AT eight o’clock the landlady knocked at the King’s door. “Hot water,
Your Majesty,” she said. “Shall I bring the can in? And the Band
desires his respects, and would you wish him to play while you are
a-dressing, being as you didn’t bring a music-box with you?”
Receiving no answer, after knocking several times, the good woman
opened the door very cautiously, and peeped in, fully expecting to
see the royal night-cap reposing calmly on the pillow. What was her
amazement at finding the room empty; no sign of the King was to be
seen, although his pink-silk knee-breeches lay on a chair, and his
ermine mantle and his crown were hanging on a peg against the wall.
The landlady gave the alarm at once. The King had disappeared! He had
been robbed, murdered; the assassins had chopped him up into little
pieces and carried him away in a bundle-handkerchief! “Murder! police!
fire!!!!”
In the midst of the wild confusion the voice of the Boots was heard.
“Please, ’m, I see His Majesty go out at about five o’clock this
morning.”
Again the chorus rose: he had run away; he had gone to surprise and
slay the King of Coringo while he was taking his morning chocolate; he
had gone to take a bath in the river, and was drowned! “Murder! police!”
The voice of the Boots was heard again. “And please, ’m, he’s a sittin’
out in the courtyard now; and please, ’m, I think he’s crazy!”
Out rushed everybody, pell-mell, into the courtyard. There, on
the ground, sat the King, with his tattered dressing-gown wrapped
majestically about him. An ecstatic smile illuminated his face, while
he clasped in his arms a large bird with shining plumage.
“Bless me!” cried the poultry-woman. “If he hasn’t got my Shanghai
rooster that I couldn’t catch last night!”
The King, hearing voices, looked round, and smiled graciously on the
astonished crowd. “Good people,” he said, “success has crowned my
efforts. I have found the Golden-breasted Kootoo! You shall all have
ten pounds apiece, in honor of this joyful event, and the landlady
shall be made a baroness in her own right!”
“But,” said the poultry-woman, “it is my Shang—”
“Be still, you idiot!” whispered the landlady, putting her hand over
the woman’s mouth. “Do you want to lose your ten pounds and your head
too? If the King has caught the Golden-breasted Kootoo, why, then it
_is_ the Golden-breasted Kootoo, as sure as I am a baroness!” and she
added in a still lower tone, “There hasn’t been a Kootoo seen in the
Vale for ten years; the birds have died out.”
Great were the rejoicings at the palace when the King returned in
triumph, bringing with him the much-coveted prize, the Golden-breasted
Kootoo. The bands played until they almost killed themselves; the cooks
waved their ladles and set to work at once on the pie; the huntsmen
sang hunting-songs. All was joy and rapture, except in the breast of
one man; that man was the Second Musician, or, as we should now call
him, the Chief Musician. He felt no thrill of joy at sight of the
wondrous bird; on the contrary, he made his will, and prepared to leave
the country at once; but when the pie was finished, and he saw its huge
dimensions, he was comforted. “No man,” he said to himself, “can eat
the whole of that pie and live!”
Alas! he was right. The unhappy King fell a victim to his musical
ambition before he had half finished his pie, and died in a fit. His
subjects ate the remainder of the mighty pasty, with mingled tears and
smiles, as a memorial feast; and if the Golden-breasted Kootoo _was_ a
Shanghai rooster, nobody in the kingdom was ever the wiser for it.