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Title: Round the year in Pudding Lane
Author: Sarah Addington
Illustrator: Gertrude A. Kay
Release date: March 30, 2026 [eBook #78322]
Language: English
Original publication: Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1923
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78322
Credits: Alan, The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUND THE YEAR IN PUDDING LANE ***
ROUND THE YEAR IN
PUDDING LANE
By Sarah Addington
THE BOY WHO LIVED IN PUDDING LANE
THE GREAT ADVENTURE OF MRS. SANTA CLAUS
ROUND THE YEAR IN PUDDING LANE
[Illustration: _The Town Crier was seen coming down Pudding Lane,
ringing his bell._ FRONTISPIECE. _See page 3._]
ROUND THE YEAR
IN PUDDING LANE
BY
SARAH ADDINGTON
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GERTRUDE A. KAY
[Illustration]
BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1924
_Copyright, 1923, 1924_,
BY SARAH ADDINGTON
_All rights reserved_
Published September, 1924
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I When the Snow Man Sat by the Fire 1
II The Valentine Mistress Mary Found 18
III How Humpty Dumpty Went to the King’s
Party 34
IV Simple Simon Has His Day 52
V Mrs. Claus Has a Great Honor 67
VI The Poodle That Didn’t Know English 81
VII Bo-Peep Finds Out How a Dutch Uncle
Talks 93
VIII The Sand Man’s Scare 110
IX Why Taffy the Welshman Stole Meat 124
X The Crooked Man Gets a Brand-new Reputation 139
XI Mother Goose Settles a Difficulty 155
XII Santa Claus Hangs Up His Stocking 187
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Town Crier was seen coming down Pudding
Lane, ringing his bell _Frontispiece_
PAGE
Everybody was happy, including Mrs. Claus who
dozed by the fire 20
No Lady Wind was that. No dog either. But a
bear that stood before her 43
They were dancing around a Maypole, a beautiful,
flower-covered Maypole 76
On the same stagecoach from Dover came a present
from the King of France to Mrs. Claus 81
“Look here,” he said to the black sheep. “You’re
responsible for all this.” 105
What could Mrs. Blue do? She could do nothing
but climb the fence, skirts and all 111
The next morning at nine o’clock the whole town
started out for Honeysuckle Hill 129
“But it’s too far to walk before dark,” said Santa
Claus. “We live ’way off in Pudding Lane” 148
I
WHEN THE SNOW MAN SAT BY THE FIRE
It had been a poor year for snow men that winter in Pudding Lane.
November had brought not one single flake of snow (though I don’t see
what good one flake would have done, anyway). December had been almost
as bad. Even at Christmas there had been only the thinnest smattering
of snow, which, like bread that has only a little sugar on it, is worse
than none at all.
But here it was January, a gray, moisty, misty day that certainly
looked and felt like nothing else in the world but snow. So that it was
no wonder the children of Pudding Lane kept rolling their eyes at the
world outside as they were having their lessons that morning.
“One, two, buckle my shoe,” recited Santa to Mrs. Claus. The snow would
surely come any minute now. “Three, four, shut the door.” Would it
be big dry flakes or little watery ones? Little watery ones were no
earthly good, of course. “Five, six, pick up sticks--”
“A, B, C, tumble-down D,” chanted Judy to the Old Woman Who Lived in a
Shoe. Was that a flake of snow she saw through a buttonhole of the Shoe
there? No, only a bit of paper drifting by. “E, F, and a pick-him-up
G,” she continued.
Even Simple Simon was having a lesson.
“Thirty days hath September,” he began, but poor Simon never got any
farther than that in the rhyme, for he never could remember that April
came next. April ought not to follow right after September, even in a
poem, he thought.
So they went on, every one of them, for Old King Cole had given
emphatic orders that lessons were to be held at any cost, every single
morning, in every single home in Pudding Lane. And then, right in the
middle of everything, it began to come, the snow that all the children
had been waiting for all the winter long.
Jill saw it first, for Jill was the kind of girl that could see several
things at once, so that, although it looked very much as if Jill had
her eyes nailed down tight to her spelling book, she really was looking
through the window out of the tail of her eye. Some people are like
that, especially girls.
But Jill saw the snow only half a second before the other children saw
it. For the next thing the mothers of Pudding Lane knew, their pupils
were all running to the windows and jumping up and down and shrieking
with delight. It began to look as if school were over for the day,
willy-nilly, as Mrs. Claus said. She, for one, couldn’t manage five
boys during the first snowstorm of the year.
Well, sure enough, school was over for the day, for the next minute
the Town Crier was seen coming down Pudding Lane, ringing his bell and
shouting, “The King says let the children out; the King says let the
children out, the first snow of the year!” Seriously, now, was there
ever such a good king as that merry Old Soul? Or such a wise one? Not
many kings would understand that a snowstorm is more important than
lessons.
You should have seen the Snow Man those children made! Such a fine
figure of manhood as he was, with sturdy, stout legs and a pipe in
his mouth (the candlestick maker wondered where in the world his pipe
had disappeared to!) and a snub nose such as snow men always, always
have. Why is it, do you suppose, that snow men never have handsome
Roman noses like Mother Goose’s, or tip-tilted ones like Jill’s, or
long lean noses like the candlestick maker’s? Merely a family trait, I
suppose. In fact, if I ever met a snow man with a long nose, I’d rather
suspect him of not belonging to the real snow family, wouldn’t you?
But this one was a true descendant of the inner circle of snow men.
Little Boy Blue stuck on his ears. Jack and Jill made his arms--long
arms they were, that fell from his shoulders in a most realistic
manner. Simple Simon put Mr. Claus’s green carpet slippers at the
bottom of the Snow Man’s legs. (And you should have seen Mr. Claus
running around the house in his bare feet that night, poor man.) Simple
Simon got the right shoe on the left leg, and the left shoe on the
right leg, but that only made the Snow Man look funnier than ever,
and Simon was indeed proud that he had done his job so cleverly. Yes,
every child in Pudding Lane had a hand in that Snow Man, except Polly
Flinders.
And Polly, of course, would not come out. Not that she was not invited.
Santa Claus, who was the most polite boy in Pudding Lane, made a
special trip to the Flinderses’ to get her, for it was thought that
Polly, being a newcomer to the village, might feel a little shy.
But although Polly liked Santa Claus very much and was really most
anxious to play with the other children, and most anxious, too, to get
acquainted with the Snow Man, still, on account of her toes, Polly had
to refuse Santa’s invitation. So Santa ran back to his little friends
and Polly, after waving them good-by, returned to her cinders.
She did not stay by the fire long, however, for the shouts and laughter
of the children rang out like chimes through Pudding Lane that day, and
she could not keep herself from going to the window to watch them. For
the truth about Polly Flinders was that, though she did choose to stay
close by her fire rather than to play outdoors with the children, she
really was a very lonely little girl. She got tired of herself and she
got tired of her dolls and books. She even got tired of her cinders. So
Polly really was not very happy by her fireside, after all. It was too
bad about her toes, really.
When the children saw Polly at the window on this day, they waved and
laughed and beckoned her to come out. Polly waved back and smiled, too,
but still she could not bear the thought of the cold, so she shook
her head sadly and presently they forgot all about her as they went
on playing. And finally the lonely little Polly went back to the fire
again.
It was dark and cold when the children of Pudding Lane at last left
their Snow Man and went home. They had fought snow battles and built
snow houses and dug snow tunnels. They had plowed up the fields of snow
until it looked like some winter planting time. But the day closed at
last and they had to go home to supper and to bed.
Only Polly Flinders, as night came on, remembered the poor Snow Man who
was left there in the ruins alone on the cold winter night. She could
hardly eat her supper for thinking about him, and she shivered closer
to the fire, as she considered how cold it must be out there for the
Snow Man, who himself was not a very warm fellow to begin with.
So Polly thought about him all evening, and still she could not forget
him when it came time for bed and her mother came in to take her
upstairs. Polly begged to stay up longer.
“But it’s very late,” objected her mother.
In the end, however, she went off to bed without Polly, shaking her
head and saying to Mr. Flinders that she never did see such a girl for
the cinders.
As Polly sat by the fire, she kept thinking of the Snow Man and kept on
feeling so sorry for him that she even cried a little to herself, as
the clock ticked and the cinders clinked in the grate. She went to the
window to look out at him. There he stood in the cold light of a frosty
moon, alone, neglected, freezing. Oh, dear, how unhappy he looked.
He wasn’t funny any more, but pitiable and pathetic, like any other
outcast.
Polly stood by the window a long time, watching him tearfully. Then
through her tears, she saw, or thought she saw, the Snow Man move. He
seemed to raise his arms to her in a gesture of pleading. The Snow Man
was motioning to her to come to him! The Snow Man wanted her help!
Quick as a flash Polly turned from the window and rushed to the door.
Quick as a wink she had flung the door open and was running down the
path to Pudding Lane and across the lane to the Snow Man. She quite
forgot her toes, did Polly. She forgot the cold and the snow. She
forgot everything except that the poor Snow Man needed somebody to help
him and that she was the somebody. When she got to the Snow Man, she
spoke to him breathlessly.
“I’ve come to take you in to the fire,” she told him. “I know how
wretched it is to be cold and lonely. I suffer from the cold myself,
Mr. Snow Man, and I’m rather lonely too.”
The Snow Man did not reply, but stood there immovable, his long arms
hanging listlessly, his pipe askew, his hat set rakishly on one ear.
Polly surveyed him and spoke again.
“Can you walk?” she asked him. He was still silent.
Polly touched him softly. He was hard and as solid as rock. She never
would be able to budge him. She put her arms around him. Ooooh, how
cold he was! She really must hurry and get him in to the fire, or he
would be frozen past all help.
What should she do? He was freezing, freezing! She must not leave him
there another minute. But he was too big to carry and too stiff to
walk. Polly looked around desperately. There was only that icy moon
above and the fields of snow about her and the still cold of night. No
help was in sight. Not a candle shone out from a single window. Not a
soul was awake in that respectable little village. Alas, Polly began to
think that her visit to the Snow Man was all in vain, that she could
not rescue him, after all.
And then, just as she was despairing of her mission, she spied Jack
Horner’s little red sled near one of the snow forts. It was the very
thing! She would take the Snow Man home on that sled. She would take
him to her own fire and there warm him until he was quite comfortable.
Hastily she began to drag the sled over to the Snow Man. Quickly she
commenced the delicate operation of putting the Snow Man on the sled.
And it was a delicate operation, indeed. For the Snow Man’s joints, if
he ever had any, were as stiff as sticks, and the Snow Man’s muscles,
if he had muscles, were as useless as a doll’s. He was very heavy and
hard to move, as Polly put her arms around him and tried it. Moreover,
the Snow Man, although so frozen and hard, had a tendency to break at
places. Polly was very, very careful as she tugged and pulled at him,
but there! his left arm snapped off clear up to the shoulder, and--oh,
dear, there went his right thumb, plunged into the snow at his feet.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” whispered Polly to the Snow Man in distress. “I
didn’t mean to, really.”
But it did not seem to hurt the Snow Man very much to lose an arm and
a thumb, for he did not bat an eyelash, though maybe that was because
he didn’t have an eyelash to bat.
At last Polly had him on the sled, lying on his back, feet foremost,
pipe in the air. Only the green carpet slippers were left behind in
the snow, for somehow they wouldn’t stick. At last, after much hard
pulling, Polly had the sled with the Snow Man right in front of her
very door. And at last, after more tugging and working, she had him
standing upright in front of her own warm cinders, which she now poked
up into a fine bright blaze again. Then she smiled radiantly at the
Snow Man.
“Now you’ll be all right,” she assured him. “You’ll get all warm and
happy again, Mr. Snow Man.”
But, my goodness, was the Snow Man crying? It certainly looked like it.
Those were surely drops of water on his face. It looked, too, as if he
needed a handkerchief. Polly hastily got out hers and applied it to the
Snow Man’s nose.
“You ought to learn to use your handkerchief yourself,” she told him
rather severely. “I learned to use mine when I was a very little girl.
But don’t cry. Oh, don’t cry so _hard_!”
By this time the tears were streaming down the Snow Man’s face like
rain. In fact, he hardly had a face any more; the snub nose had
vanished almost completely; his eyes had cried themselves out; his ears
were just little nubs now and were fast becoming even smaller nubs.
More than that, the Snow Man’s arms and shoulders seemed to be raining
tears too, and from his feet and body ran rivers of water.
Oh, dear, how frightened Polly was!
“Please don’t cry all over like that!” she begged him. “Oh, please
don’t!”
But the water continued to flow from every pore of the Snow Man’s body.
“Perhaps,” thought Polly, “it’s just perspiration. But if it is, it’s a
pretty bad case of it.”
Whatever the malady, it was fast reducing the unfortunate Snow Man into
a mere pillar of slush and streaming water. His pipe fell away from his
face and dropped to the floor with a dismal sound. His poor old hat
fell off too. His legs were rapidly giving way. And as Polly watched
the Snow Man approaching his sad end, she cried heart-brokenly. Such a
beautiful Snow Man as he had been! How she had worked to help him out
of his difficulty! And now he was going, going, going. He would soon
be gone. He _was_ gone. She looked at the floor where a pond of water
lay, an old black pipe floating desolately around in it. It was the
saddest sight that Polly had ever seen.
She cried until her mother, hearing her from upstairs, came down to her.
“Why,” began Mrs. Flinders, “what in the world--”
Polly sobbed.
“What was it?” her mother asked again.
Polly choked as she tried to answer.
“The Snow Man--” she began, then sobbed aloud again.
Then Mrs. Flinders, seeing the water, understood.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” she said sympathetically. Then, “But didn’t you
know he would melt?” she asked.
It seemed unbelievable that a child of hers would make such a foolish
mistake.
“I forgot,” confessed Polly. “It was silly of me, but I honestly
forgot. I was so anxious--”
“Well,” said Mrs. Flinders, “it’s too bad. But come, let us mop up the
Snow Man before he spreads all over the house.”
So Mrs. Flinders in her nightcap and Polly, sniffling loudly, mopped up
the Snow Man, who an hour before had been a beautiful creature and was
now mere dirty water. Polly was indeed very sad about the whole affair,
and more than that she was ashamed, for she realized now how silly she
had been and she dreaded what the children of Pudding Lane would say
the next day.
But to Polly’s everlasting surprise, the children of Pudding Lane,
instead of being angry with her, instead of laughing at her, were most
sympathetic, when she told them what she had done.
“I think it was very nice of you to want to be kind to the poor Snow
Man,” said Jill.
“And of course you forgot he was made of snow,” put in Miss Muffett.
“For he was such a friendly fellow.”
At this Polly began to sniffle.
“There, there!” Jumbo patted her shoulder. (You remember Jumbo, don’t
you, the oldest son of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe?) “We’ll build
another Snow Man,” he said. “And we’ll wrap this Snow Man up in a
blanket to-night so he won’t get cold.”
So the children began to build another Snow Man, and even Polly, whose
toes were warmly done up in leggings and overshoes, stayed out to help
them. For Polly felt responsible for the damage she had done, and she
felt grateful, too, to the children for their kindly attitude toward
her silly mistake. And so, although it was bitter cold, and she did
mind it terribly, she worked on and on until finally the Snow Man was
finished. But oh, how miserable she was, and how glad she was when
the Snow Man stood there complete, and she was free to return to her
cinders. Yet, as she started to say good-by, her heart sank a little.
She would be lonely again when she went back into the house by herself.
If her toes only did not trouble her so much!
The children were astonished when she told them she was going indoors.
“Why, Polly, we thought you liked us now,” cried Judy.
“We thought you were having a good time with us,” said Tom, Tom, the
piper’s son.
Poor Polly shook her head. “I do like you,” she protested. It was
dreadful to have such toes as she had, but she couldn’t help it.
“But you don’t like to play out here with us,” said Little Boy Blue.
“No,” confessed Polly in a small ashamed voice. “You can’t enjoy things
when your toes ache, can you?”
“I suppose not,” Boy Blue answered politely, though his toes never had
ached.
But Jumbo went up to Polly and took her arm.
“Then I think it was very brave of you to go out to get the Snow Man
last night,” he said. “And it was brave of you to stay out here to-day
and help us make a new one, when your toes ached all the time.”
He expected the rest of the children to say, “Yes, indeed, it was,” but
somehow they did not say it, nor did they say anything, not being used
to pretty speeches. But they thought it, anyway, and they looked it,
every one of them smiling at Polly in the friendliest fashion possible,
so that Polly was a little bit comforted.
Her real comfort, however, came later from Jumbo, as he sat before her
cherished cinders with her. He looked at her pretty little toes, which
were shiny patent leather with silver buckles, and smiled.
“Judy has big square brown shoes,” he said. “And Jill has copper toes
on her boots.”
Polly looked at him gratefully.
“And I rather like the cinders myself,” he went on. “Do you see that
little dwarf in there with the hood over his head?”
Polly looked deep into the fire.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Isn’t he funny? And do you see that princess with
the long flames of hair?”
“Red hair,” Jumbo grinned. He looked at Polly’s fair curls. “I like
yellow better myself.”
Polly sighed. Perhaps she wasn’t quite hopeless, after all, in spite
of her terrible affliction. Then a coal fell in the grate with a soft
cluck of a noise.
“Oh!” she exclaimed excitedly. “The dwarf got thumped. Who did it, did
you see?”
“I didn’t see a thing,” replied Jumbo, “so it must have been a fairy.
And there, the Princess is disappearing.”
“Going home to the Prince, I guess,” murmured Polly contentedly.
“Yes.” Jumbo nodded. “Wow! But that fairy came just in time. In another
minute the dwarf would have had her.”
And that was the way that Polly Flinders had her one and only
experience with a Snow Man, a rather unhappy experience it was too.
That was the way the children of Pudding Lane found out what a
courageous girl Polly was. And that was the way Jumbo became Polly’s
daily playmate, so that she was never lonely by her cinders any more,
but was both happy and warm thereafter. For Jumbo liked the fire, too,
especially when he and Polly sat before it spinning fairy tales, as
they did on that first day.
II
THE VALENTINE MISTRESS MARY FOUND
It was past eight o’clock on that St. Valentine’s Eve, and yet from
every window in Pudding Lane shone forth the yellow light of a candle,
a phenomenon which made all the clocks in the town wonder whether
they hadn’t skipped an hour somewhere or other. For every timepiece
in the village, from Mrs. Flinders’ fine old grandfather’s clock to
Mrs. Dumpty’s pert little cuckoo, had good reason to know that one
of old King Cole’s strictest rules was, “Early to Bed and Early to
Rise”; and yet here it was eight o’clock and nobody abed yet. Queer,
thought the cuckoo, as he stepped smartly out of his box and cuckoo’ed
eight times with a significant look at Humpty Dumpty. Odd, thought the
grandfather’s clock, as he rumbled his eight strokes in Polly Flinders’
ear.
Silly clocks, they had forgotten what night it was, or they never would
have been so mystified. For we know what was going on that night in
Pudding Lane, don’t we? We do it ourselves on St. Valentine’s Eve. So
we can just see Boy Blue addressing an envelope to Judy, The Shoe,
Pudding Lane, and another to Bessie, The Candlestick-Maker’s, Pudding
Lane. And we can see Jill writing a verse to Jack:
“Jack, Jack, the funny fellow,
Got bruised black and got bruised yellow,
When he came tumbling down the hill,
With his loving friend, whose name is Jill.”
Yes, they were all making Valentines that night. The children of the
Old Woman had the Shoe cluttered up with paper and ribbon and paints.
Simple Simon was busy copying a verse for Mistress Mary. It was hardly
a delicate sentiment, reading as it did:
“Hum, hum, Harry,
If I weren’t engaged, I should never marry.”
But it was the only poem Simple Simon knew. Besides, it is doubtful
whether Mistress Mary would be able to read it, anyway, for Simple
Simon’s handwriting, as you know, was highly individual.
At the Clauses’, Santa and the two batches of twins were busy making
Valentines. Santa was good at cutting and pasting, and Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John were good at getting in his way and cluttering things
up, so everybody was happy, including Mrs. Claus, who dozed by the
fire, Mr. Claus, who was reading the _Banbury Cross Weekly_ over his
spectacles, and Misery, the cat, who sat solemnly watching them all.
Indeed, everybody in Pudding Lane was busy making Valentines,
except--guess who--Cross-Patch. You know Cross-Patch, that unpleasant
old woman who lived down at the end of Pudding Lane. Of course,
Cross-Patch was not making Valentines. She didn’t believe in such
foolishness!
[Illustration: _Everybody was happy, including Mrs. Claus who dozed by
the fire. Page 20._]
Yet somebody was making a Valentine for her, and that person
was--you’ll never believe it, but it’s true--the candlestick-maker. Now
although you have known the candlestick-maker quite intimately, would
you ever have guessed that he Nursed a Secret Passion for Cross-Patch?
Of course you wouldn’t. But that’s the sort of thing that comes out
on St. Valentine’s Day. He may seem like a queer kind of lover, the
toothless, bent-over old man, yet he was an earnest one, nevertheless,
and he cackled gleefully as he pasted a yellow paper rose on a pink
paper heart and wrote:
“Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a man marries his trouble begins.”
When he tried to say this verse, the candlestick-maker always said,
“Peedles and nins, peedles and nins”, but it seemed to go all right
with a pencil. However, it did not sound very loving, he thought, after
he had written it, so he added a little verse like this:
“P.S. But when a man’s married
His wife is his own,
And when a man’s single
He’s living alone.”
It may not seem very clear to us, but the candlestick-maker was charmed
with it, and said to himself he could be a poet as well as anybody else
if he’d just take the time to it. And then, with one last delighted
cackle, he called Jack, his nephew, and bade him be nimble and be quick
about delivering that Valentine to Cross-Patch. Jack hastily jumped
over the candlestick as directed and ran down Pudding Lane with the
pink paper heart in his hand.
Jack had gone but a few steps when he heard a little squeaking noise
which sounded like--well, it sounded to Jack like a mouse with a cold
in its nose. He stopped to listen. Yes, there it was, a choked little
squeak of a noise. Then, to Jack’s surprise, up started somebody from
behind the winter hedge near by. It was Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary,
and it was she who was making the noise. Mistress Mary was crying.
Of course, she pretended she wasn’t. When she saw Jack, she giggled in
a silly little desperate way to cover up her sobs, the way girls often
do when they’re caught in tears.
“Hello,” said Jack. He was glad she had stopped crying.
“Hello,” said Mistress Mary gayly, quite as if she had never shed a
tear in her life. “Where are you going?”
“Taking a Valentine,” began Jack, when Mistress Mary unexpectedly began
to cry again in that little squealing way. Jack, much disturbed, asked
Mistress Mary what was the matter. Whereupon, the poor girl, still
weeping, explained the cause of her woe. She was crying, she said,
because she had no Valentine for Santa Claus, of whom she was so very
fond.
“But why haven’t you a Valentine?” asked Jack.
“Just because I was so contrary, I guess,” admitted Mistress Mary. “My
mother told me to get one ready, but I didn’t want to then--and now
it’s too late. Oh, dear, it’s often very uncomfortable to be contrary,
Jack.”
“It must be,” thought Jack to himself. But to Mistress Mary he said,
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know,” answered Mistress Mary mournfully. “I’m afraid there’s
nothing to do now. And, oh, Santa Claus will think I don’t love him.
And I love him better than anybody else in Pudding Lane.”
“Why don’t you send Santa Claus a flower from your garden, Mistress
Mary?” Jack suggested. “Flowers make fine Valentines, you know.”
Mistress Mary shook her head sorrowfully.
“Alas,” she said, “my crocuses are contrary, too, Jack. They ought to
be out now, but somehow they just won’t bloom.”
“I see,” said Jack gravely. Truly this was pretty bad, he thought to
himself, that a girl should set such an unhappy example to the very
flowers in her garden.
Then he thought of Mother Goose, who always knew how to get people out
of trouble.
“Let’s ask Mother Goose what to do,” he said to Mistress Mary.
“But Mother Goose is not here.”
“Yes, she is,” Jack told her. “She’s spending the week-end with old
King Cole. Let’s run right up to the palace and ask her.”
“Oh!” cried Mistress Mary, “that’s the very thing.” For once in her
life the contrary girl agreed with somebody, so the two children ran
off hand in hand toward the palace of Old King Cole.
Mistress Mary was not the only person in Pudding Lane that night who
was in trouble. Meanwhile, something had happened at the Clauses’.
It happened so quickly too. The children had all gone to bed and
Santa Claus and his mother were sitting up addressing the last of the
Valentines and Misery was watching them. Then the next minute, while
they were still busily scratching away with their pens, Misery _wasn’t_
watching them.
“Where’s that cat?” asked Mrs. Claus, as she looked up. She always
called Misery “that cat” and she always pretended that she did not like
him a bit, yet it was Mrs. Claus who had given Misery so much cream
when he was a kitten that it made him fearfully sick, and it was Mrs.
Claus who now had to be watched lest she give him more meat and gravy
than was good for his digestion.
So now she said, “Where’s that cat?” in a tone of great asperity, and
she frowned blackly at the place by the stove where Misery had been but
a moment before.
“Perhaps he’s gone to bed,” said Santa Claus, as he carefully drew a
great flourish under Humpty-Dumpty’s name.
Mrs. Claus got up and went over to the box where Misery slept.
“Not here,” she reported, after rummaging around in it. “Where is that
cat?”
She looked under the stove and in her workbasket and behind the baby’s
cradle. No Misery! She went into Mr. Claus’s bedroom and looked in the
drawer where he kept his best blue shirt. No Misery! She finally went
out into the woodshed and prowled around there in the dark, calling
for Misery. No green eyes appeared. No purring black shape came to rub
against her feet. By this time Mrs. Claus was really alarmed. She flew
back to the kitchen and Santa.
“He’s gone!” she told her little boy.
“Misery?” Santa asked, staring.
“Misery himself,” answered Mrs. Claus.
Santa jumped to his feet and ran around the room, calling the cat.
He ran all over the whole house, looking for Misery. No cat was to
be found, but the twins and Mr. Claus and even the baby woke up at
his racket, and they set up a horrible din at the news of Misery’s
departure. The four boys howled with grief; the baby screamed to keep
them company; Mr. Claus kept shouting, “Great snakes, great snakes,
great snakes,” and, oh, dear, such a time as there was in the Claus
household at that late hour on St. Valentine’s Eve.
Of course, the Clauses kept right on looking for the cat. Mr. Claus,
good soul, even went outdoors in his bare feet (he never had got his
green slippers back since the time of the first Snow Man that year). He
went out into the yard, calling the cat so loudly that if the creature
had been within ear-shot, he would have been frightened away by the
noise. He went into the shop with a candle and poked around in the
shelves and drawers there. (They _had_ found Misery sleeping sweetly
there in a nest of buns one time.) But although they all hunted high
and low for that cat, it soon became apparent that Misery was not to be
found.
It was a sad and sober company that gathered around the kitchen stove
when the search had been abandoned.
“He’s gone,” spoke Mr. Claus in a hollow tone. Mr. Claus looked rather
peculiar in his nightcap and overcoat and bare feet, but nobody noticed
that.
The twins howled again. Santa Claus blinked. Mrs. Claus was seen to rub
her eyes impatiently.
“I knew that cat would get us into some kind of a bother,” she said.
“And the mice,” said Mr. Claus. “I’m afraid that when the cat’s away,
the mice will play.”
“Of course they will,” spoke up Mrs. Claus sharply. “Anybody knows
that.” Then Mrs. Claus looked at the clock and jumped energetically out
of her chair.
“Mercy on us, Mr. Claus,” she exclaimed. “Here it is after nine! What
can we be thinking of to let the children stay up like this?”
With which she gathered her six children up and packed them all off to
bed.
But if you think Santa Claus could go to sleep that night, well, you
just never were the owner of a runaway cat. For Santa could think
of nothing but Misery as he lay in bed. He could see nothing but
Misery’s beautiful green eyes and swaying tail. He could hear nothing
but Misery’s purr, “the bee buzzing inside him,” as he called it. The
Valentines were forgotten, all the fun of the next day was forgotten,
as Santa mourned his lost Misery that night.
But presently he heard a slight noise outside the house. It sounded as
if it were right there by his window. He thought he heard a whisper,
then a tiptoe, then a little hushed-up laugh. For a moment, he was
afraid. It might be Taffy, for Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief,
and came around at night quite often to steal a round of beef. Then he
jeered at himself for being a scaredy-cat and climbed bravely out of
bed. He looked out of the window and saw there--what do you think? Four
hands, two green eyes, and a curly head. It was Jack and Mistress Mary
with Misery in their hands!
“Hey!” screamed Santa Claus excitedly.
Mistress Mary laughed and Jack called out softly “Hello!”
“Hey!” screamed Santa Claus again. He reached out his hands and took
Misery in them. Oh, how nice and warm Misery felt to him. And was the
bee buzzing inside him? Santa Claus put his ear down to the silky black
body. Yes, there it was. Misery was happy too, glad to get home again.
Then the rest of the Clauses came rushing in. A boy can’t shout “Hey!”
in the middle of the night, as Santa Claus had done, without waking
folks up, you know. When they saw the cat, they cried out too. And when
they looked out of the window and saw Mistress Mary and Jack standing
there laughing, they cried out again. At least, Mrs. Claus did.
“Good gracious!” she exclaimed. “Where did you children come from?”
“From old King Cole’s palace,” they told her.
“And what are you doing here?” she asked them.
“We brought Misery back,” they explained.
“Name of goodness,” was all Mrs. Claus could say.
Then Jack and Mistress Mary went around to the front door, came into
the parlor, and the Clauses all gathered around them to hear the story
of the discovery.
“Well, there isn’t much of a story,” said Mistress Mary. “Jack and I
just went up to the palace to see Mother Goose a minute. We wanted to
ask her--something.” She looked warningly at Jack. “And when we got
there, we found them having a party in the throne room. The King and
Mother Goose were dancing a polka, the fiddlers three were playing
their fiddles, and the Queen of Hearts, well, the Queen was asleep, but
her ladies in waiting weren’t, for they were playing games with the
King’s Men--oh, it was quite a party!”
“It must have been,” said Mrs. Claus. She wondered how often the King
indulged in such goings-on while his people were asleep in their beds.
“But the cat,” prompted Santa. “Where did you find the cat?”
“Why, right there,” said Mistress Mary. “Right there.”
“In the King’s palace?” asked Mrs. Claus incredulously. “Our Misery up
at King Cole’s?”
“Yes,” responded Mistress Mary.
“Why, a cat may look at a King, Mrs. Claus,” the baker reminded her.
But Mrs. Claus was flabbergasted.
“Little did I ever think that our cat would go amongst royalty,” she
said.
“Well, he did, anyway,” said Mistress Mary. “And he was having a lovely
time too. I never heard of a cat doing that before, running away to the
king’s, but that’s where your cat was, just the same, for we found him
right there, didn’t we, Jack?”
“We did that,” said Jack.
“Well,” said Mrs. Claus, “I suppose it was too dull for him here, Santa
Claus, with just you and me here in the kitchen. Misery loves company,
you know.”
Then she got up and went to the door.
“I don’t wish to seem unmannerly,” said Mrs. Claus, “but I know you two
children ought to be home and asleep. Does your mother know where you
are, Mistress Mary?”
“We stopped and told her on the way,” replied Mistress Mary, “but we
ought to go now, I know.” Then Mistress Mary went over to Santa. “I
meant to give you a Valentine, Santa Claus,” she said. “I did mean to,
but here it is St. Valentine’s Eve and I haven’t any for you, after
all. I was contrary about it--”
“Why, Mistress Mary,” exclaimed Santa Claus, “you brought Misery back
to me. And Misery’s the very best Valentine I could possibly have.”
Mistress Mary, happy as could be at this, beamed at Santa Claus. Mother
Goose had told her that same thing--that if she took Misery back to his
master, it would be the best Valentine he could have. And now Santa
Claus had said so himself, and everything was all right. She went home
overjoyed, and as Jack walked beside her, he thought what a nice girl
Mistress Mary was when she forgot to be contrary.
It was not until Jack got clear inside the candlestick-shop that
he remembered the Valentine his uncle had given him to take to
Cross-Patch. Then what a sinking feeling he had in his heart. What
would the old candlestick-maker say? How could he have forgotten to
deliver the Valentine when it was the very thing he had been sent out
for? Poor Jack, usually so nimble, so quick, so obedient, could have
thrashed himself for his forgetfulness. He turned around to the door.
Perhaps he could go back now and slip the Valentine under Cross-Patch’s
door. But the candlestick-maker, who had looked as if he were dozing
there on the bench, opened his eyes and spoke to Jack.
“Did ye leave her the Valentine?” he asked.
Jack grew red and began to stammer.
“I’m going--I’m going back--now--” he said.
“Then ye didn’t leave it?” asked the old man.
Oh, dear, how Jack hated to admit his disobedience. The old
candlestick-maker was really such a good uncle to him, and now he had
just gone off and forgotten to do his errand. But he had to answer, for
the old man had his little eyes pinned on him.
“No, sir,” he said hesitatingly. “No, sir, I forgot it, somehow. But
I’ll go back now.”
The old man closed his eyes again for another doze.
“Never ye mind,” he said. “It’s just as well. Don’t believe me and that
old woman would get along very well, anyway.”
III
HOW HUMPTY DUMPTY WENT TO THE KING’S PARTY
It was the fourteenth of March and there was a great stir and bustle
in Pudding Lane. The ladies, in curl papers, were washing and ironing
and mending like women possessed; the men hustled about their work
at topmost speed; even the children had no time for play, but were
busy running errands, taking baths, helping their mothers, fast and
furiously.
And what was the reason for all this industry? Why, the day of the
month was the reason. But perhaps you don’t know what the fourteenth
of March stands for; I have met children who didn’t. The fourteenth
of March is Old King Cole’s birthday, and on this particular day the
merry old soul was going to have a party in the palace, to which he had
invited every single person in Pudding Lane.
“I declare,” said Mrs. Claus suddenly, as she rushed about her tiny
house with even more energy than ever, “I declare, I forgot all about
Humpty Dumpty!”
She looked up at the baker, who was baking--well, it’s a secret what
Mr. Claus was baking, and a surprise, so I think I’d better not tell
even you what it was. “Well,” went on Mrs. Claus, “I _am_ be-twittered,
or I never should have forgotten Humpty Dumpty, Mr. Claus.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” agreed Mr. Claus, adding an extra flourish to
the--well, to _it_.
Mrs. Claus ran to the door.
“Santa,” she called, “run right down to the Dumpties’ and see who’s
going to sit up with Humpty to-night. I clean forgot about him. Tell
Mrs. Dumpty I’ll sit myself, if nobody else has offered.”
Mr. Claus looked up in alarm.
“You’d never miss the birthday party to sit up with Humpty Dumpty,
would you?” he asked.
“I would if there was nobody else to sit up with him,” replied his wife
stoutly, though in her heart she did hope she would not have to miss
the King’s birthday party, for she had made herself a fine new yellow
waist, had Mrs. Claus, and she was expecting to make quite a sensation
in it.
“Dear me,” said Mr. Claus, “I don’t want to go to the party alone with
five children, Mrs. Claus.”
“Well, you may have to,” was his wife’s comforting reply. “Poor Humpty
Dumpty! He’s a public charge, Mr. Claus, what with having no father,
and I’m not the one to neglect him, I’m really not.”
Mrs. Claus, for all her tart speech, _was_ a good soul, wasn’t she?
It’s not hard to see where Santa Claus got his kind heart.
But when Santa came back from the Dumpties’, it was to report that
Jack and Jill, who lived in the Dumpty block, had offered to stay
with the invalid while Mrs. Dumpty disported herself with royalty for
one evening. Jack, who still had his crown bandaged up, and Jill, who
wore a patch on her cheek even now, had painful memories of their own
tumble, you see, and so naturally felt most sympathetic toward poor
Humpty in his misfortune.
“Why, bless their little hearts,” said Mrs. Claus, “aren’t they good
children? I never would have thought it of that tomboy Jill, to be
frank with you.”
After which display of candor, Mrs. Claus went on with her ironing
and mending, to the end that the Clauses should make a respectable
appearance before Old King Cole and the Queen of Hearts.
But even if Mrs. Dumpty were going to the party, her heart felt heavy
about it, poor soul. For there sat her Humpty, confined to his chair,
the most dejected of boys. And who wouldn’t have been dejected under
those circumstances? This was the first time that Old King Cole had
ever celebrated his birthday with the humble people of Pudding Lane.
Once the King of France had come for that great occasion, and Mother
Goose was often invited to share his birthday cake, but until to-day
the people of Pudding Lane had never been invited for the festivity.
And such an occasion as this was going to be too! There was to be a
supper two hours long; there was to be music from London; there was to
be a Punch-and-Judy show; but wonder of all wonders, there was to be
a trained bear! All this, not to mention the surprise that Mr. Claus
was baking. Oh, dear, Humpty Dumpty did wish he could walk up the hill
to the palace. If he just could! Or if somebody could carry him. But,
alas, it was impossible. Humpty was too heavy, the hill was too steep.
So that all the poor boy could do was to sit in his chair and think,
think, think and wish, wish, wish.
Mrs. Dumpty came in when she was dressed and looked at him anxiously.
“You know Jack and Jill are only going to stay until you fall asleep,”
she told him. “It wouldn’t be right to ask them to miss all of the
party.”
“Oh, no,” replied Humpty, but he could not, for the life of him, look
as cheerful as he wanted to.
“Poor boy,” said Mrs. Dumpty. Then she added with sudden conviction,
“I’m not going at all. I’m not going. I shall stay right here with you.”
But Humpty protested so vigorously that Mrs. Dumpty finally yielded to
his entreaties. It _would_ be disrespectful to the King to stay home,
she admitted, though she certainly didn’t feel very partyfied, she
added. Then she asked Humpty if he liked her beads, and Humpty told her
he liked them very much, though what that boy knew about beads was very
little, I suspect.
“I always did like a red bead,” said Mrs. Dumpty. “Good-by, darling
Humpty. I’ll bring you a piece of birthday cake, whether or no.”
I don’t believe Pudding Lane ever saw anything half so grand as that
party at Old King Cole’s palace. There were flowers and music, fruits
and confections, jewelry and satins, all mixed up, until it made your
head swim.
The King and Queen stood up to receive their guests in the most cordial
manner possible. It was true that the Queen of Hearts could think
of nothing else to say but “And how are you this evening?” and then
didn’t listen as the good, honest people of Pudding Lane started to
tell her in great detail just exactly how they were that evening. It
is equally true that Old King Cole laughed immoderately, no matter
what anybody said, and that he even laughed at Mrs. Dumpty when she
tearfully offered Humpty’s regrets,--behavior that made that devoted
mother highly indignant. But that was just Old King Cole’s way of
being pleasant; and it was certainly much better than folding your
arms and frowning prodigiously, as the butcher did; or pulling a
long, melancholy face, like the baker; or bowing and jerking forward
incessantly, as the candlestick-maker seemed to think it necessary to
do. There are all kinds of ways of being polite, but it does seem as
if the butcher and the baker and the candlestick-maker might have
selected more winning methods.
“Dear me, Mr. Claus,” said Mrs. Grundy, coming up to him as he stood
between his neighbors, the picture of dismal woe, “is it such a sad
occasion as that?”
Mr. Claus jumped and looked at her even more solemnly than ever, and
the butcher glared ferociously at her, and the candlestick-maker,
bowing low, bumped the good lady’s fan out of her hand.
“Mercy on us!” ejaculated Mrs. Grundy. “Somebody rescue me from these
creatures.”
Whereupon up came Jack Spratt to offer her his arm.
“There’s lean meat on the banquet table,” he whispered. “Come, let’s
have some of it.”
So Mrs. Grundy disappeared on the arm of the accomplished Jack Spratt
as Mr. Claus watched them enviously.
“I wonder how he does it,” thought the baker to himself. Poor Mr.
Claus, he was but a humble fellow, more at home with his pies and cakes
than in such brilliant company as this.
Mrs. Claus, however, was no dullard in society, for she could speak her
mind to anybody, and was even now telling the Queen of Hearts how she
had made that yellow waist she wore out of just one yard and an eighth
of cloth, not counting the cuffs. Santa, too, was having a fine time
with all the other children, Bo-Peep, Jack Horner, Little Miss Muffett,
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and all the rest.
Yes, they were all having a delightful time at Old King Cole’s party.
Even Simple Simon felt at home in the palace, as he went happily about,
eating and drinking, smiling and nodding. He even danced a bit, did
Simple Simon, and did not seem to mind at all that while he was doing
the polka, everybody else, including his partner, was dancing a waltz.
But his partner minded, I can tell you, and if any little girl wants to
have her toes stepped on and her shoes completely spoiled, just let her
try to dance with Simple Simon as Polly Flinders did on that night of
the fourteenth of March.
At last, when everybody had danced a little, and eaten and drunk
quite a lot, and talked some, and stared at all the trappings of
the palace a great deal, at last it came time for the trained bear.
At the announcement the little boys yelled with delight, the little
girls shivered, the mothers and fathers sat up importantly and looked
exceedingly brave.
For this was no common bear, but a noted beast from London who had
made that great city laugh and gasp many a night with his antics and
tricks. And here he came! Oh, how funny he was, that bear. The way he
walked was funny, as he ambled slowly in, straight past the King and
Queen without so much as a glance at their royal personages. The way
he looked was funny, as his little eyes glimmered from their depth of
brown fur, and he yawned softly in the most bored fashion possible. The
way he acted was funny, too, and the children screamed as he put up one
paw and slowly rubbed his nose, for all the world like a meditative old
man.
But his tricks were funnier still, and as Tubby Tim, the old bear
trainer, cracked his whip and shouted his commands, the children of
Pudding Lane, and the grown-ups, too, thought they had never seen such
a remarkable bear. As indeed, they had not, never having seen any bear
at all before.
“Up, Bumbo, old boy!” shouted Tubby Tim, and the bear stood on his hind
legs.
“Waltz, Bumbo! One, two, three!” ordered Tubby Tim, and lo, the bear
was swaying around on his hind feet in a waltz that nobody would
have been ashamed of. In truth, Polly Flinders was thinking to herself
that she’d a great deal rather dance with the bear than with Simple
Simon.
[Illustration: _No Lady Wind was that. No dog either. But a bear that
stood before her. Page 43._]
But at last, when the old bear had roared loud and alarmingly at the
children (who stopped laughing then), when he had stood on his head
and shown his teeth and rolled a hoop and done a great many other
astounding things, Tubby Tim said abruptly, “That’s all”, and led him
out. But the party wasn’t over yet by a good deal, for there was still
the puppet show, which Tubby Tim now started to make ready.
Jack and Jill and Humpty Dumpty down in the Dumpty house meanwhile were
having a quiet little game of “Button, button” when they heard a noise
at the door.
“What’s that?” asked Jack.
“The Lady Wind,” answered Jill. “March is her month, you know.”
“It sounds more like a dog than a lady,” said Jack.
“Ho, ho,” scoffed Jill, “you don’t even know wind when you hear it.”
With which Miss Jill flounced to the door and flung it wide open.
But goodness, what was that in the doorway? No Lady Wind was that.
No dog either. But a _bear_ that stood before her, yellow-eyed and
open-mouthed!
“Oh!” gasped Jill faintly.
“Oh, oh!” breathed Jack and Humpty together.
The bear ambled into the room.
“Run,” cried Jack to Jill. “Run upstairs and shut the door tight, or
he’ll eat you!”
“But he’ll eat you too! Come along,” whispered Jill.
Then they both looked at Humpty Dumpty, who sat quaking and white in
his chair. For Humpty could not run, of course, and he saw himself a
fine meal for that open mouth.
“No, we must stay with Humpty,” said Jill, shivering with fear.
“Of course,” answered Jack, trembling.
“Perhaps if we all fight him, we can get him out,” suggested Jill.
“Yes, come on, let’s fight him,” replied Jack.
“I can’t fight,” said Humpty from his chair, “but I can glare mighty
hard. I’ll glare at him, Jill.”
“Yes, you glare, Humpty Dumpty,” said Jill encouragingly.
Jack by this time had rolled up his sleeves, ready for battle, and
Jill, flinging back the hair from her eyes, rushed at the bear
headlong. But what was that bear doing, anyway, if he were not rubbing
against Jill’s knees with the affection of an old family cat? What
was he pawing at her so softly, so gently for, if it were not because
he wanted her to play with him? Why did he look up at her with those
funny little yellow eyes, if it were not to reassure her as to his good
intentions?
“Why,” cried Jill, “I believe he’s a pet bear!”
“I think he is!” answered Jack.
“I wonder if he’d like to be patted,” ventured Humpty, putting a timid
hand on Bumbo’s back. The bear dropped on his back and pawed playfully
in the air.
“He does want to play,” cried Humpty Dumpty.
What a fine playfellow he was, too, that Bumbo bear, as the three
children romped with him there in Mrs. Dumpty’s back parlor. How he
rolled and pawed and growled--just a pretend-growl, though; you could
tell he didn’t mean a thing by it. How he tumbled and jumped and
trotted around the room. He even seemed to understand that Humpty could
not play as the other children could, but went to Humpty’s chair and
nosed and pawed around so amusingly that the poor invalid quite forgot
himself in his delight.
The Punch-and-Judy show was meanwhile progressing at the palace, and
Judy had just given Punch a mighty cuff on the cheek, to the infinite
pleasure of the audience, when Mr. Claus, who had laughed until the
tears came, began to fish for his pocket handkerchief. But, as he
fished, his eye was arrested by a startling vision at the door.
“Great snakes!” he roared suddenly.
Tubby Tim dropped his puppets and everybody looked up quickly.
“Saints preserve us!” shrieked Mrs. Grundy.
And immediately there arose such a bellowing and crying, such a
tumbling of chairs and confusion of figures, as to make Old King Cole’s
birthday party look like a riot instead. Mr. Horner was seen to throw
off his coat in great haste, Simple Simon began to call loudly and
insistently for help, Mrs. Dumpty started to faint, then thought better
of it, and came to again. As for the Queen of Hearts, that royal lady
straightway went into a fine fit of hysterics, deportment which she
considered highly becoming to queens in time of stress.
And what do you suppose was the cause of all this uproar? What was this
vision in the doorway that had suddenly set all of Pudding Lane to
screaming and bawling?
It was nothing more than our friend Bumbo, who stood in the doorway
blinking soberly, with Humpty Dumpty on his back and Jack and Jill on
each side of him. Which, you’ll have to admit, was pretty much of a
surprise for people who had supposed that the bear was snoozing in the
pantry; and which looked indeed like a dangerous business to folks that
didn’t know what a very friendly bear Bumbo was.
But so smiling and serene were those three children, so extremely
placid was Bumbo himself, that it finally became apparent that there
was really nothing to howl about. And so at last the noise did subside
somewhat, save for the exceedingly loud sniffling of Jill’s mother, who
was having a little weep all to herself, and quite naturally too.
Then Jill explained the business.
“He was such a friendly bear,” she ended, nodding brightly at Tubby
Tim, “so well-trained, that Jack and I thought there would be nothing
easier than to bring Humpty up here on his back. And it was; it was as
easy as pie. And here he is.”
But Mr. Claus had started up suddenly at the mention of “pie” and
bolted through the assemblage and out of the door. Old King Cole looked
over at Mrs. Claus in a rather annoyed manner.
“What’s happened now, Mrs. Claus?” he asked crustily. “Is your husband
ill, perhaps?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know, your Majesty,” replied Mrs. Claus, who, if the
truth must be told, was deeply ashamed of her husband’s odd company
manners. “He was all right when we left home,” and to herself she
muttered that it wasn’t her fault if the man acted like a zany. Do you
know what a zany is? Well, Mrs. Claus didn’t either, but she supposed
it was some kind of animal, and she liked to apply the word to Mr.
Claus in what she called his “off” moments.
But bless you, it was Mrs. Claus who was having the off moment this
time, for what the baker had gone for was the secret, a thing that
everybody had completely forgotten in the hubbub and excitement. So
that not only Old King Cole, but everybody else was surprised when Mr.
Claus came strutting back with it, the secret, in his hands. When they
did see it, they remembered again, and all started to sing a verse that
Mrs. Grundy had composed for the occasion, which began, “Sing a song of
sixpence, pocket full of rye.” And now you know, don’t you, what the
surprise was that Mr. Claus had baked for Old King Cole’s birthday? And
sure enough, when that merry old soul cut open his birthday pie, out
flew the four and twenty blackbirds and began to sing; and, as Mrs.
Grundy said, was that not a dainty dish to set before a king?
Old King Cole thought it was. He was the most surprised and delighted
man you ever saw, and as the birds flew around the room and sang, he
became more charmed and bewildered than ever, so that he really was in
no condition to make a speech when the people called for one. But he
arose just the same and, taking off his crown, fumbled nervously with
it, as he tried to think of something to say. His people the meanwhile
beamed loyally at him, so happy that they had really pleased Old King
Cole, who was always doing something to please them.
“Friends,” began the King, “I am deeply obliged--” Then he stopped and
burst into a hearty laugh, which rang and reverberated down the great
halls and rooms of the palace until the building almost shook.
And that was as far as Old King Cole ever got, for every time he’d try
to sober down and go on with the speech, laughter overcame him, until
at last all the people there began to laugh just to see him. They
roared, they shook, they rocked with laughter, did those good people of
Pudding Lane, until it began to look as if they would never get their
faces straight again, never get their breath again, never stop holding
their sides. Even the butcher left off frowning, the baker stopped
looking dismal, the candlestick-maker ceased bowing, as they all
laughed there together. And of course Jack and Jill laughed, and Humpty
Dumpty, too, for they were the ones to whom it was the most fun of all,
because they were the ones who had nearly missed the party.
And let me tell you something. The bear laughed too. He didn’t make
a noise about it, and he didn’t shake, but there was a look in his
eye that was plainly a look of laughter, and there was a twist to his
mouth, as he stood there by Tubby Tim’s legs, that was unmistakably a
grin. Yes, Bumbo laughed too. And if anybody wants to know, he laughed
many times after that as he thought of King Cole’s birthday party and
of his part in the whole performance. For, of course, if Bumbo had not
trotted off adventuring as he did, Humpty Dumpty would never have got
to the party, and if--oh, well, he did go trotting off, so what’s the
use of if-ing about it?
IV
SIMPLE SIMON HAS HIS DAY
It had seemed to the children of Pudding Lane that April Fool’s Day
would never, never come, they had been waiting for it so long; and
now that it had come, blest if it wasn’t raining pitchforks, as Mrs.
Claus said. And blest if it wasn’t. It really did look like pitchforks,
that rain, as it came slanting down in sharp, shining spears, splash,
splash, splash, as fast as it could come. It really looked as if the
sun would never shine in Pudding Lane again, for surely no sun would
be foolish enough even to try to break through all that darkness and
wetness and gloom.
And so, if you had been a frog in a puddle on Pudding Lane that
morning, you would have seen noses pressed tight against every window
there and disappointed eyes fastened sadly on the rainy world outside.
You might even have seen rain in those eyes themselves, though I
wouldn’t be positive of that. That roundish nose there against the
first window was Humpty Dumpty’s; the turned-up one was Jill’s; the
straight little pretty one was Miss Muffett’s; all those pert affairs
sticking out of the buttonholes of the Shoe were no others than the
noses of the children of the Old Woman Who Lived there.
The only nose that was not plastered against a window was Simple
Simon’s and the reason that Simple Simon’s nose was not there was
because Simple Simon himself was out in the rain, and his nose was with
him. Yes, that foolish fellow was standing in front of the butcher
shop, and as composedly as if it were the sun, and not the rain, that
was beating down on his head. But why was he holding that long thick
rope so carefully in his right hand? And what was that tiny object on
the walk to which his eyes were directed so intently?
That object seemed to be a purse, a very, very small purse--oh, now we
know what poor Simple Simon thought he was doing, don’t we? He thought
he was going to fool somebody with that old, old trick. He thought
somebody would come along pretty soon, stoop to pick up the pocketbook,
and that he, the clever Simon, would jerk it out of reach. He could
see now, in his mind’s eye, how silly the somebody would look, and
he snickered there to himself at the mere thought of that delicious
moment. Oh, Simon, Simon! As if anybody with half an eye would not have
seen the rope long before he saw the wee pocketbook. As if anybody
would have been apt to come strolling along in the rain, anyway! Ah,
me, I’m afraid Simple Simon’s wits do not improve much with the years.
Well, it kept on raining and Simple Simon kept on standing there and
the rest of the Pudding Lane children kept on looking forlornly at
the rain, when whirr, swish, plop,--down dropped Mother Goose on the
gander’s back, directly in front of Simple Simon. Simple Simon wrenched
his eyes a moment from the purse to smile swiftly and delightedly at
the beloved old lady, who now hardly looked like herself, so drenched
and dripping was she.
“Good morning, Simon,” said Mother Goose, as the gander shook a shower
of water from his back.
Simon’s smile waxed wider.
“Morning, mum,” he answered with a bow, then straightened up and sent
his eyes flying back to the purse. He didn’t want anybody to come along
and pick it up when he wasn’t looking, you see! Mother Goose regarded
him curiously for a moment.
“Fooling somebody, Simple Simon?” she asked.
“Yes’m,” replied Simple Simon gleefully.
Mother Goose laughed softly.
“Well, I guess it’s Simple Simon you’re fooling,” she said, and ran
into the Clauses’ next door.
Simple Simon meditated a while over what Mother Goose had just said
and was highly pleased. How funny that was, he thought, to be fooling
yourself! For, of course, Simple Simon did not mind in the least being
the butt of his own joke. And if he didn’t mind, I suppose we needn’t.
Only it does seem like a queer kind of April Fool’s trick to go to all
that trouble just to fool yourself, doesn’t it?
Inside the cozy little kitchen at the Clauses’ Mother Goose dried her
clothes and visited comfortably with her daughter, Mrs. Claus, and the
rest of the family.
“My goodness, Santa,” she exclaimed, “you _are_ a long-faced little
boy! And the twins! Why, what can be the matter with these children,
Nellie?” She turned to her daughter, “Are they ill?”
“It’s April Fool’s Day, Mother Goose,” spoke up little Santa.
“I know that,” replied his grandmother promptly. “And I, for one, think
that the Weather Man has done a fine job of fooling all you children.”
Santa Claus looked up surprised.
“Do you suppose that’s why he sent the rain?” he asked Mother Goose.
“Not a doubt of it in the world,” answered the old lady vigorously.
“The Weather Man has to have a little fun, you know. And I’ll venture
he’s laughing fit to kill at the sight of your doleful chops.”
Here Mother Goose laughed merrily, and Santa Claus tried manfully to
laugh too; but it’s hard to laugh when the joke’s on you, and I’m
afraid he didn’t make a very good job of it.
“Maybe he’ll fool you again and send the sun pretty soon,” suggested
Mrs. Claus. She felt pretty sorry for the children, did Mrs. Claus, and
she was surprised that Mother Goose did not seem more sympathetic.
“Nonsense,” said Mother Goose tartly. “I say, you people are
serious-minded folk for such a day as April Fool’s. You must take a
joke better than this, you know, or you’ll spoil the Weather Man’s
fun entirely. Why, I shall be ashamed to show my face up there at the
Weather Man’s house if he thinks my grandchildren don’t know how to
take a joke!”
“Are you going up to see the Weather Man?” asked Mrs. Claus.
“I’m on my way there now,” Mother Goose told her.
“And what about the Man in the Moon?” asked Mrs. Claus, smirking at the
baker, who tried his best to smirk back.
“The Man in the Moon is suffering a temporary eclipse,” replied the old
lady sharply, at which Mrs. Claus and Mr. Claus both laughed heartily,
and Santa wondered what kind of disease an eclipse was, and if it hurt
as much as the mumps did.
“As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives, Mr. Claus,”
said Mother Goose casually to her son-in-law.
Mr. Claus jumped out of his chair.
“Seven wives!” he exclaimed. “Great snakes, Mother Goose, seven wives!
Why, what would a man want with _seven_ of ’em--that is--oh, dear,
seven!” Clearly Mr. Claus was greatly agitated over this piece of news.
“But they weren’t his wives, Mr. Claus,” added Mother Goose. “They
were his brothers’ wives. Ha, ha, April Fool!” cried Mother Goose. At
which she and Mrs. Claus and the children shouted with delight, as poor
Mr. Claus grinned foolishly and wished he hadn’t been so quick to bite
at Mother Goose’s bait.
But while all this was going on in the Clauses’ house, Simple Simon was
playing another joke all by himself outside. For it had occurred to him
that it would be the best possible fun to play a joke on old Mother
Goose herself. And so, what did Simple Simon do but step softly around
to the shed where the old lady had left her gander? What did he do but
take that gander and carry him into The-House-that-Jack-Built, that big
uninhabited house a few doors away? What did he do but hide the gander
there and then come out on to Pudding Lane again, looking as wicked and
proud of himself as you please?
“Well,” said Mother Goose, when she went out to the shed and found that
the gander was not there, “this is a pretty pickle.”
Mrs. Claus agreed that it was a pretty pickle, but Mr. Claus differed a
bit with the ladies and called it a “fine how-do-you-do.” Anyway what
they all meant was that it wasn’t a pretty pickle, or even a fine
how-do-you-do, but that it was instead a very serious thing for Mother
Goose to lose her gander. So they started straightway to hunt the
gander, but although they searched and searched and called and called
that bird, they could not find him in all of Pudding Lane. And at last
they came back to the house, drenched with rain, and sat down in a
gloomy circle around the stove.
“Whatever will you do without the gander, Mother Goose?” asked Mrs.
Claus.
“Do?” repeated Mother Goose with some asperity. “Well, I’ll just stay
here the rest of my days, I suppose. I certainly can’t fly around the
world with nothing to fly on, can I?”
“But what will the Weather Man think when you don’t appear for your
visit?”
“Goodness only knows,” answered Mother Goose. “He’ll think something,
you may be sure. And we’ll know soon enough what he thinks. If he’s
angry, he might even send a tornado. Oh, don’t shiver now, baker. It
hasn’t struck us yet. What _is_ coming over that bird? He acts like a
loon sometimes. I really think I’ll have to get myself a fine turkey
gobbler to ride on. They have more sense than ganders.”
Mother Goose would not have scolded and fussed like this at the
poor absent gander had she known what a flutter that bird was in
himself. For the gander had not run away at all, but had been taken
by Simple Simon entirely against his will, and now as he stood in
The-House-that-Jack-Built, tied fast to a bedpost, his were harsh
and desperate thoughts. To think that he had been tricked like this
by that absurd Simple Simon, he of all fowls the most trustworthy,
the most sagacious. Tied to a bedpost indeed! What humiliation, what
degradation! The poor gander squirmed and writhed with the bitter shame
of it; but he might as well have stood still, for he was tied with that
very rope Simple Simon had used for his other joke, and that rope, as
we know, was a very substantial affair, such as no mere gander could
break.
But while Mother Goose fussed and the gander squirmed, one person was
laughing aloud at the fun of it all, and that person was, of course,
Simple Simon. He could hardly contain himself as he stood there in the
rain and thought about it. And to tell the truth, Mother Goose and Mr.
Claus _had_ looked pretty funny as they ran down Pudding Lane, calling
the gander. Mother Goose, indeed, always looked funny when she ran,
for the good old lady was so accustomed to riding that she took very
ill to running. But when she ran in a rainstorm, as she did on this
day, she was just a little more ridiculous than ever, with her long
skirts wound damply around her legs, her glasses streaming with water,
her feet in Mr. Claus’s enormous rubber boots which sloshed, sloshed,
sloshed.
As for Mr. Claus, he was not quite so funny until you noticed the
cascade of rain that came spouting down on his nose through a hole in
his umbrella, and then he became very funny indeed. And the really
ludicrous thing about that was that the more Mr. Claus tried to dodge
the waterfall, the faster it came through the hole; and the more he
shifted the umbrella around, the more accurately did the waterfall
strike him on the very tip-tip of his nose. Yes, that was very amusing,
and Simple Simon laughed himself weak now as he remembered it. All the
other children at the windows had laughed at the sight too, though they
did not know why Mr. Claus and Mother Goose were out in the rain like
that. They had paid no attention to Simon and his tricks. Nobody ever
did.
Up in his home the Weather Man was becoming decidedly worried at the
non-arrival of his expected guest, Mother Goose, and he confessed to
the Weather Woman, his wife, that he was afraid something was terribly,
terribly wrong.
“She always keeps her engagements,” he said. “She is a most punctual
woman.”
“Perhaps she is ill,” suggested the Weather Woman.
“She’s never been ill in her life,” said the Weather Man.
“No sign she never will be,” retorted the Weather Woman.
Just then the Weather Girl and the Weather Boy came in, those two hardy
children of the Weather Man.
“Where’s Mother Goose?” they demanded.
“Not here,” replied the Weather Man.
“Didn’t come,” said the Weather Woman.
“Not here! Didn’t come!” repeated the Weather Children. “Why, what’s
the matter? Is the rain too much for her?”
The Weather Man looked thoughtful at this suggestion, then turned to
his wife.
“Weather Woman,” he addressed her, “do you suppose that this rain could
possibly be the reason for Mother Goose’s failure to appear?”
“I shouldn’t wonder a bit,” replied the Weather Woman. “You know how
those earth-people are about rain. I declare, sometimes I think they’ll
never get used to it, the way they carry umbrellas in the rain, and
wear waterproofs against it, and stay at home because of it, as if a
little water once in a while would hurt the dear creatures!”
“Well,” spoke the Weather Man, “if that’s the reason that Mother
Goose hasn’t come, we’ll have to stop the rain, that’s all. Weather
Children,” he ordered, “kindly shut off the rain and turn on the sun.
Perhaps we’ve fooled the children of Pudding Lane long enough, anyway.”
So that is how it happened that three minutes later, Pudding Lane found
itself bathed in clear, sparkling sunshine which left no sign of the
previous rain except the puddles in the street, the gently dripping
trees, and some little ruffled-up birds, who shook themselves furiously
in the sun and sang loud songs of thanksgiving that the downpour was
over. And that is how it happened that all the children came tumbling
out of their homes pell-mell as they did and began fooling each other
as fast as ever they could to make up for lost time.
Such jokes as those children played too! There was Handy-Spandy,
Jack-a-Dandy, for example, who really was such easy prey it was
almost too bad to fool him. For when Santa Claus offered the greedy
fellow a nice plum cake, or what looked like a plum cake, Handy-Spandy
just grabbed it and sank his teeth into it without a single
question--without even much of a thank-you, though I guess that mumble
in his throat was meant for a thank-you. And when he bit down into the
cake, oh, how the children screamed, for it wasn’t a plum cake at all,
but a cotton cake, which Mr. Claus had made especially for the children
to fool Handy with on that first day of April.
They fooled Santa Claus too, telling him that Judy wanted him down at
the Shoe; but when Santa ran as fast as he could run down to the shoe,
there was nothing waiting there for him but a big sign which said,
“April Fool, Santa!” Which did surprise that little boy vastly, for he
had forgotten he could be fooled, so busy was he trying to fool other
people.
The children had a good deal of fun with Tom, Tom, the piper’s son, for
when he wasn’t looking, Johnny Bo-Peep pinned a big card on Tom’s back
which read, “Please to kick me, my dears!” And then when the children
proceeded to obey the injunction, poor Tom looked so bewildered and
foolish that it almost seemed as if that were the very funniest joke of
all.
Oh, everybody was fooled good and plenty, and great was the noise,
the laughter and shouting. And at last, when all the tricks had been
exhausted, and when the children were exhausted too, out came Mother
Goose from the Clauses’ house.
“I say,” she cried to the children, who had surrounded her until you
couldn’t see a thing of her but the tip of her pointed hat, “I say, I
know somebody you haven’t fooled!”
Oh, was there still somebody to fool? Delightful!
“Yes,” went on Mother Goose, “we can still fool somebody else. We
can still fool the gander, children! For he’s run off to fool us, I
suppose, and now if we find him, it’ll be a joke on the silly bird, you
see.”
So they started out on the great search for the gander, all of them,
scattered in every direction. And what of Simple Simon? Well, Simple
Simon was just as pleased as he could possibly be over the whole
affair, for now that he had fooled Mother Goose by hiding her gander,
he was perfectly willing to fool the gander by bringing him back to
Mother Goose. You see, he was so simple that he didn’t comprehend that
to bring the gander back would not really fool him at all. So into
The-House-that-Jack-Built trotted Simple Simon, chuckling jovially at
the whole affair, and out he came again in half a minute, leading the
dejected old gander behind him.
“Bless me,” said Mother Goose, when she caught sight of the gander,
“here he is. Why, Simple Simon, you are a fine fellow, indeed you are.”
Simple Simon, no longer able to contain himself, laughed outright.
“I did fool you, after all, didn’t I?” he asked proudly. “I hid the
gander, Mother Goose,” he went on excitedly, “and you never guessed it
at all.”
And there the absurd fellow had given the whole thing away! Oh, how the
children enjoyed that joke, and how Mother Goose laughed too. But above
all the racket could be heard Simple Simon’s great guffaws celebrating
his own wit and smartness, like the simpleton he was.
V
MRS. CLAUS HAS A GREAT HONOR
Mrs. Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater was briskly shaking out her best
parlor rug in her back garden one fine May day when flap, flap, clack,
clack, came a noise to her ears.
“Bless me,” said the tiny lady, looking up, “if Mrs. Dumpty isn’t at it
too.”
True enough, the mother of Humpty was likewise in her back garden,
beating a rug, and as Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater looked to the other side of
her, she discovered that Jill’s mother was doing precisely the same
thing. Then she saw that the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe was shaking
out _her_ rugs too, and so were Mrs. Grundy and Mrs. Claus, the mother
of Santa,--why, all of Pudding Lane was shaking out its rugs at that
very minute! Which was not so strange, when you consider that this was
the first day of May, which, as anybody knows, means house-cleaning
to any right-thinking woman. But the first of May means also a Maypole
and a May Queen and baskets of flowers on the door knobs. And now we’re
coming to the really sad part of this story.
For it did look as if house-cleaning this year were going to crowd out
May Day in Pudding Lane completely. Always before, while the mothers
of Pudding Lane were cleaning their houses, Mother Goose had come to
give the children their May Day, so that they had never missed it. But
this year Mother Goose had gone to a house party at the Frosts’, Jack
and his wife, you know, who do a good deal of entertaining in their
slack season. And so, since Mother Goose was not there and the mothers
of Pudding Lane were so busy with house-cleaning, it did look very
doubtful about the Maypole.
The children, Bo-Peep, Jack Horner, Polly Flinders, Jack and Jill and
Santa Claus, were talking about it in Santa Claus’s shed that very
morning.
“They could house-clean to-morrow. I wouldn’t mind living in a dirty
house one more day,” ruminated Jack.
“I wouldn’t mind it forever,” spoke up Jill. Which was probably true,
for Jill was not the tidiest little girl in the world.
Then Simple Simon jumped up quite suddenly and began to dance, throwing
his long legs gleefully around and laughing as he did so,--quite a
spectacle, I can assure you. Even the children, who were used to his
queer ways, were astonished, and they were still more astonished when
he abruptly sat down, and drawing them all close about him on the shed
floor, began to tell them a wonderful secret, in a whispering voice so
full of “shishes” and “shushes” they could hardly hear what he said.
And as soon as Simple Simon had finished, the children all jumped to
their feet and ran off together, so that in another moment not one of
them was to be seen in Pudding Lane. Their mothers did not even miss
them, so deep were they in the business of house-cleaning.
A deadly earnest business it was too. You could see by the way Mrs.
Dumpty pressed her lips together that this was no laughing matter.
You could tell by the set of Mother Hubbard’s jaw that she’d see this
affair through to the finish, come what would. And as for the tiny Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater, well, although her rug was three times as big as she
was, and she herself was only one third as big as she ought to have
been, she shook that offending piece of carpet as if to shake its very
red roses off, and I think she would have loosened a petal or two, if
they had been any but woolen roses.
But if all this were deadly serious to those excellent housewives
themselves, it was an even grimmer business for their husbands. If ever
a man is miserable, it is during spring house-cleaning, and already on
this day uncomfortable things had begun to happen to the men of Pudding
Lane. Mr. Claus, for one, had risen to find the kitchen table upside
down in the back garden and had been forced to eat his breakfast from
the window sill, no good way to start the day, certainly. But it was
rather worse for Jack Spratt, who got no breakfast at all. Mrs. Spratt
simply told him she couldn’t be bothered, unless, she added, he’d “do
with a piece of fat meat”, which of course, being the man he was, he
_couldn’t_ do with.
Mr. Horner, poor man, slipped on a piece of wet soap which was on the
kitchen floor--though it certainly had no business there--and nearly
broke his neck. And Peter, Peter, Pumpkin-Eater was forced to appear in
public in his shirt sleeves, because, when he had marched to his old
peg that morning to fetch his coat as usual, it was to discover that
not only had the coat disappeared, but the peg had too--which shows how
far things had gone in the pumpkin shell that morning.
But the most miserable of all men in Pudding Lane that day was Old
King Cole, the merry old soul himself. It does seem as if a King ought
not be bothered with such unpleasant affairs as house-cleaning. But
Old King Cole was bothered, for the Queen of Hearts was nothing if
she was not a good housekeeper. Consequently, the king had awakened
that morning to find carpets up and curtains down, furniture stacked,
dishes, brushes, paint cans, brooms, buckets everywhere, and the Queen,
her royal head in a dust cap, chasing the servants about in what looked
like a mad game of tag.
Moreover, as the Queen was having the throne regilded and the chairs
all resilvered, poor Old King Cole had to stand up all the time, unless
he chose to sit on wet paint, which he didn’t. And worse than that, he
had to stand perfectly still too, for when he tried to walk, he found
himself stumbling over mattresses, crashing into glass dishes, stepping
into buckets of water, and slipping on wet paint brushes. My goodness,
how uncomfortable he was, standing there in the midst of all that
higgledy-piggledy, while the Queen and the fiddlers three and all the
king’s men rushed insanely around, never once looking at him.
His legs soon began to ache dreadfully; his head buzzed with the noise.
He called for his pipe. Nobody paid the least attention. He called for
his bowl. It was not brought. He called for his fiddlers three. They
leaped up to him, made deep hurried bows, offered their apologies, and
were off to help the Queen of Hearts again, who at that moment was at
the top of a stepladder, wrestling with a curtain rod.
“This is enough,” said Old King Cole bitterly to himself, and, smashing
through the glass dishes, paint buckets and wet mops on the floor, he
bounded out of the throne room and through the front door. Old King
Cole had run away from home and family. Not that the Queen of Hearts
cared in the least. In fact, as she saw her liege lord departing, she
was heard to murmur something about “good riddance”, hardly the way to
speak of a king, I should think. Then she continued battling with that
curtain rod with the greatest relish in the world. There’s something
about a curtain rod that makes women--well, anyway, the Queen of Hearts
was certainly enjoying herself, that was evident.
He ran and ran, did Old King Cole, and he didn’t know in the least
where he was going, and finally, being fat, he just had to stop for
breath. So he did. And then he saw that, although he had been running a
long time, he really hadn’t run far at all, having gone in a circle, as
people so often do when they think they’re going straight.
“Fiddlesticks,” said Old King Cole. “I thought I’d be halfway to Dover
by this time.”
Dover? Dover? What was he going to Dover for, do you suppose? Could it
be that Old King Cole had reached such a pitch that he was thinking
of going away over to France to see the King of France for a while? I
shouldn’t be surprised. He really was quite worked up.
Well, anyway, there he stood on Pinafore Pike, puffing and blowing and
saying “Fiddlesticks”, and goodness knows what he would have done next
if he hadn’t seen Simple Simon ambling along the road. But he did see
him, and Simple Simon told him the secret, and the first thing that
old king knew, he and Simon had gone off in just the opposite direction
from Dover.
Meanwhile, however, something pretty serious was happening in
the palace. For just at the moment when everything was at its
topsy-turviest, who should walk in on the Queen of Hearts but the King
of France? Yes, right through the front door came that elegant fellow,
and there was the Queen of Hearts, dust cap and all, on the top step
of the ladder. Was ever a woman so humiliated? Was ever a Queen caught
in such a condition? The Queen of Hearts thought not, and as she
climbed, blushing and confused, down that horrible ladder, she wished
desperately to herself that she had never heard of house-cleaning.
And what was her chagrin when the King of France told her that the
very reason he had left France was to escape the house-cleaning in
his own palace. And he had walked right into the same muss here in
Pudding Lane! The King of France laughed heartily as he told the Queen
of Hearts this, because he thought it was funny, but it wasn’t funny
to the Queen of Hearts--no indeed--and she wrung her grimy hands in
despair.
The news spread quickly through Pudding Lane that Old King Cole had
slipped away, and that the King of France had walked in suddenly and
caught the Queen in her dust cap. And you may be quite sure that the
people of Pudding Lane soon gathered together to talk it over.
“We ought to Pay our Respects to him,” said the candlestick-maker.
They all agreed that they ought.
“But how do you Pay Respects?” asked Mr. Horner.
The candlestick-maker, not having the least idea, pretended to be too
deep in thought to hear.
“It’s certain and sure the poor Queen can’t entertain him for long,”
spoke up Mrs. Grundy, who had a small opinion of Her Majesty, as we
know.
“She ain’t exactly the brilliant talker,” admitted the
candlestick-maker, who wasn’t exactly the brilliant talker himself,
when it came to that.
Then Mrs. Claus, looking quickly around, gave a little cry, at which
everybody jumped.
“Where are the children?” she cried. “I haven’t seen a child since
early morn.”
Great goodness, where were the children? Pudding Lane had forgotten
them completely in the excitement of house-cleaning, foreign visitors,
and suchlike. But they were aroused to action now, those mothers and
fathers. They ran around the village, calling and shouting, until the
Queen of Hearts and her regal guest heard them and came down to see
what the noise was about. They joined the search party then, and just
as everybody had begun to think that the children had been swallowed
by the earth, or eaten by bears, or something else terrible, they came
across them all, down behind Honeysuckle Hill. And what do you suppose
they were doing?
They were dancing around a Maypole, a beautiful, flower-covered
Maypole, which stood a little tipsy in the ground, it is true, but
which, nevertheless, was one of the best Maypoles that Pudding Lane had
ever seen. They were dancing and singing, every one of them, and what’s
more, there was Old King Cole himself, between Mistress Mary and Polly
Flinders, galloping around that pole as if he had never heard of gout.
For once, Simple Simon had thought of something really worth while. For
this, you see, had been his secret. He had suggested to the children
that they build their own Maypole, and they had done it.
[Illustration: _They were dancing around a Maypole, a beautiful,
flower-covered Maypole. Page 76._]
Well, how surprised the parents were, to see what a beautiful Maypole
the children had made. How surprised Old King Cole was to see the
King of France. And how surprised the Queen of Hearts was to find her
husband there with the children. Indeed, everybody had something to be
surprised about, and so, of course, it was a most exciting occasion.
Then Old King Cole proposed that the mothers and fathers, with the King
of France and the Queen, should join in the dance. Then the ladies
protested that they weren’t dressed fit and proper. Then Old King Cole
said “Nonsense”, and finally it all ended up with everybody’s getting
in, and dancing and singing, and having a perfectly riotous time.
They had a Queen of the May too. Everybody thought the Queen of Hearts
ought to be the May Queen, except the Queen of Hearts herself, who was
so tired of being a Queen, and Mrs. Grundy, who wanted to be the May
Queen herself. So Mr. Spratt, who knew what to do and when to do it,
suggested that “our royal and honored guest, the King of France, crown
the Queen of the May, whomsoever he would.”
The King of France looked critically around the circle of ladies. He
looked at Mrs. Grundy and passed her by. He looked at Humpty Dumpty’s
mother, and that little lady thought she should faint from agitation.
Then he looked at the Old Woman, at Mrs. Horner, at Mrs. Flinders, and
passed them all by. After which, to everybody’s intense excitement and
joy, he marched straight up to--Mrs. Claus, of all people!
Oh, dear, what a stir that created! And can you imagine how Mrs. Claus
herself felt at this honor? Can you see her blushing and bobbing and
saying, “Yes, Your Majesty,” two dozen times without stopping? Can you
see her grow glassy-eyed with embarrassment when, a moment later, the
King of France laid the crown of roses on her topknot,--which, as she
thought to herself bitterly, hadn’t been crimped for days? Can you see
her sitting stiff as a ramrod and burning with blushes, at the side of
the resplendent King of France, who was also King of the May?
Well, perhaps a May Queen should not be goggle-eyed and red-faced as
Mrs. Claus was. Perhaps she should not gulp and wring her hands as Mrs.
Claus did. Perhaps she should have had her hair crimped, and perhaps
she would have been better dressed in a gown without those big patches
under the arms. But Pudding Lane was well satisfied with their May
Queen, and thought her most queenly and elegant. So they danced around
her, singing and clapping, and never did a woman feel more proud and
happy than did Mrs. Claus on that day. Only one person felt prouder
and happier than she, and that was Mr. Claus, who at all times thought
his wife a remarkable woman, but in this new glory considered her too
wonderful for speech. And of course, Santa Claus and the twins nearly
burst with pride in their mother.
As for the real Queen, she was having a lovely time. It seemed so nice
not to have to be regal for once, and she skipped and frolicked between
Jack Spratt and Peter, Peter quite like an ordinary woman. Peter,
Peter, by the way, was the only person there who was not quite happy.
For Peter’s coat never had been found in the frenzy of his wife’s
house-cleaning, and the poor little man was therefore dancing there in
his shirt sleeves, to his great mortification and shame.
And when it was quite dark, and they couldn’t dance any more, if the
Queen of Hearts, in a spasm of generosity, didn’t invite them all up
to the palace for tarts and lemonade, a fine finish for any May-Day
party. After which the King of France said he thought he ought to be
off. So he went away, and the people of Pudding Lane went home at last,
after a happy and eventful day.
And ever after that, while the mothers of Pudding Lane cleaned house on
the first of May, the children and the men prepared the May-Day party,
which turned out to be just the way to manage the first-of-May problem,
so that everybody should be happy. So Old King Cole never ran away
from the palace again, of course. And by the way, Old King Cole never
did tell anybody that he had started out for France that time when he
ran away, for he didn’t want to confess that he had gotten lost. But
wouldn’t it have been funny if he _had_ gotten to France only to find
the French palace in the same uproar as his own? There might be a moral
to that, something about home-keeping hearts, or sticking to the ship,
or some such, but I guess we won’t bother with morals.
[Illustration: _On the same stagecoach from Dover came a present from
the King of France to Mrs. Claus. Page 81._]
VI
THE POODLE THAT DIDN’T KNOW ENGLISH
It was about a month after the King of France had been to visit Pudding
Lane that the stagecoach from Dover brought the Jack of Hearts on a
visit to Old King Cole and the Queen of Hearts. As you remember, the
Jack had no use for Pudding Lane because it wasn’t Paris, and nobody
quite knew, indeed, why he ever came to the little village which he
held in such scorn. Mrs. Grundy said he came when he ran out of funds
and wanted to live a while on his relatives. Perhaps that was merely
Mrs. Grundy’s rather vulgar way of putting it, and perhaps it was true.
Anyway, he came and upset the palace quite as much as usual with his
French and his fine manners and his old habit of stealing tarts.
But on the same stagecoach from Dover came a present from the King of
France to Mrs. Claus, which was far more exciting to Pudding Lane than
the presence of the Jack of Hearts. You remember, of course, what an
impression Mrs. Claus had made on His Majesty on May Day, but did you
ever dream he would go so far as to send her a gift? Well, nobody else
did, least of all Mrs. Claus herself, who almost fainted when the coach
drove up to her house and the driver climbed down and handed her a
large square wooden box.
“Whatever--?” shrieked Mrs. Claus excitedly.
“Great snakes!” ejaculated the baker, who was standing by.
“What could be in such a box?” inquired Mrs. Claus of the world at
large.
“Fine French china,” guessed Mr. Claus.
Mrs. Claus’s eyes glittered hopefully.
“A lamp,” suggested the candlestick-maker, who was there too.
“A dog,” burst out Santa Claus.
Santa was right. The King’s present was a French poodle, as jolly a
little puppy as Pudding Lane had ever seen. It was surely very kind of
the King of France, and Mrs. Claus was deeply sensible of the honor
paid her by His Majesty, but what did she want with a puppy dog, she
who had six children? as she rather clumsily put it. Santa Claus and
the twins begged so hard to keep him, however, that Mrs. Claus said
well, if they would feed him and wash him and make him mind, he might
stay.
But the Clauses could not keep the poodle, after all, and all because
of Misery. For that wretched cat began to act like a feline possessed
the minute he laid his green eyes on the newcomer, and clawed and
scratched and spat at the poor little dog until he squealed with terror.
After a few hours of this, Mrs. Claus shut Misery up in the
woodhouse and locked the poodle in the kitchen and ran over to Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater’s.
“But I thought Misery loved company,” said Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater, when the
story was finished.
“Not when the company’s a dog,” said Mrs. Claus. “And, oh, dear, Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater, I don’t know what we’ll do unless--unless--well, unless
you’ll take the dog off our hands as a kind and neighborly act.”
“But, Mrs. Claus,” objected Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater, “isn’t the pumpkin
shell too small for a poodle? There is really so little room here.”
Mrs. Claus looked around the pumpkin shell appraisingly.
“It is a bit small; he’s a fat poodle.” Then she brightened. “But
perhaps the carpenter would build you a kennel in the back garden, Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater, and you could keep the poodle there.”
And so it was decided, and that very afternoon the carpenter built the
kennel and the poodle was brought over to the Pumpkin-Eaters.
The Pumpkin-Eaters were rather nervous over the prospect of keeping a
poodle, but they did consider it an honor to have a gift that the King
of France had sent, and so they met the situation unflinchingly. Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater fed the poodle with the rarest of titbits, beef-steak,
and cream, and mashed potatoes with gravy, until the greedy little
puppy was panting and breathless. Mr. Pumpkin-Eater diddle-daddled
around the kennel, patting the poodle and talking to him, and when Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater wasn’t looking, he brought his own pillow from their bed,
so that the poodle should lie comfortably in his new home. Yes, Mr. and
Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater were just as kind as people could be to that poodle,
and there was no earthly excuse for his acting the way he did.
But it soon became apparent that he was just about the most troublesome
poodle that ever lived. Not that he was really bad; you could hardly
say that of him. He just acted as if he didn’t have any sense.
It began after he had recovered his breath from eating. Until then he
was very quiet, except for little grunts, just little happy, eating
grunts that nobody could have objected to. Then, when he did get his
breath, up he jumped from his pillow, and the trouble began.
The first thing he did was to run straight from the kennel into the
pumpkin shell and upset every stick of the tiny furniture that the poor
Pumpkin-Eaters were so proud of. I don’t think he meant to upset the
furniture, but puppies are not the most graceful beasts in the world,
and so as he waddled through the shell, which was pretty small for him
anyway, he just naturally bumped into the tables and chairs and sent
them spinning.
How agitated Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater was then.
“Shush!” she called imperiously. “Shoo! Get out! Scat!” She said
everything she could think of, and still the puppy kept running
around, knocking over more things, until he finally bumped into
Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater and knocked her over too! Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater was
extremely small, as you know, and I suppose it didn’t take much to
upset her. She screamed weakly as she hit the floor, at which Mr.
Pumpkin-Eater came running in from the garden.
“Hey!” called out Mr. Pumpkin-Eater angrily to the poodle. Then he
shushed and shooed and scatted at the poodle, but the blessed dog just
jumped up against him as if he had done something praiseworthy, and the
next thing they all knew, Mr. Pumpkin-Eater was flat on his back too,
bellowing for help, as the poodle ran excitedly about, yelping with joy.
The neighbors came running in to help, the Clauses, the butcher, Mrs.
Dumpty (who was sure somebody else must have fallen off the wall), the
Old Woman, Mr. Horner, Mr. and Mrs. Flinders, all of them. Of course,
they didn’t all go inside the shell, for there wasn’t room. But Mr.
Horner did and gallantly picked up the prostrate Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater,
and the butcher squeezed his way in and lifted Mr. Pumpkin-Eater to his
feet. Then Mr. Pumpkin-Eater made a dive for the poodle, who by that
time was on the bed, chewing up Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater’s best lace spread.
The puppy, still thinking it all the greatest joke in the world, ran
out of the shell into the garden and jumped right up into the Old
Woman’s arms, squealing as happily as if he had found an old friend.
“Well,” said the Old Woman, “here he is.”
“Put him in the kennel!” cried everybody.
The Old Woman started for the kennel with the puppy wriggling
delightedly in her arms--he still thought it all a lovely lark--and
maybe all would have been well then, if a certain perky little sparrow
had not chosen that particular moment in which to poke his nose into
the kennel.
He did choose that moment, however, and so the tragedy happened. The
sparrow was halfway into the kennel, pecking at some toothsome crumbs,
when the poodle suddenly leaped from the Old Woman’s arms full on
the back and tail of the unsuspecting little bird. A cry of joy from
the poodle, a shower of feathers, then out backed the poor sparrow,
tottering and surprised, with his tail nipped off.
How indignant Pudding Lane was at that! How they all scolded the poodle
and sympathized with the sparrow. Sparrows until then had not had very
good standing in the village, as perhaps they have not in yours, but
this calamity made the people forget their old grievances against the
_passeres_ (that’s the sparrow’s dress-up name) and they could only
feel sorry now for the particular _passer_, oh, very sorry. True,
the sparrow, though he staggered uncertainly around and blinked in
amazement, did not act as if he were in pain. But if you’re used to
tails, of course you miss them, and the sparrow’s had disappeared so
suddenly.
Meanwhile, the poodle was acting just as absurdly as before. He was
running and rolling and yapping in a perfectly abandoned way, and the
more the Old Woman and the butcher and all the rest of them scolded
him, ordered him down and bade him be quiet, the more he cut up. It was
almost as if he were a mad dog, and yet you could see, just by looking
at him, that he was innocent as could be, that he didn’t know in the
least he was doing wrong. Puppies don’t naturally have morals, you
know, and this one apparently hadn’t been taught any.
Well, things finally got to such a pitch that Mr. Pumpkin-Eater said
firmly that he wouldn’t have such a beast about any more, and Mrs.
Claus declared she wouldn’t have him either, even if he were a royal
poodle straight from the King of France. They decided that the only
thing to do was to put the poodle back in the box and send him home to
Paris.
“But the King!” remonstrated Mrs. Flinders.
“I know,” said Mrs. Claus. “But Pudding Lane would be in ruins if we
let this dog stay.”
“But nobody ever sends presents back to a king,” chimed in Mrs. Grundy.
“Well, I know somebody that’s a-going to,” said Mrs. Claus stubbornly.
“He might throw you in prison or something,” suggested Mrs. Grundy.
At which Mrs. Claus turned white, but stood her ground: she’d have no
dog that threatened the future happiness and safety of Pudding Lane.
Just then who should come dawdling down Pudding Lane but the Jack of
Hearts, airy as usual? When he saw the commotion in the Pumpkin-Eaters’
garden, he stepped in. The people curtseyed obediently; they had
manners, even though they didn’t like the Jack. Then they told him what
was the matter.
“And he won’t do a thing you tell him to!” concluded Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater. “I never saw such a disobedient dog.”
At that, the poodle leaped up against Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater’s skirts.
“Down!” she commanded.
He barked joyously and leaped the higher.
“Hush!” she ordered.
But he didn’t down and he didn’t hush.
“There!” exclaimed Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater exasperatedly to the Jack. “You
see, he doesn’t mind a single thing.”
“Of course he doesn’t,” replied the Jack of Hearts quietly.
“Of course!” repeated Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater. “I don’t see any ‘of course’
about it.”
“Well,” said the Jack of Hearts with his best sneer, “I suppose you
don’t. But didn’t you say the poodle was from France?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater. She did wish the obnoxious
fellow would go away and stop interfering.
“And haven’t you been talking to this French poodle in English?” he
demanded further.
“Yes. Well--oh, I see,” cried Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater suddenly.
“Oh!” murmured everybody else. “Of course!”
The dog just then sprang higher against the wee Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater and
began to lick her face. She cast a beseeching look at the Jack.
“_Va te coucher!_” commanded that fine fellow to the dog. The poodle
instantly quieted down at Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater’s feet and began to whine
a little.
“_Veux-tu te taire!_” he demanded further, and the whining stopped at
once.
The Jack of Hearts looked at the abashed Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater and the
rest of the Pudding Laners, who stood there stupefied.
“I guess you wouldn’t understand it either, if somebody talked to you
in another language,” he said crushingly, and walked indolently away,
swinging his cane.
The people of Pudding Lane could have kicked themselves for their
stupidity, they said. Of course, a French poodle straight from Paris
could not understand English. Why had they supposed that he could?
And they were disgusted still more to have been humiliated by the
disagreeable Jack of Hearts.
But kicking themselves wouldn’t do any good now. There was only one
thing left to do, and that was to present the poodle to the Jack,
whether they wanted to or not, for Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater couldn’t learn
French for any dog. And if she could have, she wouldn’t have, for Mrs.
Pumpkin-Eater had an idea that foreign languages were an indulgence,
like mince pie at night or two dresses in one year, and she wouldn’t
have yielded to it for anything.
So that’s what they did. They handed the puppy over to the Jack of
Hearts, who could speak to him in his native tongue and make him mind
like an angel.
As for the sparrow, he soon recovered; that is, he learned to walk as
smartly and perkily as ever without a tail; he even learned to fly
without it, which, as any bird will tell you, is quite a feat. He
looked funny, with his swelled-out chest and airy manners and poor
little chopped-off stumpy back view. But the Pumpkin-Eaters didn’t care
how he looked, for he just exactly fitted the pumpkin shell now and at
last they had a pet, did the Pumpkin-Eaters, just exactly suited to
their needs. So that if you ever pass by the pumpkin shell and look in
at the window, you’ll see him there. But if he turns his back, don’t
laugh at the poor little fellow. It might hurt his feelings. He’s never
seen his back and doesn’t know how funny he looks.
VII
BO-PEEP FINDS OUT HOW A DUTCH UNCLE TALKS
Mr. Bo-Peep came home to dinner one hot July day to find his daughter
not there.
“Little Bo-Peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find
them,” explained his wife.
“Oh, leave them alone and they’ll come home and bring their tails
behind them,” answered Mr. Bo-Peep, sitting down to his dinner.
“That’s what I told her,” said Mrs. Bo-Peep, “but you know how she is.”
“Yes, I know how she is,” sighed Mr. Bo-Peep.
And indeed he did, as did everybody else in Pudding Lane, for hardly
a week went by in that village that Little Bo-Peep did not lose her
sheep. It was really a wonder that she bothered with sheep at all,
for certainly she had more trouble with her flock than any other
shepherdess did in the whole world. And to-day they were lost again,
and, as usual, Little Bo-Peep was hunting for them.
She walked along Pinafore Pike and passed the Blues’ house, where she
saw Little Boy Blue taking his customary nap under the haystack. She
came to the pickled pepper field where Peter Piper was industriously
picking his peck. She met Old Mother Hubbard’s dog sniffing around a
tree trunk.
But although Little Bo-Peep saw these familiar Pudding Lane scenes, not
a woolly strand did she see of her sheep until, just as she was about
to give up in despair, she turned a corner and plump! she bumped into
the whole flock of them running down the road toward Pudding Lane as
fast as they could run.
But who was that driving them and scolding them? A strange-looking
creature with great billowing trousers and a little blue jacket and the
rosiest--though the crossest--face you ever saw.
“Hey!” called Bo-Peep.
The rosy-faced man looked up, scowling.
“Hey!” he replied. “Stop!” he commanded the sheep. “Stop this minute,
you abominable wretches, you stupid beasts, you--”
“My goodness!” gasped Bo-Peep. “How dare you talk to my sheep like
that? How--”
“Look here,” interrupted the rosy-faced man. “You be still. You don’t
know who I am.”
“Well, you’re not very polite, whoever you are,” replied Bo-Peep
indignantly. “You’re certainly not a gentleman.”
“I am a gentleman!” shouted the man. “And if you were a lady, you’d
know a gentleman when you saw one. Haven’t I got on a gentleman’s
clothes? Haven’t I got a gentleman’s haircut?” He bent down his head
and swept off his hat to show her. “Well, then, I am a gentleman. But
don’t you wish you knew me?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” replied Little Bo-Peep more softly. For after
all, she thought to herself, she need not lose her temper just because
he did. “No, sir, I don’t like you very much, really, and I’m going
home now with my sheep.” Then she added, “But I do thank you, sir,
for bringing my sheep back. How did you do it? They’re usually very
disobedient.”
“How did I do it?” repeated the rosy-cheeked man. “Why, just by talking
to them like a Dutch Uncle. For that’s who I am, my fine young lady. I
am the Dutch Uncle, you know.”
So he was the Dutch Uncle of whom Little Bo-Peep and all the other
children of Pudding Lane had heard so much, the cross old fellow who
scolded everybody he knew, even those people whom he loved the best.
Bo-Peep had never seen him before, for the Dutch Uncle had not been
to Pudding Lane since many years ago, before Mr. and Mrs. Bo-Peep had
been married, ’way back there when the Queen of Hearts was a bride and
Humpty Dumpty was a baby. But the people of Pudding Lane, often, oh,
very often, referred to the Dutch Uncle; and now here he was, and it
was no wonder Bo-Peep stared.
“Whose uncle are you, sir?” she asked in her gentlest tones.
Questions are supposed to be rude, but if you ask them gently, they
somehow don’t sound rude, Bo-Peep had found out.
“Everybody’s, of course!” replied the Dutch Uncle. “My goodness, you
are an ignorant girl. Now if your parents would only put you in my
charge--”
Oh, dear, he was off again! But he finally stopped, so Bo-Peep tried
another question.
“And where is the Dutch Aunt?”
“Dutch Aunt!” exclaimed the Dutch Uncle scornfully. “She asks me where
the Dutch Aunt is! There isn’t any Dutch Aunt. Didn’t you know that?”
“No, sir, I didn’t,” replied Little Bo-Peep. “There ought to be one,
you know. Uncles always do have aunts.”
She didn’t mean that exactly, but you know and the Dutch Uncle knew
what she meant. And now, strangely enough, the Dutch Uncle stopped
frowning at her and smiled.
“I do indeed need a Dutch Aunt,” he agreed. “In fact, that’s just what
I’ve come to Pudding Lane for, Bo-Peep, to find a Dutch Aunt.”
“To take her away from Pudding Lane and back to Dutchland?” asked
Bo-Peep.
“Dutchland!” laughed the Dutch Uncle. “Oh, dear, Bo-Peep, you are an
ignoramus.”
“Holland, I mean,” Little Bo-Peep corrected herself.
Only she did think to herself that Dutchland was a better name for it,
after all, than Holland. And she was thinking, too, what an exceedingly
pleasant fellow the Dutch Uncle was when he forgot to talk like a Dutch
Uncle.
Which is exactly what the people of Pudding Lane had always said about
him; that if only he hadn’t been such an old busybody, attending to
everybody’s affairs, he would have been the nicest uncle in the world.
The Dutch Uncle got a tremendous ovation when he and Bo-Peep got back
to Pudding Lane with the sheep a few minutes later. At least “ovation”
is what the Town Crier called it. Anyway, they made a big fuss over the
Dutch Uncle, for they loved the old fellow, even if they did call him
names, and they were glad to see him after all these years.
As for the Dutch Uncle himself, he was overjoyed to see his old
favorites, and he greeted and scolded them all in the most affectionate
manner possible.
“As I live and breathe, Mrs. Dumpty!” he exclaimed, catching sight of
that fat little lady. “How glad I am to see you. But you ought,” here
he frowned in the midst of his rosy smile, “you ought to take Humpty to
London, you know, to consult the great doctors there.”
“And there’s Mr. Claus! Baker, baker, why will you waste your talents
in Pudding Lane when you might easily be Assistant Chief Currant Bun
Maker to the Lord Mayor of London himself?”
(You would have thought he was the British Uncle the way he talked
about London.)
“Ah, Mrs. Grundy!” He bowed low and kissed that lady’s hand. “How many
moons has it been since I have had this privilege? But that long face
of yours won’t do, my dear old friend. Really, you ought to cheer up,
you know.”
He next spied a young girl.
“Mistress Mary, Quite Contrary!” he cried delightedly. “How does your
garden grow? You were just a baby when I saw you last. But you must
mend your ways, Mistress Mary. Contrary girls, you know--”
And so he went the rounds. He chided Simple Simon for not trying to
improve his wits. He urged Little Miss Muffett to give up her diet and
try green vegetables. He insisted that the Old Woman abandon her Shoe
and go to live in a house like other respectable folk. And he even
rebuked Old King Cole as being far too merry for the dignity of his
position.
Yes, he was just the same. Queer, wasn’t it? But then everybody is
queer in one way or another, and the Dutch Uncle really did have the
softest heart in the world under his little blue jacket, as the people
of Pudding Lane had always suspected and now found out that very day.
For suddenly the Dutch Uncle whirled around and demanded:
“And where is pretty Dolly Daffy-Dill?”
“Pretty Dolly Daffy-Dill?” repeated everybody, and then they all looked
at each other.
Could it be possible that the Dutch Uncle believed that Dolly
Daffy-Dill was still the same girl he had known so many years ago? Did
he not know that she had grown older, just as everybody else had? Had
he not heard how crabbed she had become, so crabbed, indeed, that she
wasn’t even called Dolly any more, but Cross-Patch, which suited her
much better?
It seemed impossible that the Dutch Uncle did not know all these
things, but he didn’t, apparently, so Mr. Horner, the father of Jack,
tried to explain.
“She’s older now, you understand,” he said. “And we call
her--Cross-Patch.”
“Cross-Patch, draw the latch,
Sit by the fire and spin,”
quoted Mrs. Grundy.
Oh, dear, it was too bad that the Dutch Uncle had to find out all this
about Dolly, and they all felt very sympathetic. But was the Dutch
Uncle distressed? No, indeed.
“Of course, she’s older!” he exclaimed. “I had forgotten that, but it’s
all the better. And you say she’s cross? Hurray, what a fine Dutch Aunt
she’ll make!”
With which, to everybody’s astonishment, the Dutch Uncle hastened to
old Cross-Patch’s house, the same little house where he used to call on
her when she was a girl and he a dashing young blade.
And so his courtship commenced, the strangest courtship that Pudding
Lane had ever seen. Isn’t it queer that a cranky old woman like
Cross-Patch should have inspired the tender passion in the hearts of
such hosts of men? First there was the candlestick-maker and now here
was the Dutch Uncle. Well, that’s love, you know, and there’s no doing
anything about it.
But something else happened in Pudding Lane that quickly drove the
Dutch Uncle’s love affair out of everybody’s thoughts. It was really
something so terrible and so sad that nobody would have ever dreamed it
_could_ happen. And this is what it was: Bo-Peep’s sheep came home one
day, after a long absence, and they didn’t have their tails behind them!
Oh, so sad! So sad!
And how Bo-Peep cried, how the lambs bleated, how Mr. Bo-Peep hunted
for the tails, how doleful Old King Cole looked, how frightened
everybody was. But although Little Bo-Peep wept and Mr. Bo-Peep hunted
and Old King Cole worried himself sick, the missing tails were not
returned to their owners and King Cole finally said that everybody,
every single person, would have to go out on a hunt for them. He even
made a speech about it.
“What is a sheep without a tail?” he asked the assemblage.
“Nothing!” he answered himself triumphantly, which wasn’t strictly
true, although it made a profound impression on his hearers.
“Well, then, what is a whole flock of sheep without a tail?” he
finished up in grand climax.
And so, spurred on by Old King Cole’s oratory, all of Pudding Lane
started on the hunt. It did seem as if they were always searching for
something in that town. Once it was Santa Claus, once it was the Pied
Piper, ganders, cats, and now it was tails.
I said all of Pudding Lane went on the hunt, but I forgot the Dutch
Uncle, who was sitting with Cross-Patch in her back garden, sipping a
cup of tea. And he must have been talking awfully loud and drinking tea
awfully hard, for he didn’t seem to hear a bit of the commotion when
the whole town departed on its quest.
But Cross-Patch had sharp ears and she knew what was up, and she said
to her gallant caller:
“Why don’t you help a body who’s in trouble instead of fiddling with a
teacup?”
The Dutch Uncle looked at her amazed, for he had just been telling her
what a sweet creature she was and her remark sounded rather abrupt.
“What is it, my love?” he asked.
“I said why don’t you go out and help a body? Why don’t you join in the
search for the tails of the sheep?”
The Dutch Uncle jumped up, ashamed.
“Oh, I ought to help, I know. I am very fond of Little Bo-Beep and feel
so sorry for her in her trouble.”
“Then go out and show your sympathy,” replied the Dutch Uncle’s lady
love grimly. “I’d go myself if I weren’t so old and crippled.”
“Old, love!” repeated the Dutch Uncle playfully. “Crippled!”
“Go on to your tails,” replied Cross-Patch stolidly.
The Dutch Uncle, looking crestfallen, ceased his gestures, picked up
his hat and started for the gate. Indeed, he looked so wretched that
Cross-Patch relented a bit.
“Look here,” she called after him. “If you find the tails, Dutch Uncle,
I might--in fact I will--consider becoming the Dutch Aunt.”
The Dutch Uncle looked at her beaming, yet almost unbelieving.
“Wonderful woman!” he exclaimed rapturously. “Glorious--”
“Will you get on to those tails?” cried Cross-Patch, exasperated.
She hated foolishness, did Cross-Patch, and the Dutch Uncle was so full
of it. She often wished that he would scold her as he did everybody
else. Being cross herself, she would have enjoyed it.
When the Dutch Uncle got into the street, he found that every single
person was gone. All the houses and shops were closed. Even the palace
at the top of the hill looked deserted.
But the Dutch Uncle could hear a little noise from somewhere or other,
and as he listened intently, he decided that it must be the bleating of
those poor little sheep down in Bo-Peep’s meadow. He then went down to
the meadow and there they were, bleating pitifully, and there was
Bo-Peep too, under a tree and crying as if her heart would break.
[Illustration: _“Look here,” he said to the black sheep. “You’re
responsible for all this.” Page 105._]
She raised herself up when she heard the Dutch Uncle’s step and wiped
her eyes.
“Do you hear them bleating?” she asked him.
“Yes,” replied the Dutch Uncle, “I do.”
The Dutch Uncle then made a discovery; the black sheep of the flock
was not bleating at all, but was frisking around as merrily as could
be, watching the others with wicked glee out of the corner of his
eye. The Dutch Uncle watched him a moment and then, without a word to
Little Bo-Peep, he marched straight up to that black sheep, took hold
of his pink ribbon collar and looked him sternly in the eye. The sheep
squirmed a little and tried to brave it out, but the Dutch Uncle was
too much for him, so he squirmed a great deal more and dropped his eyes
in the most ashamed way.
Whereupon the Dutch Uncle _did_ give him a dose of his best Dutch Uncle
talk--such a dose!
“Look here,” he said to the black sheep. “You’re responsible for all
this. You know exactly where those tails are, and you’ve known all
along, and now right this minute you’re going to take Little Bo-Peep
and me and show us where they are. You are a wicked, wicked sheep, you
are, but we’ve got you this time, you wretch, you--” Well, he couldn’t
think of anything worse than a wretch, so he stopped with that, and
waited for the black sheep to do something.
And the black sheep did something, right enough. He turned around and
walked off, the Dutch Uncle and Little Bo-Peep behind him, and he kept
on walking until at last they came to a wood on the very edge of which
stood a tree. And there the black sheep stopped.
“What’s this?” asked the Dutch Uncle.
“I don’t know,” answered Little Bo-Peep.
Then the sheep raised his eyes, the Dutch Uncle and Bo-Peep raised
theirs, and there on a branch what should they see but ten little white
tails all in a row, hanging like white flowers among the green leaves,
with one little black one in the middle!
“Oh!” shrieked Little Bo-Peep joyfully.
“Ah-ha!” exclaimed the Dutch Uncle.
And the next thing the tails knew, they were being carried back to the
sheep in the meadow at Pudding Lane.
Everybody was overjoyed when it was known that Little Bo-Peep had found
her sheep’s tails, but of course, the next problem was to get them
back on the sheep. The carpenter was all for tacking them on, though
he quickly took back his suggestion when he remembered that it was
sheep they were talking about, not houses or boards. Jack-of-All-Trades
offered to glue them neatly back in their places, and the cobbler said
that if sewing were necessary, he would gladly render his services.
The cobbler’s idea was considered a good one, for the great London
doctors were sewing people now, and if it were good for people, it
would certainly do for sheep. So they called Doctor Foster, who had
just got back from Gloucester, and asked his advice about the sewing.
“No, no, _no_!” said Doctor Foster. “Doctors don’t sew things on, they
just sew things up. But if you just tie these tails to the sheep,
they’ll grow back as nicely as you please.”
So that’s what they did, and the tails did grow back, just as he had
said, as nicely as you please. Only one looked a little different from
its old self, and that was the black sheep’s, which was rather to one
side and at a rakish angle. But then the black sheep deserved it, for
all the trouble he had caused. Because the Dutch Uncle thought that
the black sheep not only knew where the tails were all the time, but
that he himself made the sheep lose their tails. I don’t see how he
could have, really. I think the tails just dropped off. Still, the
Dutch Uncle may be right. We’ll never know, for sheep can’t talk, and
the black sheep wouldn’t tell if he could. Anyway, it all came out all
right.
All but one thing and that concerns the poor Dutch Uncle, who didn’t
get his Cross-Patch, after all. For when he went back to her in high
glee, told her about the tails, and began calling her high-sounding
names, Cross-Patch suddenly became fifty times crosser than she had
ever been before, told him she couldn’t stand his sugarish nonsense and
left the room.
And that was the end of the Dutch Uncle’s romance. All might have been
different if he had only talked to Cross-Patch like a Dutch Uncle,
but that’s so often the way with gentlemen in love; they become such
different creatures. However, he did turn on Cross-Patch just as she
was leaving the room, and then he certainly did talk to her like a
Dutch Uncle, for he was very angry and disappointed.
Too late, though. Cross-Patch drew the latch, sat down to spin and
never for a second regretted her action. She was even glad the old
bother was gone.
Poor Dutch Uncle, having to go back to Holland without the Dutch Aunt
of his dreams. Everybody felt sorry for him, and especially did Little
Bo-Peep, who had come to love him so much.
It was Little Bo-Peep who walked with him down the road when he set
out that day for Banbury Cross. They said good-by and shook hands. The
Dutch Uncle had tears in his eyes and Bo-Peep was sniffling right out.
But the Dutch Uncle soon came to himself.
“Look here, you shouldn’t have come so far with me. The sheep will get
lost and your mother will be worried. Go straight home, you naughty
child.”
But Bo-Peep only smiled at him.
“You’re an old fraud,” she told the Dutch Uncle.
And then it was that the Dutch Uncle knew that she had found him out,
this Little Bo-Peep of Pudding Lane. Yet he wouldn’t give in, even then.
“Go straight home, I tell you!”
But he kissed her, and then was gone.
VIII
THE SAND MAN’S SCARE
Mrs. Blue was busy in her kitchen one August morning when she heard a
racket in the cornfield.
“At it again,” she murmured and ran out to the side fence.
“Little Boy Blue,” she called loudly, “come blow your horn. The sheep’s
in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.”
No answer from the little boy, lying under a near-by haystack. Mrs.
Blue opened her mouth to call again when up popped Farmer Tom from
behind the barn. Farmer Tom was the Blues’ neighbor, and it was Farmer
Tom’s cornfield that the cow was in.
“Where’s the boy that looks after the sheep?” demanded the farmer.
“He’s under the haystack fast asleep,” admitted poor Mrs. Blue.
[Illustration: _What could Mrs. Blue do? She could do nothing but climb
the fence, skirts and all. Page 111._]
Farmer Tom snorted.
“Well, he must get them animals out of my corn,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” answered Mrs. Blue nervously, and then called again,
“LITTLE BOY BLUE!” so loudly that you would have thought any fellow
might have waked up. Little Boy Blue did almost wake up too. He
grunted, stirred, rubbed his eyes, but then if he didn’t curl down
deeper in the hay and go straight back to sleep.
What could Mrs. Blue do? She could do nothing but climb the fence,
skirts and all--for the gate was a long way off--and go after Little
Boy Blue, so that’s what she did. She climbed the fence, marched over
to the haystack and shook--yes, shook--her sleeping son until at last
he was awake. Then he scuttled away and led the sheep and cow into the
pasture where they belonged.
This was the way things were always going with the Blues. Boy Blue was
forever falling asleep, the cows were forever getting in the corn,
Farmer Tom was always scolding and fussing and Mrs. Blue was always
worrying. Of course, it was worse in summer, when the warm air was
drowsy and the haystack was soft and inviting. But even in winter it
was bad enough, for then Little Boy Blue went to sleep over his books,
over his supper, over his games. He had actually been caught at it
during an exciting game of Hide-and-Go-Seek, when he had hidden behind
the hedge in Mistress Mary’s garden and then promptly gone to sleep
there.
But you cannot sleep all of the time, even if you’re a Little Boy Blue,
and so it was that Little Boy Blue found that he was not sleeping
very well of nights, because he slept all day. It was a dull business
too, lying awake in the dead of the night, with nothing to see except
perhaps a streak of moonlight or the shadow of the pear tree, nothing
to hear except the dickery, dickery, dock, of the kitchen clock,
nothing to do but wait for daylight to come.
And so on this same night, as usual, Little Boy Blue lay stark awake,
even starker awake than he sometimes was, for his naps had been more
frequent and longer that day. It was early still, about eight o’clock,
and although Little Boy Blue had been in bed only half an hour, it
seemed to him that he had been there exactly one hundred years, he was
so tired of it.
He twisted and turned and rolled and kicked. He propped himself up
on his elbows and stared up at the stars: “Twinkle, twinkle, little
star, how I wonder what you are,” and then he almost did go to sleep
wondering just exactly what stars were--fire or silver or flowers or
what. Little Boy Blue had not studied astronomy yet. But just as he
almost fell asleep, clink, clank came a noise, and he came to with a
jerk. What was that noise? It sounded like a milk pail, clink, clank.
He listened hard, but no further sound came. He squirmed and turned
some more. Finally he sat up straight in bed.
“I’m going to get up,” he said to himself. “Right up.”
Which he did. He groped in the dim light for his clothes and put them
on--his blue suit, his shoes and stockings, his favorite blue cap with
the red button on top. Then he tiptoed softly out of his room, through
the kitchen and into the yard.
Oh, Little Boy Blue, what would your mother say if she knew you were
not in bed and asleep? What would your father say if somebody should
tell him that his little boy was out in the middle of the night like
this, walking around? But they didn’t know it, those two good souls
nodding by their candle in the second-best parlor, which is probably
a good thing, as it would have distressed them. Not that Little Boy
Blue meant the least harm in the world. He had just thought he’d
take “a bit of a turn” and try that way to get sleepy. He had heard
the candlestick-maker say once that he always took “a bit of a turn”
before he went to bed, which made him sleep like a top. As if tops did
sleep--the funny old candlestick-maker.
Little Boy Blue had hardly taken three steps when clink, clank, his
foot bumped against something which made that same noise he had heard
a few moments before in bed. He stooped down. It looked like a bucket,
but it wasn’t one of his mother’s milk pails. What could it be? He put
his hands into it. There was something inside that felt gritty and
sticky and damp. He looked closer and felt it again. It was sand.
But what on earth was a bucket of sand doing on the Blues’ side stoop,
and who in the world had left it there? Little Boy Blue did not know.
Perhaps his father had forgotten it, he thought. Perhaps Farmer Tom
had put it there. He and Mr. Blue were always lending each other
things--bags of gravel, baskets of chips, nails and bridles and chicken
feed.
Well, whatever it was, this was not the place for it, Little Boy Blue
knew that. So he picked it up and carried it back to the tool house,
and there he put it in a corner out of harm’s way, like the careful
little boy that he was. And then he went away to take his bit of a turn.
Little did Boy Blue know what he had really done by hiding that bucket
of sand, though the fact was that he had done something epoch-making in
Pudding Lane. Epoch-making is a big word, but then Little Boy Blue had
done a big thing. For whom do you suppose that sand belonged to?
It belonged to the Sand Man, that fellow who slips along by our windows
at night, throws his handfuls of sand in our eyes and makes us feel
heavy in our eyelids and sleepy all over. He had left his sand for the
least little while on the Blues’ side stoop, while he went up to the
palace to put the King and Queen to sleep, and now Boy Blue had hidden
it. Think of it! The Sand Man without his sand!
Do you wonder that when he came back, he wrung his sandy hands and
beat his breast in frenzied despair? Do you wonder that he trembled
all over? Poor Sand Man! It did look bad for him. Never before had he
failed to do his work. Every single night, for years and years and
years, he had gone on his circuit from house to house, and put folks
to sleep, first the children, then the grandfathers, and after that,
sometimes quite late, the mothers and fathers and big sisters in the
parlor.
And now on this night, his sand was gone, everybody would stay wide
awake, and goodness knows what angry message Old King Cole would send
him. That merry old soul might even deprive him of his job, and then
what would he do for a living, and what would the Sand Woman do, and
all the little Sand Children? It was a sad thought, and the Sand
Man shuddered as he stood there in the shadow of the Blues’ house,
wondering what to do next.
As Little Boy Blue walked down Pudding Lane, he wondered why the Shoe
was lighted up so brilliantly, and as he passed the Dumpties’ he
thought it strange indeed that the candle in Humpty’s room was still
burning. It was late. What should children be doing awake at such an
hour? They hadn’t slept all day to make them wakeful, like Boy Blue
himself. The Clauses’ house was brightly lighted too, and he could see
the Flinderses’ fine new lamp from London burning gayly in Polly’s room.
Now, of course, we know exactly what was happening, even though Little
Boy Blue did not. We know and the Sand Man knew, but Little Boy Blue
did not know, and certainly the distracted mothers of Pudding Lane did
not know what was the matter with their children that night. And how
exasperated they were too, those mothers.
“What does _ail_ you, Santa Claus?” asked his mother of that little
boy, who was sitting up in bed with not a sign of sleep about him.
“I don’t know,” answered Santa Claus, much puzzled himself. “Only I
just can’t sleep, and I don’t believe I ever will sleep again.”
“Mercy on us!” breathed Mrs. Claus fearfully.
“Humpty, darling, are you ill?” asked Mrs. Dumpty anxiously. “You’ve
never been wakeful like this before.”
“No, not ill, just wide awake,” answered Humpty.
“Children, will you get into your beds and go to sleep?” demanded the
Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, beside herself with impatience at all
these dozens of children scampering around the Shoe at the impossible
hour of nine o’clock.
“But we’re not a bit sleepy,” spoke up Judy.
“Not a single bit!” echoed Polly and Jumbo and Jocko and all the rest.
That was the way it was in every house in Pudding Lane that night. The
mothers tried spanking, and it didn’t work. Spanking really doesn’t
make you sleepy, though sometimes it makes you try harder to get
sleepy. They tried bread and milk. They tried lullabies. They tried
everything, and still the children of Pudding Lane were as wide awake
as could be until finally, when they all begged their mothers to let
them go out and play, those frantic women, wondering what Old King
Cole would say to such a performance, consented. And with a whoop loud
enough to be heard in Banbury Cross, the children of Pudding Lane
rushed outdoors for a glorious romp in the moonlight.
What a night that was! Everybody was up, even Humpty Dumpty, looking
on from his window. Little Boy Blue had joined them, of course.
Polly Flinders, Little Bo-Peep, all the Old Woman’s children, Jack
Horner--not a single child in Pudding Lane was missing, for even that
baby, The Little Girl Who Had a Little Curl, was brought out and dumped
in the midst of the fun. You know her. She was only three, but already
she was a well-known character in the village. A changeable child. One
minute she would be very good indeed, and the next she would be--simply
horrid. But she was very pretty, and she had a little curl right down
in the middle of her forehead.
Unless you have played outdoors in the moonlight yourself, you can
never imagine how much fun it is. There’s something about it that makes
mere playing in the daylight and sunshine seem very ordinary. Perhaps
it’s the shadows. You’re always mistaking them for something else,
which is very funny. Little Bo-Peep actually tagged the shadow of the
Clauses’ gate once, thinking it was Jumbo! Perhaps it’s the moonlight
itself, thin and gleaming and rare. Perhaps it’s the jolly little
stars, kicking up their heels there in the sky. Anyway, it’s pure
delight to be out on such a night, and the children of Pudding Lane
thought they simply never had had such a good time as they were having
that night.
They played Tag and Blind Man’s Buff and Ring-Around-a-Rosy. Oh, yes,
I forgot to say that singing on such a night seems to be music of a
special sort. Even Simple Simon’s poor cracked voice did not sound bad
that night as they sang “Ring Around a Rosy, Pocket Full of Posies.”
They played Drop-the-Handkerchief, too, which is particularly good at
night, for the handkerchief is so hard to see.
Well, they played on and on, while the mothers looked at them
round-eyed from the windows and wondered if their darling children
would ever, ever, ever get sleepy and come in to bed like good and
law-abiding citizens. They played on and on and on, while the Sand Man
crouched in a corner of the Blues’ side stoop and pondered desperately
on his fate. And they might have been playing yet if the Little Girl
with the Curl had not suddenly cut up one of her capers.
But she did. She cut up a terrible caper. She cried and kicked and
jumped up and down. She screamed and howled and made faces. Oh, she was
_horrid_!
At first, the children tried to pacify her by ordinary means.
“Come ride on my back, Little Girl,” invited Santa Claus. “I’ll be the
horse and you can be the rider.”
But the Little Girl only stamped her foot at him.
“Little Girl, look here, I’ve got a top!” called out Tom, Tom, the
piper’s son.
But the Little Girl only stuck out her tongue at him!
“Little Girl, look at me!” cried Jack-Be-Nimble, jumping over a
candlestick for her benefit.
But the Little Girl only lay down on the ground and kicked and screamed
some more.
The Little Girl’s mother came out, and the Little Girl’s father came
out, and they spanked her. But even that did not do any good on this
terrible night.
They were all perfectly desperate. What could they do with such a
child? The party was spoiled. The fun was over. The beautiful midsummer
night’s dream was broken. And all because of that horrid Little Girl.
At last, however, in the midst of her caper, Little Boy Blue had a
sudden idea. He didn’t say a word to anybody, but he ran back to his
father’s tool house, picked up the pail of sand and brought it to the
Little Girl. And lo, when the Little Girl saw that bucketful of lovely
sand, she stopped right in the middle of a howl, sat down and began to
dig in it as hard as she could dig. She dug with both fists and sent
the sand flying. She loved sand to play in, the Little Girl did, and
Pudding Lane had so little sand, being far from the sea.
The children, breathing sighs of relief, began to play again.
But the next moment, the games and the night and the whole beautiful
party began to seem rather stupid. First it was Jill who yawned.
“Oh, dear, I’m really getting sleepy,” she confessed.
Whereupon Jack said that he was really getting sleepy too. Humpty
Dumpty was seen nodding at the window. The Little Girl with the Curl
had fallen over on her pail, fast asleep. Simple Simon had one eye
closed. Santa Claus had both eyes closed. The Old Woman’s children were
blinking like lazy little pussy cats and Little Boy Blue had gone to
sleep standing up.
And the next thing they knew it was to-morrow. How surprised they were
to find themselves in bed exactly as if nothing had happened.
“What did happen?” they asked their mothers.
“Why, you just got sleepy,” answered the mothers.
But of course, that really wasn’t it at all, and I think it’s funny
that nobody guessed that the sand belonged to the Sand Man. Nobody did,
however, and they don’t know it to this day.
And one thing you may be sure of and that is that the Sand Man was
never so careless as to leave his sand bucket around any place again.
That night, when the children had all been carried in to their beds,
he sneaked quietly down from the Blues’, snatched his precious bucket
quickly under his arm and, after putting the grown-ups to sleep, ran
for home.
“Look here,” he said to the Sand Woman, after he had told her his
exciting story, “I want you to sew a button on my jacket for me to hang
the sand pail on, so that I shall never, never, never forget and leave
it any place again.”
So the Sand Woman sewed a large button on the Sand Man’s coat, and ever
after that the Sand Man kept his pail right with him wherever he was,
and never, never, never forgot and left it any place again.
IX
WHY TAFFY THE WELSHMAN STOLE MEAT
Taffy the Welshman had come to Pudding Lane and that quiet village was
in a turmoil. For Taffy was not only a Welshman but Taffy was a thief.
Perhaps you have heard of him. He specialized in meat.
Some thieves go in for gold watches, some deal in silver spoons. Taffy
confined himself to meat. Once in a while he descended to bones, but
usually it was meat, here a knuckle of veal, there a shoulder of lamb,
yonder a round of beef. If ever a man knew how to steal meat, Taffy
was that man. He could nip off a roast as you or I couldn’t nip off a
feather, airily, easily, with jaunty grace. He could nip it when you
weren’t looking or when you were. He could nip ten pounds or one pound
with equal art. A born genius was Taffy, and he loved his work and
pursued it diligently.
Thus it was that every morning Mrs. Dumpty, Mrs. Claus, the Old Woman
Who Lived in a Shoe, Mrs. Jack Spratt and all the other women of
Pudding Lane would trot to the butcher’s and buy meat; every afternoon
Taffy would steal it, and every night--no meat for supper. And the men
were getting tired of it. Especially Jack Spratt.
“It’s all very well,” he said to Mrs. Spratt one day, “it’s all very
well for these foreigners to come swarming into our fair city, but I
must have lean meat soon, or I don’t guarantee, Mrs. Spratt, I don’t
guarantee that nothing will happen.”
Mrs. Spratt quailed. Her husband’s was a delicate constitution and she
well knew what the effect would be if he were deprived of meat much
longer. He would probably slam doors and kick things. He might even
hurl his shoe. Once he had hurled his shoe when there was a shortage of
lean meat in Pudding Lane. Awful to think of it, but he did do it.
“Yes,” repeated Jack Spratt, “it’s all very well for foreign robbers to
come swarming--”
Really though, Jack Spratt was talking nonsense. In the first place,
poor Taffy hadn’t “swarmed” into Pudding Lane. If there’s only one of
you, you can’t swarm; there was only one of Taffy. In the second place,
Jack Spratt needn’t have laid down the law like that to his wife.
She couldn’t help it if Taffy was a thief. She was tired of eggs and
lettuce herself, and thought yearningly of her own favorite fat meat.
At night she dreamed of it, juicy, dripping chunks of it.
It was like that in every house in Pudding Lane, the men demanding
meat, the women buying it, and then losing it that way. It did seem
rather queer that the women couldn’t keep their meat once they had
bought it, but they couldn’t. Even the Queen of Hearts couldn’t keep
her meat, and the unfortunate lady had many a scene with Old King Cole
over the disappearance of the royal chops.
“I can’t help it,” she told him, “if your friend Taffy steals meat all
over the place. But if I were the King--of course, I’m only a woman, a
mere Queen--but if I were the King, I’d soon fix that fellow. I’d take
it up with the Welsh ambassador.” Which shows how much she knew about
diplomatic matters. And it wasn’t any use talking to her, for if Old
King Cole had said there wasn’t any Welsh ambassador, the Queen would
have demanded, “Well, why isn’t there one?” and a long argument would
have ensued. Some women are like that.
Only two people in Pudding Lane did not suffer from the ravages of the
thieving Taffy. One was Little Miss Muffett, who was quite content now,
as always, with her curds and whey; and the other was the butcher. For
the more meat Taffy stole, the more meat the butcher sold. He was doing
a rushing business and he was very happy. Furiously he bought pigs and
sheep and beeves at the big market in Banbury Cross, and brought them
back on loads and droves to Pudding Lane. Furiously the women bought
his meat butchered from these pigs and sheep and beeves. Furiously
Taffy nipped the meat from their cupboards and cellars and shelves.
Yes, the butcher was very happy.
But as Jack Spratt had intimated, this state of affairs could not go on
forever. The men were getting worse. They stalked savagely; they had
glitterings in their eyes; they gathered in the candlestick-maker’s
shop and muttered together. Even that mild husband and father, Mr.
Claus, was a changed man, and one day, as he eyed his wife in an odd,
bloodthirsty way, Mrs. Claus spoke her mind.
“Look here, Mr. Claus,” said she, “I’m not a roast of mutton, sir.”
Mr. Claus gaped.
“Nor am I a leg of pork,” went on the extraordinary woman.
Mr. Claus gaped wider.
“So you needn’t look at me like a cannibal,” she told him. “I won’t be
cooked and eaten, even by you. Pray don’t delude yourself.”
“My dear--” remonstrated the baker with a ghastly smile.
“No,” continued Mrs. Claus, “nor shall you cast your eyes upon my
children in that fashion. No doubt Santa Claus would make a delicious
meal, Mr. Claus, but you shall not feast yourself upon him. Yes, and
the twins would probably be as tender flesh as a man could taste, but
you are not the man who will taste it. I am surprised at you, Mr.
Claus, that you should turn heathen like this and want to eat your
family alive; I really am.”
Oh, what a woman she was! Had Mr. Claus mentioned eating his family?
Had he even thought of such an atrocious thing? Yet on and on rattled
Mrs. Claus, and she probably would have been rattling on yet, if just
then the Town Crier had not come along, ringing his bell and shouting
something. What was he saying?
“Make your sandwiches! Bake your cakes! To-morrow is picnic day!”
[Illustration: _The next morning at nine o’clock the whole town started
out for Honeysuckle Hill. Page 129._]
Picnic day, oh, yes, so it was. To-morrow was picnic day; Mrs. Claus
had quite forgotten it.
Now the picnic that the Town Crier was calling was the picnic that
Pudding Lane had been talking about all summer, but never, until
now, had really got around to. It was a bit late for picnics, being
September, but you have to have at least one picnic a year, and if
it won’t come off early in the season, it just has to come off late,
that’s all. And to-morrow, finally, Pudding Lane’s annual picnic was to
come off.
But how can you have a picnic without ham? Mrs. Claus wanted to know.
And what is a picnic without cold tongue? demanded Mrs. Dumpty.
Nevertheless, the women went ahead making their sandwiches just the
same, cheese sandwiches and currant jam sandwiches, and sandwiches of
watercress. They baked their cakes and stuffed their eggs and fished
out their pickles and collected their bananas and packed their baskets
with all these things. And the next morning at nine o’clock the whole
town started out for Honeysuckle Hill.
The picnic went off with a bang, despite the meat crisis. Indeed, so
successful an affair was that picnic that Old King Cole felt moved
to make a formal statement, and he did so, saying that it was very
gratifying to him as king for a picnic to attain such heights as this.
Although just why he should have been gratified, I don’t know, since
all he did for the picnic was to come to it and eat at it. Still, his
statement made the women very happy; it’s a great thing to please a
king.
And so everything was going as smoothly as you please--until something
happened to Miss Muffett.
It was this way. Little Miss Muffett sat on a tuffet, eating her curds
and whey. She was talking and smiling and having a lovely time when
along came a spider and sat down beside her. Oh, dear, how she jumped
and screamed. For if there was anything in the world that Little Miss
Muffett was afraid of, it was a spider. And yet spiders were always
pursuing her. Every time that girl sat down on a tuffet to enjoy her
repast of curds and whey, along would come a spider and sit down
beside her, just as that spider did to-day. It may be that spiders are
particularly fond of curds and whey, or perhaps Miss Muffett herself
had a fatal fascination for spiders. Anyway, wherever she went she was
pursued by spiders, an unhappy fortune, surely, for a little girl as
timid as Miss Muffett.
To-day, however, the courtly Mr. Horner, always the man to assist
a lady in distress, rose up heroically and chased the spider off.
At least, he thought he chased the spider off, and everybody else,
including Miss Muffett, thought so too, when suddenly the spider
appeared again beside Miss Muffett and this time frightened Miss
Muffett away.
One look at the hideous creature sitting there so calmly beside her,
and overboard went the bowl of curds and whey, up flew Miss Muffett
shrieking, and away she was gone, down Pinafore Pike in a cloud of dust.
Mr. Horner, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker and all the
other men let out great roars, the women screamed, the children cried.
What a scene, where all had been sweet peace before. And then, away
leaped Mr. Horner down the road after Miss Muffett, away leaped Mr.
Spratt after him, and in another moment every man, woman and child in
Pudding Lane was tearing madly down Pinafore Pike behind the flying
skirts and scampering feet of Little Miss Muffett.
And the spider? Well, the spider with one look at the empty havoc
around him, legged it off to Mrs. Spider and the children, sighing as
he went. It was too bad, he was thinking to himself. He adored Little
Miss Muffett with all the fervor of his spiderish heart, yet every time
he went near her, she squealed and pulled up her skirt and ran away
from him.
Perhaps she didn’t like him, he thought. Oh, dear, it’s a hard world
for spiders. Nobody really likes them, even when they are as faithful
and devoted as this old fellow was. Well, Mrs. Spider liked him anyway,
he reflected, and the spider children liked him too. Home was the place
for spiders, so home he would go and there in the bosom of his family
console himself as best he could.
For ten good minutes the people of Pudding Lane kept their furious pace
down Pinafore Pike. They panted and heaved and got red in the face,
especially Mrs. Dumpty; their knees wobbled and waggled, especially
the candlestick-maker’s; their tongues hung out, particularly Simple
Simon’s; their arms flapped, Mr. Claus’s most of all. But still they
kept on.
Old King Cole lost his best ruby crown and never looked back after it.
Polly Flinders stubbed her pretty toes and bore the pain unflinchingly.
Mrs. Claus’s back hair went streaming in the wind, and she didn’t even
know it.
What they were running for, I don’t know, and they didn’t know
themselves, I’m afraid. Why they didn’t stop, I can’t say. But they
didn’t, until they turned the corner toward Banbury Cross and there
they did stop, suddenly and stock-still.
And it was no wonder they stopped, for the most astonishing sight
confronted them. Indeed, it was so astonishing they couldn’t believe
they were seeing aright. It didn’t seem possible that they _could_ be
seeing hundreds of cats and hundreds of dogs like that.
For that’s just what they saw: hundreds of cats and hundreds of dogs,
all there together, with hundreds of bones and hundreds of chunks of
meat. And in the midst of that mass of fur and sharp eyes and wagging
tails and crunching jaws stood Taffy the Welshman, smiling happily at
the scene.
The people of Pudding Lane blinked; they rubbed their eyes. Surely
something was the matter with their eyesight. But Taffy himself looked
natural enough, and his voice when he spoke, sounded natural too. Taffy
was speaking; he addressed himself, very properly, to Old King Cole.
“Welcome, sir,” said he graciously. “Welcome to Your Majesty, welcome
to the Queen of Hearts, and heartiest greetings to all your people
here.”
But Old King Cole couldn’t answer, for staring at the cats and dogs.
“I knew you would come some day,” went on Taffy smoothly, “and
now--here you are. We welcome you, sir, cats, dogs and Taffy himself.”
No answer from Old King Cole, glaring angrily now at the cats and dogs.
“You must understand, sir,” began Taffy.
“But that’s just it,” burst out Old King Cole, “I don’t understand at
all. I tell you, Welshman, this is a serious thing. You break the law,
you defy punishment, you steal meat from my people day in and day out,
and now I find you here, consorting with hundreds of dogs and hundreds
of cats on the public highway. Can it be, sir, that you have robbed us
of beef and mutton only to feed these beasts?”
“That is the truth, Your Majesty,” answered Taffy softly. “I spend my
life stealing meat for these poor creatures. Is it so wrong of me?”
“Wrong? Of course it’s wrong,” thundered Old King Cole. “Don’t you know
wrong from right, Welshman? Didn’t your mother teach you that it was
wrong to steal?”
“Ah,” replied Taffy, “but you don’t know about these cats and dogs,
King Cole. These are special cats and dogs, sir.”
“Special cats and dogs?”
“Yes, sir, stray cats from London and Banbury Cross, the loneliest
cats in the world; dogs without owners, the most miserable dogs there
ever were. Oh, you should have seen them when they first came to me.
They would have broken your heart. Seedy, dingy, scrawny, all of them,
sad-eyed and starving.”
“Starving?” repeated Old King Cole incredulously.
“Starving,” whispered everybody else, frightened.
“Starving,” said Taffy again. “That’s why it takes so much meat now,
King Cole. They eat all the time, sir. You can see how they’re eating
now. I don’t suppose they ever will get really filled up. They’ve been
at it for days, yes, and for nights too.”
“They eat all night too?” asked King Cole.
“All night long and all day long and never stop except for the briefest
of naps,” Taffy told him. “You see, there’s no joke about this, King
Cole. These are really hungry animals.”
It was easy to see that Taffy was right, for as the people of Pudding
Lane looked at the animals, not one cat raised an eye at them, or not
one dog, but lickety-lick, crunchety-crunch, they kept on eating,
eating, eating.
It was an odd sight, all those gray and black and brown furry bodies,
all those tails in the air, all those clamping jaws, and not one sound
but lickety-lick, crunchety-crunch. It was a sad sight too, for the
people of Pudding Lane had never known that animals could be as hungry
as that.
And so they nearly turned themselves inside out in their generosity,
those kind-hearted citizens of Pudding Lane. Mr. Spratt declared rashly
that he didn’t care if he never saw a piece of lean meat again; Mr.
Claus magnificently offered to abstain from beef the rest of his life;
and Old King Cole ordered the Queen of Hearts to see that eggs appeared
thereafter on the royal breakfast table, instead of the usual chops.
Taffy, however, wouldn’t listen to these sacrifices. He was about to
move on anyway, he said.
“I’m going to Hamelin next and after that, who knows, I may even go to
France and steal some meat from the French awhile. The cats and dogs
have to be fed, but of course I can’t deprive you good people of your
proteins forever.”
The good people didn’t know what proteins were, but they vowed again
that these poor creatures could have Pudding Lane’s meat as long as
Pudding Lane had any meat, such a pitch had their ecstasy reached.
But no, Taffy insisted that they had suffered enough, and that he must
go. And before they knew it, he was gone, followed by his winding
procession of cats and dogs.
The funny part about it was that the people of Pudding Lane were
actually sorry to see him go. They had forgotten he was a thief, you
see; they had forgotten their recent anger and annoyance against him.
They had forgotten everything except that Taffy the Welshman was a man
who was kind to animals, a man who lived and plied his trade for cats
and dogs alone. And this fact was so important that they had forgotten
the picnic too; they had even forgotten the spider.
And so those very people who had called Taffy the worst names only that
same morning now watched his departing figure down the road and called
out, “Good-by, Taffy, good-by. Good luck, good luck.”
Fancy wishing a thief good luck! It doesn’t seem respectable, but
that’s what they did.
And as for Taffy, he did have good luck. He went on his way ever after
that, stealing meat, feeding the cats and dogs and having a lovely
time. For Taffy enjoyed the stealing part quite as much as the feeding
part, if the truth must be known. It’s deplorable. People oughtn’t to
enjoy stealing, but Taffy did enjoy it, and there’s nothing we can do
about it.
Perhaps some day he’ll reform and be an honest man. Yet if he did, the
cats and dogs might have a hard time of it, so we’d better let him
alone, I guess. If we must have thieves in the world, Taffy’s the very
sort to have.
X
THE CROOKED MAN GETS A BRAND-NEW REPUTATION
The Crooked Man had invited Santa Claus to visit him and the Clauses
were sitting at the kitchen table trying to decide about it.
“I can’t think why he should have asked Santa to his house,” said Mrs.
Claus. She looked down at the letter in her hand, which was, of course,
written in extremely crooked characters on a funny little crooked piece
of paper.
“Perhaps he’s heard about the toys and wants Santa Claus to make some
for the crooked children next Christmas,” suggested Mr. Claus.
“The crooked children!” exclaimed Mrs. Claus. “You ought to know by
this time, Mr. Claus, that the Crooked Man is a bachelor.”
“Is he?” asked Mr. Claus. “Dear me. Then who lives with him on the
Crooked Mile?”
“He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse, and they all
live together in a little crooked house,” explained his wife.
“Oh, I see,” said the baker. But he didn’t see. He simply couldn’t
imagine a crooked man and a crooked cat and a crooked mouse all living
together in a little crooked house. It sounded like a bad dream to Mr.
Claus, not like real life. In real life, men and cats and mice are
straight.
“I suppose it will be all right for Santa Claus to go,” Mrs. Claus was
saying.
“I suppose so,” assented her husband.
“Nobody ever did visit him, though.”
“No,” said Mr. Claus, “the Crooked Man doesn’t stand very well among
the best people, I must admit.”
“Well, do you suppose,” Mrs. Claus stopped, reddening. “Could it be,
baker, that the Crooked Man’s morals are crooked, too?”
The baker’s face fell. Morals. He hadn’t thought of them. But
naturally, the morals of a crooked man would be crooked, wouldn’t they?
So he said to Mrs. Claus, “Why, yes, certainly his morals would
be crooked. Santa Claus must not accept this invitation to visit
the Crooked Man. In fact, Mrs. Claus, I forbid it,” he finished up
pompously, just as if he, a sage man, had thought up the morals himself.
Santa Claus, who was sitting at the table too, didn’t quite understand.
“What are morals?” he asked his mother.
“Morals?” replied Mrs. Claus. “Why, washing your face every morning is
morals, and telling the truth, and going to bed at eight o’clock, and
minding your parents, and saving your pennies--all those are morals,
Santa.”
“Do you have to have them?” asked Santa. They sounded very
uninteresting. He could think of lots of people who were most
amusing and lovable, though they didn’t do all those things: the
candlestick-maker, for instance, who didn’t wash very often; and Piggy
Peddler who stayed up till all hours; and Simple Simon, who didn’t ever
save his pennies, but squandered them prodigally on horehound lozenges,
his favorite confection.
“Have to have them?” repeated Mrs. Claus, shocked. “Well, I guess you
do, Santa Claus. If you don’t have morals, you don’t get very far in
this world, sir. Morals make the world go ’round, don’t they, Mr.
Claus?”
Mr. Claus, thus appealed to, looked dubious.
“I thought it was love that made the world go ’round,” he ventured.
“Well, love is morals,” asserted Mrs. Claus. You can’t catch that woman
very often.
The subject was getting too deep, however, and she hastily changed it.
“I’ll tell you,” she said. “Instead of visiting the Crooked Man, Santa
Claus can go to the Gingerbread Fair.”
At which suggestion Santa Claus forgot morals and love and the Crooked
Man and everything else, so thrilled was he over the Gingerbread Fair.
The Gingerbread Fair was the great celebration which was held at Pye
Corner every year. It was a magnificent affair, of that Pudding Lane
was certain, although only Mr. Claus and King Cole had ever gone so far
as to attend it. Mr. Claus went on business, of course, and Old King
Cole went for pleasure.
And now Santa Claus was going. What an experience for a little boy
only nine years old! Why, most of the grown-ups of Pudding Lane lived
and died without going to it. Even Mr. Flinders, the wealthy, had not
permitted himself that luxury, though it was said that he was planning
to take Mrs. Flinders to the Gingerbread Fair on their twentieth
wedding anniversary.
Pye Corner was so very far off, you see. It was farther than Banbury
Cross, farther than Hamelin, almost as far as London. You went down
Raspberry Road, along the Crooked Mile, across Minnow Creek, up
Rocking-horse Row, and there, just before you got to London Bridge, was
Pye Corner. It took almost a day to get there by foot; it took half a
day to get there by coach. No wonder the citizens of Pudding Lane had
never traveled so far.
It was decided that Judy-Who-Lived-in-a-Shoe should accompany Santa
Claus on his trip to Pye Corner, for Santa Claus could hardly bear
to do anything without his favorite little friend, and to do such a
wonderful thing without her was unthinkable.
Mr. Claus was to take Santa and Judy to the Gingerbread Fair, but
Mr. Claus didn’t take them; he took the mumps instead. Where he took
them from was not known, for the Claus children had had the mumps
long before, but where he took them at was quite clear. His poor
jaws swelled up like balloons, his face ached worse than he had ever
supposed a mere face could ache, and on the very day of the Gingerbread
Fair, Mr. Claus lay in his bed, moaning, without a thought of
gingerbread.
Poor Mr. Claus, with those aching balloons where his face used to be.
Poor Santa, without any father to take him to the Gingerbread Fair.
Poor Judy, all dressed up and waiting in the Shoe for a Mr. Claus that
would never come.
Mrs. Claus, however, was not the woman to let plans slip simply
because her spouse had chosen this unlucky moment in which to take
on a distressing malady. She would never get to the Gingerbread Fair
herself, probably, but she was determined that Santa should go. So what
did she do but bustle down to the Town Crier’s and beg him to take the
children and the pies to the Gingerbread Fair? Not that it took much
begging. The Town Crier had his hat on his head before she had finished
her first sentence, and before she had started her second, he was
halfway down Pudding Lane toward the baker’s shop.
So it was the old Town Crier instead of Mr. Claus who climbed into the
stagecoach ten minutes later, with Santa and Judy in tow, and a great
basket of Mrs. Claus’s pies on his arm. Into the coach they got and
away they went, Santa Claus and Judy and the Town Crier and the pies.
They bowled along Raspberry Road, they bumped along the Crooked Mile,
they forded Minnow Creek, they rolled along Rocking-horse Row, and
they swung into Pye Corner, that great metropolis, at exactly twelve
o’clock.
“We have arrived,” announced the Town Crier sonorously. The Town Crier
never said things; he always announced them. Even when he uttered a
mere “Good morning”, he rolled it out like a piece of news, sang it,
cried it.
But Santa Claus and Judy knew they had arrived without his telling
them. They knew it by the sound of a fife and drums; they knew it by
the sight of a dozen merry-go-rounds, of Punch and Judy shows, of
brightly colored stalls, of children, children, everywhere; and most of
all, they knew it by the mountains of gingerbread pigs that were piled
up as high and as far as they could see.
“Oh, Judy!” whispered Santa Claus, pressing her hand fervently.
Judy nodded blissfully.
“I know,” she answered. “But come on. Let’s hurry. Oh, it’s a lovely
Gingerbread Fair, Santa Claus.”
And it was a lovely Gingerbread Fair, quite the loveliest one Pye
Corner had ever had. And such a time as Santa and Judy had that whole
long, sunny afternoon, while the Town Crier at his stall announced Mrs.
Claus’s pies and made change, incorrectly, for the buyers who ate Mrs.
Claus’s pies.
The first thing to do was to buy their gingerbread pigs, those brown
crusty beasts with curled tails and sprouting horns (the gingerbread
species have horns if other pigs do not), and each pig bearing the
name of its owner in sticky pink-and-white icing. There on her pig you
could read Judy’s name, plain as day, J-u-d-y, and there on Santa’s
pig blazed forth his name too, S-a-n-t-a. The man did it with a little
squeezer while you waited.
You picked the pig, you told your name, you paid your penny, and the
pig was yours miraculously.
Some of the pigs had freckles, candy ones, but the freckled pigs
cost two pennies, and a plain pig does very well if your pennies are
limited, as Santa’s and Judy’s were. There was the merry-go-round yet
to be reckoned with, and the circus, and the Punch and Judy--oh, lots
of things.
The merry-go-round came next. Judy rode a wild bull, a creature with
snorting nostrils, angry red eyes and a lolling tongue; Santa Claus
strode a Mexican pony whose long tail stuck out straight behind him.
They had just mounted when the music commenced, a tune that wheezed
from a bronchial music box in the middle somewhere; the platform began
to move slowly, the bull and the pony started to rock.
Faster went the music, faster went the platform, faster rocked the pony
and the bull. Judy’s fat little legs clung frantically; Santa Claus
gripped tight with his fists. The world spun around them, a flying haze
of faces and colors and shapes. On and on and on they went, whirling,
rocking, dipping, swaying, plunging.
When it was over and they stood dazed on the ground again, Judy gulped,
then turned to Santa.
“But what makes the merry go ’round, Santa?” she asked.
Santa Claus didn’t know exactly. In fact, he didn’t know at all. But
that only made it better. If you don’t know precisely how wonderful
things happen, it seems to make them more wonderful, somehow.
In the circus, they saw an elephant that waltzed and a clown who was
fearfully funny because his coat tails were forever getting afire. In
the Punch and Judy show there were six Punches and five Judys. Think of
it! At the candy stall, Judy and Santa bought taffy that was spun off a
wheel like wool. They shot guns and threw rings at bottles and bowled
at ninepins. And then, when they had spent every single penny they
had, they went back to get the Town Crier--and he wasn’t there. The
stall was deserted, the pies were gone, and so, evidently, was the Town
Crier.
They looked all over the whole Gingerbread Fair, but no Town Crier was
to be found. Where he had gone, nobody could say, until an old apple
woman in the next stall, who had known it all along, mumbled that he
had picked up his traps and gone home by the five-o’clock stage.
“Gone home!” ejaculated Judy.
She and Santa looked at each other.
“He does forget things, you know,” Santa reminded Judy.
“But he wouldn’t forget us,” Judy said.
“He did, though,” put in the old apple woman. Then she softened. “Look
here, you childer,” she said, “it’s yet light. Best hurry home afore
dark. Your mothers will be worried-like.”
“But it’s too far to walk before dark,” said Santa Claus. “We live ’way
off in Pudding Lane.”
[Illustration: _“But it’s too far to walk before dark,” said Santa
Claus. “We live ’way off in Pudding Lane.” Page 148._]
The apple woman considered them a moment. Then she spoke.
“I’ll give yer a lift. Nobody’s buying apples, anyway,” she said
savagely.
She did give them a lift, if you can call it a lift, that short ride
she gave them in her wheelbarrow on top of apples. Still, even if Judy
did keep tumbling off like a very apple herself, even if Santa Claus
did ache all over from sitting on the knobby things, it was better than
nothing, the apple woman’s lift. And when she dumped them in front of
her cottage on Rocking-horse Row with a hoarse “Good night to yer”,
Judy and Santa thanked her heartily.
Their thanks were hearty, though their hearts were rather faint. It did
seem forlorn to be there alone on Rocking-horse Row, so far from home
at such an hour. It was now nearly seven, and the sun was getting ready
for bed behind the hill.
But Santa and Judy were brave children. Judy didn’t cry and Santa
didn’t flinch. They simply picked up their tired feet and went on. They
weren’t really lost, you see, because they knew the way. Only it was
such a _long_ way; that was the trouble.
Well, they walked and walked, and finally they came to Minnow Creek,
several inches deep and at least four feet wide. Minnow Creek was
fun, though, because they took off their shoes and stockings and waded
across it. They wiped their feet on Judy’s petticoat, put on their
shoes and stockings and approached the Crooked Mile. That indeed looked
bad. It was such a crooked mile, twisting and curving like dozens of
horseshoes. People always got lost on it. And now, to make it worse, it
was almost dark. In another moment, it would be pitchy. Then what would
they do?
The darkness plumped down on them at last. Santa Claus could see
nothing but a few feeble stars overhead; Judy could not see a foot
ahead of her. Hands clasped, they walked on, frightened and quiet,
hardly daring to whisper.
Then, suddenly, a yellow light flashed up ahead of them.
“Firefly,” said Judy.
“Lantern,” said Santa.
But it wasn’t a firefly, it wasn’t a lantern; it was a lamp in a house.
As they got closer, they talked about the house, whose it was and
whether they should knock on the door or not. Judy was afraid it might
be a witch who lived there, but Santa Claus pooh-pooh’ed that.
“You know there aren’t any witches except in stories,” he said.
“But this may be a story,” was Judy’s answer.
“You only read stories.”
“You could be a story as well as read it,” asserted Judy.
Santa didn’t understand that, so he made no answer, but marched
straight up to the door and knocked. Witch or no witch, he was going to
ask for help.
The man that came to the door looked something like a witch, to be
sure, gnarled and twisted as he was, with a long irregular nose, and
knotted, hunched-up body. He spoke pleasantly enough, however.
“Good evening,” said he. “Why, bless my soul, it’s children.”
“Please, sir,” spoke Santa Claus courageously, “it’s Judy and Santa
Claus of Pudding Lane.”
“You don’t tell me,” exclaimed the gnarled man. “Why, come in, Judy and
Santa Claus of Pudding Lane.”
He held the door open so that the yellow light streamed out of the
little house. The children could see the house more plainly now. It
was an odd-looking house, leaning every which way, like a house in
a puzzle. Its door sagged at a dizzy angle; its windows were put in
aslant. Its very chimneys were askew on top of its zigzag roof.
Wondering, the children followed the hunched-up man into his crazy
house. How queer it was inside too. The fireplace seemed to stand on
its ear; the table supported itself on one leg; the lamp was upside
down. And there, beside the fire, lay a cat such as had never been seen
before, a cat all angles and points, between his paws a mouse whose
ears were crisscross, whose tail was curly like a corkscrew.... Oh, now
Santa Claus knew.
This was the Crooked Man, and here was the crooked cat who caught a
crooked mouse and they all lived together in this little crooked house.
Santa Claus had guessed the truth. When he asked the man timidly if he
really were the Crooked Man, his host gave a pleasant, crooked smile
and jerked his crooked head in assent.
“I am that,” he replied. “And I’ve wanted to see you, oh, so much,
Santa Claus, because you’re an understanding fellow, even if you are
only nine, and I thought--”
“You thought--” prompted Santa.
“Well, I thought--” the Crooked Man seemed rather embarrassed “--I
thought that maybe if you knew me and liked me, just a little, of
course--that maybe--”
“That maybe everybody else would like you too, and not be afraid of you
any more?” finished up Santa for him.
The Crooked Man nodded vigorously, with an eager look in his eyes.
“Why, of course they will,” said Santa Claus. “I do like you, Crooked
Man. You’re very kind and agreeable, and when I tell my friends in
Pudding Lane just how nice you are, I’m sure you’ll be very popular
there. I really am sure of that, sir.”
The Crooked Man blinked at this, trying to keep back some grateful
tears that wouldn’t be kept, however, but pursued a crooked course down
his cheeks.
“It’s rather lonely being crooked, I suppose,” said Judy, trying to be
tactful.
“It is,” replied the Crooked Man huskily. “It isn’t being crooked
that’s so bad; it’s just that nobody else is crooked, you see.”
“Yes, I see,” said Judy soberly. “It’s like spelling. If nobody else
knew how, you wouldn’t have to learn, but they do, so you do,” she
ended up rather incoherently.
“Only I can’t help being crooked, no matter how hard I try,” said the
man, “and you can learn spelling.”
“Can you?” thought Judy. Privately, she thought she would never learn
spelling any more than the Crooked Man would ever straighten out.
Well, that was the way Pudding Lane discovered what a nice chap the
Crooked Man was, after all. For, of course, he took the children home
in his cart as fast as he could, when they told him their story, took
them home to their mothers, and was the object of much praise and
admiration from all of Pudding Lane. Especially did the Town Crier
praise and admire him.
“I don’t see how you remembered to bring ’em,” he said, marveling.
“I forgot ’em clean as a whistle. Had a feeling I had left something
behind, but couldn’t remember what it was. You must have an excellent
memory,” he went on. “Perhaps crooked memories are better than straight
ones.”
“Perhaps,” agreed the Crooked Man, smiling crookedly.
XI
MOTHER GOOSE SETTLES A DIFFICULTY
The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe was busy making broth one afternoon
when she looked out through the lowest buttonhole of her home and spied
Mrs. Dumpty coming up the walk.
“Why, Mrs. Dumpty, this _is_ a surprise!” cried the Old Woman. “I’m so
glad to see you. Do come right in.”
Mrs. Dumpty could not muster a smile in answer to the Old Woman’s
cordial greeting. She was a jolly little pudding of a lady with a round
face and no waistline whatever, but to-day her mouth drooped at the
corners and she looked very worried, as indeed she had looked all these
weeks of Humpty’s confinement. “I just thought I’d run over a while,”
she said to the Old Woman. “Humpty’s asleep.”
“Of course!” exclaimed the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe delightedly.
“I’m so glad you did, Mrs. Dumpty. Now come right in.”
Mrs. Dumpty sighed heavily. She was very fond of the Old Woman, but it
was an ordeal to climb into that Shoe every time she wanted to call,
and she had always said she didn’t know why in the world the Old Woman
didn’t call Jack-of-all-Trades and let him build a few steps up to the
Shoe. However, the Old Woman was queer about her home, and so now Mrs.
Dumpty bravely lifted one fat little foot for the climb, and pretty
soon, panting and pink, she had scrambled into the Shoe.
“And how is Humpty?” inquired the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, as she
hastened to put the kettle on.
“He will never be any better,” answered Mrs. Dumpty sadly. “He will
never walk another step. Oh, Old Woman, if he had only not sat on the
wall that day--”
“I know,” murmured the Old Woman sympathetically. “But Humpty doesn’t
suffer any pain, does he?”
Mrs. Dumpty’s face cleared. “No, not a bit,” she answered. “But, Old
Woman, what do you suppose the doctor says he must have now?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion,” declared the Old Woman.
“A wheel chair!” Mrs. Dumpty’s little eyes bulged as she told her news.
“A wheel chair!” repeated the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe. “Well,
whatever in the world is that?”
“It’s a chair with wheels on it,” explained Mrs. Dumpty. “You see, Old
Woman, if Humpty could be pushed around in a wheel chair, it would be
almost--not quite, but almost--as good as walking.”
“Why, of course!” agreed the Old Woman. “What won’t they be thinking up
next?” she concluded admiringly.
“But,” Mrs. Dumpty’s face became troubled again, “there isn’t a
wheel chair in all of Pudding Lane. I’ve been to the butcher’s and
the baker’s and the candlestick-maker’s, and they haven’t any. And
all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, which the king has so
generously put at my disposal”--here Mrs. Dumpty straightened up a bit
proudly--“even they have no wheel chair. And meanwhile my poor Humpty
sits by the window in his rocker.” She was ready to cry, poor thing.
The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe brought her a cup of tea without a
word, and without a word sat down beside her guest and began to stir
her own tea vigorously. She was thinking, was the Old Woman, for this
was indeed a dilemma for the Dumpties, and the Old Woman wanted to help
them out of it if she could. So she stirred and stirred and stirred her
tea, making a great clatter, while Mrs. Dumpty sat looking sadly at her
cup.
And finally the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe set her cup down noisily,
with a great light in her eye. “Well, Mrs. Dumpty, why don’t you ride a
cockhorse to Banbury Cross and get a wheel chair there?” she exclaimed
triumphantly.
At this suggestion Mrs. Dumpty stared at the Old Woman in amazement.
It was a daring idea--Mrs. Dumpty had never been to Banbury Cross in
her whole life; but it was a sensible one, too, for surely if any place
would have a wheel chair, Banbury Cross would be that place. Mother
Goose had been to Banbury Cross time and again, and she had reported it
to be a flourishing center, with as many as a dozen shops.
Mrs. Dumpty opened her mouth into a little round “O”, then closed it
again and finally spoke. “Why--” she brought out. It was such a truly
astonishing idea, she just couldn’t grasp it all at once. And yet, too,
the minute the Old Woman had spoken, Mrs. Dumpty knew that to go to
Banbury Cross was the very thing to do.
“Why not?” the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe was urging her. “You could
go one day, come back the next, and stay at the Threepenny Inn all
night. It’s a very fine inn, I hear.”
Mrs. Dumpty hesitated. “I’ve never traveled,” she ventured timidly, her
fat little body quivering with the excitement of merely thinking about
traveling.
“Good time to begin,” replied the Old Woman energetically.
“It’s as far as ten miles,” she objected feebly.
“The end of the world is farther,” was the Old Woman’s response.
“I don’t know how to ride a cockhorse.”
“You just sit on ’em,” the Old Woman enlightened her, though she
herself had never ridden one and didn’t know in the least what she was
talking about.
Mrs. Dumpty looked at her friend admiringly. “You are so brave,” she
said. “Oh, Old Woman,” she cried out suddenly, “will you go with me?”
“In the name of goodness!” exclaimed the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
“What would I do with all my children? Who would spank them and tuck
them in their beds?”
But it was finally arranged that the Old Woman should go with Mrs.
Dumpty to Banbury Cross to buy the wheel chair for Humpty, and that
night everybody in Pudding Lane knew of the proposed expedition. Mrs.
Claus had kindly offered to look after Humpty, and Old Mother Hubbard
had been asked to bring her poor dog over and stay in the Shoe with the
innumerable children. Needless to say, Mother Hubbard was only too glad
to leave her bare cupboard for a full one, for a couple of days.
And so the night before the great day Mrs. Dumpty went to bed,
trembling with agitation over the bold undertaking of the morrow, and
hardly slept a wink. But the Old Woman, who stayed awake too, smiled
into the dark as she thought of the journey, for she was an adventurous
old woman, and it looked like a lark to her.
Of course the Town Crier had got everything all mixed up in his
announcement about the coming event. For he had told it far and wide
that the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Mrs. Dumpty would start
on their momentous journey at seven o’clock, which was not at all
the truth, the ladies having set their hour for six. It seemed rather
early; but, as Mrs. Dumpty said, ten miles was a long way, and they
might not get there the same day,--terrifying thought.
But somehow, what the Town Crier had said didn’t seem to make any
difference, for everybody on Pudding Lane was there at six o’clock
just the same. That is, everybody was there except poor Humpty Dumpty
himself and the Town Crier (who was much astonished when he went out at
seven o’clock to find that the ladies had already gone). The Old Woman
Who Lived in a Shoe and Mrs. Dumpty were indeed being honored with an
impressive send-off.
And you should have seen those two women! They had never been so
magnificent before; no, not even when Mrs. Claus gave a party and
everybody had been so enormously dressed up. Mrs. Dumpty had got out
her wedding dress for the occasion, and she surely did look elegant in
it, in spite of the fact that it was much too tight, as fat ladies’
wedding dresses always, always are. In one hand she carried a package
containing her nightcap, three fresh handkerchiefs and a bottle of
cough sirup; in the other an egg basket filled to bursting with lunch.
The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe had wanted very much to wait and
have dinner at the Threepenny Inn, but Mrs. Dumpty would hear of no
such carryings-on.
As for the Old Woman herself, she was in black silk with a fine new
feather on her bonnet and a pea-green parasol to keep the sun away.
Jumbo and Jocko and Judy and all the other children of the Old Woman,
who followed their mother in a winding string from the Shoe to the
crossroads, had never seen her look so regal and were extremely proud
of her appearance.
Well, there they stood at the crossroads, Mrs. Dumpty quivering with
fear and excitement, the Old Woman impatient to be off, and all their
friends standing around and wondering how it felt to be going on such a
long journey. And precisely at six o’clock into their midst pranced the
jaunty little cockhorses driven by the keeper of King Cole’s stables.
For these travelers were to ride no ordinary cockhorses, but the King’s
best. The King was still deeply interested in Humpty’s case and was
helping in this substantial manner. One of the horses was a sleek
little white horse with a bright eye; the other was black and tossed
his mane in the liveliest fashion possible. Mrs. Dumpty grew pale at
the sight of them, for she was sure she was going to fall and break
her neck. But the dauntless Old Woman picked up her skirts and almost
danced a jig in her impatience to be off.
And now the great moment was here. The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
began hastily to kiss all her children, which took some time, of
course. Mr. Claus, the baker, stepped gallantly forward to offer his
services to Mrs. Dumpty in mounting her horse, a service that Mrs.
Dumpty accepted with deep gratitude. Mr. Claus bent low and cupped his
hand, into which Mrs. Dumpty stepped timidly and uncertainly. As Mr.
Claus gave her a boost, Mrs. Dumpty grabbed the horse’s mane, the horse
started to go, but “Whoa, whoa!” commanded Mr. Claus in a bellowing
voice, and finally, shaking and pale, the little fat lady was on her
horse.
She was on, but she wished for all the world that she were off.
However, there was nothing to do except start, and there, who was
that galloping by on the white horse but the Old Woman, holding on
for dear life and waving her parasol in joyful excitement! The black
horse started then too, and clutching the lines and the egg basket and
her bonnet all at once, and screaming weakly, Mrs. Dumpty was seen to
follow her friend in a mad gallop down Pinafore Pike. And that was the
last that Pudding Lane saw of them for seven whole days.
Yes, Mrs. Dumpty and the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe actually stayed
away from home for seven whole days, a thing that nobody in Pudding
Lane had ever done before, except Mother Goose, who was of course a
privileged character.
At the end of the second day everybody went down to the crossroads to
meet the home-coming travelers, for nobody dreamed that they wouldn’t
come back just as they had promised; they were such extremely reliable
women. But dusk came, and they had not appeared. Little wobbly stars
ventured out, and no cockhorses came flourishing around the corner. At
last it grew quite black and was really night, and still the Old Woman
and Mrs. Dumpty had not come home to their children.
Where could they be? asked everybody of everybody else. It was very
mysterious.
“I’m afraid they’re lost on the road,” said the butcher.
“It’s a perfectly straight road,” the baker reminded him.
“They may have come to grief in Banbury Cross,” suggested the
candlestick-maker.
“I fear they have,” said the carpenter.
Just then one of the king’s men came riding by and saw the anxious
group. “What is the matter?” he inquired.
The cobbler stepped up with respectful importance. “The Old Woman Who
Lived in a Shoe and Mrs. Dumpty went to Banbury Cross two days ago and
have not returned, sir,” he said.
“Have you had bad news of them?” asked the king’s man. “No news is good
news in King Cole’s kingdom, you know,” and with that he flicked his
horse and rode off.
How relieved they all were! For of course that explained everything. No
news was good news. That was one of old King Cole’s laws. How they had
forgotten it, even for a moment, they could not imagine; but they had,
every one of them, though you couldn’t find a body of more law-abiding
citizens in the whole kingdom. So they went home to bed, with no
further anxiety about the Old Woman and Mrs. Dumpty so far away in
Banbury Cross.
But even if the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe and Mrs. Dumpty had not
been safe and sound, Pudding Lane would have had no time to worry about
them after that. For something else happened so much more serious that
nobody could think of anything except that.
It began, indeed, that very night. Everything was still and quiet
throughout the whole village, for it was way past midnight and Pudding
Lane had been asleep hours and hours, when suddenly Polly, one of the
little girls who lived in the Shoe (the fat one, you know), woke up. It
was a queer thing for her to do, to wake up right in the middle of the
night like that, but then she felt queer, with a wavy feeling in her
stomach that was most uncomfortable. Polly had never had such a feeling
before, except one time when she ate too much jelly cake at Mistress
Mary’s birthday party. But there had been no jelly cake this night.
Just the usual broth and spanking. The broth could not do that to her
stomach, she thought to herself, and certainly Old Mother Hubbard’s
gentle little spankings wouldn’t hurt a mouse. The tender-hearted old
lady did not enjoy that part of her duty in the Shoe one bit, and the
children had really almost forgotten what a good sound spanking was
like.
As Polly lay there, wishing the wavy feeling would go away, she heard
Patsy in the next bed give a little moan. (Patsy was the one without
any front teeth.) The next minute Judy, on the other side of her (the
one who couldn’t spell), turned over in her sleep with a sob. The baby
began to cry; Jocko and Jumbo and the twins and the several unnamed
children sat up in bed with a start; Mother Hubbard’s poor dog began to
bark as if in pain.
“Mercy on us!” Mother Hubbard jumped out of bed and began to fumble for
a candle. “What in the world is the matter with you children?”
Just then she stumbled against one of the little beds and the next
minute was pitched off her feet over against another bed.
“What _is_ the matter?” cried old Mother Hubbard desperately. “Why are
the children sobbing and moaning? Why is this beast yowling? Why can’t
I keep my feet?”
With that she lighted a candle and looked around, and she soon
discovered what the trouble was. The trouble was that the Shoe, up
to that time a perfectly substantial dwelling, was swaying ever so
slightly in the wind, for all the world like a ship on the gently
rolling waves of the sea. No wonder the children were sick! No wonder
the poor dog yowled and old Mother Hubbard couldn’t walk straight!
But old Mother Hubbard knew what to do, right enough. She staggered to
the cupboard and took down a big bottle, after which, stumbling and
tumbling, she went to each little bed with a dose and a comforting
pat for every child. She gave the poor dog, not a bone, but a dose
of medicine too, and finally, after she herself had taken a big
tablespoonful, she rolled back into bed, the baby in her arms, her
nightcap over one ear.
The wind quieted down and the children went to sleep, but the next day
old Mother Hubbard had a fine tale for the women of Pudding Lane.
“Well, I never!” exclaimed Mrs. Claus, when she heard of it. “Whatever
did you do?”
“I gave ’em a quart of peppermint oil,” related Old Mother Hubbard.
“And they all went to sleep.”
“Well!” Mrs. Claus drew a long breath. “I must say, neighbor, I’m glad
I have only Humpty to look after. To live in a shoe with all those
children, and to have it act like a rocking-chair at night--” Mrs.
Claus threw up her hands at the thought of such a situation and thanked
her stars it wasn’t _her_ who had to go through it.
And that was only the beginning of it. The real disaster came four
nights later.
It was the worst night Pudding Lane had seen in many a day, as Mrs.
Claus said,--a real November storm with a whipping rain that lashed
angrily in every direction and wind that tore at trees and chimneys
until they creaked and cracked with the strain.
Nobody on Pudding Lane so much as stuck a nose out that night. By seven
o’clock everybody was tight in bed, some of them even hiding under
the bedclothes, and there wasn’t a candle burning in the whole of the
village, not even in the palace of Old King Cole.
Mrs. Claus, who was staying at the Dumpties’, wondered anxiously about
her own children at home with the baker. As for Mother Hubbard, she did
wish to goodness that she were not sleeping in an old, weather-beaten
shoe that night, for although Jumbo had fastened the buttons up tight
and had put the canvas top up, still she feared that the Shoe might
rock again as it had the other night.
And sure enough, just as she feared, as the storm grew worse and worse,
the Shoe began to do its old trick. At first it rocked only gently,
slipping uncertainly around in the mud.
“Oh, dear!” cried Polly. “We are rocking again, Mother Hubbard.”
“We are that,” replied Mother Hubbard grimly, longing for the safety of
her own kitchen.
“What shall we do?” asked Polly. “Shall we take more peppermint oil?”
“There is no more,” replied Old Mother Hubbard. “Let’s see.
Supposing--” She was trying to think of some way to amuse all the
children so they would forget the storm.
But Mother Hubbard got no further, for suddenly the Shoe leaned over
to one side in the wind, tipping everybody and everything into one
corner. Such a hubbub of noise and confusion as there was! The pots and
pans rattled as they flew from their hooks; the poor dog whimpered and
wailed; the baby cried. Even the older children, who tried to be brave,
were bruised from the bumping and frightened beyond words. Oh, dear,
what a fearful and unexpected catastrophe! And still the storm grew
worse, and the Shoe rocked harder, until they felt as if they were in a
tipsy boat on a sea that raged and tossed. You never would have thought
that this was the dear old Shoe that had been such a happy home all
these years.
“We’ll have to get out,” said Old Mother Hubbard to herself.
But as she peeped through the lowest buttonhole she saw that the rain
was beating harder than ever against the trees, and the wind was waving
a thousand arms.
Worse and worse it got. The Shoe tilted to one side and then the other.
Once it almost tipped completely over, but the wind whirled suddenly
around the other way, and up came the Shoe again, tottering dizzily.
There was no hope. Mother Hubbard looked around at the frightened
children in the madly-rocking Shoe.
“We must get out,” she said. “Jumbo, fly out and unbutton the Shoe as
fast as ever you can. Jocko, take the twins with you. Judy and Patsy
and Polly and Nancy, and all the others, line up in a row. I’ll take
the baby. The rest of you jump out the minute the Shoe is opened.”
Jumbo bravely climbed out of the top of the Shoe into the storm. Jumbo
was twelve and very courageous, as you see. It was his duty to open and
close the Shoe every night, and although the buttonhook was a rather
large and clumsy affair, he handled it like a man, and had often been
much complimented on his skill. In a twinkling the Shoe was open, and
in another twinkling the children had all jumped out into the rain and
wind and thunder and lightning.
They were just in time. Old Mother Hubbard and the poor dog had but
just stepped out of the rickety Shoe when over it went for the last
time, spilling beds and stoves and stools helter-skelter. It was a
sad spectacle for the children of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe.
But there was no time for repining. Already they were all soaked and
shivering. On a run they all started for Mother Hubbard’s kitchen.
You can imagine what an uproar there was in Pudding Lane the next day,
when everybody heard of the accident that had happened to the Shoe.
Everybody went to Mother Hubbard’s kitchen to see the children, to ask
questions, to shake their heads and to say what a dreadful thing it
was. It was a great day for the children who had lived in the Shoe, for
although it was sad to be homeless, still they did enjoy being talked
about and made over, and soon began to feel very important.
On that day nobody even thought of poor Humpty Dumpty, except Mrs.
Claus, who was still staying with him, and Humpty sat at home
alone, wondering where his mother was and wishing somebody--oh, just
anybody--would come to see him. And just as he was wishing that, who do
you suppose came up the walk?
Yes, it was Mrs. Dumpty, wheeling a great chair in front of her and
smiling as she used to smile in the days when Humpty was well. When
he saw her, Humpty almost jumped out of his rocker with delight, and
indeed that reunion between the Dumpties was such a one as to make Mrs.
Claus, who was there, sniffle and clear her throat.
“Well, where on earth have you been?” was Mrs. Claus’s question.
“We’ve been in Banbury Cross,” answered Mrs. Dumpty. “Where else?”
“But why did you stay so long?” persisted Mrs. Claus. “We have been so
alarmed about you.”
“Oh,” replied Humpty’s mother, “we had to wait for the sick boy, who
had this chair, to get well. It was the only chair in Banbury Cross,
you see.”
Mrs. Dumpty’s home-coming was a happy one, but what do you think the
feelings of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe must have been when she
found out what had happened?
The Old Woman had had a good time in Banbury Cross. In fact, she had
never had quite such a good time in all her life, she told Mrs. Dumpty.
But just the same, she was most eager to get home to her dear children,
and she was anxious to live in a shoe again after those days in the
Threepenny Inn. And so as she rode the cockhorse up Pinafore Pike and
turned into Pudding Lane, she was indeed a happy woman.
And then her eyes fell on the poor old overturned Shoe, and she thought
she should faint with terror. Up she dashed to inspect the ruins. The
Shoe was twisted and bent and lying on its side deep in the mud. How
horrible to come home from a journey and find your home a wreck!
But where were the children? Had they all been carried off by the
storm? With a cry the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe ran down Pudding
Lane. Soon she learned the truth. She was indeed relieved to find her
children, every single one of them, safe and happy with Old Mother
Hubbard. But it was a sorrow to have no home, and the Old Woman, for
the first time in her life, had not the heart to spank the children all
around before putting them to bed.
The next morning King Cole sent for the Old Woman to come to the
palace, and it was suspected that the merry old soul had some plan for
new quarters for her and all her children. Mother Hubbard’s cupboard
was barer than ever now, and they really could not stay there another
day longer. It turned out to be just as the two women had thought. Old
King Cole, after considering the matter carefully, handsomely offered
the Old Woman the use of The House-that-Jack-Built, rent free, until
another shoe could be found. Shoes were so scarce, you know, that she
might never find one again. And so it was considered that the King’s
offer was a very fine one, and that the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe
and her children ought to be thankful and happy to be given such a
beautiful home.
But somehow the Old Woman was not happy one single bit, for although
The House-that-Jack-Built was a much more elegant affair than the old
Shoe, still the Old Woman didn’t like houses, however elegant, and had
always said, you know, that she would never live in one.
She thought and thought before she accepted the King’s offer. The old
slipper she had gone to housekeeping in so many years ago was empty,
but it was far too small for the innumerable children and therefore
would not do. The laced shoe she had moved into next was unfit for
habitation now. It had never been repaired or blackened since it
was first made, and, of course, no shoe can last with that kind of
treatment. So finally she had to accept Old King Cole’s offer, simply
because there wasn’t anything else to do. And that afternoon they moved
in, the Old Woman and all those children.
The House-that-Jack-Built was really a very beautiful house, with
porches and steps and fine furniture; for Jack had expected to live
there himself and had put a good deal of work on it, as you know.
Moreover, nobody had ever lived in it at all, for Jack had suddenly
lost interest in the house and had gone back to the city, after selling
the house to King Cole. It was understood that the lady for whom Jack
was building the house had changed her mind about marrying him.
Yes, it was a beautiful house, but somehow the Old Woman and even the
children did not appreciate it at all. It was hard for them to live in
a house, you see, after spending their lives in a shoe, and it really
isn’t any wonder that they all cried a little bit into their pillows
that night before going off to sleep.
The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe had really expected that she and her
children would get over their homesickness but it seemed that every day
they longed for their old home a little more, until they really were
not happy at all, but quite miserable. They were ashamed of themselves,
for King Cole had been so good to them they felt almost wicked to be
ungrateful, and they tried hard not to let anybody know how wretched
they were in their grand new house. But the truth was that they all
wanted only one thing in the world, and that was their old buttoned
Shoe again, where they could go on living as before.
And then one day it all came out. The Old Woman was calling on Mrs.
Claus when somebody mentioned the Shoe. Before she knew what she was
doing, the Old Woman was crying--yes, crying as hard as she could
cry--and though she was furious with herself for doing it, she couldn’t
stop at all.
Mrs. Claus was amazed at this. “Why, Old Woman,” she said kindly, “I
didn’t know you felt that way about the Shoe.”
The Old Woman nodded her head, as she continued to sob and rock. And
right then Mrs. Claus made a promise to herself. She promised herself
that Mr. Claus, who was a very influential citizen, should go to the
King and tell him just how the Old Woman felt, for surely their good,
kind King could do something about the Shoe, if only he knew how
important it was.
Mrs. Claus kept that promise to herself, and the next day the baker
went off to interview the King, who was most surprised to hear this
news and extremely worried over it. He was such a merry old soul he
could not bear to have anybody in the kingdom in the least troubled or
unhappy.
“But there’s no other shoe,” he told Mr. Claus. “What can I do to help
the poor Old Woman?”
“Could this one not be set up again?” inquired Mr. Claus helpfully.
“Mended, perhaps, and fastened firmly against future storms?”
“I’ll see; I’ll see,” said the King. “I’ll send for the carpenter and
let him look it over.”
That same afternoon the carpenter made a careful inspection of the
Shoe. He looked at the buttons. They seemed sound and good. He
investigated the buttonholes, and they were found to be satisfactory.
The sole had not a single hole in it, and the toe could be patched to
be as good as new. But there was that heel, a run-over affair that made
the whole Shoe stand crooked. And even if that were made even again, he
doubted whether it would not slip in the mud as it had before, when the
rains came again.
The carpenter was about to give an unfavorable report to King Cole,
when he had a sudden and brilliant idea. They could put a rubber heel
on the Shoe, and it would then stand firm and true and never again be
blown by the wind and pushed around in the mud. It was the very thing!
Old King Cole hailed this as a most excellent idea and straightway sent
for the Old Woman.
“Dear me, what next?” said the Old Woman, when she got the message to
appear again at the royal palace, for she did not know that Mr. Claus
had taken up her case with the King, you see.
But up to the palace she went, and when old King Cole told her that she
could live in her Shoe again, after it had been repaired with a patch
on the toe and a rubber heel, the elated woman just danced a jig right
there in the throne room, until King Cole laughed to see her, and even
the Queen was amused. She could hardly stop to thank the King, but she
did manage to make a bow, after which she ran home to the children,
kicking up her heels and waving her arms in hilarious delight. Such a
furor as she created when she told those children that they were going
back to live in the Shoe again. They had never been such a happy family
before.
Old King Cole had said that they might move into the Shoe in exactly
one week, during which time the carpenter was to make the Shoe as good
as new, even to polishing it with fine new polish. But the King did
not know, when he made that promise, that there was going to be more
trouble.
The trouble arose when the cobbler heard that the carpenter was going
to London to buy a rubber heel for the Old Woman’s Shoe.
“Shoes are a cobbler’s business,” he said, and with that he went in
great indignation to Old King Cole.
“What is this you are saying?” asked the King, who did not always
listen very carefully to what people said.
“I’m saying, sir,” repeated the cobbler, “that shoes are a cobbler’s
business.”
“I agree with you,” replied the King. “But why have you come here to
tell me what I already know?”
“Because, sir, you have put the carpenter to work mending a shoe here
in Pudding Lane,” said the cobbler.
“Nonsense, of course I haven’t,” began King Cole. “Oh, I see, you mean
the Old Woman’s Shoe?” he asked.
“That, and no other, sir,” said the cobbler.
The King looked embarrassed. “Oh--er--well, let’s call the carpenter
in,” he said, for he saw that the cobbler was determined to stay it out.
But when the carpenter came in, and old King Cole told him that the
cobbler had objected to their previous arrangement, then it was the
carpenter’s turn to be offended.
“But, sir,” said he, “the Shoe is the Old Woman’s house, isn’t it? Then
why isn’t it a carpenter’s business to make the necessary repairs?”
The King sighed. It was a problem. Whose business was it to mend the
Old Woman’s Shoe, the cobbler’s or the carpenter’s? It was a shoe, and
it was a house. He was frank to say he couldn’t settle it. He turned to
the queen, but she, as usual, was asleep, her crown on her nose. The
poor King didn’t know which way to turn.
There was nothing to do except send for the whole town to come up to
the palace to consider the weighty problem. So the Town Crier was sent
out in a great hurry to summon all the people to the palace. And for
once in his life the Town Crier managed to get through the job without
making a single mistake.
The people of Pudding Lane were indeed surprised that King Cole should
send for them in that hasty manner.
“It must be very serious,” they told each other.
“Maybe the Queen is sick,” suggested Mr. Horner.
“She might even be dead!” Mrs. Grundy added hopefully.
“Well, come along, let’s hurry,” urged the piper, and so they all
rushed into the street and hurried pell-mell to answer the summons of
the King.
The King shook hands with everybody and then tried to awaken the Queen,
but that lady must have been exceedingly tired and sleepy, for though
he shook her and shook her, she wouldn’t wake up at all.
“Let her sleep,” said the butcher in a kindly manner. “We all know what
it is to be sleepy.”
The King, looking relieved, cleared his throat and told them all
just what the trouble was. When he mentioned the Shoe the Old Woman
almost fell over with astonishment, for she had no idea that it was on
account of her that the meeting had been called. And when he related
how the cobbler and the carpenter were quarreling, the Old Woman felt
a terrible fear in her heart. Supposing the matter never could be
settled, and she would have to stay in The House-that-Jack-Built all
the rest of her life.
“And now,” the King ended, “I leave it to the people to decide.”
Everybody looked scared. It was such a knotty problem, and there was
so much to be said for the standpoint of both the cobbler and the
carpenter, that they just stood there and didn’t say anything.
“Come,” said King Cole. “What do you say, candlestick-maker?”
The candlestick-maker started and then tried to look wise. “Well, I
wouldn’t exactly know what to say, sir,” he said importantly.
“What about you, Mr. Horner?” The King turned to Jack Horner’s father.
“What advice have you to offer?”
Mr. Horner shook his head. “It’s too much for me, sir,” he admitted.
Then the Old Woman herself was asked for an opinion.
“Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know, King Cole!” she cried out. “But do
let’s settle it somehow. I feel as if I should die if I couldn’t go
back to live in the old Shoe once more.”
At this outburst of grief the King’s distress increased. He looked at
the cobbler and at the carpenter, but neither one of them would give in
an inch; he could tell that by the set look of their faces. King Cole
sighed loudly, and then opened his mouth to speak. He was going to tell
the Old Woman that, after all, she could not live in the Shoe again,
but would have to put up with the House-that-Jack-Built as best she
could.
And just at that moment Mother Goose was ushered in. She was on her way
for a visit to the Clauses, and she said she thought she’d just run in
to say hello to the King.
“But, mercy on us!” she exclaimed, looking around at the assembled
people. “What is it--a coronation?”
Old King Cole explained affairs to his friend. He told her how sad the
Old Woman was and pointed out the cobbler and the carpenter, who were
standing there, glaring at each other, the cause of the whole trouble.
“Now isn’t that a hard one?” he asked the old lady, looking at her
anxiously to see what she thought of the matter.
“Hard one, nothing!” replied Mother Goose, looking sharply at the
cobbler and the carpenter. “Give the business to Jack-of-All-Trades and
let those fellows go.”
What a happy solution that was. How glad they all were. The Old Woman
Who Lived in a Shoe was too overjoyed for words, but the rest of the
people just chattered and buzzed and fluttered around in their pleased
excitement.
And so it was decided that Jack-of-All-Trades should mend the shoe, and
the cobbler and the carpenter, feeling very cheap, were dismissed from
the presence of the King.
It was exactly one week later that the Old Woman took all her children
and moved back into the Shoe, which now stood up proudly on its rubber
heel, mended and polished until it looked like new. In fact, it looked
so fine that the Old Woman and her children hardly recognized it as the
same old Shoe and were almost afraid the King had fooled them and had
got a new shoe somewhere.
But, sure enough, when they climbed inside, there were the same old
spots and stains on the wall, the same old beds, and the same old pots
and pans. And then they all settled down and knew they would be happy
forever after, because they were back in their dear Shoe, never to
leave it again.
XII
SANTA CLAUS HANGS UP HIS STOCKING
1
Pudding Lane was creaking and cracking with snow. Snow, snow, snow!
It ground under the heel of Old Mother Hubbard as she went to the
butcher’s to buy an especially juicy bone for the poor dog; it crunched
under the tread of Mr. Horner as he walked to the baker’s to order
Jack’s Christmas pie; it squeaked under the tread of the Town Crier as
he trudged up and down Pudding Lane, calling, “Christmas is coming,
Christmas is coming, Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!”
For Christmas was coming, and although such an announcement was not
exactly news to the people of Pudding Lane, still it was pleasant just
to hear the Town Crier say it. There’s something about the very word
“Christmas” that makes you feel happy and jolly.
And so, since Christmas was so close, everybody in Pudding Lane was as
busy as busy could be. The candlestick-maker sat day and night working
his copper and brass. The Clauses were up to their eyes in pies and
cakes. Even the children had no time for play, but spent all their
spare moments gathering holly and mistletoe to deck the windows and
fireplaces with. And as for little Santa Claus, nobody saw him these
days, for Christmas was his busy season, and many weeks before he had
retired to the woodshed and emerged now only for meals and bed.
But this Christmas there was something else going on in Pudding
Lane, something exciting and mysterious and very important. It was a
tremendous secret. And it was this: the people of Pudding Lane were
going to surprise Santa Claus himself; they were going to hang up his
stocking and put gifts in it, just as if he were not Santa Claus at
all, but a regular little boy like all the others.
It was strange that nobody had ever thought of this before, for Santa
Claus was just a regular little boy, after all, and surely all little
boys, even Santa Claus, should have a Christmas stocking. But somehow
nobody had thought of it, and although Santa Claus, all these years,
had been giving Christmas gifts to everybody else, he never had got
one himself. He had never hung up his stocking; he had never been
surprised on Christmas morning; he had never had any Christmas fun
except the fun of surprising other people. The funny part of it was,
too, that he had never even thought of such a thing.
But this year, although Santa Claus had not thought of such a thing,
the rest of Pudding Lane had, and so the secret had been hatched, and
the plans were going merrily on, the plans for surprising Santa Claus
on Christmas morning.
It was a good thing that Santa Claus was so occupied, or he surely
would have guessed that something unusual was going on. He would have
guessed it from the way Simple Simon sniggered every time he came near
Santa, or by the way Judy kept asking him over and over what he wanted
for Christmas, or by the way everybody nudged everybody else whenever
he appeared in public. But luckily for them, he paid no attention to
all these hints, being far too engrossed in his own Christmas affairs
to notice anything at all.
Indeed, he was so abstracted as to call forth a comment from that
plain-spoken woman, his mother.
“Dear me, Santa Claus,” she said one day at dinner, as he sat staring
at the wall, “I really think that if a bear should walk in on you,
you’d sit there staring just the same,--or indeed, if fifty bears
should walk in on you.”
This flight of imagination brought Santa to.
“I was thinking about that little red wagon,” he explained. “Simple
Simon wants a little red wagon for Christmas, you see, and it seems
like such a queer gift for him.”
“Queer gifts to queer people,” replied Mrs. Claus. “But eat your dinner
now, Santa Claus. I don’t intend to cook my life away and have my
children starve to death.”
There was a reason why Mrs. Claus wanted Santa Claus to hurry and
finish his dinner. The reason was that all the grown-ups of Pudding
Lane were coming to the Clauses’ that evening to discuss the final
plans for Santa Claus’s surprise. Consequently, Mrs. Claus had a great
deal of work to do, and she wanted Santa Claus well out of the way. It
was with a great sigh of relief, therefore, that she saw Santa finish
his dinner and depart again for the woodshed.
“Well,” said she to Mr. Claus and the twins, “he like to never went!”
“Yes, he did,” replied the baker, meaning, I suppose, that Santa Claus
did like to never went, whatever that meant. “Do you think, Nellie,
that he guesses the least tiny bit that we’re planning this Christmas
surprise?”
“No, he doesn’t guess a thing,” replied Mrs. Claus. “He’s thinking only
of little red wagons.”
“Won’t he be surprised, though?” Mr. Claus grinned at the prospect.
“No little boy was ever so surprised in the whole world as Santa Claus
will be this Christmas morning,” said Mrs. Claus with conviction. “But
look here, baker, this is no time to sit idly in the kitchen. What
about Jack Horner’s pie, sir? And the animal crackers. Mr. Claus, I am
surprised that you would neglect the animal crackers like this!”
Whereupon, Mr. Claus, much ashamed of himself, departed for the
bakeshop and Mrs. Claus began to tear things up in the front parlor for
the company that was coming that night.
Santa Claus and the twins and the baby were all in bed and sound asleep
that night when Mrs. Claus, attired in her best, and Mr. Claus, attired
in his best, sat awaiting their guests. But in spite of their fine
clothes, and in spite of the fact that the Clauses’ front parlor was
brilliantly lighted with as many as eight or ten candles, in spite of
the fact that this was perhaps the most important event that ever was
to take place in the humble home of the Clauses, the host and hostess
at that moment were a far from lively couple.
For as Mrs. Claus sat there stiffly, she kept opening and closing her
mouth in such tremendous yawns that it was a wonder she didn’t swallow
herself. And as Mr. Claus stood at attention by the door, he dozed and
came to with such lurches and pitches that it seemed as if he must
fall down on the floor just any moment, plunged into the deepest of
slumbers. Indeed, he would have, I do believe, if Mrs. Claus, between
yawns, hadn’t called out: “Look out there, Mr. Claus! Look out!” At
which he then would look out from his heavy, half-shut eyes and stop
lurching for the briefest while.
The truth was that the Clauses were already so terribly, fearfully,
awfully sleepy that it didn’t seem at all possible that they would get
through the evening, inasmuch as the evening hadn’t even started yet.
Night life in Pudding Lane was not what it might have been and late
hours were extremely rare.
Well, there they were, Mrs. Claus one great enormous yawn, and Mr.
Claus reeling like a sleepy wooden soldier, when thumpety, thump, came
a noise down Pudding Lane. Mrs. Claus heard the thumpety-thump first
and sat up straighter than ever.
“Look out there, Mr. Claus, look out!” she warned him, for Mr. Claus by
that time was swaying in a most terrifying fashion. Mr. Claus opened
his eyes.
“They’re coming!” she told him.
“Who’s coming?” asked Mr. Claus stupidly. He _was_ far gone, wasn’t he?
“They!” cried Mrs. Claus, exasperated. “The company!”
Just at that minute there came a great bang at the door. Mr. Claus
jumped a foot high.
“Who in the world can that be?” he cried. “Who are you?” he demanded
fiercely. “Who are you?”
“Mr. Claus,” screamed his wife frantically, “will you open that door or
won’t you? It’s the company come.”
But Mr. Claus, determined to be a hero at whatever cost, continued to
grow more and more heroic, as the banging at the door went on, and
striking a warlike pose he thundered, “Who are you, I say, coming to
disturb good honest people at such an hour of the night?”
“Oh!” yelled poor Mrs. Claus at this. “What a man!” She flew from the
sofa and flung open the door for the crowd of people that was waiting.
Mrs. Grundy, as usual, came strutting in first, ahead even of Old King
Cole, which was not exactly according to court procedure.
“Well, I must say, baker!” she said haughtily, though what she thought
she must say, she didn’t say, somehow.
“What’s this, Claus?” asked the butcher jovially. “Did you think we
were come to steal the silver?”
The Queen of Hearts gave Mr. Claus a playful dig with her elbow.
“Such a man as you are, baker,” she tittered, “to joke with us like
that.”
But Mr. Claus, still blinking, did not in the least know what it was
all about, and as he looked from one to the other of that vast company
of his neighbors and friends, he showed such complete bewilderment and
perplexity that they all burst out laughing. All but Mrs. Claus, that
is. If looks could kill, Mr. Claus would have been dead on the spot.
For Mrs. Claus was a hospitable soul and to have her husband treat
company that way was more than she could bear.
It was the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe who finally took pity on him,
as the rest of the company just stood there and laughed at his funny
puzzled countenance.
“Wake up, Mr. Claus,” she said.
“Wake up and stay awake!” added Mrs. Claus, as the Old Woman continued,
“Wake up! We’ve come to talk about the Christmas surprise for Santa
Claus. Don’t you remember?”
Then suddenly Mr. Claus did remember, and, oh, how chagrined he was
then, how extravagantly he apologized for his rudeness to the company,
and how he upbraided himself for being such a dunderhead, as he
expressed it.
It was very late in the evening when Old King Cole, rising heavily to
his feet, called for a summing-up of the evening’s business.
“Mr. Horner,” said he to Jack Horner’s father, “will you please to
summarize the conclusions we have reached this night in regard to Santa
Claus’s Christmas surprise?”
Mr. Horner, jumping up, bowed low to the King, cleared his throat,
looked uncertainly around him, opened his mouth and began to speak.
“I--sir--I suggest--”
“Oh, no,” Old King Cole waved his hand. “No more suggestions, please.
Just summarize, if you will, Mr. Horner, just summarize.”
Mr. Horner tried again.
“Your Majesty, I would remark--”
“Mr. Horner, if you please,” interrupted the merry old soul testily, “I
don’t want you to remark. All that I ask of you is that you summarize.
Surely a King may ask such a small favor of a loyal subject, Mr.
Horner.”
“Your Majesty,” spoke Mr. Horner with dignity, “I’m afraid I must
refuse to--to--sum--well, to do as you require.”
With that, Mr. Horner sat down, his face red and his hands shaking. For
the trouble with Mr. Horner was that he didn’t know what “summarize”
meant, but rather than admit it, he would have gone into a deep dungeon
and stayed there the rest of his life, so proud a man was Mr. Horner.
When Mr. Horner refused the King and sat down as he did, everybody,
including Mr. Horner himself, expected something calamitous to happen,
for that’s what it means to be a King, to have people do as you tell
them. They all shivered as they sat there. What would the King say
to the disobedient Mr. Horner and what would he do? Only Mrs. Horner
did not shiver, for she was too frightened even to shiver, but sat
stone-still in her rocking chair, like a rigid, glass-eyed doll.
But what was everybody’s astonishment when Old King Cole began to
chuckle, then laugh out loud, and finally so jolly did he become
that he rocked and gasped and held his stomach in a perfect storm of
merriment. Indeed, it began to look as if he would never recover. He
did recover, however, due to the presence of mind of Mrs. Grundy, who
fetched a pitcher of water, saying, as she did so, and very truly too,
that there’s nothing like water to bring a man to his senses.
“Well, Mr. Horner,” said the King, as he wiped his eyes of their tears
of laughter and his face of the deluge of water, “I admire your spirit,
sir. But come now, it is growing late. Who _will_ summarize for me?”
Jack Spratt jumped up eagerly. He knew what “summarize” meant and was
bursting to show off his knowledge. And here is the speech he made.
You will agree, I am sure, that Jack Spratt was a masterly hand at
speeches.
“Your Majesty, Your Gracious Beauty,” (this last was meant for the
Queen of Hearts who now bowed her head in ill-concealed delight at such
praise) “ladies, one and all, and gentlemen:
“We have decided here to-night on these things, namely, and to wit:
“That Santa Claus, being quite the kindest, most generous, most
wonderful little boy in Pudding Lane” (you should have seen Mrs.
Claus’s face at that) “in fact, the kindest, most generous, most
wonderful little boy in the wide world” (look out, Mrs. Claus, you
almost fell off your chair then), “that Santa Claus, therefore, shall
be surprised on Christmas morning as he always surprises other children;
“We have decided further, sir, that all the children shall make with
their own hands gifts for Santa Claus and that Mother Goose shall buy
gifts for us in Banbury Cross, as well;
“That then these gifts shall be stored here in Mrs. Claus’s cupboard,
shall be locked with a strong key and stay locked until Christmas Eve
when, you, Your Majesty, are to get these things, go up to the roof,
slide down the chimney, and fill little Santa’s stocking full as it
will hold, yes, even fuller, for it is well known, comrades, that a
Christmas stocking isn’t much of a stocking if it doesn’t overflow with
gifts.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Old King Cole, as Jack Spratt, with one final
flourish of a bow, took his seat again, flushed with success.
“Hurrah!” they all cried, “Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! Long live Jack
Spratt!”
But they had cried hurrah one time too many. For upon that last
resounding cry, Santa Claus, in his little bed upstairs, had awakened.
He did not know what this noise was, having no idea that Mr. and Mrs.
Claus were entertaining company that night. And so, since he did not
know what the sound was, he thought he would get up and find out. Which
he did. He fumbled around in the dark for his slippers, groped for his
dressing gown, and upon finding these, hurried into them and ran down
the back stairs.
The noise had subsided now, however, and as Santa Claus tiptoed in
toward the front parlor, he heard only the low murmur of voices. This
surely was a strange thing, thought Santa Claus to himself--people to
be talking in the Clauses’ front parlor in the middle of the night. He
crept to the parlor door and listened. It sounded as if all Pudding
Lane were there, he thought. Buzz, buzz, hum, hum, whisper, whisper!
He could hear the deep voice of Old King Cole, rumbling. He could hear
Mrs. Dumpty’s high little chirp. He could hear the cackle of the old
candlestick-maker. Buzz, buzz, hum, hum, whisper, whisper!
And what do you think they were talking about? Were they still
discussing the Christmas surprise? And would Santa Claus hear it all
now? Oh, what a disaster that would be. Let us put our ears close to
the door, as Santa was already doing. Hark! The Old Woman Who Lived in
a Shoe is talking.
“Well,” she was saying, “I wish I were a child. I’d love to hang my
stocking up Christmas Eve, I would.” Whew, that was a narrow squeak,
all right. They might still have been talking about the surprise.
“You know,” said Mrs. Spratt, “I’ve often wished that myself. That’s
the worst thing about growing up, that you don’t hang up your stocking
on Christmas.”
“But we could,” exclaimed Mrs. Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater, “we could
hang up our stockings on Christmas Eve if we wanted to.”
“Who’d fill ’em?” asked the candlestick-maker bluntly.
“Yes, who’d fill ’em?” demanded every one else. “There isn’t much use
of hanging up your stocking, Mrs. Peter, if nobody fills it.”
Mrs. Peter, Peter looked a bit crestfallen. “No, I suppose there
isn’t,” she answered. “Still, I think we might hang them up and just
see whether they got filled or not.”
“Now, Mrs. Peter, Peter Pumpkin-Eater,” said Mr. Horner, “you surely
don’t think that that little boy, Santa Claus, would fill our stockings
if we hung them up, do you? Why, Santa’s got his hands full already,
attending to the children’s stockings.”
“No, I’m not so foolish as to think that, Mr. Horner,” said Mrs. Peter,
Peter, “but some one else might.”
“Who might?” they all asked her. “Whoever would fill our stockings,
Mrs. Peter?”
“Mother Goose might or a fairy might,” burst out the little lady
triumphantly.
And the grown-ups had to admit to themselves that in truth Mother Goose
or a fairy _might_ fill their stockings on Christmas Eve. Mother Goose
had been known to do stranger things than that in her day, and as for
the fairies, well, nobody can ever tell what they’re going to do.
Supposing, then, that they all should hang up their stockings on
Christmas Eve! Supposing somebody did fill them with the gifts of
their hearts’ desire! Mrs. Dumpty’s heart fluttered wildly at the
thought; the Old Woman had a new strange light in her eyes; and the
candlestick-maker fidgeted excitedly in his chair. Foolish grown-ups,
to sit there dreaming of impossible things. Or perhaps they were wise.
Anyway, they were certainly happy, as they all forgot everything for a
moment and pretended that it was Christmas Eve and that they were young
again.
Old King Cole finally broke the silence.
“Old Woman,” he said gently, “what would you rather have than anything
else in the world? What would you want in your Christmas stocking if
you did hang it up, Old Woman?”
The Old Woman began to murmur as if to herself, “Once upon a time
when I was a girl, there was a ball given in Banbury Cross, and I was
invited. The Prince was to be there, Prince Charming himself, you know,
and I had a red dress for it, and a pair of gold slippers. Then I got
the measles and I couldn’t go. I’ve never been the same since.”
“Why, Old Woman,” said the King, “you mean to say you want a ball in
your Christmas stocking?”
“That’s the only thing I do want,” replied the Old Woman. “Only it
would have to be the same ball, you know. No other ball would do at
all.”
“Of course not,” King Cole said gravely, “no other ball would ever
do. I don’t care much for balls, Old Woman, but I can understand
that perfectly.” He sighed heavily. It was sad to hear the Old Woman
mourning for that lost joy of her youth, and sadder still, he thought
to himself, that things like balls could never, never, never be put
into old women’s Christmas stockings. He turned then to Mrs. Dumpty.
“And do you want a ball too, Mrs. Dumpty?”
Mrs. Dumpty looked up at His Majesty timidly.
“No, sir,” she replied, and then she hesitated.
“Well--?” said Old King Cole encouragingly.
“I’m afraid, sir, that you’ll think I’m rather a foolish woman to want
what I want,” she told him.
“People aren’t foolish to want things, no matter what they want,” King
Cole pronounced sagely. “What do you want in the whole world, Mrs.
Dumpty?”
“Well, sir,” began Mrs. Dumpty, “I want--I want--well, I want a lace
petticoat, King Cole, a lace petticoat with a thousand ruffles!”
“A thousand ruffles!” repeated King Cole, astonished. “Why, Mrs.
Dumpty, I don’t believe there ever was a petticoat with a thousand lace
ruffles on it!”
“Maybe there wasn’t, and maybe there isn’t,” answered Mrs. Dumpty
doggedly, “but that’s what I want, King Cole. I never had enough
ruffles in my whole life, sir. And somehow, there’s nothing quite like
ruffles to make a woman happy.”
The women all murmured sympathetically at this, as King Cole nodded
next to Old Mother Hubbard.
“Ruffles for you too, Mother Hubbard?” he asked. Women were queer, he
was thinking to himself. What on earth did they want of ruffles?
“Ruffles are all very well,” responded Mother Hubbard, “but I know
something better even than ruffles, sir.”
“And that is--” King Cole smiled reassuringly at her.
“And that is a--” Old Mother threw a reckless glance around the room,
“that is a--hurdy-gurdy!”
A hurdy-gurdy! No wonder they all gasped. Who but Mother Hubbard would
ever have thought of a hurdy-gurdy?
“Yes,” she repeated defiantly, “a hurdy-gurdy! You all may think it’s
funny to live alone with a dog, with a bare cupboard yawning in your
face, but I tell you it’s not a bit funny. No, not funny at all.” Poor
Mother Hubbard’s voice choked a bit, but she swallowed hard and went
on, “And if I had a hurdy-gurdy--oh, I’ve always longed for music, King
Cole, but now more than ever. If I had a hurdy-gurdy--”
“If you had a hurdy-gurdy,” supplied Old King Cole eagerly, “you could
play it--”
“And you could sing--” the Old Woman put in.
“And you could dance,” cried Mrs. Flinders.
“And the dog could dance too,” finished up Mrs. Claus.
“And see how jolly we’d all be,” said Mother Hubbard. “Now a
hurdy-gurdy would be a good thing for me, wouldn’t it?”
So there they sat, those grown-ups, talking about what they wanted in
their Christmas stockings just as Jack and Jill, just as Mistress Mary,
just as Polly Flinders, and Simple Simon, and Little Boy Blue talked
about what they wanted in their Christmas stockings every single year.
And these grown-ups did want the strangest things. The
candlestick-maker, who was the dirtiest and shabbiest old man in
Pudding Lane, confessed that he wanted a swallow-tail coat, “with pearl
buttons on it,” he added, “and a silk hankersniff in the top pocket.”
The candlestick-maker always said “hankersniff” for “handkerchief” and
if you corrected him, he would declare emphatically that of course it
was sniff--what else was a hanker for?--which seemed to settle the
matter.
Mr. Flinders, that citified gentleman who had come to Pudding Lane from
London, stated that he desired pigs. For in pigs, said he, he thought a
man might find a deal of comfort and a relief from the complexities of
this world. The butcher was frank to say that he wanted nothing in this
world but a wife. And Old Cross-Patch, who hadn’t said a word all the
evening, startled the company by grunting suddenly that she would like
to have a baby.
What amazing things! A ball, a thousand ruffles, a hurdy-gurdy, a
swallow-tailed coat, pigs, a wife, a baby! As Santa Claus stood there
listening behind the door, he thought to himself that no little boy in
the world had ever faced such a problem as this was. For, of course, if
they wanted these things, it was Santa Claus’s duty to provide them, he
thought. That was the kind of boy he was, you know. If anybody in the
world wanted anything, he considered it his business to see that it was
forthcoming.
Moreover, these grown-ups, Mrs. Pumpkin-Eater, Mrs. Dumpty, the Old
Woman, the candlestick-maker, Mr. Flinders, the butcher, Cross-Patch
and all the others, had reached such a pitch now that they were
actually going to hang up their stockings on Christmas Eve. They were
going to do this just for fun, as they said, and yet Santa Claus could
tell by the wistful tone of their voices, by the yearning hope in their
voices, that they did halfway expect that somebody or other would,
after all, make their Christmas wishes come true.
No wonder he didn’t sleep a wink that night, or at least many winks.
For this was the greatest dilemma any boy ever was in. Here were
people wanting things. Here were people about to hang up their
Christmas stockings. And here was he, Santa Claus, without one thing to
put in those stockings.
How could _he_ get a swallow-tail coat with pearl buttons and a silk
hankersniff in the top pocket? How could he manage a ball for the Old
Woman? And how on earth could anybody, even Mother Goose or a fairy,
produce a wife for the butcher? Or a baby for Cross-Patch? Santa
Claus’s heart was very heavy as he thought of these things and he
almost wished, although not quite, of course, that he had never gone
into the Christmas business.
But little did Pudding Lane guess what was going on in Santa Claus’s
mind these days. They were all too busy attending to his surprise.
The children made presents for Santa Claus. Judy was knitting, with
many grunts and sighs, a pair of red mittens, and although the poor
little girl had made a mistake and knitted both mittens for the left
hand, still they were extremely handsome mittens, red as a holly berry
and warm as fur. Humpty-Dumpty carved a whistle for Santa, one that
blew so shrill and loud that it sounded like the wind itself whistling
around the corner. Jack and Jill had planted an orange seed in a
geranium pot and now, bless you, there was growing up in that pot a
lovely little orange tree, such as nobody in Pudding Lane had ever seen
before. In fact, when they told Mrs. Claus about it, she didn’t believe
it.
“Has it got oranges on it?” she wanted to know.
“No,” admitted Jill.
“Has it got orange blossoms on it?”
“No, ma’am,” Jill was constrained to admit. “No blossoms, Mrs. Claus.”
“Well, then,” said that lady, “how do you know it’s an orange tree?”
“Because it grew from an orange seed,” explained Jill; “nothing would
grow from an orange seed but an orange tree, would it, Mrs. Claus?”
“That I don’t know,” answered Mrs. Claus, “but it looks to me as though
an orange tree ought to have oranges on it.”
It was about this time that Mother Goose sent a big box of gifts from
Banbury Cross for Santa Claus’s stocking. It was about this time, too,
that Jack-of-All-Trades made a fine new key for Mrs. Claus’s cupboard,
so that when the gifts were stored there they might be safely locked
up against Santa Claus’s discovery.
But still Santa Claus himself was deeply troubled. He hammered and
pounded as usual in the old woodshed, making the children’s gifts, but
still he wondered and pondered about the grown-ups’ Christmas, and
still he could see no way out of this overwhelming difficulty. The
days flew by, Christmas was coming closer and closer, and he had done
nothing toward getting the ruffled petticoat, the swallow-tail coat,
the wife and the baby and all the other things.
And then, unannounced, Piggy-Peddler dropped in one day and something
happened.
Of all the children in Pudding Lane, Santa Claus was Piggy-Peddler’s
favorite, and so it was quite natural that Piggy-Peddler should notice
how Santa’s little fat chops drooped and how melancholy were his blue
eyes. He did notice these things, and he wasted no time in making
inquiries, but took Santa Claus off into a corner and said, “Look here,
old man, something’s up. Why don’t you tell Piggy-Peddler about it?”
Santa Claus, oh, so relieved now to have somebody to confide in, told
Piggy-Peddler the whole story. He told Piggy-Peddler how he had heard
the grown-ups talking that night about the things they wanted, how
those grown-ups had planned to hang up their stockings just to see if
something wouldn’t happen, and how he, Santa Claus, longed to find
those things for the grown-ups and put them in their stockings, but
couldn’t possibly do it.
Piggy-Peddler listened intently, and when Santa Claus had finished, he
spoke softly.
“So that’s it,” he said. “Those dear, funny, grown-up people. They want
the things they’ve never had. Of course they do.”
“And they’ve been wanting them ever since they were young,” added Santa
Claus.
“Mrs. Dumpty and her ruffles,” said Piggy-Peddler.
“And Cross-Patch,” said Santa.
“And the candlestick-maker!” continued Piggy-Peddler. “Can’t you just
see him, Santa Claus, switching those tails around, with a dirty shirt
above them, and his rusty boots below?”
“Still, I think he’d look nice,” Santa Claus said.
“Nice! He’d look elegant!”
Santa Claus laughed aloud. It would be such fun, he was thinking, to
see the candlestick-maker flourishing happily around in his tails.
“I wonder”--Piggy-Peddler was musing--“I wonder if he would do it, just
this once, for these people of Pudding Lane.”
“Who?”
Piggy-Peddler was lost in thought.
“Who, Piggy-Peddler?” persisted Santa Claus. “You wonder if who would
do what?”
“Oh!” Piggy-Peddler started and laughed. “Why, I was wondering, Santa
Claus, if Father Time wouldn’t, just this one time, let these people
have an hour of their youth again. If he would, you know, they could
have all their desires. Their wishes would all come true.”
At this Santa Claus could only stare.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Well, it’s just this, Santa Claus,” explained Piggy-Peddler. “Father
Time, if he wanted to, could turn the clock back on Christmas Eve. He
could let these people fly back to the time when they were young, and
he could give them whatever they wanted.”
“He could?” Santa’s mouth was wide open at such news.
“He could,” replied Piggy-Peddler.
“Would they be children again?”
“No, you never can be a child again, quite, you know, after you’ve once
grown up,” Piggy said. “But you can feel very young, oh, very young,
even as young as sixteen.”
Santa Claus, thinking to himself that sixteen was not what he’d call
young, spoke again.
“He could make their wishes come true, you say?”
“For an hour.”
“Only for an hour?”
“Oh, that’ll be long enough. It isn’t keeping things that’s fun, you
know. Why, they wouldn’t want these things forever, Santa Claus. The
Old Woman can’t jig around at a ball the rest of her life, can she? And
that petticoat! Mrs. Dumpty would worry her life out washing the thing!
You know what a fussy little lady she is.”
“But the baby for Cross-Patch?” pursued Santa Claus. He was thinking
how badly he’d feel if his baby sister should have stayed with them
only an hour.
“Well, that is a little different,” admitted Piggy. “But think of the
poor baby living with old Cross-Patch. I’ll tell you, Santa, we’ll get
her a parrot afterwards. They’re lots better for old cross-patches than
babies. Also, the butcher doesn’t really want a wife, you know. He only
thinks he does.”
“But they said they wanted these things more than anything else in the
world,” said Santa Claus persistently.
“They do!” cried Piggy. “The things you’ve always wanted are the very
things you want most. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep them
forever. And think how happy they’d all be on Christmas. Why, this will
make them happy the rest of their lives, and they’ll never get through
talking about it.”
“And Father Time could do this?” asked Santa again.
“He could,” replied Piggy-Peddler. “He’s very powerful, you know. The
only question is, would he? That’s what I am wondering.”
“Do you know him, Piggy-Peddler?”
“Very well,” answered Piggy.
“Could you ask him?”
“I could and I will,” came Piggy-Peddler’s reply. “He ought to do it
for you, Santa Claus. Father Time thinks very highly of you, you know.”
“He doesn’t know me,” said Santa.
“Oh, yes, he does. He knows everybody. He may be old and his beard may
be long and white, but he knows everybody in the world, Santa Claus,
and don’t you forget that.”
“And you will go to him, Piggy-Peddler,” begged Santa Claus, “and ask
him to turn the clock back?”
“I will,” replied Piggy-Peddler, “this very minute I’ll go, Santa
Claus.”
And he did. He left Pudding Lane that very minute, and as Santa Claus
went back to his work, his heart beat a little rat-a-tat-tat of joy, as
he reflected that maybe, after all, The Old Woman could have her ball,
Mrs. Dumpty her ruffles, and Cross-Patch her baby on Christmas morning.
2
Christmas Eve had come. Deeper than ever was the snow. The houses
looked as if their mothers had put white hoods on them; the ground was
spread as with white fur; and the trees held their burden of snow as
lightly as if it were lace.
But nobody had time for scenery in Pudding Lane that night. In every
house, lights were burning; in every house, the mothers were flying
madly about, the fathers were jumping from room to room, and the
children were hopping, shrieking, dancing, as children always do on
this best night of the year.
At last, however, the stockings were all up at the fireplaces. At last
the children were all in bed and sound asleep. At last it was time for
Santa Claus, that fat little boy in a bright red suit, to take his
pack, go to the roofs, slide down the chimneys and fill the stockings
as he did every year.
But what about the surprise for Santa himself? Wait a bit. It wasn’t
time for that yet. And what about the gifts for the grown-ups? Were
they to get the things they wanted? Was Father Time really going to
turn the clock back, as Piggy-Peddler and Santa Claus had so ardently
hoped he would?
Well, whether Father Time was going to make the wishes come true or
not, the grown-ups were certainly hanging up their stockings. For there
was the old candlestick-maker in his shop, pawing through a drawerful
of socks. First he pulled out a white sock, but that one, alas, had a
hole in it. Then he found a brown one, but oh, my goodness, that one
had two holes in it. Then he found a gray sock, a woolen one that Mrs.
Claus, good soul, had knitted for him. But that one had shrunken in the
wash, and nobody wants a shriveled-up sock to hang up for Christmas.
At last he came upon a fine black affair that looked as if it had
been made for a giant, so enormous it was. This was the very thing,
and cackling and wheezing, the candlestick-maker hung it up beside
Jack-Be-Nimble’s smaller stocking and went to bed.
The butcher hung up his stocking, and lonely it looked too, that
stocking, as it dangled from his bachelor’s fireplace. The Flinderses
hung up their stockings, one on each side of Polly’s; Mrs. Dumpty hung
up hers,--oh, all the grown-ups hung up stockings that night. And
although they tried to pretend to themselves that it was all in fun,
still they all knew perfectly well that it wouldn’t be a bit funny if
they should get up the next morning to find these stockings empty and
their wishes still just wishes.
Only Mr. and Mrs. Claus did not join in this great stocking ceremony.
Something had happened at the Clauses’, which had turned that humble
home almost inside out and left no time for such minor considerations
as stockings.
Mrs. Claus discovered it just after Santa had left with his pack.
“Now,” said she to Mr. Claus, “I’ll get out the things for _his_
stocking.”
“But he’ll see ’em when he comes in,” objected the baker.
“Now, Mr. Claus, you ought to know by this time he always comes in
by the back door and goes up the back steps on Christmas Eve. What’s
the harm, then, of getting out the things now and putting them in his
stocking in the front room?”
“No harm, no harm at all,” agreed Mr. Claus hastily.
So Mrs. Claus went to her workbasket to get the key to the cupboard in
which Santa’s surprises were hidden. The key, oddly enough, was not
there.
“Well, that’s funny,” Mrs. Claus said. Whereupon she went to the
kitchen shelf, but the key wasn’t there, either. Nor was it behind the
clock on the mantel, or in the best alabaster vase in the parlor, or
in the old valise upstairs. And if it wasn’t in these treasure troves,
where was it? That is what Mrs. Claus wanted to know.
“Where did you put it?” asked the baker innocently.
“How do I know?” retorted Mrs. Claus. “I seemed to remember putting it
in all these places, but I didn’t.”
“Look in the almanac,” suggested her husband.
“The almanac!” repeated Mrs. Claus contemptuously, but she looked there
just the same.
She also looked in the woodbox and in the apple barrel and in the
cooky jar, where no key ought ever to be and where no key was, either.
She ripped open the beds and searched under the mattresses, and the
fact that her children were in those beds made no whit of difference
to Mrs. Claus. She tore up the carpet from under Mr. Claus’s feet;
she scratched in the corners of the room like a cat digging for a
mouse; she peered sharply down into the stove, and when the key was
not discovered there, shook down the coals angrily. And at last, after
tearing up the entire house by its roots, she sat down on a chair and
looked at Mr. Claus with a tragic face.
“It’s lost,” she announced hoarsely.
“Never mind,” Mr. Claus replied soothingly, “we’ll get another.”
“But it’s a special key,” she wailed, “made specially for this
Christmas Eve. And Jack-of-All-Trades is dead asleep by now, and if he
wasn’t, he’d never have time now to make another.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to break the door open,” said Mr. Claus.
“But we have no ax!” Poor Mrs. Claus, she had lost all her old
enterprise in that short time.
“We’ll borrow one,” replied Mr. Claus, and with that they both leaped
out of the kitchen to borrow an ax from the neighbors.
It was exactly midnight when Santa Claus had finished filling the
stockings of Simple Simon, Jack and Jill, little Bo-Peep and all the
other children of Pudding Lane. He had just clicked Mistress Mary’s
gate behind him, when up popped Piggy-Peddler in front of him.
“It’s all right,” whispered Piggy-Peddler delightedly. “It’s going on
right now.”
“Oh!” cried Santa Claus. “It is? He’s really turning the clock back?”
“This very minute,” reported Piggy-Peddler.
“But it’s too early, Piggy-Peddler,” said Santa Claus. “The grown-ups
will never be awake at this hour. They’ve just gone to bed.”
Piggy-Peddler laughed.
“Don’t you worry about those grown-ups. They’re worse than children
ever thought of being. Mark my word, they’re sneaking down the steps
right this minute. Father Time knows them; that’s why he set this hour.”
“Are they really going to get the very things they asked for?” asked
Santa Claus.
“The very things,” Piggy told him.
“The petticoat?”
“Oh, such a petticoat! A riot of ruffles!” Piggy-Peddler answered.
“A thousand of them?”
“A thousand, and one for good measure. A thousand and one ruffles,
Santa Claus.”
“And the baby?”
“The most wonderful baby,” replied Piggy. “He never cries and never
wakes up in the middle of the night and never swallows safety pins.”
“Then he isn’t a real baby,” declared Santa Claus. He knew about
babies. There had been five of them in his family.
“Yes, he’s a real baby,” Piggy-Peddler insisted. “For he does fall out
of bed, and he does eat old shoes, and he does chase sunbeams all over
the nursery floor.”
Santa Claus, however, was not quite convinced.
“Does he go into a rage if he can’t get the sunbeam?”
“The most awful rage, bellowing and roaring.”
“No tears though,” supplemented Santa Claus.
“No tears,” corroborated Piggy. “Too mad for tears.”
“Well, I guess he’s a real baby then,” Santa Claus admitted. “But,
oh, Piggy, don’t you wish we could peep in at the windows and see the
grown-ups getting their Christmas presents?”
“I never wished anything so much in the world,” was Piggy’s heartfelt
reply.
“But it isn’t nice to peep in at windows, is it?”
“Peeping is dreadful,” said Piggy-Peddler.
“So I suppose we’d better go home,” suggested Santa.
“I think that’s all we can do,” Piggy agreed.
So Santa Claus went home, and Piggy went to the Horners’, where he was
staying over Christmas.
Piggy did not go straight to bed, however, for not only did he find
Mr. and Mrs. Horner up and gloating over the lovely gifts in their
Christmas stockings, but he found Jack Horner up too--think of it, on
Christmas Eve--and moreover, making a great to-do about his Christmas
pie.
“He wants to eat it now,” Mrs. Horner told Piggy.
“Well, let him eat it then,” advised Piggy-Peddler, disgusted.
You couldn’t do anything with a boy like Jack, he was thinking, and
there was no use trying.
The rest of the grown-ups, however, had no such difficulties to
spoil their Christmas stockings, and right that minute they were all
tiptoeing down to their front parlors just as Piggy-Peddler said they
would be doing.
Mrs. Dumpty, in her pink flannel nightgown and with her eyes bulging
over her sputtering candle, was the first one down. She craned her
neck as she got near the stocking, and her eyes, pushing themselves
almost out of their sockets, searched the dimness intently. Would the
petticoat be there? Oh, beating heart, be still! Supposing it were not--
Ah, but there it was, the petticoat of her heart, lovelier even than
she had imagined. Such foamy ruffles! So many of them! Oh, what a
petticoat! Suddenly Mrs. Dumpty threw it around her and rushed out.
Where was the woman going?
At about the same time old Cross-Patch came shuffling in to her
stocking. She hadn’t slept much in her excitement, but had lain there
tense and still until at last she could stand it no longer. There she
came, shuffle, shuffle. She held the candle high and squinted at the
stocking. Was that--could it be--a baby’s fuzzy head poking up out of
the top? It was! Oh, happy old Cross-Patch. She pinched the baby to see
if it were real; she grunted and chuckled and cackled. She wasn’t a bit
cross now. Then, taking the baby under one arm, she too rushed out and
away.
And did the candlestick-maker get his swallow-tail coat? He did. Pearl
buttons, hankersniff and all? Pearl buttons, hankersniff and all. Did
Mr. Flinders find himself possessed of pigs? Most assuredly. Red little
pigs, big black pigs, middle-aged speckled pigs, and all grunting and
wallowing in a manner to delight any pig-lover’s heart.
But surely the butcher didn’t find a wife in his stocking? Well, he
just did. A charming lady with a pink cheek, a high heel, and a mincing
step, a woman exactly to the butcher’s taste. Old Mother Hubbard got
her hurdy-gurdy too, and you should have seen her and the dog dancing
to its music.
But the strange thing was that all of them took their gifts in their
arms and rushed out from their homes, just as Mrs. Dumpty and
Cross-Patch had done. They all went to the same place too, and that
place was--guess where--the Old Woman’s Shoe.
Words fail me as I try to describe the scene they all found in the once
humble old Shoe. There was the Shoe ablaze with light and color; there
were the ladies and gentlemen of the ball, in satins and velvet, bowing
and pirouetting; there was Prince Charming himself, the most agreeable
man you ever want to see; and finally there was the Old Woman, gay as a
feather, almost unrecognizable now in her fine red dress and her gold,
gold slippers.
With great hilarity the Old Woman greeted her friends, and if she
kissed Mr. Horner and shook hands with Mrs. Horner instead of the other
way around, as she intended, nobody minded, especially Mr. Horner.
Indeed, so enlivened became the gentlemen that they all said they
wanted such a handshake,--which was certainly a gay turn for the party
to take.
So they frolicked on and danced and were merry. Oh, yes, they admired
each other’s Christmas presents too. The butcher’s wife was received
with great cordiality, Cross-Patch’s baby was declared to be the
nicest baby everybody had ever seen; and Mother Hubbard’s hurdy-gurdy
rolled out its lovely tunes as Mrs. Dumpty, in her ruffled petticoat
and the candlestick-maker, in his tails, stepped gravely through a
minuet.
Only the Clauses were not there.
But we know where they were, don’t we? Or do we?
For if Mr. Claus at that moment didn’t come tumbling head-first into
the Shoe, and if Mrs. Claus didn’t come falling in after him, and then,
right on their heels, if Jack Horner didn’t burst in on everybody.
“We want an ax!” shouted Mr. Claus. “Been all over the whole town and
not a soul was home.”
“An ax!” they all shouted back at him.
“But look here!” called out Little Jack Horner.
He was holding up a tiny something in his hand.
“What’s that?” they asked.
“I stuck in my thumb,” began Jack Horner.
“Oh, it’s only that old plum he’s always talking about,” said Mrs.
Grundy.
“No, ma’am,” Jack cried excitedly, “it’s not a plum. It’s a key. I
stuck in my thumb and pulled out a--key!”
Everybody gasped, Mrs. Claus gave a jump, and as for Mr. Claus, “Great
snakes!” he roared. “It’s it!”
And before anybody could say another word, he had snatched the key from
Jack Horner’s hands and was gone, leaving Mrs. Claus to explain the
whole thing, a feat she accomplished with much hemming and hawing.
For Mrs. Claus, you see, in her excitement had baked the key to the
cupboard in Jack Horner’s Christmas pie. Nobody knows how in the world
she could have done such a thing, and indeed, to this day she swears
she _couldn’t_ have done it, but she did do it, just the same, and
everybody knows it.
The people of Pudding Lane were very kind to her about this mistake.
“Never mind, Mrs. Claus,” said the Old Woman comfortingly, “it’s
all right now. Mr. Claus has gone home to get the things out of the
cupboard and Santa Claus will have his Christmas stocking just the
same, even if you did think the key was a plum.”
“I didn’t,” retorted Mrs. Claus. “Whoever could think a key was a
plum?”
“Well,” cackled the candlestick-maker, “you put the key into the plum
pie, Mrs. Claus.”
Mrs. Claus wrung her hands and could make no answer.
“Shame on you, candlestick-maker,” said Cross-Patch reprovingly. “Your
tails have made you cruel, sir. Cheer up, Mrs. Claus,” she went on,
“it’s just as the Old Woman said. Santa Claus will have his Christmas
stocking, after all, and there’s nothing to worry about now.”
“Well, then,” spoke the Old Woman, “we ought to go on with our party,
oughtn’t we?”
“We ought to, I suppose,” said Mrs. Dumpty, smoothing her ruffles,
“but--”
“But what, Mrs. Dumpty?” asked Mr. Flinders from among his litter of
pigs.
“But--” Mrs. Dumpty hesitated again, “well, the truth is, neighbors,
I’ve had about enough of party.”
The candlestick-maker stopped switching his coat-tails to give vent to
a great yawn.
“Wouldn’t mind going to bed myself,” he admitted.
“The baby’s asleep,” said Cross-Patch. “I guess I’ll go home.”
The Old Woman rubbed her eyes.
“Balls are all right,” she said, “but bed is the place for old women at
this time of the night.”
And that was the end of the lovely Christmas party. It was the end of
the pigs and the ruffles and the swallow-tail coat; it was the end
even of the butcher’s wife and Cross-Patch’s baby. They had had their
wishes, those grown-ups of Pudding Lane, every one of them, and they
had enjoyed that Christmas Eve as they had never enjoyed anything else
before. But now they were just their old selves again and wanted to go
to bed. Father Time had turned the clock up again, you see, and their
hour of youth was past.
But Santa Claus’s hour was not past, no indeed.
For the next morning, when he came clattering down the stairs to see
his brothers and sister open their Christmas stockings, what should he
see but his own red stocking hanging there, with a great sign on it,
saying, “Merry Christmas, little Santa, from all your loving friends!”
And what should he find in that stocking but Judy’s mittens, and Jack
and Jill’s orange tree (and it did have a tiny white blossom on it,
after all) and the whistle that Humpty-Dumpty had carved for him? And
what was there all around that stocking but piles and piles and piles
of gifts, the nicest things that could be bought in Banbury Cross?
Was he surprised? He nearly swooned, that fat little boy, so surprised
was he. Did he like his gifts? You should have heard him chuckle and
shout and exclaim. Was he touched at the thoughtfulness of his friends?
He thanked them and thanked and thanked them, until they stopped their
ears, and he told his mother that night that never in all the world
were there any such people as those in Pudding Lane. He was curious,
too, to know how they managed it all.
“Who brought the things down the chimney?” he wanted to know.
“King Cole,” Mrs. Claus told him.
“King Cole himself?”
“King Cole himself,” said Mrs. Claus, but she did not add that the King
had stuck in the chimney on the way down and had to be pulled through
by his feet, although that really happened.
So that’s the way it all came out.
Father Time turned back the clock so that the grown-ups could be young
again and have the wishes of their youth. Jack Horner, the glutton,
ate his Christmas pie too early, but, by doing so, saved the day. For
if he hadn’t, they wouldn’t have found the key, and Santa Claus might
not have had his wonderful Christmas stocking. Oh, yes, they would have
taken the ax to the cupboard, I suppose, but that’s no way to open a
cupboard, after all.
THE END
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
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