CHAPTER III

‘As it fell out upon a dayWhen margarine was cheap,It filled up all the grocers’ shopsIn buckets wide and deep.Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!Matilda bought a heap.And it fell out upon a dayWhen margarine was dear,Matilda bought a little moreAnd made it into beer.Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!It tasted rather queer.As it fell out upon a dayThere wasn’t any more;Matilda took her bottled beerAnd poured it on the floor.Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!And that was all I saw.’

‘As it fell out upon a dayWhen margarine was cheap,It filled up all the grocers’ shopsIn buckets wide and deep.Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!Matilda bought a heap.

‘As it fell out upon a day

When margarine was cheap,

It filled up all the grocers’ shops

In buckets wide and deep.

Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!

Matilda bought a heap.

And it fell out upon a dayWhen margarine was dear,Matilda bought a little moreAnd made it into beer.Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!It tasted rather queer.

And it fell out upon a day

When margarine was dear,

Matilda bought a little more

And made it into beer.

Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!

It tasted rather queer.

As it fell out upon a dayThere wasn’t any more;Matilda took her bottled beerAnd poured it on the floor.Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!And that was all I saw.’

As it fell out upon a day

There wasn’t any more;

Matilda took her bottled beer

And poured it on the floor.

Ah, well-a-day! ah, ill-a-day!

And that was all I saw.’

‘Poor thing!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Such a brief and mysterious career. Now you may open your eyes.’

David did so, and found himself in a large room, with all the furniture covered up as if the family was away. The butler was still standing on his head, squinting horribly at David’s card, and muttering to himself, ‘He can’t be both, and he may be neither. He may be either, but he can’t be both.’ In the middle of the room was a big round seat, covered with ribands which were still blowing about in the wind, and on it was seated a little old lady with horn spectacles, eating curds and whey out of a bowl that she held on her knees.

‘Come and sit on the tuffet at once,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll pretend that there isn’t room for the spider. Won’t that be a good joke? I like a bit of chaff with my spider. I expect the tuffet will bear, won’t it? But I can’t promise you any curds.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said David politely, ‘but I don’t like curds.’

‘No more do I,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘I knew we should agree.’

‘Then why do you eat them?’ asked David.

‘For fear the spider should get them. Don’t you adore my tuffet? It’s the only indoor tuffet in the world. All others are out-door tuffets. But they gave me this one because most spiders are out-of-door spiders. By the way, we haven’t been introduced yet. Where’s that silly butler?’

‘Here,’ said the butler. He was lying down on the floor now, and staring at the ceiling.

‘Introduce us,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Say Miss Muffet, David Blaize⁠—⁠David Blaize, Miss Muffet. Then whichever way about it happens, you’re as comfortable as it is possible to be under the circumstances, or even above them, where it would naturally be colder.’

‘I don’t quite see,’ said David.

‘Poor Mr. Blaize. Put a little curds and whey in your eyes. That’s the way. Dear me, there’s another pun.’

David calls on Miss Muffet

‘You made it before,’ said David.

‘I know. It counts double this time. But as I was saying, a little curds and whey⁠—⁠oh! it’s tipped up again. What restless things curds are!’

She had not been looking at her bowl, and for several minutes now a perfect stream of curds and whey had been pouring from it over her knees and along the floor, to where the butler lay. He was still repeating, ‘Miss Muffet, David Blaize⁠—⁠David Blaize, Miss Muffet.’ Sometimes, by way of variety, he said, ‘Miss Blaize⁠—⁠David Muffet,’ but as nobody attended, it made no difference what he said.

‘It always happens when I get talking,’ she said. ‘And now we know each other, I may be permitted to express a hope that you didn’t expect to find me a little girl?’

‘No, I like you best as you are,’ said David quickly.

‘It isn’t for want of being asked that I’ve remained Miss Muffet,’ said she. ‘And it isn’t from want of being answered. But give me a little pleasant conversation now and then, and one good frightening away every night, and I’m sure I’ll have no quarrel with anybody; and I hope nobody hasn’t got none with me. How interesting it must be for you to meet me, when you’ve read about me so often. It’s not nearly so interesting for me, of course, because you’re not a public character.’

‘Does the spider come every night, or every day, whatever it is down here?’ asked David.

‘Yes, sooner or later,’ said Miss Muffet cheerfully, ‘but the sooner he comes, the sooner I get back again, and the later he comes the longer I have before he comes. So there we are.’

She stopped suddenly, and looked at the ceiling.

‘Do my eyes deceive me?’ she whispered, ‘or is that the s⁠——? No; my eyes deceive me, and I thought they would scorn the action, the naughty things. Perhaps you would like to peep at my furniture underneath the sheets. It will pass the time for you, but be ready to run back to the tuffet, when you hear the spider coming. Really, it’s very tiresome of him to be so late.’

David thought he had never seen such an odd lot of furniture. Covered up in one sheet was a stuffed horse, in another a beehive, in another a mowing-machine. They were all priced in plain figures, and the prices seemed to him equally extraordinary, for while the horse was labelled ‘Two shillings a dozen,’ and the mowing-machine ‘Half a crown a pair,’ the beehive cost ninety-four pounds empty, and eleven and sixpence full. David supposed the reason for this was that if the beehive was full, there would be bees buzzing about everywhere, which would be a disadvantage.

‘When I give a party,’ said Miss Muffet, ‘as I shall do pretty soon if the spider doesn’t come, and take all the coverings off my furniture, the effect is quite stupendous. Dazzling in fact, my dear. You must remember to put on your smoked spectacles.’

David was peering into the sheet that covered the biggest piece of furniture of all. He could only make out that it was like an enormous box on wheels, and cost ninepence. Then the door in it swung open, and he saw that it was a bathing-machine. On the floor of it was sitting an enormous spider.

‘Does she expect me?’ said the spider hoarsely. ‘I’m not feeling very well.’

David remembered that he had to run back to the tuffet, but it seemed impolite not to ask the spider what was the matter with it. It had a smooth kind face, and was rather bald.

‘My web caught cold,’ said the spider. ‘But I’ll come if she expects me.’

David ran back to the tuffet.

‘He’s not very well,’ he said, ‘but he’ll come if you expect him.’

‘The kind good thing!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Now I must begin to get frightened. Will you help me? Say “Bo!” and make faces with me in the looking-glass, and tell me a ghost story. Bring me the looking-glass, silly,’ she shouted to the butler.

He took one down from over the chimney-piece, and held it in front of them, while David and Miss Muffet made the most awful faces into it.

‘That’s a beauty,’ said Miss Muffet, as David squinted, screwed up his nose, and put his tongue out. ‘Thank you for that one, my dear. It gave me quite a start. You are really remarkably ugly. Will you feel my pulse, and see how I am getting on. Make another face: I’m used to that one. Oh, I got a beauty then: it terrified me. And begin your ghost story quickly.’

David had no idea where anybody’s pulse was, so he began his ghost story.

‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘there was a ghost that lived in the hot-water tap.’

‘Gracious, how dreadful!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘What was it the ghost of?’

‘It wasn’t the ghost of anything,’ said David. ‘It was just a ghost.’

‘But it must have been “of” something,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘The King is the King of England, and I’m Miss Muffet of nothing at all. But you must have an “of.” ’

‘This one hadn’t,’ said David firmly. ‘It was just a ghost. It groaned when you turned the hot water on, and it squealed when you turned it off.’

‘This will never do,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘I’m getting quite calm again, like a kettle going off the boil. Make another face. Oh, now it’s too late!’

There came a tremendous cantering sound behind them, and Miss Muffet opened her mouth and screamed so loud that her horn spectacles broke into fragments.

‘Here he comes!’ she said. ‘O-oh, how frightened I am!’

The spider chases Miss Muffet

She gave one more wild shriek as the spider leaped on to the tuffet, and began running about the room with the most amazing speed, the spider cantering after her. They upset the bathing-machine, and knocked the stuffed horse down, they dodged behind the butler, and sent the beehive spinning, and splashed through the curds and whey, which formed a puddle on the floor. Then the door through which David had entered flew open, and out darted Miss Muffet with the spider in hot pursuit. Her screaming, which never stopped for a moment, grew fainter and fainter.

The butler gave an enormous yawn.

‘Cleaning up time,’ he said, and took a mop from behind the door, and dipped it into the pool of curds and whey. When it was quite soaked, he twisted it rapidly round and round, and a shower of curds and whey deluged David. As it fell on him, it seemed to turn to snow. It was snowing heavily from the roof too, and snow was blowing in through the door. Then he saw that it wasn’t a door at all, but the opening of a street, and that the walls were the walls of houses. It was difficult to see distinctly through the snowstorm, but he felt as if he knew where he was.

CHAPTER III

The snow cleared as swiftly as it had begun, and David saw that he was standing in the High Street of the village near which he lived. It was all quite ordinary, and he was afraid that he had somehow been popped back through the blue door during the snowstorm, and was again in the stupid dull world. Just opposite him was the post and telegraph office, and next to that the bank, and beyond that the girls’ school. There were the same old shops too, Mr. Winfall the tailor’s, and the confectioner’s and the bootmaker’s, and at the bottom of the street was the bridge over the river.

‘Well, if I am back in the world again,’ said David, ‘it would be a pity to let all this good snow go to waste without its being tobogganed on. I’ll go home, I think, and get my toboggan. I wonder how they did it.’

He started to go down the street to the bridge across which was the lane which presently passed by the bottom of the field beyond the lake, on the other side of which was the garden, where was the summer-house in which he had left his toboggan yesterday. But he happened to look a little more closely at the bootmaker’s shop, and instead of the card in the window which said, ‘Boots and shoes neatly repaired,’ there was another one on which was written ‘Uncles and Aunts recovered and repaired.’

‘I suppose they recover them when they’re lost, and repair them when they’re found,’ thought David. ‘But it’s not a bit usual.’

He found it no more usual when he looked at the girls’ school, for instead of the brass plate on which was written ‘Miss Milligan’s school for Young Ladies,’ he saw written there ‘Happy Families’ Institute,’ and in the window of the bank a notice ‘Sovereigns are cheap to-day.’

‘I’ll go in there at once,’ thought David, ‘and buy some. I wonder how much money I’ve got.’

He found four pennies in his pocket, and went in with them to the bank. The manager was there talking in a low voice to a very stout gentleman with a meat-chopper in his hand, whom David knew to be the Mint-man from London, just as certainly as if he had had it written all over him. What made it absolutely sure was the fact that sovereigns kept oozing out of his clothes and dropping on the floor. There was quite a pile of them round his feet, which the porter who opened the door to David kept sweeping up, and putting down his neck again.

‘So it’s only the same sovereigns all over again,’ thought David, ‘but there must be a lot of them. No wonder they’re cheap.’

He walked up to where they were standing.

‘Please, can you let me have four penny-worth of sovereigns,’ he said.

The Mint-man blew his nose before he answered, and some thirty or forty sovereigns rattled out of his handkerchief. ‘Do you want them new-laid or only for cooking?’ he asked.

David finds the Mint-man in the bank

David had no intention of cooking them, so he said:

‘New-laid, please.’

The Mint-man picked off one that was coming out of his right elbow, another from his tie, another from his bottom waistcoat button, and the fourth from his knee, and gave them to David.

‘It’ll never do if other people get to know about it,’ he said. ‘We shall be having all the happy families in, though I don’t suppose they’ve got much money. Have another notice put up at once.’

The manager took an enormous quill pen from behind the counter. It reached right up to the ceiling of the room, and he had to hold it in both hands. Up the side of it was printed, ‘Rod, pole or perch.’

‘What shall I say?’ he asked.

‘You may say whatever you like,’ said the Mint-man, ‘but you must write whatever I like. Now begin’⁠—⁠

‘Sovereigns are five pounds two ounces each to-day, but they’ll be dearer to-morrow.’

‘Then will you please give me five pounds for each of my sovereigns?’ asked the greedy David. ‘Never mind about the ounces.’

The Mint-man and manager whispered together for a little while, and David could hear fragments of their talk like ‘financial stringency,’ ‘tight tendency,’ ‘collapse of credit,’ which meant nothing to him. All the time the porter was shovelling sovereigns down the back of the Mint-man’s neck.

‘The only thing to be done,’ he said, ‘is to write another notice. Write “The Bank has suspended payment altogether. The deposits are therefore forfeited by square root, rule of three, and compound interest.” What do you make of that?’ he asked David triumphantly.

David knew that compound interest and square root came a long way on in the arithmetic book, and that he couldn’t be properly expected to make anything of it. Evidently they were not going to pay him five sovereigns for each of his, but he had done pretty well already, with his four sovereigns instead of four pence.

‘I don’t make anything of it yet,’ he said, ‘because I haven’t got as far.’

‘When I was your age,’ said the manager severely, ‘I’d got so far past it that it was quite out of sight.’

The Mint-man nudged him, and said behind his hand:

‘Never irritate the young. Keep them pleased and simmering.’

He turned to David with a smile, and patted him on the head. Two cold sovereigns went down the front of David’s jersey.

‘We have read your references,’ he said, ‘and find them quite satisfactory. You are therefore appointed honorary errand-boy, and your duties begin immediately. So go straight across to the shop where they repair uncles and aunts, and see if there’s a golden uncle being repaired. If there is, tell him that his nephew⁠—⁠that’s you⁠—⁠wants him to come out to tea⁠—⁠that’s here⁠—⁠and that the motor will be round immediately⁠—⁠and that’s where.’

David felt that he didn’t want to be errand-boy to the bank at all, but somehow he seemed to remember having sent in references. What was even more convincing was that he found his sailor clothes had disappeared, and that he was dressed in a jacket that came close up to his neck, and was covered with brass buttons. He had black trousers, rather tight, and a peaked cap, round the rim of which was written: ‘David Blaize, Esquire. To be returned to the bank immediately. This side up.’

But after he had received his appointment as honorary errand-boy, nobody attended to David any more, for they were all most busily engaged. The manager wheeled in a tea-table, and began arranging tea-things and muffin-dishes on it, then when he had done that, brought in easy chairs, and a piano and all the things that you usually find in drawing-rooms, while the Mint-man made up a huge fire in the fire-place, and put a large saucepan as big as a bath upon it, into which he dropped the sovereigns that oozed out of him. Meantime, the porter had gone out carrying a ladder and a pot of paint, and when David went out too on his errand, he had already painted over the signboard outside the house, which said it was the bank, and had written on it:

‘This is the house of David Blaize, the nephew of Uncle Popacatapetl.’

‘So that’s the uncle who’s coming to tea with me,’ thought David. ‘I wonder if he knows who he is yet.’

The snow had already melted, so that he did not again consider whether he should go tobogganing. It had gone very quickly, but everything seemed to happen quickly here. It could hardly have been five minutes since he had gone into the bank with fourpence in his pocket, and here he was with four sovereigns instead, a complete suit of new clothes, an uncle, and a position as honorary errand-boy. He crossed the street, and entered the shop where boots and shoes used to be repaired, but where now they repaired uncles and aunts.

The recovering of Uncle Popacatapetl

On the counter there lay a very odd-looking old gentleman, dressed in rags and tatters in about equal proportions. His hands and face were quite yellow, and wherever there was a tatter, or there wasn’t a rag, and he showed through, he was yellow there too. His boots were in very bad repair, and a great golden toe stuck out of one, and a golden heel out of the other: in fact, there could be no doubt at all that he was made of pure gold, and as he was being repaired, he was also either an aunt or an uncle. But though one of David’s aunts had a slight moustache, he had never yet seen an aunt with a long beard and whiskers, and so without doubt there was Uncle Popacatapetl.

The bootmaker and his wife were repairing him, which they did by driving nails into him, so as to tack down the rags over the tatters. If there was a very big tatter, which they could not cover with the rag, they nailed on anything else that was handy. In some places they had filled up the gaps with pieces of newspaper, match-boxes, and bits of leather and sealing-wax, and balls of wool, and apples and photographs. While this was going on, Uncle Popacatapetl kept up a stream of conversation, interspersed with laughing.

‘Anyhow it can’t hurt him much,’ said David to himself.

‘Delicious, delicious!’ said Uncle Popacatapetl. ‘Nail the toe of my boot a little more firmly on to the toe of me. Put a paper-knife there if you can’t cover up the hole. Now my gloves.’

He put on a pair of thick white woollen gloves that came up to his elbow.

‘Would you like them nailed on too, sir?’ asked the shoemaker.

‘By all means. Put a nail in each finger, and three on the wrist, and ninety-eight round my elbows. Did you gum the gloves inside, before I put them on?’

‘I glued them well,’ said the shoemaker’s wife.

‘That’ll glue then,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl. ‘I think when I’ve put my mask on the disguise will be complete. What fun it all is! To think of the Mint-man having traced me all the way here, only to find I’m not in the least like me any more. Or is it ever more?’

‘Never more, ever more, any more,’ said the shoemaker, with his mouth full of nails.

‘It’s every-more, Ithink,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl, ‘though it doesn’t matter. When I’m finished, and when you’re finished, they won’t think I am anything, still less an uncle. I don’t suppose they ever saw anything the least like me, sowhy,’ he added argumentatively, ’should they pitch upon uncle?’

They had none of them appeared to notice David at all as yet, and, as he was an errand-boy, he thought he had better proceed with his errand.

‘If you please,’ he said, ‘I think you’re my uncle, and I should like to have you come to tea with me. It’s quite a short way, in fact it’s only across the road, but the motor will be here in a minute, so that you can get in at one door and out at the other.’

Uncle Popacatapetl sat up so suddenly that David knew he must have a hinge in his back. He looked at David, but he couldn’t speak, because the last nail the shoemaker had driven into him had fixed his beard to his chest, which naturally prevented him moving his mouth. But he wrenched off the pair of scissors which had been nailed into his knee, and cut a piece of his beard off, so that he could talk again. He had turned quite pale in the face, which was the only part of him visible, just as if he had been made of silver.

‘Say it again,’ he said.

David said it again, upon which Uncle Popacatapetl jumped up and looked out of the window.

‘It’s a plot,’ he said. ‘That used to be the bank. Now it’s David Blaize. Has it been disguising itself too? Because if so, we’re as we were, and I’ve had all the trouble and hammering for nothing.’

He began to cry in a helpless golden sort of manner. The shoemaker had followed him to the window to repair an enormous tatter with very little rag on his shoulder, and was nailing bananas on to it to cover it up. But he was so much affected by Uncle Popacatapetl’s misery that he hit his fingers instead of the nail and began to cry too, sucking his injured finger and dropping nails out of his mouth. As for his wife, she gave one loud sob, and tore out of the room, leaving the door open. They heard her falling downstairs, bumpity, bumpity, bumpity, till she cameBUMPagainst the cellar door.

‘Bumpity, crumpity, rumpity, numpity, squmpity, zumpity,’ said the shoemaker, with a sob between each word. ‘There she goes. I don’t rightly know if it’s her crying that makes her fall down, or her falling down that makes her cry, but it don’t make home happy, and it’s a great expense in sticking-plaster. The sticking-plaster that’s come into this house would be enough to paper it.’

David was determined not to cry whatever happened, for it never did any good to cry, and besides something must be done at once, only he had not the least idea what that something was. It was perfectly clear that the Mint-man wanted to get Uncle Popacatapetl into the bank, and no wonder, since he was worth his weight in gold, with all the bananas and match-boxes thrown in. And he thought with a shudder of the meat-axe and the saucepan heating over the fire. Without the least doubt Uncle Popacatapetl was going to be chopped up and melted down into sovereigns.

‘It’s all too sad,’ sobbed Uncle Popacatapetl, ‘and too true and too tiresome. I knew they had tracked me down here⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠but when I saw that there was this nice respectable shop, where uncles and aunts⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠could be recovered and repaired, I thought I could have myself recovered and repaired out of all knowledge⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠wow⁠—⁠and diddle the whole lot of them. Instead of which, they send in my beastly nephew to ask me to tea, and then they’ll chop me up, and make sovereigns of me. I’ve seen their signs and notices. They tried to put me off the scent by saying that sovereigns were cheap, and make me think they didn’t want me. And then that was changed, and they said sovereigns were dearer. And then that was changed, and they suspended payment to make me think that they weren’t collecting gold any more, never more at all. Oh, I know their cussedness. And just when everything was going so well, and I was going to walk across the street as cool as carrots or cucumbers, and I should have left by the next telegram that was sent from the office. Look at them all flying in! And there’s one going out with its mackintosh on, and I could have caught it as easy as a subtraction sum if it hadn’t been for this upset. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow.’

David felt dreadfully sorry for him, but what he said about telegrams was quite as dreadfully interesting, and he looked out.

It was quite true: there was a whole string of telegrams rushing down the wires towards the post-office, each in a neat mackintosh. It had begun to snow again, and was getting dark.

‘But why have they got mackintoshes on?’ he asked.

‘Well, of all the silly nephews that ever I had,’ said Uncle Popacatapetl, who had stopped crying as suddenly as if a tap had been turned off, ‘this one takes the cake. Why do you wear a mackintosh?’

‘To keep me dry,’ said David.

‘Well, and mayn’t telegrams do the same?’ asked his uncle. ‘They come from America and Australia and Jerusalem, and did you ever see a wet telegram, though it had gone for hundreds and billions and millions and thousands of miles under the sea?’

‘No, they all seem dry,’ said David.

‘And there you are, sitting there,’ said the golden uncle, ‘and wanting to deprive them of their mackintoshes. Crool, I call it. They puts them on when they starts, and they takes them off when they arrives and cools themselves.’

Uncle Popacatapetl had begun to talk so like David’s father’s gardener, that again he was afraid he had got back into the stupid world.

‘I sees them coming, and I sees them going,’ said his uncle, ‘and who so free I arsk, as a little ninepenny telegram? They’re cheap at the price, they are, going where they please like that⁠——’

He gave a wild shriek, like Miss Muffet when the spider came, and snatched the mask that the shoemaker was holding.

‘There’s the motor come for me,’ he sobbed, ‘and what is a poor old man to do? Nail my mask on quickly. Don’t mind my eyes or my ears or anythink.’

He lay down in the window-seat, and David and the shoemaker drove nails in all over his face. Sometimes the mask, which was that of a young lady with pink cheeks, tore, and then they tacked on buttons from David’s jacket, or bits of the window-curtain.

‘Don’t mine me,’ Uncle Popacatapetl kept whimpering. ‘There goes one eye, and there goes the other, but make it safe whatever you do. Cut off my head, if that would make me look more like a young lady⁠—⁠but I won’t, I won’t, I won’t look like anybody’s uncle. They may take me for an aunt if they like, or a nephew, or a niece, but I won’t be a golden uncle.’

The mask was nailed on at last, and Uncle Popacatapetl sat up.

‘Now go outside, David,’ he said, ‘and find out exactly what sort of motor-car it is.’

David very obediently went out into the street. It looked quite different now, for there were flags flying from every house with the inscription, ‘David Blaize, the fireman’s son,’ which was very gratifying, and showed a pleasant interest in him on the part of the happy families. He felt that he had seen a card of himself as the fireman’s son, but he could not remember his mother as Mrs. Blaize, the fireman’s wife, or his father as Mr. Blaize, the fireman.

But that was not the immediate business in hand. As the whole street was decked out in honour of himself, he naturally bowed right and left, but since nobody was there, it did not matter much whether he bowed or not. Still it was better to be polite. Then he looked in front of him. There stood an immense motor-car, that buzzed in a most sumptuous manner. It was pointing down the street towards the bridge over the river, but it did not much matter which way it pointed, because the bank was immediately opposite. There were two cords attached to the roof of it, and attached to the cords were a couple of aeroplanes, which were pointing in the opposite direction. On the pavement were standing the chauffeur and two pilots of the flying-corps. They all saluted smartly as David came out.

‘Three cheers for David Blaize,’ said one of them. ‘Hip, hip, hip⁠—⁠I’m blowed if I know how it goes on.’

‘You must all say “Hurrah,” ’ said David.

They all said ‘Hurrah,’ in a very depressed sort of voice, and one of the airmen said, ‘Lor’, these civilians.’

‘Lor’, yourself,’ said David, rather rudely. ‘I want to hear about the motor-car.’

The chauffeur stroked the side of the bonnet which contained the engines.

‘She’s a good thing,’ he said. ‘She’s a good going concern. But throttle her up never so, she won’t go less than a hundred miles an hour. So I made so free, your honour, since that was above speed-limit, to harness these two silly aeroplanes which between ’em go ninety miles an hour in the other direction. That brings she down to ten miles an hour, and no one can say a word against her.’

And then the two airmen threw their caps in the air, and shouted ‘Hurrah.’

This was all very clever on the part of the chauffeur, but as the bank was just opposite, and all that the motor-car had got to do was to stand quite still while Uncle Popacatapetl stepped in at one side and got out at the other, it seemed a little superfluous. But David appreciated kind intentions, and next minute he found himself hand-in-hand with the chauffeur and the airmen, and they were all dancing in a circle, singing

‘Ninety miles one ways, and a hundred miles the others,And some of us are nephews, and all of us are brothers.’

‘Ninety miles one ways, and a hundred miles the others,

And some of us are nephews, and all of us are brothers.’

‘Then are you ready to start, your honour?’ said the chauffeur, when they had finished dancing.

David pulled himself together.

‘Yes, but I am taking an invalid with me,’ he said. ‘It’s my uncle, who is far from well, like the spider!’

‘The one that sat down next that old woman?’ asked the chauffeur, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb. ‘He’s all right again, he is.’

‘It’s that sort of illness,’ said David. ‘He’s coming to tea with me, but he had better have a little drive first, to give him an appetite. We’ll go along some road with plenty of telegraph wires. They make him feel better.’

The window of the shoemaker’s house was thrown open, and David’s uncle looked out in his mask.

‘Much better,’ he said. ‘Better much, much better,’ and he closed it again so violently that all the glass broke.

‘Crash!’ said the second of the airmen. He had a very long elastic sort of nose, which David had not noticed before. Then both of them and the chauffeur opened their mouths very wide, as if they were going to sing again.

‘There must be no more singing,’ said David sternly, and they all shut their mouths again with a snap.

There was evidently no time to lose, for David could hear the roaring of the fire in the bank opposite, over which poor Uncle Popacatapetl was to be melted after he had been cut up, and against the red glow of it he could see the heads of the Mint-man and the manager pressed so tightly against the glass that the tips of their noses were quite white, as they looked out and wondered why the motor-car didn’t return.

‘Come on, uncle,’ he shouted, ‘the tea will be spoiled,’ and he gave him a great wink to show that he had got an idea in his head.

So the chauffeur got into his place, and Uncle Popacatapetl came out covered with apples and match-boxes and things like a Christmas-tree, and at the very last moment David undid the buttons of the cords to the aeroplanes, and away they flew, leaving the airmen gazing up at them. Then he shut the door, and he and Uncle Popacatapetl drove off at a hundred miles an hour down the street to the bridge.

‘Turn to the left when you get over the bridge,’ shouted David, ‘and drive over the fields till you come to our lake. You’ll have to jump that, but after that there’s only the garden.’

‘She ain’t been jumping much lately,’ said the chauffeur.

‘It can’t be helped,’ shouted David. ‘Then go to the garden door. I’ll hide you in the game-cupboard,’ he explained to his uncle. ‘There’s lots of room there now all the games have gone.’

Suddenly there came an awful crash. They had run into the railing of the bridge, and the whole motor-car flew into several million small pieces, and there were David and his uncle standing in the middle of the road.

Uncle Popacatapetl began whimpering again.

‘I’m a poor old man,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know whether I’m standing on my head or my heels.’

David looked at him attentively.

‘I think you’re standing on your heels,’ he said, ‘but it’s so dark I can’t tell you for certain. Wait till I light a match.’

There came a noise of running behind them, and, before David could be sure whether his uncle was on his head or his heels, he saw the porter and the Mint-man and the bank manager rushing down the street towards them.

At that very moment the telegraph wires began to sing, as they always do when a telegram is coming along them, and looking up he saw a very long one with its mackintosh on sliding down the wires. It was so long that it came within six or seven feet of the ground.

‘Quick, jump and catch hold of it,’ said David, ‘and then you’ll be safe.’

Twice Uncle Popacatapetl tried to jump, but he couldn’t jump far because he was so heavy, and the Mint-man with the meat-chopper in his hand was close upon them. But the kind good telegram, which was reply-paid, reached down a hand, and pulled him up at the very moment the Mint-man and the manager were grabbing at him. They just missed him, and the Mint-man being unable to stop himself flew over the railing of the bridge, followed by the manager and the porter, and they all fell into the river with three splashes, each louder than all the rest put together.

The telegram rescues Uncle P. from the Mint-man

By this time the telegram and Uncle Popacatapetl were far away out of sight, and as the chauffeur had vanished too, there was little use in David’s remaining on the bridge all alone. He tried, as long as his match burned, to put together some pieces of the motor-car, but when that went out, it was like doing the most awful jig-saw puzzle in the dark.

So he walked back up the street, for there was a bright light coming out of the door of the bank, which looked cheerful, and besides he remembered that he had been sent to ask his Uncle Popacatapetl to tea, so that probably there would be tea ready.

‘It must be time for tea,’ he thought, ‘because it has been dark quite a long time, and I haven’t had it yet. Tea always comes soon after dark even on the shortest days.’

By the bank door were standing the two airmen, whose machines he had unbuttoned. They had got their caps on the side of their heads all right, but they didn’t look quite like ordinary airmen. The nose of one had grown enormously since David saw him last, and he waved it about, turning up the end of it in a manner that reminded David not of an airman at all, but of some quite different sort of creature. The other had a large kind face, and kept moving his mouth round and round, and out of his hair there distinctly stuck two horns, both broken.

As soon as they saw David they ran inside the bank, and shut the door in his face, leaving him out in the dark and the cold.

CHAPTER IV

David felt rather hurt at this, for having intended to ask them to tea, it was vexing to find that they didn’t intend to ask him. But before he could feel much hurt the window on the third floor was thrown open, and a giraffe looked out. It bent down to David, and whispered in his ear:

‘They’ll let you in soon. It’s a surprise.’

‘Is it a nice one?’ asked David.

‘That depends on whether you like it. But I’ll stay and talk to you till they’re ready. You begin.’

David didn’t know what sort of conversation giraffes liked, but he supposed that, like everybody else, they enjoyed talking about themselves.

‘How did you get up to the third floor?’ he asked. ‘I should have thought you were too tall to be able to go upstairs.’

‘I was,’ whispered the giraffe.

‘Then how did you get there?’ said David.

‘I didn’t. I’m on the ground floor all the time, and I can feel them running about among my legs. Only my head went upstairs in order to brush its hair. That’s another surprise; you never thought of that! But I didn’t see you jump when I told you. Shall I jump you?’

‘No. I think I’ll stop where I am,’ said David.

‘Very well. I’ll tell you another thing too. Some animals are so short that they have to go down to the cellar to tie their bootlaces. I should think you were one of that sort, aren’t you?’

‘Indeed I’m not,’ said David indignantly. ‘I’m tall enough to tie my bootlaces anywhere.’

The giraffe’s head gave a great jerk.

‘I jumped at that, you see,’ it said. ‘That was a real jumping surprise. I should never have guessed it.’

David looked up at the mild silly head above him. Certainly it looked surprised, but all giraffes did that.

‘I live on surprises,’ said the giraffe. ‘If I can’t get a proper supply of them my eyebrows come down.’

All the time it spoke it whispered into David’s ear, and tickled it.

‘Could you speak a little louder and a little farther off?’ he asked.

‘No, not possibly,’ said the giraffe. ‘My throat is so long, you see, that if I speak in the ordinary voice, it gets quite lost before it comes out of my mouth.’

David guessed this was another surprise, and remembered to jump.

‘That’s a good boy,’ said the giraffe approvingly. ‘Now I’ll tell you something else. I’ll dance with you when they’re ready.’

‘Oh, is it going to be a dance?’ asked David, who didn’t care about dancing.

‘Some of it is going to be a dance, and then the happy families give a concert, and then I should think there would be a battle. One never can tell for certain, but, with so many soldiers about, something of the sort is bound to happen. But the dance comes first, and I’ll be your partner.’

‘Oh, are you a lady?’ asked David.

‘I should think so. You never saw a gentleman like me, I’ll be bound.’

‘Yes, but then I never saw a lady like you either,’ said David.

‘Well, you see one now. I hope you can reverse well, otherwise we shall get terribly tangled up with the staircase. I feel like a corkscrew already.’

The door was suddenly thrown open, and David entered. The room seemed to have grown a good deal, and certainly when he talked to the Mint-man and the manager not long before, it hadn’t got a gallery at one end, and a large throne below it, as it had now. It was quite full of animals with either white ties or tiaras on, talking to each other about the weather. Up in the gallery were the Noah family, seated side by side at an immense piano, which they were all playing on simultaneously. All their heads were close together, for they had only one copy of music to play from, and they kept knocking off each other’s hats, and quarrelling as to when it was time to turn over the page. First of all Noah turned over, and Ham shouted out that he hadn’t got more than half-way down the page, and turned back again, and his mother said she had finished that page five minutes ago, and turned over two. Then they all grabbed at the book together, and tore the pages to bits with one hand while they went on playing with the other. Just as David came in, the book slipped down into the inside of the piano, and so they settled to go on playing by heart. As none of them knew how to read a single note of music, it made no difference whether there was any music there or not.

Below the gallery was the throne, all covered in chintz, and on the throne sat the elegant elephant. The legs of the giraffe were planted about the room, and the body of it went up through the staircase. The elephant still had the cap of the flying-corps on his head, so that David had no doubt that it was he who had been the pilot of one of the aeroplanes.

It seemed evident that the elephant was the host, and as David had been taught always to shake hands with his host when he went to a party, he sidled through the crowd of animals up to the throne.

‘How do you do?’ he said to the elephant.

‘I’m not doing anything at present,’ said the elephant, ‘but when I do, I shall do it very well. Who asked you to come?’

‘Nobody exactly,’ said David, feeling rather uncomfortable. ‘I⁠—⁠I understood I was to.’

‘Have you brought your card?’ asked the elephant.

David looked down and found he was in his sailor clothes again, and pulled a handful of cards out of his pocket.

‘Yes, I’ve got lots of them,’ he said, ‘and all yours too.’

‘Then introduce yourself,’ said the elephant.

‘I’m David Blaize,’ said David.

‘I knew that. Now introduce me, and there we are. In order to introduce me properly, you must say “Elegant Elephant” six times over without stopping, or squinting, or stuttering. Now begin.’

‘Elegant Elephant, Ephalent Egalent, Egaphent Elelant, Ephagant Legegant, Ephephant Ephegal, Egantel Ephantel,’ said David all in one breath.

There was an awful pause; the elephant’s mouth had dropped open, and he turned quite pale. All the Noahs stopped playing and leaned over the edge of the gallery, and several of their hats fell on to the floor. Then there came a dreadful silence, and you could have heard a pin-partridge drop.

‘Where did you learn to talk?’ asked the elephant in a faint voice.

‘I didn’t learn anywhere particular,’ said David. ‘It happened. But it’s dreadfully hard to say that six times. I don’t believe you could do it yourself.’

The elephant looked round in a frightened manner.

‘Change the subject,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Change the object, change places, change partners, change your money, change your socks, change the weather, change everything. But, whatever you do, change the subject.’

He was so distressed at the thought of having to say it, that David felt it would be very bad manners to insist upon it.

‘I was going to dance with the giraffe,’ he said. ‘Would you tell me how to do it, and where I’m to begin?’

The elephant grew blue again.

‘That’s a good boy,’ he said. ‘Begin as high up as you can. Take one leg first, and let the band play as loud as possible.’

This didn’t seem very promising, but David did as he was told, and put his arm round the foreleg of the giraffe that was nearest him, and began revolving about it. But he had hardly begun, when he found that he could shift his hands higher up the leg, and still higher, for he was growing in the most extraordinary manner. Soon his head began going up through the staircase, and he felt his arm round the giraffe’s waist. Still he grew, his head passed the second storey, and came up to the third, where it went into an attic where his partner’s head was. One foreleg of the giraffe and his own arm stuck out of the window, and they kept slowly revolving to the sound of the piano. They were getting fearfully tangled up with the banisters of the stairs, and presently they began to reverse, and unwound themselves again.

‘You dear creature,’ said the giraffe, ‘I thought you’d grow, though I wasn’t sure about it.’

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