you think I should be doing while the dragon was getting his birthday
present? Don't cry, my own little Mary Ann! Fido and I have arranged
everything. You've only got to do as you are told."
"Is that all?" said the Princess. "Oh--that's easy--I've often done
that!"
Then Tom told her what she was to do. And she kissed him again and
again. "Oh, you dear, good, clever Tom," she said. "How glad I am that I
gave you Fido. You two have saved me. You dears!"
The next morning Uncle James put on his best coat and hat and the vest
with the gold snakes on it--he was a magician, and he had a bright taste
in vests--and he called with a cab to take the Princess out.
"Come, little birthday present," he said tenderly. "The dragon will be
so pleased. And I'm glad to see you're not crying. You know, my child,
we cannot begin too young to learn to think of the happiness of others
rather than our own. I should not like my dear little niece to be
selfish, or to wish to deny a trivial pleasure to a poor, sick dragon,
far from his home and friends."
The Princess said she would try not to be selfish.
Presently the cab drew up near the pillar, and there was the dragon, his
ugly purple head shining in the sun, and his ugly purple mouth half
open.
Uncle James said: "Good morning, sir. We have brought you a small
present for your birthday. We do not like to let such an anniversary go
by without some suitable testimonial, especially to one who is a
stranger in our midst. Our means are small, but our hearts are large. We
have but one Princess, but we give her freely--do we not, my child?"
The Princess said she supposed so, and the dragon came a little nearer.
Suddenly a voice cried: "Run!" and there was Tom, and he had brought the
Zoological guinea pig and a pair of Belgian hares with him. "Just to see
fair," said Tom.
Uncle James was furious. "What do you mean, sir," he cried, "by
intruding on a State function with your common rabbits and things? Go
away, naughty little boy, and play with them somewhere else."
But while he was speaking the rabbits had come up one on each side of
him, their great sides towering ever so high, and now they pressed him
between them so that he was buried in their thick fur and almost choked.
The Princess, meantime, had run to the other side of the pillar and was
peeping around it to see what was going on. A crowd had followed the cab
out of the town; now they reached the scene of the "State Function"--and
they all cried out: "Fair play--play fair! We can't go back on our word
like this. Give a thing and take a thing? Why, it's never done. Let the
poor exiled stranger dragon have his birthday present." And they tried
to get at Tom--but the guinea pig stood in the way.
"Yes," Tom cried. "Fair play is a jewel. And your helpless exile shall
have the Princess--if he can catch her. Now then, Mary Ann."
Mary Ann looked around the big pillar and called to the dragon: "Bo! you
can't catch me," and began to run as fast as ever she could, and the
dragon ran after her. When the Princess had run a half mile she stopped,
dodged around a tree, and ran back to the pillar and around it, and the
dragon after her. You see, he was so long he could not turn as quickly
as she could. Around and around the pillar ran the Princess. The first
time she ran around a long way from the pillar, and then nearer and
nearer--with the dragon after her all the time; and he was so busy
trying to catch her that he never noticed that Tom had tied the very end
of his long, tight, whipcordy tail to the rock, so that the more the
dragon ran around, the more times he twisted his tail around the pillar.
It was exactly like winding a top--only the peg was the pillar, and the
dragon's tail was the string. And the magician was safe between the
Belgian hares, and couldn't see anything but darkness, or do anything
but choke.
When the dragon was wound onto the pillar as much as he possibly could
be, and as tight--like cotton on a reel--the Princess stopped running,
and though she had very little breath left, she managed to say,
"Yah--who's won now?"
This annoyed the dragon so much that he put out all his strength--spread
his great purple wings, and tried to fly at her. Of course this pulled
his tail, and pulled it very hard, so hard that as he pulled the tail
_had_ to come, and the pillar _had_ to come around with the tail, and
the island _had_ to come around with the pillar, and in another minute
the tail was loose, and the island was spinning around exactly like a
top. It spun so fast that everyone fell flat on their faces and held on
tight to themselves, because they felt something was going to happen.
All but the magician, who was choking between the Belgian hares, and
felt nothing but fur and fury.
And something did happen. The dragon had sent the kingdom of Rotundia
spinning the way it ought to have gone at the beginning of the world,
and as it spun around, all the animals began to change sizes. The guinea
pigs got small, and the elephants got big, and the men and women and
children would have changed sizes too, if they had not had the sense to
hold on to themselves, very tight indeed, with both hands; which, of
course, the animals could not be expected to know how to do. And the
best of it was that when the small beasts got big and the big beasts got
small the dragon got small too, and fell at the Princess's feet--a
little, crawling, purple newt with wings.
[Illustration: "The dragon ran after her." _See page 34._]
"Funny little thing," said the Princess, when she saw it. "I will take
it for a birthday present."
But while all the people were still on their faces, holding on tight to
themselves, Uncle James, the magician, never thought of holding
tight--he only thought of how to punish Belgian hares and the sons of
gardeners; so when the big beasts grew small, he grew small with the
other beasts, and the little purple dragon, when he fell at the
Princess's feet, saw there a very small magician named Uncle James. And
the dragon took him because it wanted a birthday present.
So now all the animals were new sizes--and at first it seemed very
strange to everyone to have great lumbering elephants and a tiny little
dormouse, but they have gotten used to it now, and think no more of it
than we do.
All this happened several years ago, and the other day I saw in the
_Rotundia Times_ an account of the wedding of the Princess with Lord
Thomas Gardener, K.C.D., and I knew she could not have married anyone
but Tom, so I suppose they made him a Lord on purpose for the
wedding--and _K.C.D._, of course, means Clever Conqueror of the Dragon.
If you think that is wrong it is only because you don't know how they
spell in Rotundia. The paper said that among the beautiful presents of
the bridegroom to the bride was an enormous elephant, on which the
bridal pair made their wedding tour. This must have been Fido. You
remember Tom promised to give him back to the Princess when they were
married. The _Rotundia Times_ called the married couple "the happy
pair." It was clever of the paper to think of calling them that--it is
such a pretty and novel expression, and I think it is truer than many of
the things you see in papers.
Because, you see, the Princess and the gardener's son were so fond of
each other they could not help being happy--and besides, they had an
elephant of their very own to ride on. If that is not enough to make
people happy, I should like to know what is. Though, of course, I know
there are some people who could not be happy unless they had a whale to
sail on, and perhaps not even then. But they are greedy, grasping
people, the kind who would take four helps of pudding, as likely as not,
which neither Tom nor Mary Ann ever did.
[Illustration: THE DELIVERERS OF THEIR COUNTRY]
III. The Deliverers of Their Country
It all began with Effie's getting something in her eye. It hurt very
much indeed, and it felt something like a red-hot spark--only it seemed
to have legs as well, and wings like a fly. Effie rubbed and cried--not
real crying, but the kind your eye does all by itself without your being
miserable inside your mind--and then she went to her father to have the
thing in her eye taken out. Effie's father was a doctor, so of course he
knew how to take things out of eyes--he did it very cleverly with a soft
paintbrush dipped in castor oil.
When he had gotten the thing out, he said: "This is very curious." Effie
had often got things in her eye before, and her father had always seemed
to think it was natural--rather tiresome and naughty perhaps, but still
natural. He had never before thought it curious.
Effie stood holding her handkerchief to her eye, and said: "I don't
believe it's out." People always say this when they have had something
in their eyes.
"Oh, yes--it's out," said the doctor. "Here it is, on the brush. This is
very interesting."
Effie had never heard her father say that about anything that she had
any share in. She said: "What?"
The doctor carried the brush very carefully across the room, and held
the point of it under his microscope--then he twisted the brass screws
of the microscope, and looked through the top with one eye.
"Dear me," he said. "Dear, dear me! Four well-developed limbs; a long
caudal appendage; five toes, unequal in lengths, almost like one of the
_Lacertidae_, yet there are traces of wings." The creature under his eye
wriggled a little in the castor oil, and he went on: "Yes; a batlike
wing. A new specimen, undoubtedly. Effie, run round to the professor and
ask him to be kind enough to step in for a few minutes."
"You might give me sixpence, Daddy," said Effie, "because I did bring
you the new specimen. I took great care of it inside my eye, and my eye
_does_ hurt."
The doctor was so pleased with the new specimen that he gave Effie a
shilling, and presently the professor stepped round. He stayed to lunch,
and he and the doctor quarreled very happily all the afternoon about the
name and the family of the thing that had come out of Effie's eye.
But at teatime another thing happened. Effie's brother Harry fished
something out of his tea, which he thought at first was an earwig. He
was just getting ready to drop it on the floor, and end its life in the
usual way, when it shook itself in the spoon--spread two wet wings, and
flopped onto the tablecloth. There it sat, stroking itself with its feet
and stretching its wings, and Harry said: "Why, it's a tiny newt!"
The professor leaned forward before the doctor could say a word. "I'll
give you half a crown for it, Harry, my lad," he said, speaking very
fast; and then he picked it up carefully on his handkerchief.
"It is a new specimen," he said, "and finer than yours, Doctor."
It was a tiny lizard, about half an inch long--with scales and wings.
So now the doctor and the professor each had a specimen, and they were
both very pleased. But before long these specimens began to seem less
valuable. For the next morning, when the knife-boy was cleaning the
doctor's boots, he suddenly dropped the brushes and the boot and the
blacking, and screamed out that he was burnt.
And from inside the boot came crawling a lizard as big as a kitten, with
large, shiny wings.
"Why," said Effie, "I know what it is. It is a dragon like the one St.
George killed."
And Effie was right. That afternoon Towser was bitten in the garden by a
dragon about the size of a rabbit, which he had tried to chase, and the
next morning all the papers were full of the wonderful "winged lizards"
that were appearing all over the country. The papers would not call them
dragons, because, of course, no one believes in dragons nowadays--and at
any rate the papers were not going to be so silly as to believe in fairy
stories. At first there were only a few, but in a week or two the
country was simply running alive with dragons of all sizes, and in the
air you could sometimes see them as thick as a swarm of bees. They all
looked alike except as to size. They were green with scales, and they
had four legs and a long tail and great wings like bats' wings, only the
wings were a pale, half-transparent yellow, like the gear-boxes on
bicycles.
They breathed fire and smoke, as all proper dragons must, but still the
newspapers went on pretending they were lizards, until the editor of the
_Standard_ was picked up and carried away by a very large one, and then
the other newspaper people had not anyone left to tell them what they
ought not to believe. So when the largest elephant in the Zoo was
carried off by a dragon, the papers gave up pretending--and put ALARMING
PLAGUE OF DRAGONS at the top of the paper.
[Illustration: "The largest elephant in the zoo was carried off." _See
page 43._]
You have no idea how alarming it was, and at the same time how
aggravating. The large-size dragons were terrible certainly, but when
once you had found out that the dragons always went to bed early because
they were afraid of the chill night air, you had only to stay indoors
all day, and you were pretty safe from the big ones. But the smaller
sizes were a perfect nuisance. The ones as big as earwigs got in the
soap, and they got in the butter. The ones as big as dogs got in the
bath, and the fire and smoke inside them made them steam like anything
when the cold water tap was turned on, so that careless people were
often scalded quite severely. The ones that were as large as pigeons
would get into workbaskets or corner drawers and bite you when you were
in a hurry to get a needle or a handkerchief. The ones as big as sheep
were easier to avoid, because you could see them coming; but when they
flew in at the windows and curled up under your eiderdown, and you did
not find them till you went to bed, it was always a shock. The ones this
size did not eat people, only lettuce, but they always scorched the
sheets and pillowcases dreadfully.
Of course, the County Council and the police did everything that could
be done: It was no use offering the hand of the Princess to anyone who
killed a dragon. This way was all very well in olden times--when there
was only one dragon and one Princess; but now there were far more
dragons than Princesses--although the Royal Family was a large one. And
besides, it would have been a mere waste of Princesses to offer rewards
for killing dragons, because everybody killed as many dragons as they
could quite out of their own heads and without rewards at all, just to
get the nasty things out of the way. The County Council undertook to
cremate all dragons delivered at their offices between the hours of ten
and two, and whole wagonloads and cartloads and truckloads of dead
dragons could be seen any day of the week standing in a long line in the
street where the County Council had their offices. Boys brought
barrowloads of dead dragons, and children on their way home from morning
school would call in to leave the handful or two of little dragons they
had brought in their satchels, or carried in their knotted pocket
handkerchiefs. And yet there seemed to be as many dragons as ever. Then
the police stuck up great wood and canvas towers covered with patent
glue. When the dragons flew against these towers, they stuck fast, as
flies and wasps do on the sticky papers in the kitchen; and when the
towers were covered all over with dragons, the police inspector used to
set fire to the towers, and burnt them and dragons and all.
And yet there seemed to be more dragons than ever. The shops were full
of patent dragon poison and anti-dragon soap, and dragonproof curtains
for the windows; and indeed, everything that could be done was done.
And yet there seemed to be more dragons than ever.
It was not very easy to know what would poison a dragon, because, you
see, they ate such different things. The largest kind ate elephants as
long as there were any, and then went on with horses and cows. Another
size ate nothing but lilies of the valley, and a third size ate only
Prime Ministers if they were to be had, and, if not, would feed freely
on servants in livery. Another size lived on bricks, and three of them
ate two thirds of the South Lambeth Infirmary in one afternoon.
But the size Effie was most afraid of was about as big as your dining
room, and that size ate little girls and boys.
At first Effie and her brother were quite pleased with the change in
their lives. It was so amusing to sit up all night instead of going to
sleep, and to play in the garden lighted by electric lamps. And it
sounded so funny to hear Mother say, when they were going to bed: "Good
night, my darlings, sleep sound all day, and don't get up too soon. You
must not get up before it's quite dark. You wouldn't like the nasty
dragons to catch you."
But after a time they got very tired of it all: They wanted to see the
flowers and trees growing in the fields, and to see the pretty sunshine
out of doors, and not just through glass windows and patent dragonproof
curtains. And they wanted to play on the grass, which they were not
allowed to do in the electric lamp-lighted garden because of the
night-dew.
And they wanted so much to get out, just for once, in the beautiful,
bright, dangerous daylight, that they began to try and think of some
reason why they ought to go out. Only they did not like to disobey their
mother.
But one morning their mother was busy preparing some new dragon poison
to lay down in the cellars, and their father was bandaging the hand of
the boot boy, which had been scratched by one of the dragons who liked
to eat Prime Ministers when they were to be had, so nobody remembered to
say to the children: "Don't get up till it is quite dark!"
"Go now," said Harry. "It would not be disobedient to go. And I know
exactly what we ought to do, but I don't know how we ought to do it."
"What ought we to do?" said Effie.
"We ought to wake St. George, of course," said Harry. "He was the only
person in his town who knew how to manage dragons; the people in the
fairy tales don't count. But St. George is a real person, and he is only
asleep, and he is waiting to be waked up. Only nobody believes in St.
George now. I heard father say so."
"We do," said Effie.
"Of course we do. And don't you see, Ef, that's the very reason why we
could wake him? You can't wake people if you don't believe in them, can
you?"
Effie said no, but where could they find St. George?
"We must go and look," said Harry boldly. "You shall wear a dragonproof
frock, made of stuff like the curtains. And I will smear myself all over
with the best dragon poison, and--"
Effie clasped her hands and skipped with joy and cried: "Oh, Harry! I
know where we can find St. George! In St. George's Church, of course."
"Um," said Harry, wishing he had thought of it for himself, "you have a
little sense sometimes, for a girl."
So the next afternoon, quite early, long before the beams of sunset
announced the coming night, when everybody would be up and working, the
two children got out of bed. Effie wrapped herself in a shawl of
dragonproof muslin--there was no time to make the frock--and Harry made
a horrid mess of himself with the patent dragon poison. It was warranted
harmless to infants and invalids, so he felt quite safe.
Then they joined hands and set out to walk to St. George's Church. As
you know, there are many St. George's churches, but fortunately they
took the turning that leads to the right one, and went along in the
bright sunlight, feeling very brave and adventurous.
There was no one about in the streets except dragons, and the place was
simply swarming with them. Fortunately none of the dragons were just the
right size for eating little boys and girls, or perhaps this story might
have had to end here. There were dragons on the pavement, and dragons on
the roadway, dragons basking on the front doorsteps of public buildings,
and dragons preening their wings on the roofs in the hot afternoon sun.
The town was quite green with them. Even when the children had gotten
out of the town and were walking in the lanes, they noticed that the
fields on each side were greener than usual with the scaly legs and
tails; and some of the smaller sizes had made themselves asbestos nests
in the flowering hawthorn hedges.
Effie held her brother's hand very tight, and once when a fat dragon
flopped against her ear she screamed out, and a whole flight of green
dragons rose from the field at the sound, and sprawled away across the
sky. The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew.
"Oh, I want to go home," said Effie.
"Don't be silly," said Harry. "Surely you haven't forgotten about the
Seven Champions and all the princes. People who are going to be their
country's deliverers never scream and say they want to go home."
"And are we," asked Effie--"deliverers, I mean?"
"You'll see," said her brother, and on they went.
When they came to St. George's Church they found the door open, and they
walked right in--but St. George was not there, so they walked around the
churchyard outside, and presently they found the great stone tomb of St.
George, with the figure of him carved in marble outside, in his armor
and helmet, and with his hands folded on his breast.
"How ever can we wake him?" they said. Then Harry spoke to St.
George--but he would not answer; and he called, but St. George did not
seem to hear; and then he actually tried to waken the great
dragon-slayer by shaking his marble shoulders. But St. George took no
notice.
Then Effie began to cry, and she put her arms around St. George's neck
as well as she could for the marble, which was very much in the way at
the back, and she kissed the marble face, and she said: "Oh, dear, good,
kind St. George, please wake up and help us."
And at that St. George opened his eyes sleepily, and stretched himself
and said: "What's the matter, little girl?"
So the children told him all about it; he turned over in his marble and
leaned on one elbow to listen. But when he heard that there were so many
dragons he shook his head.
"It's no good," he said, "they would be one too many for poor old
George. You should have waked me before. I was always for a fair
fight--one man one dragon, was my motto."
Just then a flight of dragons passed overhead, and St. George half drew
his sword.
But he shook his head again and pushed the sword back as the flight of
dragons grew small in the distance.
"I can't do anything," he said. "Things have changed since my time. St.
Andrew told me about it. They woke him up over the engineers' strike,
and he came to talk to me. He says everything is done by machinery now;
there must be some way of settling these dragons. By the way, what sort
of weather have you been having lately?"
This seemed so careless and unkind that Harry would not answer, but
Effie said patiently, "It has been very fine. Father says it is the
hottest weather there has ever been in this country."
"Ah, I guessed as much," said the Champion, thoughtfully. "Well, the
only thing would be ... dragons can't stand wet and cold, that's the
only thing. If you could find the taps."
St. George was beginning to settle down again on his stone slab.
"Good night, very sorry I can't help you," he said, yawning behind his
marble hand.
"Oh, but you can," cried Effie. "Tell us--what taps?"
"Oh, like in the bathroom," said St. George, still more sleepily. "And
there's a looking glass, too; shows you all the world and what's going
on. St. Denis told me about it; said it was a very pretty thing. I'm
sorry I can't--good night."
And he fell back into his marble and was fast asleep again in a moment.
"We shall never find the taps," said Harry. "I say, wouldn't it be awful
if St. George woke up when there was a dragon near, the size that eats
champions?"
Effie pulled off her dragonproof veil. "We didn't meet any the size of
the dining room as we came along," she said. "I daresay we shall be
quite safe."
So she covered St. George with the veil, and Harry rubbed off as much as
he could of the dragon poison onto St. George's armor, so as to make
everything quite safe for him.
"We might hide in the church till it is dark," he said, "and then--"
But at that moment a dark shadow fell on them, and they saw that it was
a dragon exactly the size of the dining room at home.
So then they knew that all was lost. The dragon swooped down and caught
the two children in his claws; he caught Effie by her green silk sash,
and Harry by the little point at the back of his Eton jacket--and then,
spreading his great yellow wings, he rose into the air, rattling like a
third-class carriage when the brake is hard on.