Part 11

“At first the girl didn’t want to trust him with the shoe, but she saw that he was in earnest, and so she pulled off the only shoe she had and placed it in Smat’s hands. He saw at once that the leather he had was a match for that in the shoe, and he set to work with a light heart,—with a light heart, but his hand was heavy. And yet, somehow or other, he found that he knew all about making shoes, although he had never learned how. The leather fitted itself to the last, and everything went smoothly. But the beautiful girl, instead of feeling happy that she would soon have a mate to her shoe, began to grow sad. She sat in a corner with her head between her hands and her hair hanging down to her feet, and sighed every time Smat bored a hole in the leather with his awl or drove in a peg. Finally, when he handed her the shoe entirely finished, she looked at it, sighed, and let it fall from her hands.

“‘Of course,’ said Smat, ‘I don’t feel bad over a little thing like that. But you don’t have to pay anything for the shoe, and you don’t have to wear it unless you want to.’

“‘Oh, it is not that,’ cried the beautiful girl. ‘The shoe will do very well, but the moment I put it on, your troubles will begin.’

“‘Well,’ replied Smat, ‘we must have troubles of some sort anyhow, and the sooner they begin, the sooner they’ll be ended. So put on your shoe.’

“Now, it happened that just as the girl put on the shoe, which fitted her foot exactly, King Stuff and his councilors came driving up to the door. King Stuff was not a large man, but he was very fierce-looking. He called out from his carriage of state and asked what sort of a person lived in that house that he couldn’t come out and salute when the king and his councilors went riding by. Smat went to the door and bowed as politely as he could, and said that he would have been glad to bow and salute, if he had known his royal highness and their excellent excellencies intended to honor his poor house even so much as to pass by it. The king and his councilors looked at one another and shook their heads.

“‘This man is none of us,’ said the oldest and wisest of the councilors. ‘We must be careful.’

“‘How long have you lived here?’ asked the king.

“‘Longer than I wanted to,’ replied Smat. ‘My house is so far from the palace that I have not been able to call and pay my respects to your majesty.’

“‘I see you are a maker of shoes,’ remarked the king, seeing the awl in Smat’s hand.

“‘No, your majesty, not a maker of shoes, but simply a shoemaker. Thus far I have succeeded in making only one shoe.’

“At this the king and his councilors began to shake and tremble. ‘What was the prophecy?’ cried the king to the oldest and wisest. ‘Repeat it!’

“The oldest and the wisest closed his eyes, allowed his head to drop to one side, and said in solemn tones:—

‘Wherever you go, and whatever you do, Beware of the man that makes but one shoe; Beware of the man with the awl and the axe, With the pegs and the leather and the shoemaker’s wax. If you’re out of your palace when you meet this man, You’d better get back as fast as you can.’

“Smat felt very much like laughing at the solemn way in which the oldest and wisest councilor repeated this prophecy, or whatever it might be called. ‘Your majesty needn’t be worried about that prophecy,’ said he. ‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to break the force of it.’

“‘How?’ asked the king.

“‘Why, having made one shoe, I’ll go to work and make another,’ replied Smat.

“The oldest and wisest of the councilors said that was a pretty good plan,—anyhow, it was worth trying. Smat promised to make another shoe, and have it ready in two days. But this was easier said than done. In the first place, he had used nearly all his leather in making a shoe for the beautiful girl. In the second place, the awl point wouldn’t stay in the handle. In the third place, the pegs split and broke every time he tried to drive them, and the shoemaker’s wax wouldn’t stick. Everything went wrong at first and grew worse at last, so that when the king sent his officers for the shoe it was no nearer done than it had been before Smat began.

“The beautiful girl had not gone very far away, and she came every day to see how Smat prospered in making the second shoe. She was watching him when the king’s officers came for the shoe, and when she saw them she began to weep. But Smat looked as cheerful as ever, and even began to whistle when the officers knocked at the door.

“‘We are in a fix,’ said he, ‘but we’ll get out of it. Lend me the shoe I made for you. I’ll send that to the king and then get it back again.’

“The girl tried to take the shoe from her foot, but nothing would move it. ‘That is a sign,’ said Smat, ‘that it ought not to come off. I’ll just go to the king myself and tell him the facts in the case. That is the best way.’

“So he gathered the awl and the axe and the shoemaker’s wax, and the scraps of leather, and bundled them together. Then he told the officers that he would go with them and carry the shoe himself, so as to be sure that it came safely into the king’s hands. They went toward the palace, and Smat noticed, as they went along, that it grew darker and darker as they came nearer to the palace. The officers seemed to notice it too. By the time they reached the palace, it was so dark that Smat had great trouble in keeping up with the officers.

“There was great commotion in the palace. Nobody had ever seen it so dark before except just at the stroke of midnight, when the shadows grow thick and heavy and run together and over everything.

“Now, old King Stuff was a sort of magician himself (as, indeed, he had to be in those times, in order to manage a kingdom properly), and as soon as he saw the great darkness coming on at the wrong time of day, he thought at once of the prophecy in regard to the man who made but one shoe. So he hustled and bustled around the palace, calling for the officers he had sent after the shoe. But nobody had seen them return before the dark began to fall, and after that it was impossible to see them.

“In the midst of it all, the officers, followed by Smat, stumbled into the palace and went groping about from room to room hunting for old King Stuff and his ministers. At last, they heard him grumbling and growling, and felt their way toward him.

“‘The shoe! the shoe!’ cried King Stuff, when the officers had made themselves known.

“‘I have something that will answer just as well,’ said Smat.

“‘The shoe! give me the shoe!’ cried the king.

“‘Take this, your majesty,’ said Smat, handing him the bundle.

“No sooner had the king’s hands touched the bundle than there was a rumbling noise in the air, the building began to shake and totter and crumble away. In the midst of it all some one cried out in a loud voice:—

‘Wherever you go, and whatever you do, Beware of the man that makes but one shoe!’

“In the twinkling of an eye, King Stuff and his army and his palace had disappeared from sight. At the same time the darkness had cleared away, and Smat saw his father and his brother standing near, dazed and frightened, and not far away was the beautiful girl. The father and the brother were very much astonished when they found that Smat had been the means of their rescue. They talked about it until night fell, and then the Man in the Moon, with his tiny lantern-bearers, came and escorted them to their own country.

“Now it happened that the beautiful girl was a princess, the daughter of the king. It fell to the lot of Smat to take the princess home. Not long after that the king gave a great festival, to celebrate the return of his daughter. Smat’s father and brother got close enough to the palace to see him standing in a large room, where there was a large crowd of people and music and flowers. They saw, too, that he was holding the princess by the hand.

“And so,” said little Mr. Thimblefinger, wiping the perspiration from his forehead, “the story ended.”

XX.

THE WOOG AND THE WEEZE.

“Phew!” exclaimed Mr. Rabbit, when he was sure that little Mr. Thimblefinger had finished. “That beats anything I ever heard.”

“I’m glad you like it,” said Mr. Thimblefinger.

“Oh, hold on there!” protested Mr. Rabbit, “you are going too fast. I never said I liked it. I said it beat any story I ever heard, and so it does,—for length. I didn’t know that such a little chap could be so long-winded. It was such a long story that I’ve forgotten what the moral ought to be.”

“Why, I thought you said you didn’t believe much in stories that had morals tacked to them,” remarked Mrs. Meadows.

“No doubt I did,” replied Mr. Rabbit,—“No doubt I did. But this story was long enough to have a dozen morals cropping out in different places, like dog fennel in a cow pasture.”

“Well,” said Mr. Thimblefinger, “there was a moral or two in the story, but I didn’t call attention to them in the telling, and I’ll not dwell on them now.”

“I thought it was a tolerably fair story,” said Buster John, yet with a tone of doubt.

“Oh, I thought it was splendid all the way through,” said Sweetest Susan.

“There are some stories that are hard to tell,” suggested Mrs. Meadows. “They go in such a rambledy-wambledy way that it’s not easy to keep the track of them. I remember I once heard Chickamy Crany Crow trying to repeat a story that she heard the Looking-glass Children tell. I never found head nor tail to it, but I sat and listened almost without shutting my eyes.”

“What was the story?” asked Sweetest Susan.

In reply, Mrs. Meadows said she would call Chickamy Crany Crow, and ask her to tell it. As usual, Chickamy Crany Crow was off at play with Tickle-My-Toes. They both came when Mrs. Meadows called them, and Chickamy Crany Crow, after some persuasion, began to tell the story.

“One day,” she said, brushing her hair behind her ears with her fingers, “I wanted to see the Looking-glass Children. Tickle-My-Toes was off playing by himself, and I was lonesome; so I went to the Looking-glass, whirled it around in its frame, and waited for the children to come out. But they didn’t come. I called them, but they made no answer. I went close to the Glass, and looked in. At first, I couldn’t see anything; but after a while I saw, away off in the Glass, one of the children,—the one they all say looks like me. I called her; but she was so far off in the Glass that she couldn’t hear me, and, as she had her face turned the other way, she couldn’t see me.

“After so long a time, she came up to the frame of the Glass, and then stepped out and sat down on the ground. I saw she had been crying.

“Says I, ‘Honey, what in the world is the matter?’ I always call her Honey when we are by ourselves.

“Says she, ‘There’s enough the matter. I’m e’en about scared to death, and I expect that all the other children in this Looking-glass are either captured, or killed, or scared to death.’

“Says I, ‘Why didn’t you holler for help?’

“Says she, ‘What good would that have done? You all could help us very well on dry land, out here, but how could you have helped us in the Looking-glass, when you can’t even get in at the door? I’ve seen you try to follow us, but you’ve always failed. You stop at the Glass, and you can’t get any farther.’

“Says I, ‘You are right about that; but if we outside folks can’t get in the Glass to play with you and keep you company, how can anybody or anything get in there to scare you and hurt you?’

“Says she, ‘The thing that scared us has been in there all the time. It was born in there, I reckon, but I’ve never seen it before; and I tell you right now I never want to see it again.’

“Says I, ‘What sort of a thing is it?’

“Says she in a whisper, ‘_It’s the Woog!_‘

“‘The what?’ says I.

“‘_The Woog!_‘ says she.

“Says I, ‘It’s new to me. I never heard of it before.’

“Says she, ‘To hear of it is as close as you want to get to it.’

“Why, I heard of the Woog in my younger days,” remarked Mr. Thimblefinger. “I thought the thing had gone out of fashion.”

“Don’t you believe a word of it,” said Chickamy Crany Crow. “It’s just as much in fashion now as ever it was, especially at certain seasons of the year. The little girl in the Looking-glass—I say little girl, though she’s about my size and shape—told me all about it; and as she lives in the same country with the Woog, she ought to know.”

“What did she say about it?” asked Buster John, who had a vague idea that he might some day be able to organize an expedition to go in search of the Woog.

“Well,” replied Chickamy Crany Crow, “she said this,—she said that she and the other children were sitting under the shade of a bazzle-bush in the Looking-glass, telling fairy stories. It had come her turn to tell a story, and she was trying to remember the one about the little girl who had a silk dress made out of a muscadine skin, when all of a sudden there was a roaring noise in the bushes near by. While they were shaking with fright, a most horrible monster came rushing out, and glared at them, growling all the while. It wore great green goggles. Its hair stood out from its head on all sides, except in the bald place on top, and its ears stuck out as big as the wings of a buzzard.

“‘Do you know who I am?’ it growled. ‘No, you don’t; but I’ll show you. I am the Woog. Do you hear that? The Woog! Don’t forget that. What did I hear you talking about just now? You were talking about fairies. Don’t say you weren’t, for I heard you.’

“‘Well,’ says one of the Looking-glass Children, ‘what harm is there in that?’

“‘Harm!’ screamed the Woog. ‘Do you want to defy me? I have caught and killed and crushed and smoked out all the fairies that ever lived on the earth, except a few that have hid themselves in this Looking-glass country. What harm, indeed!—a pretty question to ask me, when I’ve spent years and years trying to run down and smother out the whole fairy tribe.’

“The Looking-glass Children,” Chickamy Crany Crow continued, “told the Woog that they didn’t know there was any harm in the fairies themselves, or in talking about them. The Woog paid no attention to their apologies. He just stood and glared at them through his green goggles, gnashing his teeth and clenching his hands.

“Says the monster after awhile, ‘How dare any of you wish that you could see a fairy, or that you had a fairy godmother? What shall I do with you? I crushed a whole population of fairies between the lids of this book’ (he held up a big book, opened it, and clapped it together again so hard that it sounded like some one had fired off a gun), ‘and I’ve a great mind to smash every one of you good-for-nothing children the same way.’

“You may be sure that by this time the poor little Looking-glass Children were very much frightened, especially when they saw that the Woog was fixing to make an attack on them. He dropped his big book, and when the children saw him do this they broke and run: some went one way and some another. The last they saw of him, he was rushing through the bushes like a blind horse, threshing his arms about, and doing more damage to himself than to anybody else. But the children had a terrible scare, and if he hasn’t made way with some of them it’s not because he is too good to do it.”

“The poor dears!” exclaimed Mrs. Meadows sympathetically.

“Dat ar creetur can’t come out’n dat Lookin’-glass like de yuthers, kin he?” inquired Drusilla, moving about uneasily: “kaze ef he kin, I’m gwine ’way fum here. I dun seed so many quare doin’s an’ gwine’s on dat I’ll jump an’ holler ef anybody pints der finger at me.”

“Well, Tar-Baby,” replied Mr. Rabbit with some dignity, “he hasn’t never come out yet. That’s all that can be said in that line. He may come out, but if he does you’ll be in no danger at all. The Woog would never mistake you for a fairy, no matter whether he had his green goggles on or whether he had them off.”

“No matter ’bout dat,” remarked Drusilla. “I mayn’t look like no fairy, but I don’t want no Woog fer ter be cuttin’ up no capers ’roun’ me. I tell you dat, an’ I don’t charge nothin’ fer tellin’ it. Black folks don’t stan’ much chance wid dem what knows ’em, let ’lone dem ar Woog an’ things what don’t know ’em. Ef you all hear ’im comin’, des give de word, and I boun’ you’ll say ter yo’se’f dat Drusilla got wings. Now you min’ dat.”

“What does the Woog want to kill the fairies for?” asked Sweetest Susan. “He must be very mean and cruel.”

“He’s all of that, and more,” replied Mrs. Meadows. “The fairies please the children, and give them something beautiful to think about in the day and to dream about at night, and the Woog doesn’t like that. He hates the fairies because it pleases the children to hear about them, and he hates the children because they like to hear about the fairies.”

“Well, I never want to see him until I am big enough to tote a gun,” said Buster John. “After that, I don’t care how soon I meet him.”

“Now,” remarked Mr. Rabbit, turning to Mrs. Meadows with a solemn air, “didn’t you say that all this about the Woog was a tale, or something of that sort.”

“I believe I did,” replied Mrs. Meadows. “What about it?”

“Just this,” said Mr. Rabbit,—“a tale’s a tale, and it never stops until all is told.”

“If that’s the case, I’ve heard some here that overshot the mark,” remarked Mrs. Meadows.

“No doubt, no doubt,” responded Mr. Rabbit. “But what became of the Woog?”

“I know! I know!” cried Tickle-My-Toes, who had been listening to all that was said about the Woog.

“Very well; let’s hear about it,” suggested Mr. Rabbit.

“’Taint much,” said Tickle-My-Toes modestly. “The chap in the Looking-glass that looks like me, he was the one that fell into the hands or the claws of the Woog. He could have got away with the rest, but a piece of straw was caught between his toes, and it tickled him so that he laughed until he couldn’t run. He just fell on the ground and rolled over and over, laughing all the time. In this way the Woog caught up with him and grabbed him, and carried him away off in the woods in the Looking-glass country. They were away off in that part of the country where there was no green grass on the ground. There were no green leaves on the trees, no flowers blooming, and no birds singing.

“The Woog carried the little chap that looks like me to that dark place, and nearly scared him to death.

“‘You pretend to be something or somebody, do you?—you, a shadow in a glass,’ growled the Woog.

“‘I’m what I am,’ said the little chap.

“‘You are not,’ cried the Woog. ‘You are nothing. Why do you pretend to be somebody or something?’

“The little chap didn’t say anything in reply, because there was nothing to say. There’s no use in disputing when you can’t help yourself. So the Woog took him and tied him to a dead tree, leaving his big book lying near. There is no telling what would have happened to the little chap; but just as soon as the Woog got out of sight, a strong, tall man, with gray hair combed straight back over his head, suddenly made his appearance, and untied the cords, and set the little chap free.

“‘Don’t be frightened,’ said the tall man; ‘I am the Weeze. I have been hunting the Woog for many a long day, and now I think I’ll put an end to him.’

“Presently the Woog came back growling and grumbling. When he looked up and saw the Weeze, it was too late for him to escape. But he turned and tried to run. Just then the Weeze seized the big book and threw it at the Woog. As it hit him, there was a big explosion, and the Woog and his big book both disappeared.

“The little chap that looks like me,” said Tickle-My-Toes, “was telling me about it to-day; and he said that it wasn’t long after the explosion before the flowers began to bloom in that place, and the birds to sing, and the leaves began to grow on the trees. And after awhile the fairies began to peep out from their hiding-places; and when the little chap came away he could see them playing Ring-Around-Rosy on the green grass.

“It was mighty funny, wasn’t it?” asked Tickle-My-Toes, in conclusion.

XXI.

UNCLE RAIN AND BROTHER DROUTH.

“Now I’m not so mighty certain that that is a real tale after all,” said Mr. Rabbit, “although it took two to tell it. There’s something the matter with it somewhere. The running-gear is out of order. I’m not complaining, because what might suit me might not suit other people. It’s all a matter of taste, as Mrs. Meadows’s grandmother said when she wiped her mouth with her apron and kissed the cow.”

“Well,” remarked Mr. Thimblefinger, “there’s no telling what happens in a Looking-glass when nobody is watching. I’ve often wanted to know. The little that I’ve heard about the Woog and the Weeze will do me until I can hear more.”

“I remember a story that I thought was a very good one when I first heard it,” said Mrs. Meadows. “But sometimes a great deal more depends on the time, place, and company than on the stories that are told. I’m such a poor hand at telling tales that I’m almost afraid to tell any that I know. I’ve heard a great many in my day and time, but the trouble is to pick out them that don’t depend on a wink of the eye and a wave of the hand.”

“Give us a taste of it, anyhow,” suggested Mr. Rabbit. “I’ll do the winking, the Tar-Baby can do the blinking, and Mr. Thimblefinger can wave his hands.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Meadows, “once upon a time there lived in a country not very far from here a man who had a wife and two children,—a boy and a girl. This was not a large family, but the man was very poor, and he found it a hard matter to get along. He was a farmer, and farming, no matter what they say, depends almost entirely on the weather. Now, this farmer never could get the weather he wanted. One year the Rain would come and drown out his crops, and the next year the Drouth would come and burn them up.

“Matters went from bad to worse, and the farmer and his wife talked of nothing else but the Rain and the Drouth. One year they said they would have made a living but for the Drouth, and the next they said they would have been very well off but for the Rain. So it went on from year to year until the two children,—the boy and the girl,—grew up large enough to understand what their father and mother were talking about. One year they’d hear they could have no Sunday clothes and shoes because of the Drouth. The next year they’d hear they could have no shoes and Sunday clothes because of the Rain.

“All this set them to thinking. The boy was about ten years old and the girl was about nine. One day at their play they began to talk as they had heard their father and mother talk. It was early in the spring, and their father was even then ploughing and preparing his fields for planting another crop.

“‘We will have warm shoes and good clothes next winter if the Rain doesn’t come and stay too long,’ said the boy.

“‘Yes,’ replied the girl, ‘and we’ll have good clothes and warm shoes if the Drouth doesn’t come and stay too long.’

“‘I wonder why they’ve got such a spite against us,’ remarked the boy.

“‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ replied the girl. ‘If we go and see them, and tell them who we are, and beg them not to make us so cold and hungry when the ice grows in the ponds and on the trees, maybe they’ll take pity on us.’

“This plan pleased the boy, and the two children continued to talk it over, until finally they agreed to go in search of the Rain and the Drouth. ‘Do you,’ said the boy, ‘go in search of Brother Drouth, and I will go in search of Uncle Rain. When we have found them, we must ask them to visit our father’s house and farm, and see the trouble and ruin they have caused.’