’re rather late, darling.’
His father stopped munching toast for a second.
‘Did the birds awake you, too, David?’ he said. ‘I never heard such a
noise as there was about dawn.’
‘I heard them,’ said David. ‘I went to sleep again afterwards.’
Just think! That was all that the grown-up people knew about those
lovely adventures. David had never felt so sorry for them. Poor things.
And then his mother began reading the paper again, and his father asked
her if anything had happened.
‘If anything has happened!’ thought David, a little bit aloud.
‘What did you say, darling?’ asked his mother.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said David. ‘I was only thinking.’
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.
Some illustrations moved to facilitate page layout.