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(titlepage)
BY
Daffodil's father and mother were very kind to her. When she grew
old enough to learn, they used to take a great deal of pains to teach her
everything good for a little girl to know, and they explained all so
carefully and so pleasantly that she liked some of her lessons, and
especially her history, more than any stories, except stories about fairies
and mermaids and such people. But they did not teach her to play; because
they did not know how themselves; for
they were grave very wise people; and, as they did not like her to go with other children, there was nobody to teach her that. Their house stood by a river and behind it there was a wood: a road through the wood led to a good-sized town, but there were no houses very near. No one lived in the house with Daffodil and her father and mother but an old woman called Keziah, who generally sat by the kitchen fire warming her wrinkled hands and saying she was worked to death. So Daffodil could not easily have found children to play with often. But sometimes she would hear people say to her father and mother "Do let your child come to the town and have a game of romps with my boys and girls:" and they said too "All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." But, when she asked her father why she might never have the game of romps, he told her he wanted to see his little girl grow up thoughtful and good and that some children were not thoughtful and good, and, as he could not tell which were so, he was forced to keep her from them all. And she remembered that, once, when two little boys who lived in a farmhouse a long way on the other side of the wood were brought to see Keziah, who was their great-aunt, instead of being thoughtful and good they had jeered at her for not knowing how to play, and had dragged her about so rudely, calling it fun, that she was quite frightened; so she thought "If that is how it is when one plays with other children, my fairies and river people are much nicer companions for me." And, as she found that learning one thing was generally only a way of finding out that there was another thing to be learned,
so that she suspected there was more to be learned than she could manage even in ten whole years, she did not feel afraid of growing too clever even by a quarter. And as, besides, she was not a boy and she never did anything you could call work, there must, she considered, be some mistake about that reason for her going to the town for a game of romps.
Daffodil had not really any fairies or river people to play with her at
this time. But, when Keziah had got herself well warmed and was in a good
humour, she would talk to the little girl in a very interesting way about
the elf world and its various tribes. Keziah was a well-informed
woman and knew a great deal about the laws and customs of all these, and
Daffodil was never weary of listening to her accounts of them.
Daffodil's father and mother always said that Keziah had not
trustworthy authority for her statements; and they themselves, after much
study and research, had come to the conclusion that the elf world with all
belonging to it was nothing but nonsense, or imagination, which, as you may
have heard, is the same thing. But that came from their being
philosophers--persons of whom all the elfin peoples stand in so much
dread that they take every possible means of concealing from them all
traces of their existence. This is because they believe that, if the
philosophers were to catch them, they would put them through a competitive
examination: just as we believe that no ogre can resist the
temptation of munching and crunching any boy or girl he may be able to
seize.
Daffodil was fond of telling fairy tales as well as of hearing them. But
there was a difficulty about
finding any one to whom to tell them. Keziah would not listen to them at all, because they were not true fact stories, but only what came into Daffodil's head, and she said an old woman like her could not waste her poor bit of hearing upon make-believes. However, Daffodil had a very large grave black dog and a fat grave white cat to keep her company, and, as they were not so particular as Keziah, she sometimes told them her stories. But the cat used to go to sleep over them, and if they were very long the dog would whine and fidget, and Daffodil was afraid he must feel as she once did when she was taken to a lecture on astronomy in which all the words were too hard for her to make out and she was not allowed to go to sleep like the cat. On the whole the best way for enjoying her make-believes, as Keziah called them, was to sit looking into the river or up at the sailing clouds and let it seem as if it were the river or the clouds that showed her the stories and she had nothing to do with making them up.
Now, though Daffodil did not know it, this is the sure way to get into
the good graces of the elfin people and make them willing to admit you to
their acquaintance. But it is not always a safe plan, for they may thus get
power over you before you are aware, and, as they are some good and some
bad, as men and women are, that is running too much risk. And, if Daffodil
had been a child who thought unholy and unkind thoughts, certainly more
harm would have come of it than did come. What happened was that the river
people took a liking to her and that, while she was sitting near the river,
letting the
stories come to her, they would be singing to her a kind of sleepy song--a song with no words to it and no tune, and yet it was a song; and she would hear it without even knowing that she heard, but it drew her heart more and more to the river people. In a little while after they began doing this she quite left off looking at the clouds, and she used to lie down on the grass with her face leaning over the bank so that she could see into the water, and keep trying to fancy what the river people's bowers were like; and sometimes she would half close her eyes so that she saw the reflections and the green shadows of the trees, not clear and distinct as they really were, but in an uncertain way, that she might think them bowers underneath the water; and the more she did this the sweeter and the sleepier the song came to her, and the more her heart was drawn to the river people. The river people did this without any plan: it was only their way of showing approbation, and they did not design to entice her to them. Indeed the possibility of such a thing was not generally believed among them. There were traditions of mortals having been attracted down to their abodes, but there was no authoritative historic evidence of any such occurrence. Moreover many of the river people disputed the existence of human beings, saying they were only the fantastic creations of the brain. Of course those who sang to Daffodil knew better than that. But the river people do not leave home much, and some of Daffodil's friends' tribe who lived in the middle of the wood far from all houses had never had an opportunity of seeing a human being. And, among river peoples and other fairies, there are some
so constituted that they are not aware of the presence of human beings, even when close by them. The number of those who are destitute of the faculty by which fairies and mortals are capable of perceiving each other increases so fast that in a thousand years or so this faculty will be as rare in the elf world as it has already become in ours. And, although Daffodil's river friends did possess the faculty, they, from the reasons I have pointed out, were without any information as to the modes of communication between fairies and human kind and the influence they themselves were exerting.
It was in the summer the river people began to sing to Daffodil, and, by
the time the leaves were turning amber and red on their boughs, she had
grown to think there could be no happiness out of heaven so great and
delightful as there must be under the water with them. By and by the leaves
grew brown and shrivelled and lay on the ground in dank heaps and blew
about uncomfortably, and the sky was all one dull lead-coloured
cloud and came so low that it seemed as if the world had grown smaller
since the summer. The song of the river people had quite left off, but
Daffodil still used to sit looking into the water, thinking about the
pleasant regions below. It seemed dreary round her, and now she began to
find it dull to have no one to go about with in her play-hours but
the grave dog and the grave cat. But it was not for the company of other
children she longed; it was for the river maidens to dance and sing with
her and teach her to float through the waters. She asked her father and
mother whether they would object to her
making friends with the river people, if she should see any, and they smiled, and gave her leave to do so. She might play with all the fairies she met, they said, only they must decidedly object to her forming any acquaintance with Will-o'-the-wisp, whom she had once seen beckoning to her with his lamp. Daffodil agreed quite cheerfully to that for she knew Will-o'-the-wisp was an injudicious sort of person who would be sure to lead her into scrapes.
Now that she had her parents' leave, she looked about eagerly for
some way of beginning the acquaintance. Sometimes she would call softly
into the water "River people, dear river people, I want so much to
know you, and my father and mother have given me leave. Won't you
come up and talk to me?" And sometimes she would throw an apple or a
very pretty pebble into the water, and say "This is Daffodil's
present to the river people, with her love." And she hunted several
days for a four-leaved shamrock, because Keziah had told her you can
do a great many fairy spells, if you have one, and she thought she should
be able to make a spell that would persuade one of the river people to come
to her. But, when she had found a four-leaved shamrock, Keziah could
not remember what was the way to use it, and so all her pains were thrown
away.
One day she chanced to find a funny little thing growing out of the
stump of a felled tree--a tiny scarlet cup with a sort of saucer of
crimson petals: it seemed neither quite a flower nor quite a fungus.
When she picked it, it made a little noise like a mouse squeaking a long
way off, and very much
surprised, she took it to Keziah. "It is so odd," she said, "that I can't help thinking it must have something to do with the fairies."
Keziah peered at it with her old purblind eyes, and pinched it, and
smelt it over and over again, for it had no smell at all. "Aye,
aye," she said at last, "it's what I thought. Now, if you
did but know what day of the year and month and week it was when that tree
was felled, you'd be in luck, child; for you'd only have to
jump into the river from off that tree-stump the same day of the
year and month and week, and water couldn't drown you, but
you'd get down among the river people you talk so much about, and
have power over them so that they'd be forced to let you come back
whenever you liked."
When she had said this, she was going to throw the elf-cup into
the fire, for she thought it was of no use, as they did not know the day
the tree was felled. But Daffodil cried out "Oh don't,
please," in a great hurry, for she was sure she could
find out. Her father had a book in which he wrote down every day what had
happened, and she took it that such an important happening as a tree being
cut down must be written in the book. She ran at once to ask.
"What can you want to know that for?" her father said, quite
astonished. And her mother took off her spectacles, so that she might be
able to look at her better, and gazed inquiringly.
"Because, if I knew that, there is a way I could get to know the
river people at once, if you and mother will give me leave," said
Daffodil, almost breathless with eagerness.
"Oh, very well," said her father, "that is important,
and I will look at once, so that no time may be lost." He got his
book and, after he had searched a long time, he said "My little
day-dreamer, that tree was felled on Monday, the first of December,
the year you were born."
"Why! that makes it come right to-day!" screamed
Daffodil, in an ecstasy of joy, "This is a Monday, and it is the
first of December!" And she ran off in such haste that she forgot to
say "thank you" to her father for the trouble he had taken for
her.
Presently her father, who had gone on looking through the book, said to
her mother "I have told our little woman the wrong day of the week, I
see. The first of December was a Tuesday the year that tree was felled.
Luckily not much harm can come of that mistake."
"Monday will do just as well till you see her again," said
her mother. "She will be as happy over her calculations as if she had
got the right day to count from."
Of course neither of them had the least notion that there was anything
about jumping into the water in the plan for knowing the river people
Daffodil was going to try. And, as they did not believe that there were
river people at all, they did not think the day of the week would make any
difference to her chance of forming an acquaintance with them.
When it was dinner time, lo and behold, there was no Daffodil to be
found! You may imagine what a calling and searching there was. But, call
and search as they would, there was no trace of the child. Only, the white cat was crying on the top of the stump where Daffodil had found the elf-cup, and beside her on the river bank was the big black dog with his hair wet, giving a little whine every now and then, but never moving, and all the while staring hard at the water, as if he were expecting to see something that he knew was in it. And, when Keziah saw that, she knew Daffodil must have jumped into the river to find the river people, and she told the father and mother, to comfort them. Then they understood why the dog was so wet and still kept watching. It was easy to see that he had jumped in to catch Daffodil, and that he had not succeeded.
I will not tell you what weeping and lamenting there was for Daffodil.
Keziah, of course, had not been much disturbed at first, as she thought
Daffodil had ascertained the right date and would come back by bedtime; but
she soon learned the mistake that had been made. She tried to keep up a
hope that the poor child must have reached the river people safely with her
elf-cup, in spite of the day of the week being wrong, and that some
time she might get leave to come back; but the father and the mother were
certain she was drowned. You may imagine how unhappy they were.
And you may imagine too what care they took of the good dog who tried to
get their dear daughter back from the river for them. The cat too was made
much of for the good feeling she had shown. But what they found difficult
was to forgive Keziah, for they looked on what she had told Daffodil about
the elf-cup as
the cause of Daffodil's death. However, when they saw how grieved she was--so grieved that she even left off grumbling--they agreed that they must be gentle to her and never reproach her. Keziah, on her side, seeing how heavily their carelessness, as she considered it, had been punished, scarcely ever found fault with them for, first, making the mistake, and, next, not hurrying with all their might to correct it. But she was very angry, once, when a pedlar to whom she was talking about the sorrowful story took their part about that piece of carelessness and said the mistake was not of consequence. "Not of consequence!" cried Keziah. "The drowning of the best behaved little girl in the world not of consequence!!!" and she opened the kitchen door wide, with a bang, and made him walk out so fast that she had to throw his pack, and all the things he had taken from it to show her, out into the snow after him.
In a few seconds--only it seemed much longer to her--she felt
firm footing. But she did not consider that much was gained by that; for
what was the use of standing in that horrible mud, which would most likely
stifle her presently? So she stamped about to see if she could get farther
down: for getting up through the mud was quite hopeless.
And, all at once, something gave way with a loud crash and clatter, and
down she fell, head over heels, too fast to leave her time to know she was
falling till it was over. The next thing was that she was lying on a soft
wet floor of some sort of moss or grass, with the fragments of the roof and
ceiling from where she had broken through lying about her,
pell-mell.
She picked herself up, and jumped about to see if she was hurt anywhere;
which she was very much pleased to find she was not. Then she observed how
terribly dirty her clothes and her hands had got, and she felt sure her
face must be as bad. She could hardly help crying at this disaster, for she
heard sounds of running about and calling which seemed getting nearer, and
she was sure the river people had heard the noise of her fall and would
come upon her in a moment. Probably they would excuse her having broken
their ceiling, as she could not know it was there when she stamped on it,
but how could they be expected to be glad to see a visitor in so
unpresentable a condition--all over greasy black mud? And the worst
was that some of it was dripping from her and soiling the beautiful green
floor.
She was in a large room, as large as a church, only not so high for its
length as we think suitable for great buildings. Its walls were built in a
curve, so that you could not say where they left off and the ceiling began;
it was just as if the room had been made out of the hollowed half of an
enormous ball. And its doorways, of which there were too many to count just
then, were semicircular too. All over the walls there grew, where we put
papering, a delicate covering that looked like chickweed spotted in various
patterns with forget-me-nots around white or yellow
water-lilies. Towards the top of the ball began long waving grasses
and water-plants, getting longer and closer together the higher up
they were, till they knotted themselves in tangles overhead and their long
leaves hung
gracefully downwards--but there was a sad gap where Daffodil had tumbled through. The drooping leaves were bright with sparkling drops of water that kept trickling down on to the floor; and the chickweed and lilies and forget-me-nots were all glistening with wet. Right round the room was a canal of clear greenish water, exactly like the phosphorescent sea that shows such a wonderful gold-green light when the oars dip into it on dark nights: and it was this canal which lighted the room. It was bordered with lilies and forget-me-nots in a pattern something like the wall patterns, but there were rich red flowers mixed among them. The whole of the room was carpeted with the soft wet moss on which Daffodil had fallen. It was an odd sort of floor, for it seemed to have water under it and it shook at every step she took, so that she was afraid it would give way beneath her: but it was quite secure, and was very nice for people who did not mind wet feet. There were about the room chairs and tables and couches, which all seemed made of the same kind of material as the floor, and which had growing upon them patterns in flowers or in differently tinted leaves and mosses: and, in the centre of the room, just under the greatest drip from the leaves in the ceiling, there were raised steps, with seats on each step but the lowest, and on the highest step of all two larger seats which seemed meant for thrones. It was a most magnificent apartment, and Daffodil was shocked at having so damaged it by her manner of entering it.
She had not much time to reflect upon that, however. On every side there
was a pattering and
scuffling and slopping sound of steps, and nearer and nearer came a noise like shouting and coughing and sneezing all in one: people seemed to be calling to each other in this extraordinary fashion. There were no doors to the doorways, and Daffodil saw through three entrances at once a rush of strange-looking creatures with such bright large eyes that, in her alarm, she seemed to see nothing but eyes. For a moment it crossed her mind that they would not be able to get at her, because of the canal: but then she remembered that they would not have built a room into which you could only get through the roof, and she gave herself up for lost.
But, to her amazement, as soon as they caught sight of her, they stopped
short in the archways, huddling together as if they were in a terrible
fright, and some of them turned right round and began pushing at the others
in order to break through them and run away: so there was a great
hubbub and confusion. And presently they had all scuffled away, and she
could hear them making a noise as if they were discussing what they must
do. Every now and then one or two would come and peep at her stealthily
from the archways; and she noticed that they seemed a little bolder each
time, so she felt sure that they would soon decide on facing her again.
However, she began to feel less frightened, for she had become certain
that these creatures, though they were very much larger than any frogs she
had ever seen or heard of, and walked, or rather waddled, upright, and wore
bright-coloured garments on their bodies, were nothing but great
green and yellow frogs.
"Frogs are not beasts of prey," she said to herself, "and have not sharp claws and teeth: they cannot do me much harm. And they do not look ill-tempered, either: if I can only make them understand that my coming through their roof was an unexpected accident, perhaps they will excuse it."
So the next time one of the frogs peeped at her she smiled and nodded to
him, and pointed to the hole in the ceiling and to the fragments on the
ground, and tried to make him understand by signs how sorry she was. The
frog stared at her, and, after a little, he seemed to get some notion of
what she meant, for he nodded to her and made signs as if he meant to ask
if she had fallen through, and then called out something to her. But what
it was Daffodil could not make out, for it seemed to her like
"Chrchrkkerkeckkeckghrchr." He said it twice and seemed to
expect an answer, and so Daffodil replied, as politely as she could,
"I am sorry I do not understand Froggais, Sir." She thought
that would the the proper name to call his language, because,
as Français is the name of the
language they speak in France. Froggais seemed the same sort of word for
the language they speak in Frogland.
The frog looked, and shook his head, then ran away. Presently more frogs
came and questioned in signs, and Daffodil answered in signs: then
they spoke, and Daffodil answered as she had to the first frog. Then they
went away and others came, and it all had to be done over again. And then
others came, and others, until Daffodil grew tired. But she thought it
would be rude to show it, and she went on answering them in the same
fashion.
At last she heard advancing from several sides at once a sort of
flop-flop, slop-slop, which she knew must be the sound of
frog feet walking together in a measured quick time. And presently, and all
at the same moment--such was the beautiful precision into which the
frog army was drilled-there appeared at each entrance the head of a
column of soldiers. The soldiers were dressed in short yellow tunics
spotted with orange, with broad belts of plaited rushes from which hung
swords made of fish-bones of a glittering whiteness. They wore also
short leggings, which Daffodil thought looked quite like crimson
bell-flowers, fringed at the edge. And it is no wonder that they
looked so, for that is just what they were, though she did not know it
then. Their arms and feet were bare like those of the other frogs she had
just seen, but, while the other frogs were bare-headed, these wore
helmets plaited to match their belts, with a brown tuft on the top. Their
helmets seemed rather uncomfortable head-dresses for them, as they
were always tumbling over their eyes and noses, and Daffodil wondered that
they did not take them off and throw them away, for she did not know that
the best military authorities have always decided that a soldier should
have at least one part of his uniform exceedingly inconvenient. They had
rush straps across their chests, in which were secured fish-bone
weapons pointed like lances at one end and, at the other, club-shape
with a small stone in a socket of the bone: these rested on their
shoulders. They had nothing in their hands as they marched, and they kept
them crossed on their breasts. The frog
recruits always find it very difficult to learn to do this; because the frogs who are not soldiers are accustomed to use their arms (which we call their forelegs) to balance themselves as they walk. The recruits keep tumbling down when they first try to do without this assistance, and it takes several years for them to acquire the art of moving steadily on their hindlegs when their forelegs are folded over the breast. But the regiment sent against Daffodil was composed of veteran soldiers, and their gait was quite erect and even, unless they tried to go very fast.
The reason they had been so long in coming was not, however, only that
they could not go very fast. It is not the custom for them ever to wear the
same uniform twice, and, as they had not expected to be called out on
active service that day, their tunics were not ready. Some too suspicious
frogs afterwards accused them of cowardice for not confronting the invader
more speedily; but that was not fair. The yellow tunics were not made of a
common flower and could not be found in a moment for a whole regiment.
Daffodil had plenty of time to observe her assailants, for they had many
military movements to execute before they could close upon her properly.
First the word of command was given for the columns to halt in the
entrances; then they fell in and fell out and formed into triangles and
circles a great many times; and then each column arranged itself into a
sort of curl twisted round and round. Then the word was given and the outer
frog of each curl plunged into the canal, all in the same half-
second, then the second outer frog of each curl, and so they went on, the curls unwinding by degrees, until every flog had crossed the canal. And they did this so beautifully that the tenths and twentieths and fiftieths and hundredths and so on of each curl crossed precisely at the same moment, up to the very last of all. The outer flog of each curl had now become the innermost of the curl newly formed, each frog, as he crossed, turning the proper way to keep the curve perfect. Then they all fell in and fell out and marched and halted all about the border of the canal until all the curls had joined together. And then they went on wheeling round and round till at last there was one great curl with Daffodil inside the head of it.
This manoeuvre having been so successfully accomplished, the
Officer in Command, who was the innermost frog of the curl, advanced
resolutely and summoned Daffodil to surrender. He was not so tall as most
of his regiment, so that he did not quite reach to her shoulder, but he was
very fat and broad and looked extremely dignified; so Daffodil made him the
most respectful curtsey she could. As she did not understand what he said,
she did not make any remark in reply, but the Officer in Command accepted
her curtsey as a token of submission. He turned to his men and made a short
speech. "Brave soldiers," he said, "we have conquered.
All honour to your dauntless hearts: I am proud of you."
"And we of you, and we of you," shouted the soldiers, taking
advantage of a slight pause in the speech.
"Hush, my brave soldiers," said the Officer in Command,
"you interrupt. I forgive you; it is the truthful fervour of your
honest minds that forces you to speak; but no more. I resume. We have
conquered, brave soldiers. The enemy surrenders. We will be merciful, as
becomes soldiers and frogs."
Then all the frog soldiers hurrahed and waved their swords, and there
was such a din that Daffodil was quite terrified, thinking they were going
to rush upon her at once and make an end of her.
When quiet was restored, six soldiers advanced and stood round her,
pointing their lances at her to warn her not to resist. Two others secured
her hands behind her back with their belts. Then twenty picked frogs were
told off to remain with her as a guard, and the Officer in Command directed
the Officer Next in Command to march the troops back to their barracks. He
decided to go home himself to write his report to the King; but first he
sent his Aide-de-camp to tell Their Majesties everything that
had happened.
The King was asleep when the messenger came, but the Queen, on hearing
the narrative, felt so curious to see the prisoner, that, when she was
assured it was quite safe, she resolved to go herself to the Great Throne
Hall, the room into which Daffodil had tumbled. The Officer in Command,
after giving precise instructions to the guard about the necessary
precautions in case of any attempt of the enemy at a surprise, was just
leaving the Hall, muttering to himself the first paragraph of the report,
when he saw Her Majesty enter, with her Royal Mantle all crooked from the
haste with which
she had put it on, with only her third best crown that she kept for indoors wear when she did not expect to see any visitors, and attended by not more than a dozen Lords and Ladies in Waiting. So great had been her Royal haste. He flopped hurriedly to the door to receive her. And the Queen, in the most gracious manner, said to him "Brave as ever, Sir Ghxrrschcroxbog. Accept our Royal thanks, His Majesty's and mine."
But the Officer in Command looked terribly disappointed, for he had
expected to be promised a peerage. However, he made the best of it and
replied, with a tremendously low bow, that no reward that could have been
given him would have been worth those words from Her Majesty.
"I should think so, indeed," said the Queen. "And now,
have the prisoner brought forward."
So the Officer in Command flopped backwards to the end of the Hall where
Daffodil was being kept in custody, and, at his order, the twenty guards
marched her up to the Queen, and then fell back respectfully.
Daffodil, perceiving by the crown, though it was rather a shabby one,
that she was in the presence of Royalty, was so impressed that she managed
to make a yet lower curtsey than she had made to the Officer in Command; at
which the Queen was pleased, for she had never seen curtseying before and
she thought it looked extremely loyal. The frogs' way of bowing and
curtseying to Royalty is to hop three times round It. They hop twice round
a superior below Royal rank, or to a distant acquaintance, and once round a
familiar acquaintance.
The Queen spoke to Daffodil, but Daffodil could
only say "If you please, I am sorry, but I don't know Froggais." Now the Queen had been instructed by the Regius Professor of Everything and was the most learned woman in Croäxaxica, which is the native name for Frogland. She desired one of the soldiers to turn the prisoner slowly round several times that she might view the creature thoroughly. Then she leant her head on her hand and remained in deep thought for ten minutes, while, for fear of disturbing her reflections, the Lords and Ladies in Waiting and the Officer in Command and the soldiers stood as mute and motionless as statues, trying not to breathe.
"The thing is a human being," said the Queen, at last.
"Get me the Treatise on the Modes of Articulation, Pronunciations,
and Dialects of the Inferior Races, with Glossary and Directions for
Imitating the various Pronunciations."
An attendant rushed off obediently, and soon returned with the book. It
was not quite like one of our books. Its leaves, which were of two
different tints, white and yellow alternately, were thick and
waxy-looking, and were rounded off instead of having straight lines
and corners like ours. They were, in fact, the petals of large flowers of
the water-lily kind which are especially cultivated for writing and
printing on. The printing is done by pointed implements with which the
letters are pricked in. These implements are long and sharp, so that many
leaves at a time can be pricked through by them. Only one side of a leaf is
used: the lines are arranged rather far apart and care is taken in
the binding that the pricks on one leaf shall not lie upon the pricks on
the next leaf but shall be just over the
smooth part between the lines, so that the yellow leaves shall show through the pricked lines of white leaves and the white leaves through the pricked lines of yellow leaves. Sometimes green leaves are used instead of yellow; but the yellow are considered the best and cost the most, so, of course, the Queen had yellow. The binding of Croäxaxican books is sometimes very elaborate. This one, which had been presented to the Queen by its author, the Regius Professor of Everything, had for cover the petals of a crimson lily of the same nature as that of which its leaves were made, but much thicker: the cover was adorned with a mosaic pattern in small white, blue, and gold-coloured petals. And, as the book had just been taken out of the water, it glistened all over. The Croäxaxican bookshelves are cut in the ground like drains, and are always kept full of water. The books are arranged in them side by side, as we place ours, only that they do not stand upright: it is as if we laid our bookshelves on the ground instead of setting them up against the walls. Care is taken to arrange the books according to their sizes and to keep them level, and they make a very handsome floor. Of course no furniture is stood on them. And the Croäxaxicans do not tread upon them, but hop gently over from step to step of the moss partitions between them. These partition-strips of moss are made wide enough for a frog to stand on them and get out a book comfortably. In the Royal Library they are so wide that there is room on them for seats and couches and writing-tables, which is a very pleasant and convenient arrangement.
The Queen took her book and turned to the part "On the Dialect of
Human Beings." And first, as there was a short introduction
describing the appearance of human beings, she compared Daffodil with the
description. "An odd-looking tangled tuft of coloured rushes
growing on the head--very long in the female," she said.
"Quite so. This is a female. Look at the tangled rushes. I suppose
they were green in the summer."
"Fleshy red mouths which do not reach across the face, but,
stopping short as it were half way, give them a ridiculous
appearance," she read again. "Just so. Look how absurd it
is: her mouth stops short just under that knob over the nostrils. And
the knob--yes the book says human beings all have that strange
excrescence."
All the attendants said "Your Majesty is evidently right, as
usual. This is a human being." And they whispered to each other in
very loud whispers "Is it not wonderful? She knows everything! She
knows more even than the Regius Professor of Everything!" Every one
was in such a hurry to whisper it first that they were all whispering at
once, so that there was a rustling sound like the surge among the rushes on
a windy day.
But the Queen said "Hush!" for she wanted to read over the
rules of pronunciation, which she had a little forgotten, although she had
once read some of them some years before. She read them for twenty minutes,
in the midst of a profound silence. Then she said to Daffodil
"Ghxoogh Ghxar Ghxooghxxxxh?"
That puzzled Daffodil very much, and she could only reply by making a
curtsey and shaking her
head hard. So the Queen read her book for thirty minutes more, and then she said "Ghxoogh Ghar Ghxooghxxxh?" And Daffodil curtseyed, and shook her head harder.
Then the Queen read her book for three-quarters of an hour. And
at the end of that time she looked up, and said exactly the same as she had
before.
Daffodil was luckier this time. She made out that the Queen was saying
"Who are you?" So with a deeper curtsey than ever, for she saw
that the Queen approved of her curtseys, she answered "If you please
I am Daffodil. And my breaking the roof was not my fault I do assure you,
please Your Majesty. When I was in the mud I could not help kicking to try
to get out, and I would not have broken your beautiful ceiling on any
account if I had known it was there."
The Queen looked bewildered. "Ghxxayitxhxxagainxgh" she
said, and Daffodil understood that she was to repeat her speech. So she
said the very same words as before, and tried to pronounce them very
distinctly. And the Queen put her hand behind her right ear and leant
forward listening attentively.
"Ghxxayitxghxxxagainxgh" she replied when Daffodil had
finished. And Daffodil said it again very slowly and
carefully.
This time the Queen did not tell her to repeat it. But she remained
silent for ten minutes looking very puzzled. Then she put her paws to her
ears and said to her attendants "Oh! it goes through my head! I
cannot endure this poor creature's discordant noise any longer. It is
too painful!"
And all the attendants and the Officer in Command and the twenty
soldiers put their hands to their ears. And the attendants and the Officer
in Command all said "It is too painful, too painful." The
soldiers all shook their heads slowly: it was not allowable for them
to speak.
"There is only one thing to be done," said the Queen.
"It must be confined in the State Prison for two or three days, and
the Regius Professor of Everything must be sent to it. Let me
see--this is Monday: I order that it shall talk reasonably by
Thursday. Then we will have a Drawing-room, and it will be a treat
for you all to hear me examine it."
"What a delightful plan! How profound! How judicious! How
diplomatic!" they all said. And Daffodil was marched off at once to
the State Prison.
lilies growing on the ceiling, and, in the centre of them, a tuft of water-plants with long leaves which dripped down water. The furniture was of the same kind as that in the Throne Hall but less decorated. On the whole, this was much such a room as you would find for the principal reception room in the house of a Croäxaxican gentleman of easy but not extensive fortune.
A sleeping closet opened out of this room. It was of the same shape, but
barely long enough for Daffodil to lie down in, and even a Croäxaxican
could not have stood upright in it. It had no water to light it, and was
nearly all taken up by a moss and water bed on which lay a counterpane of
bog cotton plaited together and, for ornament, dotted at the joins with the
little brown tufts of bulrushes. Daffodil looked disconsolately at this
bedroom: it seemed to her a dismal kind of sleeping place, though it
was just as the most luxurious Croäxaxicans had their own. The sole
difference between it and the Royal Bedroom itself was that the Royal
Counterpane was trimmed every day with fresh
forget-me-nots.
A thing which disturbed her greatly was that there was no
wash-handstand. And really it was very unpleasant to have such muddy
hands. She looked wistfully at the water in her sitting-room:
she was afraid she should get into trouble if she took the liberty of
puddling it with her dirty hands, but there seemed no other resource and
she felt tempted to try. At last she dabbled one hand in it: in doing
so she made a little splashing sound, and, in a moment, a sentry, of whose
vicinity she
had not been aware, came marching up to the doorway.
To prevent escapes, there was only one entrance to this apartment, and,
out of consideration for the prisoners, the corridor leading to it was made
to curve away from it, so that the sentry could be placed in such a way as
to guard the room without going into it. But a splash is the same sort of
signal among the Croäxaxicans as ringing a bell is for us, and, as
they have no objection to taking a bath before spectators, it was customary
for the sentry, when he had come to answer a splash, to remain in the
doorway, if he found the prisoner in the water, in case he should be
wanted. For, of course, while the splashing of a bath was going on, the
sentry had no way of knowing if he was wanted unless he remained in
sight.
The sentry did not look at all put out by seeing Daffodil dabbling her
muddy hand in the canal, and, when she put her other hand in and looked
inquiringly, he nodded. Then, when he saw that she only washed her hands
and did not get in, he came forward and pointed to the water and made
signs, so that at last she understood that she might take a bath if she
liked. She was glad of that, you may be sure, and, going into her bedroom,
she began to undress. But, when she put out her head, she saw that the
sentry intended to remain in the doorway. So she put her pinafore on again,
and, thinking it was the only way to get clean and that she was so wet
already and everything round her so damp and dripping that sousing her
clothes could not matter, she plunged, just as she was, into the water. She
was a little startled when she found that it was deep enough to come up to her neck, but she quickly got over her first alarm and splashed and floundered so long that she got her hands the very next thing to clean. The sentry looked on, very much surprised that she did not swim about quietly as he would have done, instead of making all these antics, but he did not interfere, though she was spoiling the water sadly.
When she got out at last, he went to the canal, and, removing some sods
and stones at one end, let all the water run out; then, going into the
bedroom, he moved some sods and stones there, so that a gush of water burst
out and, filling the bedroom, overflowed into the canal and made it just as
it had been before Daffodil's bath. The counterpane was soaked
through, of course, and the moss bed still wetter than she found it, but
the sentry did not know that she would not think them all the better, as a
Croäxaxican would have done.
Daffodil was sorry to have given her keeper so much trouble, and tried
to apologise to him. But he good-humouredly hopped once round her
and withdrew to his post in the corridor.
In a few minutes he came back, escorting the Regius Professor of
Everything, who had just arrived. Two frogs in the Royal Livery of green
and orange followed, carrying each a pile of books on a tray of plaited
rushes. These they carefully placed under the drip from the ceiling, and,
after hopping twice round the Professor and turning up their noses at
Daffodil, they withdrew in a lofty manner. The sentry, on a sign from the
Professor, withdrew to his
post, after making a military obeisance which the Professor returned by a slight but kindly hop.
The Regius Professor of Everything was a short thin frog of a pensive
and melancholy expression of countenance. He was by nature cheerful, but
laughing is not professorial and therefore he had always to be remarkably
serious, and the habit of drawing down the corners of his mouth, to avoid
smiling, had finally stiffened them in a downwards curve, so that no
Professor of any country has ever surpassed him in a sad and ponderous
aspect. He was dressed in brown spotted with black, and he wore spectacles
with handsome broad rims of interwoven fish-bones, which made his
eyes look extra round and staring. Among the Croäxaxicans round and
staring eyes are considered a sign of intellect. A low forehead is another
sign of intellect, and the Professor's was so low that his friends
said he had none at all.
The Professor drew a seat close to Daffodil's, and sat, with his
hands on his knees, staring into her face till she felt quite
uncomfortable. Then he said "Xspeakgh."
Daffodil, much pleased that she could understand him, began "If
you please, sir, I am so sorry I broke the roof. It was quite by
accident."
"Xstopgh," said the Professor. He cleared his
throat--which alarmed Daffodil no little, for she imagined that he was
choking or scolding or both--he wetted his spectacles on the moss, and
began. "I have not authority to enter with you into questions of
State. Her Majesty has commissioned me to tutor you into such approximation
to the
correct mellifluous and harmonious pronunciation to which we favoured children of nature, the inimitable Croäxaxicans, are habituated, as may enable her Royal Ears to tolerate your answers to her Majestic inquiries. Let us commence our studies."
Only, although he believed that he was speaking exactly as Daffodil
spoke, he could not help before and after every word a little sound of the
Croäxaxican throat letters--which we can most nearly express in
writing by repeated Gh's, Xh's and X's--and Daffodil
could hardly understand him.
"Let us commence our studies," resumed the Professor, after
having again solemnly wetted his spectacles. "And first I will,
continuing to condescend to your own uncouth and, to me, degrading mode of
pronunciation, extemporise to you a preliminary lecture on the origin of
language."
But, just then, in came two servants who began laying the cloth for a
meal. The tablecloth was made of the finest bog cotton plaited into
patterns; and Daffodil particularly admired the plates and dishes, which
were of a mosaic work of shell and mother-of-pearl, and the
drinking-cups, which were a single white or blue shell. But she was
surprised at seeing no forks, only knives, cut from the same large kind of
fish-bone as the soldiers' swords, and
mother-of-pearl spoons, or rather ladles, very wide in the
bowls and short in the handles. The Croäxaxicans do not use forks but
put their food into their mouths by means of these spoons, which are made
of a shape and size to fit them.
The servants were quick with their work, and the first course was soon
on the table. The Regius
Professor of Everything offered Daffodil his arm, and they took their places opposite each other. Daffodil was hungry; she had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and that was a long time ago now; and she could not help feeling disappointed to see nothing but water-cresses before her. However, she was glad to help herself to a few, when one of the servants handed them. But the Professor immediately ordered her plate to be taken away, and told her she must on no account taste one leaf of watercress at that time. Water-cresses, he said, excited the brain, and what would presently be necessary for her was quiet persistent and passive attention. From him, as teacher, he said, energy and effort would be required, and the water-cresses were suitable, and even desirable, for him: as a proof of his wish to spend himself to the utmost in the lesson he was about to give her, he would eat them to the last stalk. And he did. Daffodil watched the process, which was a very long one, thinking him rather tiresome not to let her eat too, and she did not believe that the water-crosses would have excited her brain at all too much, but she consoled herself with the thought that something she would be allowed to eat would come presently: and, besides, he apologised so very politely and in such grand words that she could not but feel flattered at his behaviour.
The next course consisted of a large eel at one end of the table and, at
the other, some dace sliced up and mixed with chopped weeds. These weeds
were of a sort which is thought a great dainty, as it will only grow in mud
of a particular soil; and the Professor was much pleased to see what a
recherché
dinner was being given him and his pupil. "But unfortunately," said he "I must, with the acutest commiseration, refuse to sanction your indulging in the luxuries before us. These dishes are of a rich and over-nutritious quality and temporarily dull the mind. I, whose mind nothing can dull, and who have, moreover, partaken freely of water-cresses, may safely, nay advantageously, consume these, for you, too treacherous dainties. I shall be assisted by their nutritive forces to go through the enormous mental labour I shall presently have to commence on your behalf. You--it grieves me, it depresses me, to say it--you must forbear."
Daffodil felt inclined to tell him the right way would have been for her
to eat both of the water-cresses and of the fish, and then one would
have made up for the other for her as well as for him: but Keziah had
often told her it was rude to argue. And then, as the eel and the dace and
the weeds were all raw, they were not much loss to her. The
Croäxaxicans cannot bear even the thought of fire, so of course
boiling and roasting and frying are out of the question.
Next came the soup--it being the Croäxaxican fashion to serve
the soup in the middle of the meal, in consequence of a King of
Croäxaxica a few thousand years ago having once, during a hunting
expedition, unexpectedly entered a nobleman's dining-hall
while the family were sitting at dinner, just as the second course was
being removed, and asked to be helped to soup.
"One half-quarter of a half-spoonful of this
delicious soup, for a taste," said the Professor ladling
out a few drops into a plate for Daffodil. "Not more; alas! not more. I fear I am too venturesome in allowing you this; but it goes to my heart to restrict you, and I permit this one excess. This soup, the most exquisite existing, excepting indeed its one paragon, that flavoured with mud from the roots of the water-parsley and the juice of pounded snails, is endowed with the property of calming the sentiments. I, indeed, need all there is in this soup-tureen, and even more, to partly allay the passionate devotion I feel for the tedious duty awaiting me; but your sentiment of gratitude to Her Majesty and to me--the sentiment which will inspire you to intelligent attention even when for a moment or two the delight of my lesson may perchance cease to fascinate you, on account of some difficulty to your limited faculties,--that sentiment should have no allaying. But the comparatively limited quantity I have allowed you can be neutralised by this." And, suddenly, reaching across the table, he popped into her mouth a tiny dried fly, a little smaller than a pin's head, which he had taken out of his pocket.
Daffodil was grateful for his consideration for her, but yet she had a
feeling that she could have done without both fly and drops of soup. For
the soup, which looked like green-pea pottage of rather a deep
colour, was ditch-water with a strong flavour of
water-parsley; and she thought the taste for it must be an acquired
one, as she heard her father and mother say about some stuff called
caviare which they had once given her to
taste, and, which she had not enjoyed.
The next course was of bright blue craw-fish and
cockles. These, the Professor said, were irritating to the nerves, unless counteracted by composing food, like the eel and dace he had recently consumed. So he had to eat them too without allowing her to share them with him.
The next course was minnows and stickle-backs. These, the
Professor said, were dangerously enlivening, and rendered it difficult to
fix the attention. He nearly cleared both dishes himself; but he explained
that his attention was always so fixed that nothing could unfix it.
For dessert there were, besides some pulpy berries of a rare kind which
the Croäxaxicans cultivate in green ooze, choice sea-weeds
brought from distant beds in a tunnel which had anciently communicated with
the seashore. They are a very notable and expensive luxury, and the
servants were directed to say that they were sent by order of the Queen
herself. The Professor was more sympathising than ever when he had to
forbid his pupil's taking any of these. They were, it appeared the
most terrible things in the world for making people sleepy. But, as his
love of study had made him acquire the habit of never going to sleep at
all, he did not feel afraid of them, and he ate them all up. The berries,
he told her, had a weakening effect on the memory: but he had come to
know all about everything the moment he thought upon it, even if he had
never heard of it before, so memory was of no consequence to him, and he
ate all the berries too.
Daffodil felt surprised and very thankful to be allowed at last a sip of
what she took for water. But the water, being in fact a Croäxaxican
wine,
was strongly impregnated with an aroma of distilled chickweed, and was not palatable to her.
When they had done dinner, the Professor offered her his arm to the
adjacent canal. But she thanked him politely and, pointing to her wet
clothes, explained that she had already had a bath. The Professor looked at
her in great astonishment, for he could not see that was any reason for not
taking another, and it is the custom among well-bred
Croäxaxicans always to swim gently round and round three or four times
after dinner. However, he did not press her, but quietly glided in.
Daffodil admired the smooth easy manner in which he swam round without
ruffling the water. She was surprised to see that his clothes, which she
had expected to be quite spoiled, were fresher when he came out than when
he went in.
The dessert things were removed, and master and pupil began their
labour. The Professor of Everything ordered a large bowl of mussels to be
brought. He informed Daffodil that these were to assist her in acquiring
the Croäxaxican manner of speech-since, besides their
well-known property of clearing the brain, they had the property of
clearing the throat, thus making it able to exhale Ghchrrghxxxrr in a loud
and dignified harmony. So he popped a mussel into her mouth to begin with
and swallowed two himself, which was not, he pointed out, because
his throat needed any clearing, for, if it had a fault, it was
always being too clear, but in order to prevent a bad effect on it from the
harsh and unnatural sounds of the human pronunciation he must condescend to
employ in the preliminary stages of her
education. He then proceeded to deliver his celebrated treatise on the origin and use of speech.
Daffodil did not understand much of the treatise, but she listened hard.
And at length it became easy for her to know what the words he was saying
were, though they were so much like the seven syllable part of her
spelling-book that she could not often understand more than two at a
time.
At the end of an hour the Professor took out his watch. It was the first
of its kind Daffodil had seen and she could not help leaning forward to
peep at it. A Croäxaxican watch has no hands: the figures are
made of small flower-buds, which open each at the hour it marks, and
wither each at its fixed time before the next hour's
flower-buds open. The watch-case is made of the pink lining
of shells: it is filled with a fine golden sand into which the
flowers are set after it has been well damped. The flowers have to be
renewed every twelve hours. The wealthiest Croäxaxicans keep two
watches in regular use, so that their servants can always have one ready
when the other has run out its hours. The Professor used two, and a servant
came every twelve hours to bring him the fresh one and take the other to
put in new flowers.
The Professor looked at his watch, popped one mussel into
Daffodil's mouth and two into his own, took one swim round, and then
sat down and resumed his discourse. He did this regularly at the end of
each hour. Daffodil did not much relish the mussels, but, when she found
that her lesson lasted to Thursday morning, she thought it a lucky thing
for her that she had them to keep her from getting quite exhausted.
Learning Croäxaxican was not so difficult as she had expected. She
had mistaken it for a foreign language, but the Regius Professor of
Everything explained that it was only a question of pronunciation and
accent. It is not to be supposed, he told her, that things would be so
mismanaged that creatures having the same boundaries of latitude and
longitude should have different words for the same meaning. That would be
too irrational. "What really is the case," said he, "is
that the inferior animals, such as horses, birds, crickets, cows, human
beings, and flies, have imitated the great Croäxaxican language in all
respects excepting its pronunciation and accent--in which they find a
difficulty because of the peculiar constructions of their throats, which
are none of them like ours. It is so long," he continued,
"since the Croäxaxicans settled in this kingdom and entirely
abandoned their dry and useless territory above water, that all you
creatures, debarred from access to us, have had time to forget a good deal
of what you had learned before we left you to shift for
yourselves."
Then he went on to set forth all about pronunciation. And Daffodil
thought it highly interesting, because she saw how, by listening
intelligently to the conversation of any species of animals, so as to find
out how they pronounced and accentuated, she should be able to understand
and use their manner of speech.
But, though it was highly interesting, the poor child got woefully
sleepy when she had been hearing all this information for half a day and a
whole night. The Professor good-naturedly put pieces of rush
across her eyes to keep them open, or she would certainly have dozed off. And no one can tell what would have happened to her, and to the Professor, if she had not learned Croäxaxican by the appointed time.
When Daffodil perfectly understood the Professor of Everything's
rules about pronunciation and accent, he made her recite his treatise on
the origin and use of speech, after him, in the Croäxaxican tongue,
over and over again for twelve hours, until, if it had not been for her
having got so hoarse that she could not speak at all, she was able to
converse with great fluency. The next thing was to accustom her ears to the
sound of the language, so that she might readily understand what was said
to her: and, with that object, the Professor decided to talk,
himself, till Thursday morning. Daffodil was to prove her attention by
saying the Ohs and Ahs in the right places.
The Professor ate three mussels to prepare himself, and then began the
history of his own life, which, he said, would make the lesson more
attractive to her than any other subject would do. It was very kind of him,
Daffodil thought, but still she found it hard work to attend so carefully
as was necessary, and sometimes she put the Ohs and Ahs in the wrong
places. For the story of the Regius Professor of Everything's life
was very long, and it did not appear that anything had ever happened to
him. She was glad she had the rushes in her eyes, for it would have been
shocking if she had been so rude as to fall asleep when the Professor was
being so obliging as to relate his own history, and yet she verily believed
she should have been in risk of doing so but for those useful rushes.
When the Professor left off speaking it was Thursday morning and the
Queen's commands were obeyed. Daffodil could talk reasonably:
that is to say she could talk Croäxaxican.
But Her Majesty only replied "Of course it can: I ordered
that it should." And she did not offer him breakfast, as he had
counted upon her doing. So he returned to his home in discontent, and spent
the rest of the day in eating mussels and communing with philosophy. His
servants used to say that communing with philosophy looked to them just
like going to sleep. But the Regius Professor of Everything, as I have said
before, never went to sleep.
Daffodil, as soon as she was alone, began a comfortable yawn. But she
had the disappointment of being interrupted in it. The Officer in Command
entered, followed by four other officers of high rank. He advanced towards
her, and informed her courteously that he had come to conduct her to the
Royal Palace. He could give her exactly two minutes and a quarter to
prepare in. And he asked her to do him the honour to inform him if she was
a gentle-
man or a lady, so that he might know whether to send a valet or a lady's-maid to assist her.
"You are very kind," said Daffodil. "But I am only a
little girl; and I can manage quite nicely by myself." For she
thought a frog lady's-maid would not be much help to her.
Washing made her feel fresher; but she was still so sleepy that she
could not venture to take the rushes out of her eyes, and she felt afraid
that, if they did not give her water-cresses to excite her brain,
she would soon be altogether stupefied.
She was trying to smooth her hair when, precisely at the two minutes and
a quarter, the officers came back, followed by a guard of forty soldiers.
They looked surprised at her occupation, and the Officer in Command begged
that she would not pull out those yellow rushes before she had been
presented to Her Majesty, who would expect to see her in the same condition
as when she was consigned to his keeping. "I have no doubt," he
said encouragingly, "that Her Majesty will graciously permit you to
get rid of the encumbrance, after she has inspected it."
"Pull out my hair !" exclaimed Daffodil, aghast. "Why
I should not think of such a thing." But there was no time for
explanations, and she was marched off.
She was conducted through several corridors and galleries, crossed here
and there by trenches full of water through which she had to wade, as she
could not swim like the soldiers. At last she arrived at the anteroom where
she was to wait till Their Majesties should be pleased to order her to be
brought before them. The rushes in her eyes kept her from falling
downright asleep, but she was all the while growing more and more bewildered, till at last it seemed to her as if all this were a dream and she found herself every now and then saying nonsensical things, as if she were talking in her sleep.
Just as she had taken the Officer in Command for Keziah and was saying
to him "Oh dear, you have made a mistake and put me to bed in the
washing-tub," the order came for him to bring in the prisoner.
The guard formed round her again, the officers marched together ahead, and
she was led from the waiting-room into a long arched gallery which
opened right into the Great Throne Hall. The canal of the Great Throne Hall
was too deep for her to wade, but she was now too stupefied to feel
frightened. It was more and more like a dream, and she made no resistance
when two soldiers drew her in with them. It was lucky for her that, as a
matter of form, they supported her, for else she would have gone under.
The soldiers continued to support her on each side--for that was
the proper way of bringing a prisoner into the Royal Presence--and
next she found herself standing in front of the Throne. She saw, in a hazy
kind of way, that all the seats on the steps were filled by frogs, and that
there were two frogs in bright robes and with shining crowns on their heads
sitting on the two topmost seats. She had just sense enough left to
understand that she was before Their Majesties, and to make her court
curtsey to them.
The King thought her so strange-looking a creature that he burst
out laughing; and, as that was an unusual exertion for him, it sent him to
sleep
at once. But the Queen, although this was a State occasion and all the Court were assembled, condescended to speak to her with her own Royal lips.
"What are you, and on what mission have you come to our
Kingdom?" she said.
But Daffodil was half dreaming and she somehow got a dazed notion that
the Queen was Keziah dressed up; so she said to her "Oh what a dear
funny stupid old thing you look!" And she said it in good
Croäxaxican, for, after her long lesson, that came the most naturally
to her.
You may imagine what consternation there was! Some of the Maids of
Honour shrieked, and the Noblemen drew their swords to defend their Queen.
The Princess Royal almost fainted with horror and alarm.
The Queen was so indignant that she shook the King till he woke up
shaken out of breath. But she was always courageous, and Daffodil looked
quite quiet and harmless, and the Officer in Command, directly his prisoner
gave that terrible answer, had taken precautions by ordering the whole of
the guard to advance and make ready for attack. So, with a stately and
fearless air, Her Majesty said "Miserable creature, if your life had
not been already forfeited by your High Treason against our ceiling, it
would become forfeit now. What room can there be for mercy
when----"
But here Daffodil, who had now got it into her head that Her Majesty was
the big black dog barking, interrupted her with "Do be quiet,
there's a good fellow. Don't make a noise."
"I order you to instant death," cried the Queen, hopping
with rage.
"Lie down and hold your tongue, there's a good fellow"
said Daffodil.
"Do you hear? Instant death. Being swallowed by the
State Boa Constrictor is the punishment for treason, and he is sure to be
very hungry by now," cried the Queen, with added fury.
"You are to die at once."
Daffodil looked at her reprovingly, and, holding up a forefinger, said
solemnly "If you go on barking and growling and making such a horrid
noise, I shall have to punish you. Lie down directly." And she
clapped her hands and stamped her foot, for that was how she could always
make her dog lie down and be quiet.
There was a panic! The soldiers, thinking that she was
going to attack their Queen, all ran away, and the Officer in Command and
the four other officers ran as fast as they could after them, shouting
"Quick: guards, quick! Help us to summon the regiment!"
All the Maids of Honour went into hysterics. The Noblemen hid behind the
Maids of Honour and held their breaths. The Princesses, who were usually
quarrelling, threw themselves into each other's arms and said
"Let us all make it up and die together." The Crown Prince
crept under his father's throne, and the Queen crept under her own.
The second Prince turned as pale as pale could be, but he folded his arms
and leaned back in his seat, quoting some poetry of his own about meeting
death in the arms of danger, strong and sprightly, brisk and brightly, with
an unchanged noble hue, while all the world for fear a startled yellow
grew: only he trembled so that he could not say it very distinctly.
The King was the only person who did not seem discomposed. The shrieks of the Maids of Honour disturbed him from a nap, and he looked round saying "What's this all about?" but, when he perceived what a turmoil there was, he stretched himself and leaned back in his chair again. "This is too much for me," he said. And then he made this speech: "Noble Croäxaxicans, Lords and Ladies, my loyal and deserving subjects, things seem going wrong, but Her Majesty, my wife, who is absent somewhere or other now on business of the State, knows my mind on the subject and will put them all right presently when she comes back." And with these words he went to sleep.
Daffodil, meanwhile, having no longer the two soldiers to keep her up,
as they had run off among their comrades, had dropped down on the ground,
with her head resting on the lowest step of the throne. She thought she was
in bed, and she was trying hard to go to sleep, but the rushes in her eyes
prevented her and she was too drowsy to take them out.
When the tumult had subsided and nothing was heard of Daffodil, the
Queen took courage to peep out from under her throne, and, to her great
surprise, saw the cause of all the alarm lying motionless. At first she
thought it was a trick to entice her within reach, but, when nearly half an
hour had passed and Daffodil still did not stir, she felt reassured, and,
coming out from under her throne, took her seat on it with great
dignity.
"The creature had some sense of duty, after all," she said.
"I ordered it to die at once, and it has
done so. Probably it did not understand that my order implied an intention of having it put to death by the proper person. I shall now have it rewarded for its obedience by a magnificent State Funeral. Somebody pick up the body."
But they were all afraid to go near it, and at last the Queen herself
came down the steps and, very cautiously, stood beside the half torpid
child.
"It seems to breathe," she said. "And yet it is
certainly dead. Look at the way it lies: could any live thing lie so?
Some of you lie down and try the experiment."
All the Maids of Honour and half the courtiers lay down and tried to
arrange their limbs like Daffodil's. But none of them could do
it.
"Yes, it is quite dead," said the Queen. "No doubt it
is the nature of such creatures to breathe after they are dead." Then
she put out her hand and touched Daffodil's cheek. The scream with
which she started back terrified the Court.
"It is hot! Burning hot!" cried Her Majesty. "Oh! oh!
How it has hurt me! Get me a doctor, this moment."
"Good gracious! Is it alive?" shrieked all the Maids of
Honour.
"Don't expose your ignorance," replied Her Majesty
sharply. "Do you think anything could be in that fiery state and
live? No doubt these creatures smoulder away after death. In fact we had
better have some buckets of water thrown over it at once to prevent it
getting on fire."
Daffodil heard all this and felt too heavy to say anything. It seemed to
her that she was continuing
her dream. If she had spoken, it would have been to say that she did not feel hot at all, but very chilly. People of different countries have different views on some things: the cheek which seemed to the Croäxaxican Queen to be at burning heat would have been called as cold as a frog by any of us.
However, the Croäxaxicans thought she would be in smoke and ashes
presently, and so, at the moment on which the Head Royal Physician came
hurrying in at one entrance, forty attendants with buckets of water pushed
each other in through another entrance.
The Head Royal Physician gasped out eagerly "How is Her Majesty?
Is she still alive?" But Her Majesty, who had forgotten the pain of
her hand, said severely "What do you mean by intruding upon Us in
this unseemly manner and getting in the way of the buckets?" Then she
ordered the attendants to make haste and throw the water upon the creature,
one after the other as fast as they could.
Daffodil was disturbed by this shower-bath. She was so wet
already that nothing could make her wetter, but she felt the shock
unpleasantly. She lifted her head and, looking slowly round, said "Oh
dear: How it is raining! Give me an umbrella." You may fancy
the general terror when they heard this from the creature they had all
believed to be dead. But, the shower-bath being over, Daffodil put
her head on the step again and went on trying to go to sleep.
"It does not seem a dangerous creature, after all" said the
Queen.
"It sleeps, a shape of doubt and mysterie.
Not frog nor
fish: whatever can it be?"
said the second Prince, Prince Brekekex, who had to talk in verse because he was a poet.
"A human being," replied the Queen. "I explained all
about it. I suppose you were making a poem about it, instead of
attending."
"Yes," said Prince Brekekex,
"Blame me not, I thought a poet's
thought;
In that, great Queen, you have guessed very
well:
And now, on this strange creature hither
brought,
I gaze in awe, and ask "Is it
unwell?"
"How clever you are, my dear boy!" said the Queen, in
delight. "It's just what I have been thinking all along without
knowing I was."
And the courtiers and the Maids of Honour all said it was just what they
had been thinking without knowing they were, and that it showed what a
great poet Prince Brekekex was that he should say in verse the very thing
they should have said themselves in prose, if they had thought of it in
time.
"Cure the creature at once," said the Queen to the Head
Royal Physician.
The Head Royal Physician did not much like it, but he was obliged to go
close to Daffodil and he had to feel her pulse, which made him start and
cry out worse than the Queen had done. Then he told the Queen that the
creature was in a feverish and excitable state and required sleep, and that
it must at once take a composing draught to put it to sleep if possible.
There was no time to lose, he said.
So messengers were sent in hot haste to bring what was wanted; and, when
they had returned the Head Royal Physician set to work to compound the
draught himself, so that it might be sure to be
rightly mixed. Some of the attendants were ordered to carry the patient to a couch, and the Queen herself again descended from her throne and stood near her to see the result of the draught being given.
Nobody would undertake to administer it, so the poor Head Royal
Physician, trembling all over, had to do it himself. Luckily for him,
Daffodil opened her mouth in a great yawn: he seized the moment and
in went the draught. Daffodil spluttered and coughed--it was only a
mussel-shell full, but it went the wrong way and half choked her.
She was still too sleepy to understand what was going on, but she sat up
and rubbed her eyes. The rushes that held her eyelids open gave way at
that, and, the moment they were out, she dropped back on her couch in a
dead sleep.
There was a shout of admiration from the whole Court. Never was such a
Head Royal Physician! The Queen knighted him on the spot. Prince Brekekex
promised to write a poem about him. The King said "I shall never fear
now not getting my proper quantity of sleep: I shall only have to
send for my Head Royal Physician, if I should ever be in a difficulty about
it." It was years since His Majesty had made so long a speech to a
subject. The Crown Prince, who, feeling the solemnity of his greatness, did
not converse, broke his habit so far as to say distinctly "Hear,
Hear!" when the King had left off. The Head Royal Physician swelled
with joy. He looked nearly twice the size he had been when he gave the
draught. But he thought best to hide his feelings. "I do not deserve
so much praise," he said meekly. "If there were any one in the
king-
dom who knew so much medical science as I do, I daresay he would have been able to do it nearly as well."
"True worth is always modest, we are told
By them of
new and them of old,"
said Prince Brekekex. And the Head Royal Physician only wished that the
Regius Professor of Everything had been there to witness the honour he was
receiving and to hear what Prince Brekekex had said. "It would lessen
his conceit somewhat," he thought. For the Head Royal Physician and
the Regius Professor of Everything, while each sincerely revering the other
as the second greatest sage the world could boast, and even each avowing
that the other excelled him in some special branches of science of a
technical nature or of limited importance, were each a little afraid that
the other thought too much of himself.
The Queen began to think so well of Daffodil that she was half inclined
to have her removed on her couch to a private room of the palace:
but, on the Head Royal Physician's saying that he could not answer
for the consequences if any accident were to startle the patient awake
before it had slept off its inclination to frenzy, Her Majesty ordered that
the creature should be left to sleep out its sleep where it was. Thereupon,
as the business was over, she broke up the Court. A herald in orange
proclaimed through a crimson flower-trumpet that Their Majesties
were about to depart. The Lord Chamberlain respectfully and vigorously
shook up the King, who, leaning on the Lord Chamberlain's arm,
descended, with a deliberate and lofty bearing for
which he was celebrated, from the throne where he had been left sitting alone while the Queen and all the Court had gathered around Daffodil's couch. Then a procession formed, the Royal Band struck up the Royal March of the Croäxaxicans, and Their Majesties, the Princes, the Princesses, the Maids of Honour, the courtiers, the officers, the guards and the attendants went off in order. Daffodil was left with her forty soldiers to keep watch over her. The Head Royal Physician marched away in his due place in the procession, holding his head so high that it could hardly be seen at all in front, but he came back squeezed small, for the Queen had reprimanded him sharply for leaving his patient. He placed himself in a big arm-chair at the head of the couch, and there he had to sit till Daffodil should wake of her own accord, for Their Majesties had it proclaimed that whoever should, by any means, intentional or accidental, and for any motive, good or bad, hasten the awakening of the human being, should be imprisoned for life with hard labour and only one newspaper a week.
But the Head Royal Physician, to whom she spoke, made no reply, for he
did not understand her. He offered her a plate of mussels, for which he had
sent one of the soldiers as soon as he saw her begin to open her eyes.
The sight of the mussels aroused her memory at once. "No, thank
you," said she, in good Croäxaxican. "No mussels: I
feel quite as clever as I want to be this morning. But, if you could give
me some tea and toast for breakfast. I am so
hungry."
Nobody there had ever heard of tea and toast. But, after some
consultation, a soldier was sent with
a message to the Head Royal Cook, and presently returned with water-cresses and minnows, which he offered to her. She thought this a strange sort of breakfast; however, she saw she had no chance of anything more like what she had at home and she made a good meal of water-cresses and the plateful of mussels, which the Head Royal Physician forced her to eat and which, in her hunger, she found she enjoyed. The minnows she declined, as politely as she could: "They are very fine and very fresh, I am sure," she said. "But I am not used to them quite so under-done." For she thought it would be rude to call them raw.
She felt revived by her breakfast, and was now quite able to accompany
the Head Royal Physician to her former quarters in the Royal State Prison.
The soldiers, of course, formed an escort as before.
As the Head Royal Physician was kind in manner, she took courage to ask
him if she might be allowed to wash and dress. "And if somebody would
be so kind as to lend me some clothes while these are washed!" she
added imploringly.
"While these are buried, you mean," said the Head Royal
Physician.
"They will wash," she replied.
"What can you mean?" said the Head Royal
Physician."Wash clothes! And such soiled clothes as these! The
servants will bury them in the proper bog for that purpose."
"But I have no others," pleaded Daffodil.
"Whether you have others or no, these will be buried," said
the Head Royal Physician, with a wave of his hand to settle the question.
"We inimitable
Croäxaxicans are more particular about cleanliness than the foreign and less advanced races of the world, and for us to allow clothes nearly a fortnight old to go about on any one! Faugh! Unheard of! Besides, as your medical adviser, I could not allow it. But never mind," he added good-naturedly, seeing that she was distressed. "If you want clothes, I will tell the Queen, to whom I must now report my complete cure of you, and no doubt Her Majesty will allow you some. If she does not, you could find some on the first highway: plenty of them in Croäxaxica. Now then, in for your bath, and off I go."
He had pushed her into the canal as he spoke, and he was out of the room
before she had recovered breath.
The bath proved very refreshing, but her clothes became but little the
cleaner for it. She was still trying to rub out the stains the river mud
had made on her frock, when the Lieutenant of the State Prison entered the
room, followed by a company of soldiers. He greeted her with much courtesy,
and even hopped round to her--only once indeed, but he would not have
done more even to a frog, unless of the highest rank. On her part, as she
had learnt the rules of behaviour from the Regius Professor of Everything,
she hopped twice round to him, and did it twice over to show deference to
so high a functionary of the state.
"Creature." said the Lieutenant of the State Prison, who did
not know what else to call her, "you are to leave the prison
forthwith: whether to return or not I am unable to say. You will be
under the escort of this troop of armed and determined grenadiers.
I warn you to make no attempt at escape: it would be punished as High Treason."
"And I should not know where to escape to" said
Daffodil.
"Precisely so," said the Lieutenant of the State Prison.
"It is vain for the boldest to think to escape from the inimitable
Croäxaxicans: though human, you have intelligence. Go then,
creature, and be obedient. I wish you good fortune."
Thereupon the soldiers surrounded her, and she was blindfolded and
marched off.
After about ten minutes' progress, sometimes on moss and sometimes
on mud and weeds and sometimes through canals, the soldiers halted. The
prisoner's eyes were unbound, and she found herself under an
archway,--or, rather, in a tunnel. It was everywhere lined with short
close-grown grass, and was lighted, not very brightly, by a runlet
on each side. The frog in command of the guard was a little way ahead in
conversation with two frogs in the Royal Livery who seemed to be watchmen,
and who stood on the right and left of what looked like a dark cave.
Presently she was marched into this cave and left alone with the watchmen,
who were loudly uttering a "Ghchhxhxxsrrrrrrrrrrr" which seemed
to be a call. Then they were still, and she heard, the measured flopping of
the departing soldiers as they got more and more distant. She was in the
dark and could only listen; it was of no use trying to see. Next she heard
a faint sound of water, and then a louder, and, all at once, a stream,
rushing into its channel beside her, filled the place with light. Then she
saw it was not a cave, but a very long
low corridor. At the far end stood a figure in bright clothes--pink and blue with a white apron. This was a maid-servant whom the watchmen had summoned by their call, and who, after turning on the lighting water, was waiting for Daffodil.
"Is this the new arrival we're to find clothes for?"
said the maid-servant, when the watchmen came up to her with
Daffodil. "Well it is an object!"
"It has to be made as pretty as you, Miss," said one of the
watchmen: and the maid-servant tittered, and both the watchmen
grinned at the joke.
"I don't like the charge of it," said the servant,
eyeing Daffodil askance, when she had recovered her gravity.
"It can't escape," one of the watchmen replied.
"We are to stay here; and the guard is at the outer courtyard
entrance, if it could get past us."
"I daresay," said the servant: "but how about my
escaping, if it turns on me?" And she looked uneasily at
Daffodil's teeth and nails.
"Don't be afraid," said Daffodil. "I will not
give you any trouble."
The servant was so startled at being addressed in good Croäxaxican
by the strange being she had thought a sort of deaf and dumb savage that
she gave a loud scream.
"Don't be frightened, Miss," said one of the watchmen.
"They tell me it's only a foreign sort of frog. And you see how
naturally it's learned to talk already."
"I am a Human Being," said Daffodil, drawing herself up.
"Ah! poor thing! That's it--a human being"
said the good-natured watchman. "It can't help it: it's nature. And the Regius Professor of Everything will soon make it just like one of us."
"Well, come along then, human being," said the servant.
"And mind you don't go anywhere without my leave."
The corridor through which Daffodil had come opened only into another
corridor crossing it at right angles. Along this second corridor she now
followed the servant, almost in the dark, for some minutes. Then there was
a wide canal to cross, and a low entrance to grope through, and she was in
what seemed to be a large nursery garden--a nursery garden not only
floored, but walled and roofed, with lines of large oblong
flower-beds cut out in the moss, filled each with one kind of
flower. This was the Queen's Royal Wardrobe room, and the oblong
flower-beds were in fact wardrobe-shelves, arranged, like the
Croäxaxican bookshelves, with strips of moss between them. The clothes
in Croäxaxican wardrobes are placed on the floor or on the walls or on
the ceiling, according to whether their manner of growth is upright,
climbing, or drooping. The ceiling is always pitched very low, so that the
clothes growing there may be within reach.
"What enormous flowers!" said Daffodil. "How
do you get them to grow to such a size?"
"What a silly question!" said the maid. "What use
would they be to us if they were too small?"
Daffodil observed that the rows between which they were passing were of
the same sort of flowers as the servant's skirt. "Is this where
you got your pretty frock?" she inquired.
"It's where the Royal Dresspickers picked it this
morning," said the servant. "All these shelves we're
among now are for the clothes of the Royal Wardrobe-maids to grow
in: where we've come is for the Royal Cook-maids:
and those shelves there to the right, that you can see if you peep between
the stalks of these jackets, are for the Royal Housemaids: and these
common things we are just coming to are for the Royal
Scullery-maids. But where yours are to come from, I can't
imagine. The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary won't surely match you with
Royal Scullery-maids."
They were just entering the shelves for the scullery-maids.
"I should not mind," replied Daffodil; "I think these are
prettier than the other clothes."
"What! these common blue and lilac things! Well! You
are a judge! And just feel how thin they are compared to what
we superior classes wear."
"Are they very common?" asked Daffodil. "I never saw
any like them. They look as if they were big hare-bells made out of
the clouds at the end of sunset."
"They're not to say common," was the answer. "We
of the Royalty don't any of us wear common things, and there are not
many of this sort outside the Royal Wardrobe: but the Royal
Scullery-maids don't count high compared with the other orders
of Royal Servants, and of course their clothes count according."
"And you think these are what I shall have to wear?" said
Daffodil.
"You!" the servant exclaimed in a tone which did not sound
complimentary. "That I don't. I
don't suppose it would be thought of to put upon the Royal Scullery-maids that way. Didn't I tell you so just now?"
"We will not talk about it any more," said Daffodil gravely.
She meant her manner to be a reproof; for certainly the frog was not
polite. But the frog servant-maid, instead of feeling corrected,
burst out laughing. It was the first laugh Daffodil had heard in
Croäxaxican, and it startled her so that she turned first white and
then red. For a moment she thought the frog was cracking to pieces and this
was the noise of the explosion.
"My!" said the servant when she could speak. "The
Regius Professor of Everything has taught you to be somebody!
I suppose you think yourself quite a frog!"
Daffodil replied only by a dignified silence, at which her companion
laughed still louder than before.
They went on through rows of flowers which seemed to Daffodil
interminable. At last she said "Is there much more of this
garden?"
"Garden!" was the astonished reply. "You can't
see the garden from here."
"I mean the garden we are in" said Daffodil.
"I never! Hasn't the Regius Professor of Everything taught
you what's a garden and what's a wardrobe? This is a wardrobe.
Wardrobe--wardrobe; you see--for clothes." And she repeated
several times, very loud, "Wardrobe," "Clothes,"
pointing all round, so that Daffodil might understand.
"What is the difference, then, between a wardrobe and a
garden?" inquired Daffodil.
The frog went off into another fit of laughter. "Well, you
are fun!" she said, when it was over. "Difference
between a wardrobe and a garden! Why, one's a garden and the
other's a wardrobe. Can't you understand?"
"Not yet," said Daffodil.
"Dear! dear! what a deal of explaining you take! There's no
difference between them--at least it's all difference:
one's one and the other's the other."
"Yes," said Daffodil "that is how it is where I come
from, too. But what is a garden?"
"What should it be but a garden? A place where people go to do
nothing and look at the patterns."
"Are the flowers in your gardens as big as these?"
"Flowers! You don't suppose gardeners allow flowers in a
garden?"
"Do they have only leaves, then?"
"Leaves? Flowers and leaves in a garden! That would be fine
untidiness. What do you suppose gardeners are for, if they don't
scrape away everything that tries to grow?"
"Your gardens must be different from ours," was all Daffodil
could say.
"I should think that very likely," said the
frog pointedly. Then, seeing that Daffodil showed no enjoyment of her joke,
she checked as well as she could the laughter it had excited in herself,
and said "Come don't be downcast: I won't laugh at
you any more; and of course it can't be expected that human beings
should have gardens, or anything
else, as good as ours. It's no blame to you; why, there's nothing in the world to match us. Don't you know we're called the inimitable Croäxaxicans?"
"Who call you so?" Daffodil asked, a little tartly.
"We shouldn't be called so if it weren't true and
known to everybody," was the answer. "But, come, I don't
believe you've ever seen a real garden: would you like a peep
at the Queen's Royal Private one?"
"That I should," said Daffodil, whose curiosity was
excited.
The wardrobe-maid, turning into a shelf on the right hand, led
the way in and out among rows of clothes till they came to some canals and
corridors much like those by which they had entered. These led them to a
corridor so low that Daffodil had to stoop, to avoid touching the top with
her head. It was quite dark.
"I can't see here," said Daffodil, hesitating about
going on.
"How should you? Do they see in the dark in your
country?"
"But we put lights in our dark passages."
"Then how do you manage to keep them dark?"
"They are not dark passages when the lights are lit: that is
true," said Daffodil, thinking she saw the point.
"I don't mean whether you call them light or call them
dark: but, if you put light into the passages to the garden, where do
you get the darkness to pass out of?"
"I don't think I quite understand you," said
Daffodil.
"I never thought you did," said the frog, with a giggle.
"Look here, I'll explain. Darkness is darkness and light is
light: you know that much?"
"Yes."
"And, when people want darkness, they don't go and light a
place full of light: now, do they?"
"No," said Daffodil. "Nobody would do that."
"Well then, now you know that, you understand why nobody would
think of lighting the entrance to a garden."
"I don't quite," said Daffodil, as she continued to
grope along the passage, keeping close behind her guide.
But, all at once, the corridor turned a corner: the light burst on
her eyes as she stood in front of what seemed a blaze of colours. Then she
understood that the Croäxaxicans pass to their gardens through a dark
passage in order that they may come suddenly on the broad open space with
its flashing canals, and thus see the many-hued patterns in a
brilliancy beyond the reality, from the contrast with the dusk out of which
they have come upon them.
The garden seemed to Daffodil an immense hall walled, paved, and ceiled,
with patterns of every shape and colour in mosaic of some rough material.
On the floor the patterns were bordered and traced out by runlets and
canals, some but an inch wide, some a yard or two, and by geometrically
shaped pools. A large waterfall plunged from the roof into a round lake in
the centre of the central pattern, and, along the walls, at regular
intervals, were smaller waterfalls descending into pools framed in
variegated
curves and zigzags. Here and there, beside the more important patterns, and in the spray of the waterfalls, were placed rustic seats constructed of shells and fish-bone lattice.
"Oh! what lovely water!" exclaimed Daffodil. "It looks
like green fire."
"It's the best; and there's plenty of it,"
replied the frog-servant. "But there's nothing so
particular about that: anybody has that in their garden. But did you
ever see such lots of patterns and such lots of colours? They
take money to get them. And look at the blue earth: the dye's a
secret, and you won't see that in anybody's garden
but ours. It's only Royalty may use it."
"Is that blue stuff earth?" asked Daffodil, surprised, as
she looked at the blue vandykes to which her attention had been called.
"Of course it's earth. It's all earth here but the
water and the seats. Don't the gardeners in your country use earth
for the garden beds?"
"Yes, but they don't dye it. They put flowers into it for
the patterns."
"The juices of flowers, you mean--to colour it. That's
how our gardeners do, too."
"No, they don't colour the earth; they leave it brown and
they plant--"
"Never mind; they'll learn some day," interrupted the
frog, who did not care to listen to Daffodil's explanation of so
uncivilised a system of gardening. "But let me hear what you think of
the garden. Did you ever see such lovely bright colours?"
"They are not so bright as some of the flowers in the
wardrobe," said Daffodil.
"That's nothing. The flowers grow that way: this is
all artificial."
At that moment there advanced into the garden, from an entrance just
opposite to where Daffodil and her guide were standing, two frogs smaller
than any Croäxaxicans Daffodil had yet seen, followed by two
full-grown frogs holding huge round green leaves over the little
ones' heads, for parasols. Other frogs, apparently nurse-maids
and pages, were coming on behind these, but Daffodil had no time to observe
the procession, for the Royal Wardrobe-maid, exclaiming "Good
gracious! the Royal Nursemaids!" dragged her into the passage and
scrambled back with her to the Royal Wardrobe as fast as they could get
along.
"What is the matter?" asked Daffodil, when they stopped to
take breath, safe among the shelves again.
"Those were the youngest Royal Princesses," replied the
servant.
"But why had we to run away from them?"
"It isn't so much them; it's the Royal Nursemaids,
nasty jealous tell-tales! But they hadn't time to get their
eyes undazzled before we were out of sight."
"Were we trespassing, then?"
"Don't pretend you didn't know" said the frog,
snappishly. "You'll only give me a very low opinion of you. You
can't make me believe you've had the Queen's leave to go
into her Royal Private Garden whenever you choose."
"I must ask you," said Daffodil, "to be so kind as not
again to take me anywhere where I am a trespasser. I am not used to go into
people's premises in an underhand way."
"Then it's to be supposed you don't call breaking in
through their Royal Throne Hall ceiling, and calling all their army out to
keep you quiet, going into people's premises in an underhand
way," retorted the frog.
"That was an accident."
"Well, all I know is you're a trespasser wherever you go in
Croäxaxica: so perhaps you'll be good enough to tell me
where I am to take you." And the frog sat down, as if to
wait for Daffodil's instructions.
"This is not right of you," said Daffodil. "You must
take me where you have been told."
The frog, being vexed at her own imprudence at going into the garden
against orders and uneasy lest harm should come of it, naturally was glad
to be put into a pet. So she jumped up and began to scold satisfactorily.
"Not right, indeed!" exclaimed she. "Who are you to talk
to me? And what is it to you where I was told to take you."
"Not anything," Daffodil replied quietly. "But I think
we ought to go on."
The frog drew herself up to her full height. "Do you know who you
are speaking to?"
"Not quite clearly," Daffodil made answer. "I should
like to know, if you do not mind telling me."
"I don't mind telling you, now you ask respectfully,"
said the frog, mollified by the politeness of the inquiry. "I am a
Royal Under Wardrobe-maid."
"And you have charge of these beautiful flowers?" said
Daffodil.
"Well, not exactly charge. You see there are the Upper Royal
Wardrobe-maids, and the Royal Lady's-
maids, and the Royal Dresspickers, and the Royal Dressmakers. But it's all the same: we're all in the Plenipotentiary Department, and that's the highest there is."
"Shall you ever get higher than Under Wardrobe-maid?"
asked Daffodil sympathisingly.
But the question jarred on the Under Royal Wardrobe-maid's
sensitiveness: it seemed as if Daffodil thought lightly of her
present rank. "Higher!" she cried with a toss of her head,
"I think I'm too high as it is to be gossiping with a human
being. Do come on. The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary will be
tired of waiting for us," and, taking Daffodil's hand, she
rushed off, hopping and bounding, at such a rate that Daffodil, although a
swift runner, was dragged on at a speed far beyond all former experience of
her own powers, and which she felt she could not keep up for long. Dashing
and splashing on through shelves of flowers that seemed to whirl away as
she passed, she ran, as if for her life, until her guide stopped and let go
her hand and, after almost losing her balance by the jerk, she found
herself in the presence of the highest personage in the country after the
Royal Family, the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary.
Seated amid them, on a dais under a canopy of marsh marigolds with broad
green leaves, the great disposer of Croäxaxican comfort and grace was
leaning back, her paws folded on her lap, in an attitude of internal
contemplation. The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary of Croäxaxica was a
person of such remarkable gifts that, until the dawning fame of Prince
Brekekex startled the delighted nation, she
was recognised as the first and far peerless genius in the world. This did not interfere with the just renown of the Regius Professor of Everything and the Head Royal Physician, nor did it disturb their satisfaction with themselves and her: they were not geniuses and did not desire to be considered anything of the sort; for genius, they felt, is a matter of chance, and their wisdom was the result of perfected study. Nor did the growing feeling in Croäxaxica that the poet Prince was perhaps the first genius in the world put the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary really in the position of only second; for she could not make poems and he could not make dresses, so that there was no rivalry between them in their gifts and she remained undisputably paramount in hers.
But, in spite of this dazzling celebrity, and in spite of her exalted
position and authority, her manner was characterised by a modesty which,
from its contrast, kept all in mind of her greatness, and her apparel by a
simplicity which marked her out as the one person in Croäxaxica not in
bondage to the Plenipotentiary Department. To the frequent compliments she
received on this modesty and simplicity, she would reply, with a gentle
smile, "Why praise me for what my nature cannot help? Perhaps I have
a little genius--at least the foolish world seems to fancy
so--and humility is always the mark of true genius. I can't help
being humble, so I have nothing to boast of for being so." She would
also explain that the plainness and ease of her dress must not be ascribed
to her humility alone, but to the high necessities of art.
"Inspiration must be
free from the trammels of self," she would say: "how could I plan costumes if I had to contemplate their physical inconveniences as about to affect myself? and how could I concentrate my thoughts if I had, like those who profit by the exercise of my constraining art, to keep my attention fixed on accommodating my movements to the requirements of my clothes and my body to their outline?" She habitually wore a tunic of some light bell-flower, left to hang round her tall and stately figure in its natural shape, sleeveless, the armholes being merely edged by a daisy frill, and unaccompanied by the fashionable leg-flounces of one flower, or row of flower petals, beneath another, beginning so narrow that the top flounce had to be arranged for by the leg being compressed to the size by a bandage of untearable sedge and so wide in the lowest flounces that the wearer could not place her feet less than a yard apart for fear of crushing the flowers--a garment her own latest invention and without which no noble lady but herself would have had the courage to show herself. But her crimson boots were surmounted by anklets of pearls gleaming out upon the yellow of her beautifully marked skin, and she wore on her forehead a jewel in some lights like a ruby and in some like a topaz, of priceless value, and on her wrists bracelets made of buds of the rarest toadstools. To-day her tunic was a pale pink heather-bell with a crimson edge, and Daffodil, as she stood before her, waiting for her attention, gazed with admiration on the smooth texture and delicate tint of the gigantic flower.
"Pre-eminent Madam," said the Head Secretary
Spinster of the Plenipotentiary Department, "Number Seventy Seven And A Half, Under Royal Wardrobe-maid has at length returned."
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary roused herself from her reverie.
"Seventy Seven And A Half," she said in reproving accents,
"you have been a long while. The Queen has sent to know the reason we
have not finished, and we have not even been able to begin."
"I did my best; I did my very best, Pre-eminent Madam.
I'm ready to drop with running: Pre-eminent Madam can
see how out of breath I am. It was the human being. It would go here, and
it wouldn't go there, and it contradicted, and it sat down, and it
scolded, and it disrespected me; and it's a wonder I ever got here at
all."
"That is serious," said the Dressmaker Plenipotentiary.
"The Queen understood it had been perfectly tamed. It will have to be
taught by severe measures, poor thing. Go to your place, Seventy Seven And
A Half: your excuse is sufficient."
As she turned from the Under Royal Wardrobe-maid she perceived
Daffodil, and was startled into a little croak of surprise followed by a
pause of speechless amazement. "Is this the being Her
Majesty desires us to dress!" she gasped, rather than said. And every
frog of her staff made gestures of despair or contempt, and croaked in
sympathy.
The Dressmaker Plenipotentiary had but the day before returned from a
month's retirement in a secluded wardrobe of her own to which she
withdrew at times, with only one trusted attendant, to
give herself up undisturbed to her inspirations and carry out new inventions; consequently she had not been present at either of Daffodil's appearances in the Great Throne Hall. "What can this wear?" she said mournfully, "I had planned--but no matter what I planned. It was described to me as but an ill-contrived frog in form: but look at it! it is all in and out and round about. And its complexion! like a trout's flesh. And that ball on a peg for a head!--like a button mushroom. What can it wear?"
As these remarks were divided from each other
by minutes of reflection and by sighs of discouragement, Daffodil had time
to think for herself. "Pre-eminent Madam," she
said--first however making one of her successful curtseys, "if
you will give me leave to choose for myself in the wardrobe, I think I can
contrive a set of clothes that I can wear."
"And so you shall," cried the Plenipotentiary, much
relieved. "And to me," she continued, addressing the assembled
staff, "and to me this shall be an opportunity