CHAPTER V

David dances with the giraffe

‘I don’t feel very comfortable,’ said David. ‘And I’m so afraid we’re treading on all the animals below.’

‘I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,’ said the giraffe. ‘Don’t they crowd up one’s ankles, the rude things. We might stand straight up, I think now. Butt the roof with your head; that will give us more room.’

David did as he was told, and a shower of tiles fell round them. Some dropped down his jersey, and he could hear others clattering downstairs.

‘But aren’t we doing a lot of damage?’ asked David.

‘Quantities,’ said the giraffe. ‘Thump! There goes the staircase. I knew it would.’

They revolved faster and faster, and the stars spun round them. Far below was the village street, down which David could see all the animals scampering as hard as they could go from the ruined remains of the bank.

‘Who’ll pay for it?’ asked David breathlessly.

‘Why, you, of course, dear!’ said the giraffe. ‘How much money have you got?’

‘Four pounds,’ gasped David.

‘That’s plenty, I should think, though I’ve no head for figures,’ said the giraffe. ‘And you might give me the remainder for a surprise. It would keep me in hoofs and hoof-laces for weeks.’

‘I’ll give it you all, if we may only stop growing and dancing,’ said David. ‘And please don’t tickle my ear so when you whisper.’

‘I can’t helpyourtickling,’ whispered the giraffe. ‘Just as you couldn’t helpmineif I began to tickle. Now I’ll give you a surprise. If I began tickling, we should both begin littling. But as long as I don’t tickle, we shan’t little. There!’

David could bear it no longer, and he instantly thrust his fingers into the giraffe’s ribs, and began tickling her. She gave a loud silly cackle, and he felt, to his intense joy, that they were getting littler.

‘Stop, stop!’ she whispered, but she couldn’t say much because she was laughing so, and presently David found himself sliding down the remains of the staircase, and back into the ballroom. His hands slipped down and down her foreleg, and soon he was his own size again, with those four great legs standing among the ruins.

But even as he looked at them, still panting with the exertion of growing and ungrowing again, he saw that they were not legs any more, but the four pillars of the porch of the house next door, which had been the girls’ school and was now the Happy Families’ Institute. As he stood there, the door was opened a foot or two, and a large mutton bone flew past his head.

Before it closed again, a hoarse voice from inside said:

‘I’ll just have time to have my second helping before the concert. That sirloin will do. Chuck it over here, you greedy!’

Now David did not want to intrude again without being definitely asked, but he had a sort of idea that though nobody had asked him to the animals’ ball, he had been expected all the same, indeed, that the whole thing had been got up for him. Probably it was the same case here, for the giraffe had said that the happy families’ concert was part of the programme for the evening, and, after all, the fact that quite a short while ago the High Street had been decorated with banners, on which was written ‘David Blaize, the fireman’s son,’ was a sort of invitation from the happy families to become one of them. Also he was tired with growing and ungrowing, and thought it would be very pleasant to sit down and listen to a little music.

So, though it was not the sign of great cordiality to be greeted at the door by a huge mutton bone thrown at your head, he thought it better to ring the bell⁠—⁠though it wasn’t a bell but a coal-scuttle hung on a chain, and underneath it was the instruction ‘Knock also.’ So he first rang the coal-scuttle and then knocked it.

It sounded as if all the dinner bells in the world had been pealed, and all the postmen in the world had come with letters. He felt quite ashamed of having made such a tumult, and, with the giraffe still in his mind, stood on tiptoe to get his mouth close to the bell, and whispered:

‘Hush, please: I had no idea you were so loud.’

The noise ceased at once, and dead silence succeeded. Then David heard a little clink come from the letter-box in the door, and he saw that the shutter of it had been raised, and that Mr. Chip the carpenter was looking at him. Then Master Dose the doctor’s son had a look, and David heard him giggling as he passed on to make room for Mr. Bones the butcher. After that there was a sound of whispering inside, and he tried hard not to hear what was being said. But the harder he tried, the more distinctly he heard it.

‘It doesn’t look a bit like him. Where’s his fire?’

‘I expect they’ve forgotten to mend it. It’s gone out.’

‘Stuff and nonsense: the fireman’s family put fires out themselves.’

‘But he hasn’t got a ladder or anything to show who he is.’

‘Nor a brass helmet. It can’t be the one.’

David tried to interest himself in other things, while he was being talked about like this. He found he was dressed in a sort of uniform with a sword by his side, and knee-breeches and a blue riband over his shirt, and a quantity of stars and medals on his coat. This discovery rather consoled him, for he evidently was expected at some party, since nobody dressed like this except for something grand. On the other hand, if they were expecting him to look like a fireman, it was no wonder they had their doubts about him, for he could not imagine putting out fires in this costume. But he had not long to wait, for the door flew open, and somebody inside called out in capital letters:

‘DAVID BLAIZE, THE FIREMAN’S SON.’

He entered a room, dazzlingly bright, with a stage at one end, and rows and rows of chairs, four on one side, and four on the other of a gangway that led up the centre. All the chairs were occupied, and all the occupiers had their backs to the stage, and were looking towards the door when he entered. Over each group of four chairs was suspended a banner, which bore the name of the happy family which occupied it. And every member of every happy family looked at him quite steadily.

David bowed a great many times, but nobody took the least notice, and there was nothing to be done but to stand still until something happened. Many of the banners were familiar to him: there was the Bones family of butchers, the Chip family of carpenters, the Bun family of bakers, the Dose family of doctors, and so on; but these were all in front rows. Behind them were a quantity of families, of whom he had never heard before. There was Mr. and Mrs. Funk, the bathers, and Mr. and Mrs. Fuss, the train-catchers; and Mr. and Mrs. Talk, the tiresomes; and Mr. and Mrs. Green, the cabbages. All these were complete strangers to David, and he felt shyer than he had been even when he had to introduce the elegant elephant to himself.

A heavy sigh came from every member of the old happy families whom David knew, and they all turned round in their seats and began talking to each other. On the other hand, the strange families began smiling at him, and, though he knew none of them, he felt grateful for their sign of friendliness, for it was a very lonely thing to go to a concert, which you supposed was given in your honour, and find all the people that you knew turned their backs on you.

Then a whole family suddenly left their seats and ran up to David, and began bowing and curtsying. They had come from a set of chairs called ‘Rhyme, the poets,’ and though David felt grateful to them for being so kind as to notice him, he was rather nervous because they might expect him to talk about poetry. They had all books under their arms, and pockets bulging with pencils and pens, and as they sat down round him, when they had finished bowing and curtsying, Master Rhyme put a large ink-bottle on the floor, and they all dipped their pens in it.

Then they all looked at each other, frowning, as if they were trying to think of something, and counting syllables on their fingers.

‘Ahem!’ said Miss Rhyme, clearing her throat. ‘This is the nicest of all days, because we welcome David Blaize. Go on, Pa.’

As soon as she had spoken, she opened her book, and began writing in it. The pages were already quite covered up with other writing, but she seemed not to mind that. She wrote with a pen, and put the tip of it into her mouth in order to get blacker marks out of it. Very soon her lips were all covered with ink, which she licked off when she had time. Usually she hadn’t.

Mr. Rhyme began writing and talking.

‘We saw at once that you were not one of the antiquated lot,’ he said. ‘Your turn, Ma.’

Mrs. Rhyme stopped counting on her fingers and frowning on her face, and took up a pencil in one hand and a pen in the other, and began writing with them both in her book. Sometimes she dipped them both in the ink, and then they both wrote ink, and sometimes she put them both in her mouth, and then one wrote pencil, the other nothing at all, because she had sucked the ink off. She seemed to be writing in shorthand, for it consisted of hooks and dashes and strokes and marks like footsteps in the snow.

‘It gives us all the utmost joy,’ she said, ‘to welcome here a human boy. They say your name is David Blaize, but it don’t matter what they says. The great thing is to stick to rhyme’⁠—⁠

‘And make up verses all the time,’ interrupted Master Rhyme, who began writing too. ‘We’re very pleased that you havegothere.’

‘I’ve made a blot, and want the blotter,’ said Miss Rhyme. ‘Papa, don’t jog my elbow so, it stops my inspiration’s flow.’

David felt his head going round, and was in a perfect agony lest he should be expected to make poetry too, which he knew he was quite incapable of doing. But by this time the whole of the family were all writing together, and making poetry at the tops of their voices without paying the least attention to him or to each other. Blobs of ink were flying about everywhere, for they all tried to dip their pens and pencils in the ink-bottle together, and they kept stabbing each other’s fingers with their nibs, and wiping off the blots on to each other’s sleeves, or on to David’s white stockings, until he thought he had never seen such a noisy and messy family. Besides, he had come to listen to a concert, which was probably going on all the time, if only he could hear it.

David and the Rhyme family

‘I wonder if we had better talk so much,’ he said. ‘I believe a concert is going on.’

‘It doesn’t rhyme, you silly ass,’ said Master Rhyme.

‘We couldn’t ever let that pass,’ said his sister.

‘I went and ate a few meringues,’ shouted Mrs. Ryhme, ‘and then threw twenty boomerangs.’

‘She threw them once, she threw them twice,’ screamed Mr. Rhyme. ‘She put the others on the ice. The cupboard wouldn’t hold them all, and so she nailed them on the wall. She put them safe there, all and sundry, intending to come back on Mondray.’

David couldn’t stand this any more, for there were much more amusing things going on. The good old families of butchers and doctors and bakers and sweeps were changing places with each other exactly as if they were being collected. Some voice said, ‘Mrs. Dose, the doctor’s wife,’ and Mrs. Dose left her seat and moved somewhere else. Then somebody said ‘Mr. Dose, the doctor,’ and another voice said, ‘I haven’t got him. . . . Mrs. Dose, the doctor’s wife. Thank you . . .’

David looked down at his own hand for a moment, and saw that Mr. and Mrs. Dose were both sitting there, and he supposed it must have been he who had asked for them. The cork of the bottle that Mrs. Dose carried was continually coming out, and she kept murmuring to herself, ‘It’s a glass stopper, I want, it is!’ Miss Bones was sitting there too. She had nearly finished the sirloin of beef she had asked for, and only a few shreds of meat were left on it.

‘Then have I collected you?’ asked David. ‘I can ask for all the rest, can’t I? Is nobody else playing?’

Miss Bones was sitting on his thumb. Somehow she looked quite life-size, and yet David did not feel any bigger than she. She was still gnawing her sirloin of beef, and tore off large pieces of gristle with her hands, just dropping them on David’s knee, or on the note-books of the Rhyme family who had got a good deal smaller, but were still sitting round him and writing.

Miss Bones sitting on David’s thumb

‘Collect yourself,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to collect yourself before you win. Where’s your father and mother, for instance? Ask for Mrs. Blaize, the fireman’s wife, and get her, and then we shall begin to believe in you.’

David felt that it was quite silly to mind whether Miss Bones believed in him or not. But he knew that if he called out ‘Mother!’ or ‘Mrs. Blaize, the fireman’s wife,’ nothing whatever would happen. Yet somehow he had to account for Mrs. Blaize, the fireman’s wife, not being there.

‘My mother isn’t feeling very well,’ he said. ‘Perhaps she may have gone to sleep, and it would be a pity to disturb her.’

‘Mother malingering,’ announced Miss Bones contemptuously. ‘Where’s your father, then?’

David suddenly felt that this was a most ridiculous position. Hitherto he had always played with the happy families, and now they were playing with him. And they were so fierce and unkind, like wasps.

‘I can’t tell where my father is,’ he said. ‘I haven’t seen him all evening. And I’m getting so tired: mayn’t we stop?’

There was a sudden stir among the newer families, and Mr. Funk, the bather, ran up to him. He was dressed in a striped bathing-dress, and all his teeth chattered.

‘I believe you’re a Funk,’ he said. ‘I believe you belong to my family. I’m collecting you. Come on, Master Funk.’

‘I’m not Master Funk,’ said David indignantly. ‘Haven’t got him. My turn.’

Miss Bones threw the remains of her sirloin at the Rhymes. It fell in their ink-bottle and splashed them frightfully, but they were already so covered with ink that a little more didn’t matter. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and sidled a little nearer David.

‘That’s right: it’s your turn,’ she whispered. ‘Remember you’ve got me, Don’t ask for me.’

‘I shouldn’t think of it,’ said David. ‘What I want is the concert. I came here for a concert. I want to sit down and be quiet a little. Nobody knows all the things I’ve been doing.’

‘And nobody cares,’ said Miss Bones.

David felt tired of this contemptuous treatment, and stood up.

‘I won’t have any more rudeness,’ he said. ‘I can do what I choose with you all. I can put you all back in your case, and never open you again till you get mouldy, like the ones I left in the garden. If there’s no concert just tell me so, and I’ll go somewhere else.’

Miss Bones shouted out:

‘Mr. Bradshaw, the Time-table,’ and instantly there was aBradshawon her knee. ‘There’s the 11.29,’ she said. ‘You might catch it, or again you mightn’t. It all depends how you feel. If you feel in a hurry, you’ll miss it; if you feel calm, you may catch it. Will you have one taxi or two?’

‘Why should I have two?’ said David. ‘It’s only me.’

‘One taxi goes ten miles an hour, and two go twenty,’ said she. ‘And ten go a hundred, and a hundred go a thousand. Say what you can afford, and you can catch any train up, no matter how far it has gone.’

David had not really meant to go away by train at all, but somehow it seemed all settled for him, and instantly all the happy families began blowing on things, with piercing shrieks, to summon his taxi, or the hundred taxis, or however many they thought good for him. Miss Bones picked up her sirloin, and blew that, Mr. Chip the carpenter blew on his gimlet, Mrs. Dose blew her bottle, and Miss Bun her bun. Never since the flame-cats had mewed and squealed to accompany their dances, had David heard such a deafening noise. Quantities of steam appeared to come out of their instruments also, and soon the whole room was filled with it and whistlings. Then the steam began to clear again a little, though the whistling got no less, and whether or no David had come in a taxi, he had certainly arrived at a station.

CHAPTER V

There were huge piles of luggage all round David, as he saw when the steam cleared away a little. There were trunks, portmanteaux, dress-baskets, lunch-baskets, tea-baskets, gun-cases, golf-clubs, gladstone-bags, carpet-bags, despatch-cases, hat-boxes, collection-boxes, band-boxes, hampers, milk-cans, hold-alls, fish-baskets, safes, unsafes (the sort that fly open as you are getting into the train), Christmas boxes, rug-straps, and a sort of palisade of umbrellas and sticks on the top. All of them had green printed labels on, and wherever he turned, he saw that the labels were

David Blaize, Esq.,Passenger to Anywhere.

David Blaize, Esq.,

Passenger to Anywhere.

‘That’s no earthly use at all,’ thought David. ‘It doesn’t tell me where I’m going. And how did I get so much luggage?’

David and the cow porter on the pile of luggage

He began climbing up the wall of luggage that was made of the more solid pieces, when he heard somebody climbing up the other side.

‘Hurrah, it’s probably a porter,’ he said to himself. ‘Hi, porter!’

‘I’m coming,’ said a slow, placid voice. ‘Moo! I’m coming.’

The first thing that came over the edge of the wall of luggage was the cap of a flying man, then two broken horns, then a mild hairy sort of face, the mouth of which went round and round.

‘Oh, are you the cow and the other pilot?’ asked David.

‘Hush,’ said the cow. ‘I’m incognito, disguised as a porter, and collecting evidence.’

‘What about?’ asked David.

‘Anything, as long as it’s evidence. Don’t give me away, and I’ll help you. Is this all you’ve got? That’s nothing to what people travel with now.’

‘Yes, that’s all,’ said David. ‘At least I suppose that’s all.’

‘You mayn’t have less than a hundred pieces, and they must all weigh a hundred pounds each,’ said the cow, referring to a blue paper of regulation which she carried. ‘But I won’t take no notice if you’re a bit under weight.’

The cow had climbed up a little higher, and David could see she had a dark blue coat, with a red tie like the people at Waterloo.

‘Perhaps I’d better get you out first,’ said the cow. ‘You seem sort of hemmed in. If you’ll stop just where you are, I’ll butt my way somewhere. Steady now, stop just where you are.’

David clung to the portmanteau which was on the top of the pile, and heard the cow retreat a few steps, and breathe heavily.

‘Now, I’m coming,’ she said, and next moment she charged through a weak part of the wall, which consisted only of lighter articles like dressing-cases and gun-cases and bags of golf-clubs. A lunch-basket had stuck on her horns, and she shook her head till it fell off with a great clatter of tin-plates and knives and forks.

‘That was a good bit of evidence,’ she said panting. ‘What train are you going by?’

‘The 11.29 I think,’ said David.

The cow looked at the labels.

‘That’s all right then,’ she said. ‘That’s the one that goes Anywhere. It’s whistling loud still, so you’ve got heaps of time. There’s more time than luggage.’

‘But doesn’t its whistling mean that it’s just going off?’ asked David. He had a firm idea in his mind that hemustcatch the 11.29, or the whole plan would go wrong.

‘Not a bit of it, dearie,’ said the cow. ‘It whistles loudest when it’s going to stop longest, and whistles faintest when it’s going to stop shortest. Now if it was whistling soft, we should have to hurry. The moment it stops whistling altogether, then it’s off, and you have to wait for the next. Usually there isn’t a next, and then the trouble begins.’

‘Then do they whistle all the time they stand still?’ asked David.

‘Naturally. When they go, there’s something else to think about.’

She looked at him with a mild milky sort of eye. She was dressed in a large jacket, and a pair of trousers which covered her completely all but her face and her tail.

‘And to think that I ever thought of tossing you,’ she said. ‘Well, bye-gones are gone-byes, and now I feel like a mother to you. Let’s get going with your bits of luggage, or the train you’re going to get will get gone.’

She took up four or five bags on her horns, put some of the lighter stuff like gun-cases and golf-clubs over her ears, and then turned her back to David.

‘Just sling the rest on my tail,’ she said. ‘Stick it through the cords or through the handles. You just put it on.’

She moved backwards and forwards in the most obliging manner, while David put her tail through the handles of boxes and portmanteaux, just as you would string beads on to a thread. Her tail had a surprising sort of spring in it, and when he had put it through a cord or a handle, she gave it a little jerk, and the box hopped along it. Very soon all the heavy stuff was neatly strung on her tail, and she took up the sticks and umbrellas that lay about on the platform, in her mouth.

‘Now, all you’ve got to do is to hold on to the end of my tail,’ she said, ‘and off we go to the 11.29. There’s no more evidence about here.’

They threaded their way down miles of crowded platforms past train after train that was puffing and whistling to show that it wasn’t going yet. Occasionally one stopped whistling, on which all the doors slammed, and next moment there wasn’t any train there at all. There were a tremendous lot of people travelling; now and then in the crowd he got a glimpse of some one he knew like Miss Muffet, or the shoemaker, or members of the happy families, but for the most part they were all strangers. The cow’s head, wreathed in luggage, seemed miles away, but very soon David found there was a sort of telephone in her tail, and he talked to the end of it, asking whatever he wanted to know, and then put it to his ear. When she wished to speak to him a bell rang at the end of it.

David uses the telephonein the cow porter’s tail

‘I haven’t got my ticket yet,’ said David.

‘Of course not. You don’t know where you’re going yet,’ said she. ‘Travellers by the Anywhere Express take their tickets when they’ve got there. Otherwise you might take a ticket say for France, and find yourself at Fiji, and the ticket wouldn’t be any use.’

‘Is the Anywhere Express likely to go abroad this time?’ asked David, who would have enjoyed that.

‘Nothing’s likely with the Anywhere Express. It never goes where you expect it to. It’s the unlikeliest thing that ever happened. But it always goes to lots of somewheres, which is why it’s the Anywhere. You see it takes hundreds of somewheres to make an Anywhere.’

‘Does it go every night?’ asked David.

‘It goes every day and every night,’ said the cow. ‘But it only goes from here when it has got here. I should think it was five or six years since it was here last. I saw it once when I was a calf.’

‘Then shan’t I get back here for five or six years?’ asked he.

‘Round about that, I should say. Here we are. It’s begun to whistle softly. You’ll take all your bits of things in the carriage with you, I suppose, and then you’ll have them handy, in case of being hungry or if it rains, or there’s a cricket match. Which glass do you go, dearie?’

‘Which glass?’ asked David.

‘Yes; there’s first glass, where you can see out of the windows, and second, where you can’t, and third, where there aren’t any windows at all, and very few doors. I always go second, because it’s ugly country hereabouts.’

‘But it might be pretty farther on,’ said David.

‘Please yourself, dearie,’ said the cow. ‘Here’s a beautiful carriage now. That’ll make a sweet home for you for five or six years.’

David followed the cow, when she had finished sticking in the door into the carriage. It was a large bare room with a quantity of hooks on the walls, and a small three-legged stool standing in the middle of it.

‘Now I’ll get rid of your luggage,’ said the cow.

She began tossing the pieces on her horns in the neatest manner on to the hooks. Then she switched her tail, and the portmanteaux and dress baskets and wine-cases and all the heavier things flew this way and that on totheirhooks, or piled themselves in the corners.

David looked round his sweet little house with some dismay.

‘But if I get very sleepy, can’t I go to bed?’ he asked.

‘Why, of course you can,’ said the cow. ‘You can go to bed anywhere you like all over the floor, or you can hang yourself up to a hook, or get inside a portmanteau. And the motion will never disturb you, as it’s an empty-speed express.’

‘What’s that?’ asked David.

‘Why, a full-speed express goes as fast as it can, doesn’t it? And an empty-speed express goes as slow as it can. Hullo! It’s stopped whistling.’

The cow jumped out of the door, which immediately slammed to after her, and disappeared among the crowd on the platform. The train started at a great speed, so it seemed to David, but as it got going, it went slower and slower, until he could scarcely believe that it was moving at all. He felt rather lonely at the idea of spending five or six years in the train, but after all, if it moved so slowly, it would not be difficult to jump out. Unless he found another cow-porter, which didn’t seem likely, he would have to leave his luggage behind, but he would not really miss it much, since he had never had it before, and had not the slightest idea what it contained.

A pecking noise at the window attracted his attention, and he saw a crow sitting on the ledge outside.

‘Let me in,’ it said. ‘It’s time to rest. I shall stop flying for the present.’

David let down the window, and the crow fluttered on to the floor.

‘But if you stop flying, shall I become invisible?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course. You’re getting dim now. Pop! Now you’ve gone.’

David held up his hand in front of him, but he could see nothing at all of it. It must have been there, because when he touched the end of his nose with it, it felt quite solid. But he had certainly vanished for the present, for there was nothing whatever of him to be seen.

‘I wish you wouldn’t interfere with me like that,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t like it if I made you invisible.’

The crow had put its head under its wing, and tucked up one leg, and its voice sounded muffled.

‘You seem to think,’ it said, ‘that everything is to be managed as you want it. But if you imagine I’m going to go on flying all night, without a rest, just in order to keep you visible, you make a mistake. You aren’t so pretty as all that, my young fellah.’

‘But you’ll fly again before long, won’t you?’ asked David.

All the answer he got was:

‘Haugh! Rumph, haugh! Rumph! Rumph!’ for the crow had gone fast asleep, and was snoring.

David poked it with the place where his fingers usually were, to wake it, but it only snored louder and louder. Then he picked it up and shook it, but the only result was that its snoring became perfectly deafening.

‘I’ll drop it out of the window,’ he said to himself,’ and then it must fly.’

But this was no good, for the crow didn’t even take its head from under its wing, or put its leg down, but fell quietly on to the ground below the window, without waking. Just then there came a bend in the line, and though the train was scarcely moving at all, it was soon out of sight.

‘Well, there’s no help for it,’ thought David, ‘and so I may as well go to sleep too. It seems to make one sleepy to be invisible.’

Then, so he supposed, he must have gone completely to sleep, for when the next thing happened, it was quite light. As he had been travelling since 11.29P.M., it was perfectly obvious that it was now morning. For some reason he felt inclined to lick his hand and rub it behind his ears, but he remembered that only cats did that, and instead he drew his three-legged stool to the window and looked out. He found he was visible again, and supposed the crow must have begun flying.

The train seemed to be running very slowly round and round a field. Occasionally it stopped dead, and began to whistle, but usually it splashed quietly along, into puddles and out of puddles, without any lines in front of it. Sometimes they curved a little to avoid a tree, but they crushed their way through an ordinary hedge, and birds flew out scolding them and saying, ‘I wish you would look where you are going.’ Then a voice from the engine said, ‘Sorry youhavebeen troubled,’ just like a young lady in the telephone exchange.

But the country seemed familiar to David, and presently he saw that the train was in a field just beyond the High Street of the village he had left at 11.29. It was slowly going back to it again, to a spot some fifty yards away from the place they had started from. Then it began to make a very sharp curve, in order to avoid a horse that was lying down in the field, and the engine came just opposite his window.

‘A rare good run, David,’ shouted the engine-driver. ‘We shall stop at the hairdresser’s in a minute now, if you want to have anything done.’

David had not had his hair cut lately, so this seemed rather a good opportunity.

‘How long do we stop there?’ he shouted.

‘Two or three weeks. You’ll just have time.’

In spite of the slowness with which they were moving, there was a tremendous rattle of wheels somewhere, and the noise seemed to come from overhead. Then looking up, he saw that there were hundreds of wheels all turning round. There were long bands hanging from them, and just then the engine began whistling to show it had stopped. Clouds of steam poured in through the carriage window and, as that cleared away, David saw that he was standing in the hairdresser’s shop, and that underneath the wheels was sitting a row of old gentlemen having their heads brushed with circular brushes. Others were being shampooed, others were apparently having their heads painted, others were having breakfast, but they were all, without exception, absolutely bald.

There was a looking-glass in front of each of them, and David saw the face of a kind old gentleman in it. The looking-glasses were of the sort that stood on his mother’s dressing-table, which showed your left-hand side where the bruise was, which came when you fell out of a tree, and your right-hand side, where a tooth had been taken out, and full face where both these things happened. And in each looking-glass was the reflection of a bald old gentleman, nodding and smiling at him.

After his solitary night in the train, David longed for a little conversation again, and he went to the nearest old gentleman, who was eating eggs and bacon, while the hairdresser scrubbed his head with the circular brush.

‘Good morning, David,’ said he. ‘Have you had a good journey? The hard brush, please,’ he added to the hairdresser. ‘That doesn’t do me any good. Aha, aha, that’s better. And now I’ll have a shampoo.’

David thought this rather an odd way of doing things, since you usually had your shampoo first, and your brushing afterwards, but the hairdresser didn’t seem to mind. The old gentleman bent over the basin, with his eggs and bacon on his knee, and continued breakfasting.

‘Boiling or freezing, sir?’ asked the hairdresser.

‘Boiling first and then freezing,’ said the old gentleman, with his mouth full. ‘No, freezing first and boiling afterwards. And where did you come from?’ he asked David.

‘From the house next the Bank, I think,’ said David. ‘I came by the 11.29.’

‘A fine train,’ said he, ‘a very fine train. There’s nothing slower anywhere.’

The hairdresser wrapped a towel round his head, and began drying it.

‘And what will you have on, sir?’ he asked.

The old gentleman considered a little.

‘I think a map of south-west London would be best,’ he said. ‘I’m going up there next week, and I don’t know my way about. It would be very tiresome to get lost. But if you give me a nice map of south-west London, with 25 Brompton Square marked in red, why, all I shall have to do, if I get lost, is to ring the nearest bell of the nearest house, and ask for a couple of looking-glasses.’

‘What for?’ asked David.

‘Why, I shall sit in front of one, and reflect the top of my head in the other. Then I shall see where I am, and where I want to go to. Send the geographer and the painter at once.’

This old gentleman got so interested in his map that he did not talk to David any more, and so he strolled on to the next one, who, so he learned, was going to Egypt, and was having a spider’s web painted on his head to keep the flies off. He, too, seemed to know David, which made it very pleasant.

‘And so you’ve come by the 11.29,’ he said. ‘A dangerous trip, because you go so slow that it’s almost impossible to stop in case of an accident. I leave for Egypt by the same train. I wonder if it would be wiser to have some fly papers as well. Or a picture of a mummy or two, to give me local colour.’

‘Whatever you please, sir,’ said the hairdresser.

‘Well, we can’t go wrong with a mummy. I think a mummy and a spider’s web, and leave out the fly-papers.’

The next old gentleman was having his own face painted in oils on the back of his head, and he put his finger on his lip, and beckoned with the other hand to David.

‘Is it like me?’ he whispered. ‘Give me your candid opinion. Don’t mind the artist.’

He nodded his head up and down, so that David should see his real face and his painted face.

‘Very like indeed,’ said David. ‘But what’s it for?’

He assumed an air of great secrecy.

‘You mustn’t tell anybody,’ he said. ‘Do you promise?’

‘Yes,’ said David.

‘Well, if I have my own face at the back of my head, it will be such a puzzle. People in the street will see me looking at them, as if I was coming towards them, and all the time I shall be going away. What do you think of that?’

‘It’s⁠—⁠it’s certainly very puzzling,’ said David.

‘Isn’t it? And then when I’m tired of going that way, I shall begin to walk backwards, and all the people the other side of me will think the same thing. In quite a short time nobody will know where I am. I shall always be going away when they think I’m coming, and when they think I’m coming I shall always be going away!’

‘But that’s the same thing, isn’t it?’ asked David.

He took no notice of this, and called out to the painter, who had R.A. embroidered on his collar.

‘Mind you put a cigarette in my mouth. And then this side will smoke a pipe. That’ll puzzle them worse than ever. It will, it will⁠—⁠won’t it?’ he said to David triumphantly.

The bald-headed men in the hairdresser’sget up to catch the train

David could not understand what it was all about, but at that moment the door opened, and the cow looked in.

‘Passengers by the Bald Express to take their seats,’ she called. ‘All others to remain standing.’

Instantly there was a scene of the utmost confusion, and all the old gentlemen began running into each other. The worst of them was the one who had had his face painted on the back of his head, because nobody could possibly guess which way he was coming. But by degrees the room cleared, as the whistling of the engine, which had gone on all the time, grew fainter, and finally, when it stopped, David found himself quite alone. The sound of wheels going round overhead ceased, and its place was taken by a rumble that gradually got less. He ran out on to the platform, and there was the empty-speed express crawling out of the station, carrying the kind old gentlemen to Egypt and London S.W., and wherever the backward-forward one meant to puzzle people. He felt that it must be quite easy to catch it up, but the faster he ran the farther he got away from it. At last, perfectly breathless, he stopped, not quite certain whether he really wanted to catch it or not. He longed to know if the spider’s web would keep off the flies, or the map of London S.W. show the other old gentleman where he was, but, after all, there were so many different things to explore.

He began to run again, after he had got his breath, not after the train any more, but Anywhere. He felt that with every step he took he was getting lighter, and in a minute he was running on the very tips of his toes. Then his left foot didn’t touch the ground at all, and then his right foot. He simply found himself running in the air.

CHAPTER VI

David gave a great kick with his left foot to make sure it wasn’t touching anything. Certainly it touched nothing, but he felt the air stream swiftly by him. Then he kicked with his right foot, and the same thing happened.

‘I do believe I’m flying,’ said he aloud. ‘Now there’s a hedge coming. If I am really remembering how to fly, and if I kick downwards, I shall get over it.’

He made a sort of spring in the air, and bounded high over the hedge without even touching its topmost twigs.

‘It’s all quite easy,’ he shouted. ‘I must remember carefully how it’s done. You run, and then you get on the tips of your toes, and then you run a little more, and then you’re up. If you want to get higher you kick downwards. And I suppose if you want to go downwards, you just take a sort of little header.’

This answered perfectly. He had been learning to swim lately, and made a bob with his head, and spread his arms in front of him. Next moment he was within a foot or two of the ground, and kicked downwards again to bring himself up.

‘Now I’ll float,’ he said, ‘and see what happens.’

He spread his arms and legs out like a starfish, drew a long breath, and looked at the sky, as his father had taught him to do. This, too, succeeded, and he found himself motionless in the air, perhaps drifting a little in the morning wind.

‘I’ll go higher now,’ he said. ‘I’ll just wander up to the top of the elm trees, and see what’s going on there.’

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