Part 7

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.”

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.”