“You that make so many stories,” said Anastasia, as she listened to the prattle of the Môme, “have you no stories for children? Can you not make one for little Solonge?”
“Yes, of course, I might; but you will have to put it in French for her.”
“All right. I try.”
So I thought a little, then I began:
Once upon a time there was a little boy who was very much alone and who dreamed greatly. In his father’s garden he had a tiny corner of his own, and in this corner grew a large pumpkin. The boy, who had never seen a pumpkin so big, thought that it might take a prize at the yearly show in the village, and so every day he fed it with milk, and always with the milk of the brindled cow, which was richest of all.
So the pumpkin grew and grew, and the little boy became so wrapt up in it he thought of little else. At last it grew to such a size that other people began to look at it, and say it would surely take a prize. The little boy became more proud of it than ever, and fed it more and more of the milk of the brindled cow, and took to rubbing it till it shone—with his big brother’s silk handkerchief.
Then one night as he lay in bed he heard a great to-do in the garden, and ran out in his night-dress. There was a patch of ground where grew the pumpkins, and another where grew the squashes, and both seemed greatly disturbed. Fearing for his favourite he hurried forward. No, there it was, great and glossy in the moonlight. He kissed it, and even as he did so it seemed as if he heard from within it a tiny, tinny voice calling his name. In surprise he stepped back, and the next moment a door opened in the side of the pumpkin and a fairy stepped forth.
“I am the Pumpkin King,” said the fairy, “and in the name of the Pumpkin People I bid you welcome.”
Then the boy saw that the inside of the great gourd was hollow, and was lit with a wondrous chandelier of glow-worms. It was furnished like a little chamber, with a bed, table, chairs—such a room as you may see in a house for dolls. The boy wished greatly that he might enter, and even as he wished he found that he had grown very small, as small, indeed, as his own finger.
“Will you not enter?” asked the King with a smile of welcome.