LITTLE QUEEN PET AND HER KINGDOM.
There was once a little queen who was born to reign over a great rich kingdom called Goldenlands. She had twelve nurses and a hundred and fifty beautiful names: only unfortunately on the day of the christening there was so much confusion and excitement that all the names were lost as they fell out of the bishop's mouth. Nobody saw where they vanished to, and as nobody could find them, the poor little baby had to return to the palace nursery without anything to be called by. They could not christen her over again, so the king offered a reward to the person who should discover the princess's names within the next fifteen years. Every one cried "Poor pet, poor pet!" over the nameless baby, who soon became known as the Princess Pet. But her father and mother took the accident so much to heart that they both died soon after.
Of course, little Pet was considered too young to manage the affairs of her own kingdom, and so she had a great, powerful Government to do it for her. This Government was a most peculiar monster, with nine hundred and ninety-nine heads and scarcely any heart; and when anything was to be decided upon, all the heads had to be laid together, so that it took a long time to make up its mind. It was not at all good to the kingdom, but little Pet did not know anything about that, as she was kept away in her splendid nursery, with all her nurses watching her, while she played with the most wonderful toys. Sometimes she was taken out to walk in the gardens, with three nurses holding a parasol over her head, a page carrying her embroidered train, three nurses walking before, fanning her, and six nurses following behind; but she never had any playfellows, and nothing ever happened at all different from everything else. The only variety in her life was made by startling sounds, which often came echoing to the nursery, of the gate-bell of the palace ringing loudly.
"Why does the bell ring so?" little Pet would cry, and the nurses would answer:
"Oh, it is only the poor!"
"Who are the poor?" asked Pet.
"People who are born to torment respectable folks!" said the head nurse.
"They must be very naughty people!" lisped Pet, and went on with her play.
When Pet grew a little older she became very tired of dolls and skipping-ropes, and she really did not know what to do with herself; so one day, when all the nurses had gone down to dinner at the same time, she escaped from her nursery and tripped down the passages, peering into the corners on every side. After wandering about a long time she came to a staircase, and descending it very quickly she reached a suite of beautiful rooms which had been occupied by her mother. They remained just as the good queen had left them; even the faded roses were turning into dust in the jars. Pet was walking through the rooms very soberly, peering at, and touching everything, when she heard a queer little sound of moaning and whispering and complaining, which came like little piping gusts of wind from somewhere or other.
"Fiss-whiss, whiss, whiss, whiss!" went the little whispers; and "Ah!" and "Ai!" and "Oh!" came puffing after them, like the strangest little sighs.
"Oh, dear, what can it be?" thought Pet, standing in the middle of the room and gazing all round. "I declare I do think it is coming out of the wardrobe!"
An ancient carved wardrobe extended all along one side of the room, and indeed the little sounds seemed to be whistling out through its chinks and keyholes. Pet walked up to it rather timidly; but taking courage, put her ear to the lock. Then she heard distinctly:
"Here we hang in a row,
In a row!
And we ought to have been given
To the poor long ago!"
And besides this strange complaint she caught other little bits grumbles floating about, such as
"Fiss, whiss, whiss!
Did ever I think
I should have come to this?"
And:
"Alack, and well-a-day!
Will nobody come
To take us away?"
As soon as she had recovered from her amazement, Pet opened the wardrobe, and there she saw a long row of gowns, hanging in all sorts of despondent attitudes, some hooked up by their sleeves, others caught by the waist with their bodies doubled together.
"Here is somebody at last, thank goodness!" cried a dark-brown silk which was greatly crumpled, and looked very uncomfortable hanging up by its shoulder.
"Oh, gowns, gowns!" cried Pet, staring at these strange grumblers with her round, blue eyes, "whatever do you want?"
"Want?" cried the brown silk; "why, of course, to be taken out and given to the poor."
"The poor again!" cried Pet. "Who can these poor be at all, I wonder?"
"People who cannot buy clothing enough for themselves," said the brown silk. "When your dear mother was alive she always gave her old gowns to the poor. Only think how nice I should be for the respectable mother of a family to go to church in on Sundays, instead of being rumpled in here out of the daylight with the moths eating me."
"And I," cried a pink muslin, "what a pretty holiday frock I should make for the industrious young school-mistress who supports her poor grandfather and grandmother."
"And I! and I! and I!" shrieked many little rustling voices, each describing the possible usefulness of a particular gown.
"Yes! we should all turn to account," continued the brown silk, "all except, perhaps, one or two very grand, stiff old fogies in velvet and brocade and cloth-of-gold; and even these might be cut up into jackets for the old clown who tumbles on the village green for the children's amusement."
"My breath is quite taken away," cried Pet. "I shall certainly see that you are all taken out and given to the poor immediately."
"She is her mother's daughter after all;" said the brown silk, triumphantly; and Pet closed the door upon a chorus of little murmurs of satisfaction from the imprisoned gowns.
"This is a very curious adventure," thought the little queen, as she trotted on, fancying she saw faces grinning at her out of the furniture and down from the ceiling; and then she stopped again, quite sure she heard very peculiar sounds coming out of an antique bureau which stood in a corner. After her conversation with the gowns this did not surprise her much at all, and she put her ear to the keyhole at once.
"Clink! Clink!
What do you think?
Here we are
Shut up in a drawer,"
cried the queer little voices coming out of the bureau.
"What can this be about, I wonder?" said Pet, and turning the key, peeped in. There she beheld a whole heap of gold and silver lying in the depths of the bureau, all the guineas and shillings hopping about and clinking against each other and singing:
"Take us out
And give us about,
And then we shall do
Some good, no doubt!"
"Why, what do you want to get out for?" asked Pet, looking down at them.
"To help the poor, of course!" said the money. "We were put in here by the good queen, your mother, and saved up for the poor who deserve to be assisted. But now every one has forgotten us, and we are rusting away while there is so much distress in the kingdom."
"Well," said Pet, "I shall see to your case; for I promise you I am going to know more about these wonderful poor."
She shut up the bureau, and went on further exploring the rooms, and now you may be pretty sure her ears were wide open for every sound. It was not long before she heard a creaking and squeaking that came from a large wicker-basket which was twisting about in the most discontented manner.
"Once on a time I was filled with bread,
But now I stand as if I were dead,"
mourned the basket.
"And why were you filled with bread?" asked Pet.
"Your mother used to fill me," squeaked the basket, "and give the bread out of me to feed the poor."
"Why! do you mean to say that the poor have no bread to eat?" asked Pet. "That is really a most dreadful thing. I must speak to my Government about these poor immediately. Whatever my mother did must have been perfectly right at all events, and I shall do the same!"
And off she went back towards her nursery, meeting all her twelve nurses flying along the corridors to look for her.
"Go directly and tell my Government that I want to speak to it," said Queen Pet, quite grandly; and she was brought down to the great Council Chamber.
"Your Majesty has had too much plum-pudding and a bad dream afterwards!" said the Government when Pet had told the whole story about the gowns, and the money, and the bread-basket, and the poor; and then the Government took a pinch of snuff and sent Queen Pet back to her nursery.
The next day, when all the nurses had gone to their dinner again, Pet was leaning out of her nursery window, with her two elbows on the sills and her face between her hands, and she was gazing down on the charming gardens below, and away off over the fields and hills of her beautiful kingdom of Goldenlands. "Where do the poor live, I wonder?" she thought; "and I wonder what they are like? Oh, that I could be a good queen like my mother, and be of use to my people! How I wish that I had a ladder to reach down into the garden, and then I could run away all over my kingdom and find things out for myself."
Just as she thought thus an exquisite butterfly perched on her finger and said gaily,—
"A thousand spiders
All weaving in a row,
Can weave you a ladder
To fit your little toe."
"Can they, indeed?" cried Pet; "and are you acquainted with the spiders?"
"I should think so, indeed," said the butterfly; "I am engaged to be married to a spider; I have been engaged ever since I was a caterpillar."
"Well, just ask them to be so good!" said Pet, and away flew the butterfly, coming back in a moment with a whole cloud of spiders following her.
"Be as quick as you can, please, lest my nurses should come back from dinner," said Pet, as the spiders worked away. "Fortunately they have all good appetites, and cannot bear to leave table without their six helpings of pudding."
The ladder being finished, Pet tripped down it into the garden, where she was hidden at once in a wilderness of roses, out of which she made her way through a wood, and across a stream quite far into the open country of her kingdom.
She was running very fast, with her head down, when she heard a step following her, and a voice speaking to her, and looking round, saw a very extraordinary person indeed. He was very tall and all made of loose, clanking bones; he carried a scythe in one hand, and an hourglass in the other, and he had a pleasant voice, which made Pet not so much afraid of him as she otherwise might have been.
"It is no use trying to run away from me," said this person. "Besides, I wish to do you a good turn. My name is Time."
Pet dropped a trembling courtesy.
"You need not be afraid of me," continued the stranger, "as you have never yet abused me. It is only those who are trying to kill me who have cause to fear me."
"Indeed, sir, I wish to be good to every person," said Pet.
"I know you do," said Time, "and that is why I am bound to help you. The thing you want most is a precious jewel called Experience. You are going now in search of it; yes, you are, though you do not know anything about it as yet. You will know it after you have found it. Now, I am going to give you some instructions."
"Thank you, sir," said Pet, who was delighted to find that he was not a government, and had no intention of bringing her back to her nursery.
"First of all I must tell you," said Time, "that you have a precious gift which was born with you: it is the power of entering into other people whenever you wish, living their lives, thinking their thoughts, and seeing everything as they see it."
"How nice!" cried Pet.
"It is a most useful gift if properly cultivated," said Time, "and it will certainly help you to gain your jewel. Now, whenever you find a person whose life you would wish to know all about for your own instruction, you have only to wish, and immediately your existence will pass into theirs."
"And shall I ever get out again?" asked Pet, who had an inveterate dislike of all imprisonment.
"I am going to tell you about that," said Time. "You must not remain too long locked up in anybody. Here is a curious tiny clock, with a little gold key, and you must take them with you and be very careful of them. Whenever you find that you have passed into somebody else, you must at once wind up your clock and hang it somewhere so that you can see it as you go about. The clock will go for a month, and as soon as it runs down and stops, you will be changed back into your separate self again. A month will be long enough for you to live in each person."
"Oh, thank you, thank you," cried Pet, seizing the clock.
"One thing you must be sure not to forget," said Time, "so attend to me well. There is a mysterious sympathy between you and the clock and the little gold key, and if you lose the key after the clock is wound up the clock will go on forever, or at least until you find the key again. So if you do not want to be shut up in somebody to the end of your life, be careful to keep guard of the key."
"That I will," said Pet.
"And now, good-by," said Time. "You can go on at this sort of thing as long as you like—until you are quite grown up, perhaps; and you couldn't have a better education."