Part 2

So the King settled down to business, respected by his subjects, who had all, since the coming of the Cockatoucan, had their little ups and downs. And Matilda kept the books and wrote out the bills, and really they were both rather happy. Pridmore, disguised as the automatic machine, stood in the shop and attracted many customers. They used to bring their children, and make the poor innocents put their pennies in, and then read Pridmore’s good advice. Some parents are so harsh. And the Princess sat in the back garden with the Cockatoucan, and Matilda played with her every afternoon. But one day, as the King was driving through another kingdom, the King of that kingdom looked out of one of his Palace windows, and laughed as the King went by, and shouted, “Butcher!”

The Butcher-King did not mind this, because it was true, however rude. But when the other King called out, “What price cat’s meat!” the King was very angry indeed, because the meat he sold was always of the best quality. When he told Matilda all about it, she said, “Send the Army to crush him.”

So the King sent his Army, and the enemy were crushed. The Bird laughed the King back into his throne, and laughed away the butcher’s shop just in time for his Majesty to proclaim a general holiday, and to organise a magnificent reception for the Army. Matilda now helped the King to manage everything. She wonderfully enjoyed the new delightful feeling of being clever, so that she felt it was indeed too bad when the Cockatoucan laughed just as the reception was beautifully arranged. It laughed, and the general holiday was turned into an income tax; the magnificent reception changed itself to a royal reprimand, and the Army itself suddenly became a discontented Sunday-school treat, and had to be fed with buns and brought home in brakes, crying.

“Something must be done,” said the King.

“Well,” said Matilda, “I’ve been thinking if you will make me the Princess’s governess, I’ll see what I can do. I’m quite clever enough.”

“I must open Parliament to do that,” said the King; “it’s a Constitutional change.”

So he hurried off down the road to open Parliament. But the bird put its head on one side and laughed at him as he went by. He hurried on, but his beautiful crown grew large and brassy, and was set with cheap glass in the worst possible taste. His robe turned from velvet and ermine to flannelette and rabbit’s fur. His sceptre grew twenty feet long and extremely awkward to carry. But he persevered, his royal blood was up.

“No bird,” said he, “shall keep me from my duty and my Parliament.”

But when he got there, he was so agitated that he could not remember which was the right key to open Parliament with, and in the end he hampered the lock and so could not open Parliament at all, and members of Parliament went about making speeches in the roads to the great hindrance of the traffic.

The poor King went home and burst into tears.

“Matilda,” he said, “this is too much. You have always been a comfort to me. You stood by me when I was a butcher; you kept the books; you booked the orders; you ordered the stock. If you really are clever enough, now is the time to help me. If you won’t, I’ll give up the business. I’ll leave off being a King. I’ll go and be a butcher in the Camberwell New Road, and I will get another little girl to keep my books, not you.”

This decided Matilda. She said, “Very well, your Majesty, then give me leave to prowl at night. Perhaps I shall find out what makes the Cockatoucan laugh; if I can do that, we can take care he never gets it, whatever it is.”

“Ah!” said the poor King, “if you could only do that.”

When Matilda went to bed that night, she did not go to sleep. She lay and waited till all the Palace was quiet, and then she crept softly, pussily, mousily to the garden, where the Cockatoucan’s cage was, and she hid behind a white rosebush, and looked and listened. Nothing happened till it was gray dawn, and then it was only the Cockatoucan who woke up. But when the sun was round and red over the Palace roof, something came creeping, creeping, pussily, mousily out of the Palace; and it looked like a yard and a half of white tape creeping along; and it was the Princess herself.

She came quietly up to the cage, and squeezed herself between the bars; they were very narrow bars, but a yard and a half of white tape can go through the bars of any birdcage I ever saw. And the Princess went up to the Cockatoucan and tickled him under his wings till he laughed aloud. Then, quick as thought, the Princess squeezed through the bars, and was back in her room before the bird had finished laughing. Matilda went back to bed. Next day all the sparrows had turned into cart horses, and the roads were impassable.

That day when she went, as usual, to play with the Princess, Matilda said to her suddenly, “Princess, what makes you so thin?”

The Princess caught Matilda’s hand and pressed it with warmth.

“Matilda,” she said simply, “you have a noble heart. No one else has ever asked me that, though they tried to cure it. And I couldn’t answer till I was asked, could I? It’s a sad, a tragic tale, Matilda. I was once as fat as you are.”

“I’m not so very fat,” said Matilda, indignantly.

“Well,” said the Princess impatiently, “I was quite fat enough anyhow. And then I got thin—”

“But how?”

“Because they would not let me have my favourite pudding every day.”

“What a shame!” said Matilda, “and what is your favourite pudding?”

“Bread and milk, of course, sprinkled with rose leaves—and with pear-drops in it.”

Of course, Matilda went at once to the King, and while she was on her way the Cockatoucan happened to laugh. When she reached the King, he was in no condition for ordering dinner, for he had turned into a villa-residence, replete with every modern improvement. Matilda only recognised him, as he stood sadly in the Park, by the crown that stuck crookedly on one of the chimney-pots, and the border of ermine along the garden path. So she ordered the Princess’s favourite pudding on her own responsibility, and the whole Court had it every day for dinner, till there was no single courtier but loathed the very sight of bread and milk, and there was hardly one who would not have run a mile rather than meet a pear-drop. Even Matilda herself got rather tired of it, though being clever, she knew how good bread and milk was for her.

But the Princess got fatter and fatter, and rosier and rosier. Her thread-paper gowns had to be let out, and let out, till there were no more turnings in left to be let out, and then she had to wear the old ones that Matilda had been wearing, and then to have new ones. And as she got fatter she got kinder, till Matilda grew quite fond of her.

And the Cockatoucan had not laughed for a month.

When the Princess was as fat as any Princess ought to be, Matilda went to her one day, and threw her arms round her and kissed her. The Princess kissed her back, and said, “Very well, I _am_ sorry then, but I didn’t want to say so, but now I will. And the Cockatoucan never laughs except when he’s tickled. So there! He hates to laugh.”

“And you won’t do it again,” said Matilda, “will you?”

“No, of course not,” said the Princess, very much surprised, “why should I? I was spiteful when I was thin, but now I’m fat again I want every one to be happy.”

“But how can any one be happy?” asked Matilda, severely, “when every one is turned into something they weren’t meant to be? There’s your dear father—he’s a desirable villa—the Prime Minister was a little boy, and he got back again, and now he’s turned into a Comic Opera. Half the Palace housemaids are breakers, dashing themselves against the Palace crockery: the Navy, to a man, are changed to French poodles, and the Army to German sausages. Your favourite nurse is now a flourishing steam laundry, and I, alas! am too clever by half. Can’t that horrible bird do anything to put us all right again?”

“No,” said the Princess, dissolved in tears at this awful picture, “he told me once himself that when he laughed he could only change one or two things at once, and then, as often as not, it turned out to be something he didn’t expect. The only way to make everything come right again would be—but it can’t be done! If we could only make him laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. That’s the secret. He told me so. But I don’t know what it _is_, let alone being able to do it. Could _you_ do it, Matilda?”

“No,” said Matilda, “but let me whisper. He’s listening. Pridmore could. She’s often told me she’d do it to me. But she never has. Oh, Princess, I’ve got an idea.”

The two were whispering so low that the Cockatoucan could not hear, though he tried his hardest. Matilda and the Princess left him listening.

Presently he heard a sound of wheels. Four men came into the rose-garden wheeling a great red thing in a barrow. They set it down in front of the Cockatoucan, who danced on his perch with rage.

“Oh,” he said, “if only some one would make me laugh, that horrible thing would be the one to change. I know it would. It would change into something much horrider than it is now. I feel it in all my feathers.”

The Princess opened the cage-door with the Prime Minister’s key, which a tenor singer had found at the beginning of his music. It was also the key of the comic opera. She crept up behind the Cockatoucan and tickled him under both wings. He fixed his baleful eye on the red Automatic Machine and laughed long and loud; he saw the red iron and glass change before his eyes into the form of Pridmore. Her cheeks were red with rage and her eyes shone like glass with fury.

“Nice manners!” said she to the Cockatoucan, “what are you laughing at, I should like to know—I’ll make you laugh on the wrong side of your mouth, my fine fellow!”

She sprang into the cage, and then and there, before the astonished Court, she shook that Cockatoucan till he really and truly did laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. It was a terrible sight to witness, and the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear.

But instantly all the things changed back as if by magic to what they had been before. The laundry became a nurse, the villa became a king, the other people were just what they had been before, and all Matilda’s wonderful cleverness went out like the snuff of a candle.

The Cockatoucan himself fell in two—one half of him became a common, ordinary Toucan, such as you must have seen a hundred times at the Zoo, unless you are unworthy to visit that happy place, and the other half became a weathercock, which, as you know, is always changing and makes the wind change too. So he has not quite lost his old power. Only now he is in halves, any power he may have has to be used without laughing. The poor, broken Cockatoucan, like King you-know-who in English history, has never since that sad day smiled again.

The grateful King sent an escort of the whole Army, now no longer dressed in sausage skins, but in uniforms of dazzling beauty, with drums and banners, to see Matilda and Pridmore home. But Matilda was very sleepy. She had been clever for so long that she was quite tired out. It is indeed a very fatiguing thing, as no doubt you know. And the soldiers must have been sleepy too, for one by one the whole Army disappeared, and by the time Pridmore and Matilda reached home there was only one left, and he was the policeman at the corner.

The next day Matilda began to talk to Pridmore about the Green Land and the Cockatoucan and the Villa-residence-King, but Pridmore only said—

“Pack of nonsense! Hold your tongue, do!”

So Matilda naturally understood that Pridmore did not wish to be reminded of the time when she was an Automatic Nagging Machine, so of course, like a kind and polite little girl, she let the subject drop.

Matilda did not mention her adventures to the others at home because she saw that they believed her to have spent the time with her Great-aunt Willoughby.

And she knew if she had said that she had not been there she would be sent at once—and she did not wish this.

She has often tried to get Pridmore to take the wrong omnibus again, which is the only way she knows of getting to the Green Land; but only once has she been successful, and then the omnibus did not go to the Green Land at all, but to the Elephant and Castle.

But no little girl ought to expect to go to the Green Land more than once in a lifetime. Many of us indeed are not even so fortunate as to go there once.

WHEREYOUWANTOGO.

or

THE BOUNCIBLE BALL.

IT is very hard, when you have been accustomed to go to the seaside every summer ever since you were quite little, to be made to stay in London just because an aunt and an uncle choose to want to come and stay at your house to see the Royal Academy and go to the summer sales.

Selim and Thomasina felt that it was very hard indeed. And aunt and uncle were not the nice kind, either. If it had been Aunt Emma, who dressed dolls and told fairy-tales—or Uncle Reggie, who took you to the Crystal Palace, and gave you five bob at a time, and never even asked what you spent it on, it would have been different. But it was Uncle Thomas and Aunt Selina.

Aunt Selina was all beady, and sat bolt upright, and told you to mind what you were told, and Selim had been named after her—as near as they could get. And Uncle Thomas was the one Thomasina had been named after: he was deaf, and he always told you what the moral of everything was, and the housemaid said he was “near.”

“I know he is, worse luck,” said Thomasina.

“I mean, miss,” explained the housemaid, “he’s none too free with his chink.”

Selim groaned. “He never gave me but a shilling in his life,” said he, “and that turned out to be bad when I tried to change it at the ginger-beer shop.”

The children could not understand why this aunt and uncle were allowed to interfere with everything as they did: and they quite made up their minds that when they were grown up they would never allow an aunt or an uncle to cross their doorsteps. They never thought—poor, dear little things—that some day they would grow up to be aunts and uncles in their turn, or, at least, one of each.

It was very hot in London that year: the pavement was like hot pie, and the asphalt was like hot pudding, and there was a curious wind that collected dust and straw and dirty paper, and then got tired of its collection, and threw it away in respectable people’s areas and front gardens. The blind in the nursery had never been fixed up since the day when the children took it down to make a drop-scene for a play they were going to write and never did. So the hot afternoon sun came burning in through the window, and the children got hotter and hotter, and crosser and crosser, till at last Selim slapped Thomasina’s arms till she cried, and Thomasina kicked Selim’s legs till he screamed.

Then they sat down in different corners of the nursery and cried, and called each other names, and said they wished they were dead. This is very naughty indeed, as, of course, you know; but you must remember how hot it was.

When they had called each other all the names they could think of, Thomasina said, suddenly, “All right, Silly,” (that was Selim’s pet name)—“cheer up.”

“It’s too hot to cheer up,” said Selim, gloomily.

“We’ve been very naughty,” said Thomasina, rubbing her eyes with the paint rag, “but it’s all the heat. I heard Aunt Selina telling mother the weather wore her nerves to fiddle-strings. That just meant she was cross.”

“Then it’s not _our_ fault,” said Selim. “People say be good and you’ll be happy. Uncle Reggy says, ‘Be happy, and perhaps you’ll be good.’ _I_ could be good if I was happy.”

“So could I,” said Thomasina.

“What _would_ make you happy?” said a thick, wheezy voice from the toy cupboard, and out rolled the big green and red india-rubber ball that Aunt Emma had sent them last week. They had not played with it much, because the garden was so hot and sunny—and when they wanted to play with it in the street, on the shady side, Aunt Selina had said it was not like respectable children, so they weren’t allowed.

Now the Ball rolled out very slowly—and the bright light on its new paint seemed to make it wink at them. You will think that they were surprised to hear a ball speak. Not at all. As you grow up, and more and more strange things happen to you, you will find that the more astonishing a thing is the less it surprises you. (I wonder why this is. Think it over, and write and tell me what you think.)

Selim stood up, and said, “Halloa”; but that was only out of politeness. Thomasina answered the Ball’s question.

“We want to be at the seaside—and no aunts—and none of the things we don’t like—and no uncles, of course,” she said.

“Well,” said the Ball, “if you think you can be good, why not set me bouncing?”

“We’re not allowed in here,” said Thomasina, “because of the crinkly ornaments people give me on my birthdays.”

“Well, the street then,” said the Ball; “the nice shady side.”

“It’s not like respectable children,” said Selim sadly.

The Ball laughed. If you have never heard an india-rubber ball laugh you won’t understand. It’s the sort of quicker, quicker, quicker, softer, softer, softer chuckle of a bounce that it gives when it’s settling down when you’re tired of bouncing it.

“The garden, then,” it said.

“I don’t mind, if you’ll go on talking,” said Selim kindly.

So they took the Ball down into the garden and began to bounce it in the sun, on the dry, yellowy grass of the lawn.

“Come on,” said the Ball. “You do like me!”

“What?” said the children.

“Why, do like I do—bounce!” said the Ball. “That’s right—higher, higher, higher!”

For then and there the two children had begun bouncing as if their feet were india-rubber balls, and you have no idea what a delicious sensation that gives you.

“Higher, higher,” cried the green and red ball, bouncing excitedly. “Now, follow me, higher, higher.” And off it bounced down the blackened gravel of the path, and the children bounced after it, shrieking with delight at the new feeling. They bounced over the wall—all three of them—and the children looked back just in time to see Uncle Thomas tapping at the window, and saying, “Don’t.”

You have not the least idea how glorious it is to feel full of bouncibleness; so that, instead of dragging one foot after the other, as you do when you feel tired or naughty, you bounce along, and every time your feet touch the ground you bounce higher, and all without taking any trouble or tiring yourself. You have, perhaps, heard of the Greek gentleman who got new strength every time he fell down. His name was Antæus, and I believe he was an india-rubber ball, green on one side where he touched the earth, and red on the other where he felt the sun. But enough of classical research.

Thomasina and Selim bounced away, following the Bouncible Ball. They went over fences and walls, and through parched, dry gardens and burning-hot streets; they passed the region where fields of cabbages and rows of yellow brick cottages mark the division between London and the suburbs. They bounced through the suburbs, dusty and neat, with geraniums in the front gardens, and all the blinds pulled half-way down; and then the lamp-posts in the road got fewer and fewer, and the fields got greener and the hedges thicker—it was real, true country—with lanes instead of roads; and down the lanes the green and red Ball went bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, and the children after it. Thomasina, in her white, starched frock, very prickly round the neck, and Selim, in his every-day sailor-suit, a little tight under the arms. His Sunday one was a size larger. No one seemed to notice them, but they noticed and pitied the children who were being “taken for a walk” in the gritty suburban roads.

“Where are we going?” they asked the Ball, and it answered, with a sparkling green and red smile—

“To the most delightful place in the world.”

“What’s it called?” asked Selim.

“It’s called Whereyouwantogoto,” the Ball answered, and on they went. It was a wonderful journey—up and down, looking through the hedges and over them, looking in at the doors of cottages, and then in at the top windows, up and down—bounce—bounce—bounce.

And at last they came to the sea. And the Bouncing Ball said, “Here you are! Now be good, for there’s nothing here but the things that make people happy.” And with that he curled himself up like a ball in the shadow of a wet sea-weedy rock, and went to sleep, for he was tired out with his long journey. The children stopped bouncing, and looked about them.

“Oh, Tommy;” said Selim.

“Oh, Silly!” said Thomasina. And well they might! In the place to which the Ball had brought them was all that your fancy can possibly paint, and a great deal more beside.

The children feel exactly as you do when you’ve had the long, hot, dirty train journey—and every one has been so cross about the boxes and the little brown portmanteau that was left behind at the junction—and then when you get to your lodgings you are told that you may run down and have a look at the sea if you’re back by tea time, and mother and nurse will unpack.

Only Thomasina and her brother had not had a tiresome journey—and there were no nasty, stuffy lodgings for them, and no tea with oily butter and a new pot of marmalade.

“There’s silver-sand,” said she—“miles of it.”

“And rocks,” said he.

“And cliffs.”

“And caves in the cliffs.”

“And how cool it is,” said Thomasina.

“And yet it’s nice and warm too,” said Selim.

“And what shells!”

“And seaweed.”

“And the downs behind!”

“And trees in the distance!”

“And here’s a dog, to go after sticks. Here, Rover, Rover.”

A big black dog answered at once to the name, because he was a retriever, and they are all called Rover.

“And spades!” said the girl.

“And pails!” said the boy.

“And what pretty sea-poppies,” said the girl.

“And a basket—and grub in it!” said the boy. So they sat down and had lunch.

It was a lovely lunch. Lobsters and ice-creams (strawberry and pine-apple), and toffee and hot buttered toast and ginger-beer. They ate and ate, and thought of the aunt and uncle at home, and the minced veal and sago pudding, and they were very happy indeed.

Just as they were finishing their lunch they saw a swirling, swishing, splashing commotion in the green sea a little way off, and they tore off their clothes and rushed into the water to see what it was. It was a seal. He was very kind and convenient. He showed them how to swim and dive.

“But won’t it make us ill to bathe so soon after meals? Isn’t it wrong?” asked Thomasina.

“Not at all,” said the seal. “Nothing is wrong here—as long as you’re good. Let me teach you water-leapfrog—a most glorious game, so cool, yet so exciting. You try it.”

At last the seal said: “I suppose you wear man-clothes. They’re very inconvenient. My two eldest have just outgrown their coats. If you’ll accept them——”

And it dived, and came up with two golden sealskin coats over its arm, and the children put them on.

“Thank you very much,” they said. “You _are_ kind.”

I am almost sure that it has never been your luck to wear a fur coat that fitted you like a skin, and that could not be spoiled with sand or water, or jam, or bread and milk, or any of the things with which you mess up the nice new clothes your kind relations buy for you. But if you like, you may try to imagine how jolly the little coats were.