Princess Mary's Gift Book Part 24

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Bless my soul!" cried nurse. "Quite thought it wanted ten to seven, and here it is only ten past six. I shall find myself in Colney Hatch before I'm much older."

The little girl wanted to a.s.sure Nanna there was no good reason to a.s.sume that mental decay had set in, but she did not do this at once, and afterwards it seemed too late. So nurse was allowed to chat on, and tell her very best story about the time when she was a child, and a good one at that, and when the clock, having been compelled to go over the ground twice, again gave the time as ten to seven, nurse said,

"Now my dearie!"

Upstairs, the little girl devoted a few minutes to instructing her dolly in the art of going off nicely to bye-byes.

She was left alone, with just a mere star of gas-light for company s.h.i.+ning above the dressing-table, and at the moment when she was about to go to sleep conscience woke up. Conscience became wide-awake.

Conscience insisted upon talking, and the little girl had to listen. She was aware it is useless to cry when one is by oneself with n.o.body looking on; not only useless but wasteful, because you may want those tears on more important and more public occasions. So the little girl did not weep, but, oh! she felt troubled. She did feel troubled.

"A silly, stupid world!" she cried aloud. "It ought--it ought to be changed. I'd very much love it to be altogether different."

A knock at her door, and she answered, "Please come in, Nanna!" Not nurse. Certainly the tall lady with diamonds sparkling in her hair, and a white chiffon kind of costume, and a long silver stick in the right hand, was as unlike nurse as any one could be. The little girl said, "Oh, I beg pardon!" in her politest manner.

"It is for me to beg yours," answered the tall lady with severity. "I am exceedingly sorry to disturb you."

"Pray don't mention it."

"I wish to mention it," insisted the lady. "I claim the right to mention it. I decline to allow any one to dictate to me what I shall or what I shall not mention. I am a good fairy."

The little girl opened her mouth with surprise.

"A good fairy, and I am here to do you a favour. When a good fairy wishes to do a favour, it is only necessary for a wish to be expressed, and----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Bless my soul!" cried nurse]

"Thank you," said the child nervously, "but really I would so much rather you did not take the trouble."

"The trouble," replied the good fairy, striking the floor with her silver stick in an impatient way, "is no concern of yours. You mustn't haggle."

"I don't know what that means," declared the other earnestly, "and if I did, I wouldn't do it, ma'am, I wouldn't really. Good evening, and, of course, thank you ever so much for calling."

"Dress!" ordered the good fairy.

On the instant something happened which the little girl had often thought about; more than once she had talked it over with nurse. She found herself, in the s.p.a.ce of less time than it takes to click your finger and thumb, fully and completely costumed, boots laced up, hair taken out of curlers and properly brushed, hat set at the correct angle, parasol in hand, gloves b.u.t.toned, and everything ready for a walk out of doors. She gave a cry of delight and astonishment.

"I am about to give you the great treat of your life," said the fairy, "something that no one has ever yet experienced, something that will give you a subject to talk about for the rest of your days. n.o.body will believe you, but that must be endured. You are about to see the world as n.o.body else has seen it. And if you ask me why you have been selected for this high and special honour----"

"Please, I don't!"

"My answer is," taking no notice of the interruption, "that you are receiving the award for your wonderful discovery."

"But I have discovered nothing."

"Nothing!" echoed the lady, with amazement. "You call it nothing to have found out the secret that has puzzled clever people for thousands and thousands of years? How often folk have said, 'If only I could live some part of my life over again!' and they never have been able to do it.

You, child, were the first."

The staircase had always gone straight down until it neared the next landing, where it took a slight curve; now it was all curves and had nothing about it that could be called straight. It went up, it went down, it went to the left, it went to the right, so that wherever you put your foot expecting to find a step, you did not find it, and wherever you put your foot expecting to find nothing, you hurt your toes.

"This is very strange, ma'am!"

"That," replied the other, "should be its great attraction. Don't lag.

We shall get to the end of the staircase in less than ten minutes."

Going out of the street doorway proved one of the most difficult tasks.

The fairy did not seem to mind, but the child found it extremely odd that when you pulled at the door it opened outwards, and that when you pushed at it it came in. The iron gate which led to the pavement had another form of behaviour. Determined not to be bothered here, she gave a touch with her boot, and instantly the iron gate offered her boot a pinch; she placed her hand upon it and the gate gripped it, much in the way that Uncle Henry did when he said "How do you do?" She put her back against it, and the iron gate gave her a clutch around the waist, and said, in rasping tones, as it waltzed to the pavement,

"Do you reverse?"

It was then that she perceived the fairy had left her.

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A pavement is expected to behave in a calm and demure manner; even when it takes you up-hill it does this in the gentlest way. But this pavement, so soon as the little girl set foot upon it, at once changed to something like a switchback, and a switchback, mark you, she enjoyed when seated on a trolley at Shepherd's Bush Exhibitions; it was less agreeable to try to walk up and down the uneven parts here. Other people did not seem to experience her difficulties, and this she failed to understand until she observed that they went along on their hands and toes, pretending to have four legs; she tried the same method and found it made her back ache; discovered, too, that she could not see so much as when walking in the old way. Thus it was that she had reached the end of the road, where a steep ascent occurred that was like the side of a mountain, ere she noticed something strange and peculiar about the houses.

"How very foolish of them to build in that way!" she cried. "They must be out of their senses."

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It was the more eccentric in that her own house so far as she had observed had not changed; thinking it over, though, she could not be quite sure. Here at any rate was every house upside down with the front door right away at the top, Virginia creepers growing downwards; at one house the painters were seeing to the front and their ladders came from the roof (which was the bas.e.m.e.nt) nearly to the bas.e.m.e.nt (which was the roof). A neat lawn hung out over the top of each house; it made her feel giddy to think of the risks of playing croquet there; she could not see how one would be able to make even the first hoop.

Other things claimed her attention.

There were carts with horses pus.h.i.+ng them--she had often heard her father reprove her eldest brother for doing this in argument--the horses stood upright and wore silk hats in a rakish sort of way, sometimes lifting these on meeting another horse and taking cigars out of mouths.

She spoke to a constable, who wore a helmet on each hand, and put an urgent inquiry.

"Miaow!" said the policeman.

"You didn't quite understand," remarked the little girl patiently. "I asked you if you would kindly tell me the way to get home to Wellington Road."

"Ba, ba!"

"Do please listen to me," she begged, "and tell me what I want to know.

I think I've lost my way, and I'm so afraid that I'm going to cry."

"Moo--oo!" said the constable.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Instructing her dolly in the art of going off nicely to by-byes.

_Painted for Princess Mary's Gift Book by M. E. Gray_]

"Please, please," she cried, "please don't be silly. Why do you keep making noises like that instead of giving me a proper answer?"

"Missy," he explained, "I'm a comic policeman. I'm not here to tell folk the way or to lock them up, or anything of that kind; I'm here to make people laugh."

"You are not amusing me!"