“That cannot be part of Punishment Land!” exclaimed Kitty, watching the vision growing there.
She saw a place where tarts grew on bushes and candies strewed the ground, where the flowers sparkled with sugar, where there was a river of syrup on which a boat of chocolate lay at anchor, and sugar swans curved their long necks. A bird flew out of the fog; it fell down ready roasted on the ground. A little rabbit scampered along, then suddenly it stood rigid, turned to candy. A cowslip ball was tossed out of the mist; as it fell, it became a plum-pudding stuck all over with almonds.
A number of children were in that pleasant place, but they did not seem to be enjoying it. Their faces were the color of boiled cauliflowers, and they rubbed their little stomachs with a very dismal expression, sighing: “Oh, that nasty sweetmeat! Oh, that dreadful pie! Oh, that tart! that jam! Oh, to be hungry again and relish a mug of milk!”
A faint and querulous voice addressed Kitty.
“Take my advice and never eat a tart. I shall never eat one again when I leave this place, never.”
She saw that the speaker was the little lad she had met in the lane and whose conversation always turned upon plum-cakes and sweets. He shook his head warningly and woefully as he spoke.
“I should have thought this is just the place you would have liked,” she said.
“It is a dreadful place. You have always a lump here;” and he rubbed himself round and round. “I begin to hate sugar. I can’t touch anything but it turns to sugar. I can’t play because I feel so ill, and I can’t think because my head feels like a pudding, and when I go to sleep I have dreadful dreams. Listen, there are the dreams coming! Oh! oh! oh! and I am going to sleep, to sleep.”
Kitty heard a rustling. She thought the dreams would come through the fog. Not a bit of it. Out of tarts that hung on the bushes, out of the pebbles, the sugar flowers, the syrup river, the chocolate boat, they came, growling, squealing, squeaking, jumping, trotting, whirling, hopping. Old men with very hooked noses, and legs like asparagus, waving about dreadful bottles of medicines. Old women with gray wisps of hair and green-eyed black cats on their shoulders. Red imps making somersaults and waving their arms like windmills, children with whiskers, frogs as big as shoulders of mutton, with eyes on fire, pigs with bristles like porcupines. All these phantoms filled the picture on the fog. They jumped upon the children’s chests, and presently there was a sound of long, dreary snores. The fat pig with the bristles jumped upon the boy who had been speaking to Kitty. “Grunt, grunt,” went the pig. “Snore, snore,” went the boy, and to these sounds the vision slowly faded away.