by Edith Nesbit
He rushed into the chief ironmonger’s and bought a pair of skates and a gimlet. In less time than I can write it he had scurried back to the beach, bored holes in his gold heels, fastened on the skates, and was skating away over the brown sea towards Allexanassa. For the treacle, heated to boiling-point by the passing of the dragon, had now grown cold, and, of course, it was now toffee! Far off, Eliza had had the same idea as soon as she saw the toffee, and, of course, as Queen of Allexanassa, she could skate beautifully. So the two skated into each other’s arms somewhere near the middle of the channel between the two islands.
They stood telling each other how happy they were for a few moments, or it may have been a few hours; and when they turned to go back to Plurimiregia they found that the toffee-ice of the treacle sea was black with crowds of skaters — for the Allexanassians and the Plurimiregians had found out the wonderful truth, and were hurrying across to pay visits to their friends and relations in the opposite islands. Near the shore the toffee was hidden by troops of children, who had borrowed the family hammers and were chipping into the solid toffee and eating the flakes of it as they splintered off.
People were pointing out to each other the spot where the dragon had sunk, and when they perceived Billy the King and Eliza the Queen they sent up a shout that you could have heard miles out at sea — if there had been any sea — which, of course, there wasn’t. The Prime Minister had lost no time in issuing a proclamation setting forth Billy’s splendid conduct in ridding the country of the dragon, and all the populace were in a frenzy of gratitude and loyalty.
Billy turned on a little tap inside his head by some means which I cannot describe to you, and a bright flood of cleverness poured through his brain.
‘After all,’ he said to Eliza, ‘they were going to give us to the dragon to save their own lives. It’s bad, I know. But I don’t know that’s it’s worse than people who let other people die of lead-poisoning because they want a particular glaze on their dinner-plates, or let people die of phosphorus-poisoning so that they may get matches at six boxes a penny. We’re as well off here as in England.’
‘Yes,’ said Eliza.
So they agreed to stay and go on being King and Queen, on condition that the Prime Minister consented to give up straws altogether, even in moments of crisis.
‘I will, your Majesties,’ he said, adding, with a polite bow, ‘I shall not need a single straw under your Majesty’s able kingship.’
And all the people cheered like mad.
Eliza and Billy were married in due course. The kingdoms are now extremely happy. Both are governed by Billy, who is a very good King because he knows so much. Eliza got him to change the law about Queens knowing everything, because she wanted her husband to be cleverer than she was. But Billy didn’t want to make laws to turn his Eliza stupid, so he just changed the law — only a little bit — so that the King knows everything a man ought to know, and the Queen knows everything that ought to be known by a woman. So that’s all right.
Exploring expeditions were fitted out to find the edge of the toffee. It was found to stand up in cliffs two hundred feet high, overhanging the real, live, salt-watery sea. The King had ships built at once to sail on the real sea and carry merchandise to other lands. And so Allexanassa and Plurimiregia grew richer and richer every day. The merchandise, of course, is toffee, and half the men in the kingdoms work in the great toffee-mines. All the toffee you buy in shops comes from there. And the reason why some of the cheaper kinds you buy are so gritty is, I need hardly say, because the toffee-miners will not remember, before they go down into the mines, to wipe their muddy boots on the doormats provided by Billy the King, with the Royal Arms in seven colours on the middle of each mat.
THE PRINCESS AND THE CAT
The day when everything began to happen to the Princess began just like all her ordinary days. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the Princess jumped out of bed and ran into the nursery to let the mice out of the traps in the nursery cupboard. The traps were set every night with a little bit of cheese in each, and every morning nurse found that not a single trap had caught a single mouse. This was because the Princess always let them go. No one knew this except the Princess and, of course, the mice themselves. And the mice never forgot it.
Then came bath and breakfast, and then the Princess ran to the open window and threw out the crumbs to the birds that flew down fluttering and chirping into the marble terrace. Before lessons began she had an hour for playing in the garden. But she never began to play till she had been round to see if any rabbits or moles were caught in the traps the palace gardeners set. The gardeners were lazy, and seldom got to work before half-past eight, so she always had plenty of time for this.
Then came lessons with dear old Professor Ouatidontnoisuntwuthnoing, and then more play, and dinner, and needlework, and play again.
And now it was teatime.
‘Eat up your bread-and-butter, your Highness,’ said nurse, ‘and then you shall have some nice plummy cake.’
‘I don’t feel plum-cakey at all to-day, somehow,’ said the Princess. ‘I feel just exactly as if something was going to happen.’
‘Something’s always happening,’ said nurse.
‘Ah! but I mean something horrid,’ said the Princess. ‘I expect uncle’s going to make some nasty new law about me. Last time it was: “The Princess is only to wear a white frock on the first Sunday in the month.” He said it was economy, but I know it was only spite.’
‘You mustn’t say that, dear,’ said nurse. ‘You know your rosy and bluey frocks are just as pretty as the white;’ but in her heart she agreed with the Princess Everilda.
The Princess’s father and mother had died when she was quite little, and her uncle was Regent. Now, you will have noticed that there is something about uncles which makes it impossible for them to be good in fairy stories. So of course this uncle was bad, as bad as he could be, and everyone hated him.
In fact, though it was now, as I have said, everybody’s teatime, nobody was making any tea: instead they were making a revolution. And just as the Princess was looking at the half-moon-shaped hole left by her first bite into her first piece of bread-and-butter, the good Professor burst into the nursery with his great gray wig all on one side, crying out in a very loud and very choky voice:
‘The revolution! It’s come at last. I knew the people would never stand that last tax on soap.’
‘The Princess!’ said nurse, turning very pale.
‘Yes, I know,’ said the Professor. ‘There’s a boat on the canal, blue sails with gold letters “P.P.” — Pupil of the Professor. It’s waiting. You go down there at once. I’ll take the Princess out down the back stairs.’
He caught the Princess by her pink bread-and-buttery hand, and dragged her away.
‘Hurry, my dear,’ he panted; ‘it’s as much as your life is worth to delay a minute.’
But he himself delayed quite three minutes, and that was one minute too long. He had just run into the palace library for the manuscript of his life’s work, ‘Everything Easily Explained,’ when the revolutionary crowd burst in, shouting ‘Liberty and Soap!’ and caught him. They did not see the Princess Everilda, because he had just time, when he heard them coming, to throw a red and green crochet antimacassar over her, and to hide her behind an armchair.
‘When they’ve taken me away, go down the back stairs, and try to find the boat,’ he whispered, just before they came and took him away.
And then Everilda was left alone. When everything was quiet, she said to herself: ‘Now, you mustn’t cry; you must do as you’re told.’ And she went down the palace back-stairs, and out through the palace kitchen into the street.
She had never set foot in the streets before, but she had been driven through them in a coach with four white horses, and she knew the way to the canal.
The canal boat with the blue sails was waiting, and she would have got to it safely enough, but she heard a rattling sound, and wh
en she looked she saw two boys tying an old rusty kettle to a cat’s tail.
‘You horrid boys!’ she said; ‘let poor pussy alone.’
‘Not us,’ said the boys.
Everilda instantly slapped them both, and they were so surprised that they let the cat go. It scuttled and scurried off, and so did the Princess. The boys threw stones after her and also after the cat, but fortunately they were both very bad shots and nobody was hit.
Even then the Princess would have got safely away, but she saw a boy sitting on a doorstep crying. So she stopped to ask what was the matter.
‘I’m hungry,’ said the boy, ‘and father and mother are dead, and my uncle beat me, so I’m running away — —’
‘Oh,’ said the Princess, ‘so am I. What fun! And I’ve got a horrid uncle, too. You come with me, and we’ll find my nurse. She’s running away, too. Make haste, or it’ll be too late.’
But when they got to the corner, it was too late.
The revolutionary crowd caught them; they shouted ‘Liberty and Soap!’ and they sent the boy to the workhouse, and they put the Princess in prison; and a good many of them wanted to cut off her pretty little head then and there, because they thought she would be sure to grow up horrid like her uncle the Regent.
But all the people who had ever been inside the palace said what a nice little girl the Princess really was, and wouldn’t hear of cutting off her darling head. So at last it was decided to get rid of her by enchantment, and the Head Magician to the Provisional Revolutionary Government was sent for.
‘Certainly, citizens,’ he said, ‘I’ll put her in a tower on the Forlorn Island, in the middle of the Perilous Sea — a nice strong tower, with only one way out.’
‘That’s one too many. There’s not to be any way out,’ said the people.
‘Well, there’s a way out of everything, you know,’ said the Magician timidly — he was trembling for his own head—’but it’s fifty thousand millions to one against her ever finding it.’
So they had to be content with that, and they fetched Everilda out of her prison; and the Magician took her hand and called his carriage, which was an invention of his own — half dragon, and half motor-car, and half flying-machine — so that it was a carriage and a half, and came when it was called, tame as any pet dog.
He lifted Everilda in, and said ‘Gee up!’ to his patent carriage, and the intelligent creature geed up right into the air and flew away. The Princess shut her eyes tight, and tried not to scream. She succeeded.
When the Magician’s carriage got to the place where it knew it ought to stop, it did stop, and tumbled Everilda out on to a hard floor, and went back to its master, who patted it, and gave it a good feed of oil, and fire, and water, and petroleum spirit.
The Princess opened her eyes as the sound of the rattling dragon wings died away. She was alone — quite alone. ‘I won’t stay here,’ said Everilda; ‘I’ll run away again.’
She ran to the edge of the tower and looked down. The tower was in the middle of a garden, and the garden was in the middle of a wood, and the wood was in the middle of a field, and after the field there was nothing more at all except steep cliffs and the great rolling, raging waves of the Perilous Sea.
‘There’s no way to run away by,’ she said; and then she remembered that even if she ran away, there was now nowhere to run to, because the people had taken her palace away from her, and the palace was the only home she had ever had — and where her nurse was goodness only knew.
‘So I suppose I’ve got to live here till someone fetches me,’ she said, and stopped crying, like a brave King’s daughter as she was.
‘I’ll explore,’ said Everilda all alone; ‘that will be fun.’ She said it bravely, and really it was more fun than she expected. The tower had only one room on each floor. The top floor was Everilda’s bedroom; she knew that by her gold-backed brushes and things with ‘E. P.’ on them that lay on the toilet-table. The next floor was a sitting-room, and the next a dining-room, and the last of all was a kitchen, with rows of bright pots and pans, and everything that a cook can possibly want.
‘Now I can play at cooking,’ said the Princess. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that. If only there was something to cook!’
She looked in the cupboards, and there were lots of canisters and jars, with rice, and flour, and beans, and peas, and lentils, and macaroni, and currants, and raisins, and candied peel, and sugar, and sago, and cinnamon. She ate a whole lump of candied citron, and enjoyed it very much.
‘I shan’t starve, anyway,’ she said. ‘But oh! of course, I shall soon eat up all these things, and then — —’
In her agitation she dropped the jar; it did not break, but all the candied peel rolled away into corners and under tables. Yet when she picked the jar up it was as full as ever.
‘Oh, hooray!’ cried Everilda, who had once heard a sentry use that low expression; ‘of course it’s a magic tower, and everything is magic in it. The jars will always be full.’
The fire was laid, so she lighted it and boiled some rice, but it stuck to the pot and got burned. You know how nasty burned rice is? and the macaroni she tried to cook would not get soft. So she went out into the garden, and had a very much nicer dinner than she could ever have cooked. Instead of meat she had apples, and instead of vegetables she had plums, and she had peaches instead of pudding.
There were rows and rows of beautiful books in the sitting-room, and she read a little, and wrote a long letter to nurse, in case anyone ever came who knew nurse’s address and would post it for her. And then she had a nectarine-and-mulberry tea.
By this time the sun was sinking all red and splendid beyond the dark waters of the Perilous Sea, and Everilda sat down on the window seat to watch it.
I shall not tell you whether she cried at all then. Perhaps you would have cried just a little if you had been in her place.
‘Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!’ she said, sniffing slightly. (Perhaps she had a cold.) ‘There’s nobody to tuck me up in bed — nobody at all.’
And just as she said it something fat and furry flew between her and the sunset. It hovered clumsily a moment, and then swooped in at the window.
‘Oh!’ cried the Princess, very much frightened indeed.
‘Don’t you know me?’ said the stout furry creature, folding its wings. ‘I’m the cat you saved from the indignity of a rusty kettle in connection with my honourable tail.’
‘But that cat hadn’t got wings,’ said Everilda, ‘and you’re much bigger than it, and it couldn’t talk.’
‘How do you know it couldn’t talk,’ said the Cat; ‘did you ask it?’
‘No,’ said the Princess.
‘Well, then!’ said the Cat ‘And as for wings, I needn’t wear them if you’d rather I didn’t.’
The Cat took off her wings, rolled them neatly up, like your father rolls his umbrella, tied them round with a piece of string, and put them in the left-hand corner drawer in the bureau.
‘That’s better,’ said Everilda.
‘And as for size,’ said the Cat, ‘if I stayed ordinary cat-size I shouldn’t be any use to you. And I’ve come to be cook, companion, housemaid, nurse, professor, and everything else, so — —’
‘Oh, don’t,’ said the Princess—’don’t get any bigger.’
For while she was speaking the Cat had been growing steadily, and she was now about the size of a large leopard.
‘Certainly not,’ said the Cat obligingly; ‘I’ll stop at once.’
‘I suppose,’ said the Princess timidly, ‘that you’re magic?’
‘Of course,’ said the Cat; ‘everything is, here. Don’t you be afraid of me, now! Come along, my pet, time for bed.’
Everilda umped, for the voice was the voice of her nurse; but it was also the voice of the Cat.
‘Oh!’ cried the Princess, throwing her arms round the cat’s large furry neck, ‘I’m not afraid of any thing when you speak like that.’
So, after all, she had s
omeone to tuck her up in bed. The Cat did it with large, soft, furry, clever paws, and in two minutes Everilda was fast asleep.
And now began the long, lonely, but all the same quite happy time which the Princess and the Cat spent together on the Forlorn Island.
Everilda had lessons with the Cat — and then it was the Professor’s voice that the Cat spoke with; and the two did the neat little housework of the tower together — and then the Cat’s voice was like the voices of the palace housemaids. And they did the cooking and then the Cat’s voice was the cook’s voice. And they played games together — and then the voice of the Cat was like the voices of all sorts of merry children. It was impossible to be dull with a companion who changed so often.
‘But who are you really?’ the Princess used to ask.
And the Cat always answered:
‘I give it up! Ask another!’ as if the Princess had been playing at riddles.
‘How is it our garden is always so tidy and full of nice fruit and vegetables?’ the Princess asked once, when they had been on the island about a year.
‘Oh,’ said the Cat, ‘didn’t you know? The moles you used to let out of the traps do the digging, and the birds you used to feed bring the seeds in their little beaks, and the mice you used to save from the palace mouse-traps do the weeding and raking with their sharp little teeth, and their fine, neat, needly claws.’
‘But how did they get here?’ asked the Princess.
‘The usual way — swimming and flying,’ said the Cat.
‘But aren’t the mice afraid of you?’
‘Of me?’ The great Cat drew herself up to her full height. ‘Anyone would think, to hear you, that I was a common cat.’ And she was really cross for nearly an hour.
That was the only approach to a quarrel that the two ever had.
Sometimes, at first, the Princess used to say: