Rag, Tag and Bobtail and Other Magical Stories

by Enid Blyton

  ‘I don’t think we shall like that person much if her things are all like that dreadful vase,’ said Jill. ‘I expect she will have paper flowers instead of real ones, and a china dog instead of a real puppy.’

  ‘And mats that mustn’t be dirtied, and cushions you mustn’t lean against,’ said Leslie. ‘I don’t think we’ll make friends with our new neighbour, Jill.’

  ‘Children, children!’ called Mother. ‘It’s not polite to stare like that. Come away from the wall and play in the garden at the back.’

  The children didn’t bother any more about Miss Bustle. They went to school, played in the garden, went for walks and took no notice of the cottage next door at all. If they had, they would have seen that Miss Bustle was simply longing to smile at them and talk to them. But they ran by Daisy Cottage without a single look.

  Then one day Leslie happened to look at Daisy Cottage from their back garden and he saw the dreadful pink vase standing at one of the windows.

  ‘Oh, Jill, look! There’s that ugly vase again!’ he cried.

  ‘Well, I shan’t look,’ said Jill. ‘It was quite bad enough the first time. Come on, Leslie, let’s play cricket with your new ball.’

  ‘You can bat first,’ said Leslie. ‘I’ll bowl.’

  He bowled his new ball to Jill. She missed it and it went into the rose-bed. She found it and sent it back to Leslie. He bowled again.

  It was an easy ball. Jill lifted her bat and swiped at it. Crack! She sent the ball right up into the air, spinning over the wall next door in the direction of the upstairs windows. The children watched it in fright. Would it break a window?

  No – it struck the tall pink vase that stood at an open window and broke it in half! Crash! The pieces fell down inside the window. The cricket-ball rolled along the window-ledge and fell outside the window down to the flower-bed below.

  The children looked at one another in dismay. Whatever would Miss Bustle say? They waited for her to put her head out of the window – but nothing happened.

  ‘Perhaps she’s out,’ said Leslie.

  ‘Yes, I remember now – she is,’ said Jill. ‘I saw her go out with a basket about half an hour ago.’

  ‘Let’s go and get our ball,’ said Leslie. So they climbed quickly over the wall, found their ball and climbed back. They sat down on the grass and looked at one another.

  They were both thinking the same thing. If Miss Bustle was out, perhaps they needn’t own up to breaking the vase. She might think the curtain had blown against it and knocked it down.

  ‘Do you think we need say anything?’ asked Jill at last.

  Leslie went red. ‘We needn’t,’ he said. ‘But we must, Jill. We’d be cowards not to own up.’

  ‘And, oh, dear, I expect Miss Bustle loves that vase better than anything in the world,’ said Jill, with a groan. ‘And we’ll have to buy another out of our money-box.’

  ‘Look, there she is, coming back,’ said Leslie. ‘Come on, Jill, let’s get it over while we feel brave.’

  So they went to the door of Daisy Cottage and knocked. Miss Bustle opened the door and stared at them in surprise.

  ‘Please,’ said Leslie, ‘we’ve come to say we’re very very sorry but our cricket-ball broke your pink vase and if you’ll tell us how much it was we’ll buy you another.’

  ‘Broken that pink vase!’ exclaimed Miss Bustle. ‘Have you really?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Jill, very red in the face.

  ‘Well, I am glad it’s broken at last!’ said Miss Bustle, in a delighted voice. ‘An old friend gave it to me and I’ve always hated it, but I didn’t like to throw it away as it was given to me. I’ve always hoped it would get broken, it was so very ugly, but somehow it never did. And now at last it’s smashed. Oh, dear me, I am glad! Come in, do, and have a bun and some lemonade, and see my new puppy. I only brought him home today.’

  Well, would you believe it! Jill and Leslie were so surprised and delighted to hear that Miss Bustle, instead of being angry with them, was really pleased! They could hardly believe their ears. They stepped inside and found that Daisy Cottage was the gayest, prettiest, cosiest little place they had ever seen.

  She showed them the puppy in his basket and then went to get the lemonade and buns.

  ‘Isn’t it a pretty house?’ said Jill to Leslie. ‘Not a bit like we imagined. And isn’t Miss Bustle nice?’

  ‘You know,’ said Miss Bustle, hurrying back with a jug, ‘I didn’t think you were very nice children. You never spoke to me or smiled. I thought you were horrid. But now I know better. It was so nice of you to come and own up about the vase, because it might have been one I liked. And I can see now that you are nice, bright, smiley children.’

  Jill told Miss Bustle how they had seen the pink vase and hated it. ‘We were silly!’ she said. ‘We thought you’d be like that vase, so we didn’t bother about being good neighbours at all. Do forgive us.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ said Miss Bustle, setting ginger buns in front of them. ‘I’d forgive anyone anything if they had broken that horrid pink vase. Do come and see me often. I’ve got a nephew and niece coming to stay with me soon, so perhaps you would come out for picnics and motor rides with us?’

  ‘Oh, rather!’ said Jill and Leslie happily. ‘Thank you very much!’

  Now they are so much in Daisy Cottage with Miss Bustle and the puppy that their mother says she really thinks they ought to live there altogether!

  ‘Wasn’t it a good thing we owned up about that broken vase!’ Jill often says to Leslie. ‘We should have missed a lot of fun if we hadn’t!’

  Whiskers and the Parrot

  Whiskers the cat lived with Miss Nellie, and was her great pet. He had a special chair of his own with a special cushion, a china dish with kittens all round it, and a saucer of blue and yellow.

  So you can guess that he thought a great deal of himself. The other cats he met out in the garden didn’t like Whiskers at all. They thought he was selfish, proud and stuck-up.

  ‘One day you’ll have your punishment,’ said Tailer, the next-door tabby. But Whiskers yawned in his face very rudely and didn’t even bother to answer.

  And then Miss Nellie bought a parrot in a cage! Good gracious me, you should have seen Whiskers’s face when he saw the parrot sitting in its cage in a sunny corner of the dining-room. The cage hung from a hook in the ceiling, and the parrot sat in the sun and fluffed out all her feathers.

  She saw Whiskers and cocked her grey and red head on one side.

  ‘Hallo, hallo, hallo!’ she said.

  Whiskers nearly shot out of the room with fright. What was this thing that looked like a big bird and talked like a human being?

  ‘Woof, woof, woof!’ said the parrot, pretending to bark like a dog.

  Whiskers mewed in fright and ran under the table. He thought there really was a dog in the room.

  ‘Ha-ha, ha-ha, ha-ha!’ jeered the parrot. ‘Hallo, hallo! Pretty Polly, pretty Polly!’

  Just then Miss Nellie came into the room and laughed to see Whiskers under the table.

  ‘Why, Whiskers!’ she cried. ‘Surely you are not frightened of my Polly parrot? I want you to be friends.’

  But that was just what Whiskers was not going to be! As soon as he was used to the parrot and knew that it was only a big bird that could talk, he made up his mind to catch Polly somehow. He would wait until Miss Nellie was safely out of the way and then he would get down that big cage and eat the parrot.

  So he waited his time, and at last his chance came. Miss Nellie went out to tea with a friend and left her parrot and her cat shut up in the dining-room together.

  ‘Miaow!’ said Whiskers fiercely, looking up at the cage. ‘Now I’m going to get you!’

  ‘Pretty Polly, pretty Polly!’ cried the parrot, climbing up and down her big cage. ‘Hallo, hallo!’

  Whiskers crouched to spring up at the cage. He leapt right up in the air and sprang on to the side of the cage. Crash – crash! The hook cam
e out of the ceiling and the cage fell with a loud bang on to the floor!

  Whiskers was frightened. He didn’t know that his weight would bring the cage down. The parrot was frightened too. Whiskers ran into a corner to hide.

  The parrot looked round – and saw that the crash had made the door of the cage fly open. Ha! Now she could get out and fly round a bit!

  Out of the cage she hopped and flew up to the top of the curtain. Whiskers watched her in surprise. Perhaps he could get that parrot now. He crept out from the corner and lay watching, swishing his tail from side to side. The parrot saw the moving tail and suddenly flew down to the table. Before the surprised cat knew what was happening the parrot shot down and nipped his tail hard, right at the tip.

  ‘Miaow!’ cried the cat in pain and surprise.

  ‘Ha-ha, ha-ha!’ laughed the parrot, sitting on the top of the clock. Whiskers leapt at the big bird, who at once spread her wings and flew to the electric light over the table, screeching loudly as she went. Then it was the parrot’s turn. She suddenly flew at Whiskers and pecked him on the nose!

  ‘Miaow!’ wailed the cat, and the parrot flew up to the top of a picture, where she screeched and squawked very happily.

  Whiskers wondered what to do. Then he thought of a good idea. He would creep into the parrot’s cage and lie down there. Perhaps when it was dark the parrot would go back to her cage again and then Whiskers could get her! So as soon as the parrot’s back was turned, Whiskers crept into the cage. Polly was happily pulling all the flowers out of a vase and took no notice of Whiskers at all.

  Then she looked round to see where the cat was, and when she spied him in the cage how she laughed! In a trice the parrot flew down and shut the door of the cage with a clang. Whiskers was a prisoner!

  ‘Ha-ha, ha-ha!’ chuckled the mischievous parrot in glee, and settled down on Whiskers’s own cushion, in Whiskers’s own chair. Soon Whiskers saw that the parrot was pulling all the fluff out of the cushion!

  Whiskers mewed angrily and tried to get out of the cage – but the door was fast shut. Whiskers clawed at the door, but it was no good. He could not open it!

  And there Miss Nellie found him when she arrived home again. The first thing she saw when she switched on the light was the parrot fast asleep on the curtain-rod. Then she saw the cage on the floor, and to her great surprise, spied Whiskers inside, with the door fast shut!

  ‘O-ho, Whiskers!’ she cried. ‘So you jumped at the cage and made it fall down, did you? And Polly escaped out of the cage and you got in! And somehow or other the door was shut and made you a prisoner! Well, it serves you right. I shall leave you there for the night, and then, perhaps, you won’t even look at the parrot-cage again.’

  So there poor Whiskers had to stay all night long, and Polly laughed and chuckled, screeched and squawked whenever she thought of him.

  The next day the cage was opened and Whiskers crawled out. He ran into the garden, and found that all the cats there had heard what had happened – and how they teased him!

  ‘You won’t be so proud now, Whiskers!’ they said. ‘Who got caught in the parrot-cage? Ho-ho!’

  And now Whiskers never takes any notice of the parrot at all, and would never dream of eating it – but Polly hasn’t forgotten. She cries: ‘Poor pussy, poor pussy!’ whenever she sees Whiskers – and he doesn’t like it at all!

  The Odd Little Bird

  Once upon a time there was a fine fat hen who was sitting on twelve eggs. Eleven of the eggs were brown but the twelfth was a funny greeny-grey colour. The hen didn’t like it very much. She thought it must be a bad egg.

  ‘Still,’ she thought to herself, ‘I’ll see if it hatches out with the others. If it doesn’t, well, it will show it is a bad egg.’

  After many days the hen was sure her eggs were going to hatch.

  ‘I can hear a little “cheep cheep” in one of them!’ she clucked excitedly to all the other hens. Sure enough one of the eggs cracked, and out came a fluffy yellow chick, who cuddled up in the mother-hen’s feathers with a cheep of joy.

  Then one by one all the other eggs cracked too, and tiny fluffy birds crept out – all except the greeny-grey egg. No chick came from that. It lay there in the nest unhatched.

  ‘Well, I’ll give it another day or two,’ said the hen, sitting down on it again. ‘After that I won’t sit on it any more.’

  In two days the hen found that the twelfth egg was cracking too. Out came a small bird – but it wasn’t a bit like the other chicks!

  It was yellow, certainly – but its beak was bigger and quite different. Its body was different too, and the little creature waddled about clumsily instead of running with the others.

  The mother-hen didn’t like it. She pecked it and clucked: ‘Oh, you funny-looking little thing! I’m sure you don’t belong to me.’

  The other chicks didn’t like the little waddling bird, either. They called it names and shooed it away when it went to feed with them. It was sad and unhappy, for not even the mother-hen welcomed it or called it to enjoy a tit-bit as she did the others.

  ‘I’m the odd one,’ it said to itself. ‘I wonder why? I can’t run fast like the others, and I don’t look like them either. I am ugly and nobody wants me.’

  The odd little bird grew faster than the others, and at last it was so much bigger that the little chicks didn’t like to peck it any more, for they were afraid it might peck back and hurt them. So they left it alone, and stopped calling it names.

  But the mother-hen was not afraid of it. She was often very cross with it indeed, especially when the rain came and made puddles all over the hen-run.

  For then the odd little bird would cheep with delight and go splashing through the puddles in joy.

  ‘You naughty, dirty little creature!’ clucked the mother-hen. ‘Come back at once. No chicken likes its feet to be wet. You must be mad, you naughty little thing!’

  Then the odd little bird would be well pecked by the hen, and would sit all by itself in a corner, watching the rain come down and wishing it could go out in it.

  One day it found a hole in the hen-run and crept through it. Not far off it saw a piece of water, and on it were some lovely white birds, swimming about and making loud quacking noises. Something in the odd little bird’s heart cried: ‘Oh, if only I could be with those lovely birds, how happy I should be!’

  But then it grew sad. ‘No,’ it said to itself, ‘I am an odd little bird. Nobody wants me. But all the same I will just go to the edge of the water and paddle my feet in it. I can run away if those big white birds chase me.’

  So off it went and paddled in the water. It was lovely. At first the big white ducks took no notice of the little bird, and then two came swimming up quite near to him.

  ‘Hallo!’ they cried ‘What a little beauty you are! Come along with us and have a swim. We’d be proud to have you.’

  At first the little bird didn’t know that the ducks were talking to him. But when he saw that they really were, he was too astonished to answer. At last he found his voice, and said: ‘But, lovely creatures, surely you don’t want me, such an odd, ugly little bird as I am!’

  ‘You’re not odd or ugly,’ cried the ducks. ‘You are a beautiful little duck, like us. Come along, it is time you learnt to swim. Don’t go back to those funny little chicks any more. Live with us, and have a fine swim on the water!’

  The odd little bird could hardly believe what he heard. So he wasn’t odd or ugly, after all! He was only: different from the chicks because he was a duckling! And he would grow up to be like these lovely white creatures, and swim with them on the water. Oh, what happiness!

  ‘Quack, quack!’ he said, for the first time, and swam boldly out to join the ducks. The old mother-hen spied him through the hole in the run and squawked to him to come back. But he waggled his tail and laughed.

  ‘No, no!’ he cried. ‘You will never make a hen of me. I’m a duck, a duck, a duck!’

  The Meccano Motor-Car

&nb
sp; Tom had made a Meccano motor-car to put Elizabeth’s dolls in. It was rather a curious-looking car, but when Elizabeth had put in a few little cushions out of her dolls’ house, and sat her dolls in the seat, it looked quite real.

  ‘We shall have to push it along the floor because it won’t go like a real car,’ said Tom. ‘Wait a minute though! Where’s my clockwork engine? I know how to take the clockwork out of that, and perhaps I can put it into the Meccano motor-car.’

  He tried it – and it worked! He wound up his home-made motor-car and it ran along the floor by itself, taking the dolls with it. Tom and Elizabeth were delighted.

  They showed it to Mummy when she came to put them to bed.

  ‘It’s very good,’ she said. ‘Leave it there on the floor, and I’ll show it to Daddy when he comes in.’

  So they left it there, with all the dolls sitting on the seats. And that night, when everyone was asleep, you should have seen how excited those dolls were! They came alive and called to the sailor doll to wind up the Meccano motor-car to let it take them round and round the nursery again.

  ‘I say!’ said the curly-haired doll suddenly. ‘Let’s call the pixies in! They’re holding a party under the lilac bush tonight, and they would so love to see our car.’

  So they called to the pixies, and they all came tumbling in at the window in great excitement.

  ‘Let’s have a ride, let’s have a ride!’ they cried, when they saw the motor-car. In they got, and one of the dolls showed them how to steer the little wheel. The pixies soon learnt how to drive, and my goodness me! how they tore about the nursery, almost running over the pink rabbit and nearly knocking down the blue teddy-bear.

  They made such a noise that Tom and Elizabeth woke up. They slept in the room next to the nursery, and they sat up in bed and wondered whatever was happening.