The Magic World

by E. Nesbit

There is a certain country where a king is never allowed to reign while a queen can be found. They like queens much better than kings in that country. I can’t think why. If some one has tried to teach you a little history, you will perhaps think that this is the Salic law. But it isn’t. In the biggest city of that odd country there is a great bell-tower (higher than the clock-tower of the Houses of Parliament, where they put M.P.’s who forget their manners). This bell-tower had seven bells in it, very sweet-toned splendid bells, made expressly to ring on the joyful occasions when a princess was born who would be queen some day. And the great tower was built expressly for the bells to ring in. So you see what a lot they thought of queens in that country. Now in all the bells there are bell-people—it is their voices that you hear when [p161 the bells ring. All that about its being the clapper of the bell is mere nonsense, and would hardly deceive a child. I don’t know why people say such things. Most Bell-people are very energetic busy folk, who love the sound of their own voices, and hate being idle, and when nearly two hundred years had gone by, and no princesses had been born, they got tired of living in bells that were never rung. So they slipped out of the belfry one fine frosty night, and left the big beautiful bells empty, and went off to find other homes. One of them went to live in a dinner-bell, and one in a school-bell, and the rest all found homes—they did not mind where—just anywhere, in fact, where they could find any Bell-person kind enough to give them board and lodging. And every one was surprised at the increased loudness in the voices of these hospitable bells. For, of course, the Bell-people from the belfry did their best to help in the housework as polite guests should, and always added their voices to those of their hosts on all occasions when bell-talk was called for. And the seven big beautiful bells in the belfry were left hollow and dark and quite empty, except for the

clappers who did not care about the comforts of a home.

Now of course a good house does not [p162 remain empty long, especially when there is no rent to pay, and in a very short time the seven bells all had tenants, and they were all the kind of folk that no respectable Bell-people would care to be acquainted with.

They had been turned out of other bells—cracked bells and broken bells, the bells of horses that had been lost in snowstorms or of ships that had gone down at sea. They hated work, and they were a glum, silent, disagreeable people, but as far as they could be pleased about anything they were pleased to live in bells that were never rung, in houses where there was nothing to do. They sat hunched up under the black domes of their houses, dressed in darkness and cobwebs, and their only pleasure was idleness, their only feasts the thick dusty silence that lies heavy in all belfries where the bells never ring. They hardly ever spoke even to each other, and in the whispers that good Bell-people talk in among themselves, and that no one can hear but the bat whose ear for music is very fine and who has himself a particularly high voice, and when they did speak they quarrelled.

And when at last the bells were rung for the birth of a Princess the wicked Bell-people were furious. Of course they had to ring—a bell can’t help that when the rope is pulled—but [p163 their voices were so ugly that people were quite shocked.

‘What poor taste our ancestors must have had,’ they said, ‘to think these were good bells!’

(You remember the bells had not rung for nearly two hundred years.)

‘Dear me,’ said the King to the Queen, ‘what odd ideas people had in the old days. I always understood that these bells had beautiful voices.’

‘They’re quite hideous,’ said the Queen. And so they were. Now that night the lazy Bell-folk came down out of the belfry full of anger against the Princess whose birth had disturbed their idleness. There is no anger like that of a lazy person who is made to work against his will.

And they crept out of the dark domes of their houses and came down in their dust dresses and cobweb cloaks, and crept up to the palace where every one had gone to bed long before, and stood round the mother-of-pearl cradle where the baby princess lay asleep. And they reached their seven dark right hands out across the white satin coverlet, and the oldest and hoarsest and laziest said: