Oswald Bastable and Others Part 35

'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 n.o.body to tuck me up in bed--n.o.body 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 someone 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.