“I know, I know, little lad,” said the youth, and his voice was clear, like bird-notes that were turning into words. “I, too, tell the message, making it in a song.”
And these words made Peter glad, so that his strength was new, and he ran on with the poet’s gentle music in his ears.
I cannot tell you how far Peter went, but he went very far, and to many a lonely outpost, and away and away on a drear frontier. It was long to go and hard to do, but that is the way the world is made; and little Peter went on, now weary, now frightened, now blithe, now in good company, now alone and in the dark. I cannot tell you all the adventures he had and all the things he did—perhaps you will know these in some other way, sometime. And there were those to whom he told the message who listened, or set out in haste for the king’s palace; and some promised that they would go another day, and a few ran to tell others. But many and many were like the hundred heralds and the thousand trumpeters and the king’s High Council, and found many a reason why they might not set out. And some there were who mocked Peter, saying that the world indeed was doing very well without their help and would work itself out if only one would wait; and others would not even listen to the little lad.
At last, one morning when the whole world seemed glad that it was beginning and seemed to long to tell about it, little Peter entered a city, decorated for a festival. Everywhere were garlands of vines and of roses, bright rugs and fluttering pennons and gilded things, as if the world had been long enough begun so that already there were time to take holidays. The people were flooding the streets and crowding the windows, and through their holiday dress Peter could see how some minced and mocked a little like apes, and others peered about like giraffes, and others ravened for food and joy, like the beggar or the bear or the tiger, and others kept the best, like swine, or skulked like curs, or plodded like horses, or prattled like parrots. Animals ran about, dumb like the vegetables they had eaten. Vegetables were heaped in the stalls, mysterious as the earth which they had lately been. The buildings were piled up to resemble the hills from whose substance they had been created, and their pillars were fashioned like trees. Everywhere were the savage angles and wild lines of one thing turning into another. And Peter longed to help to fashion them all, as he fashioned his little balls of mould and loam.
“There is so much yet to do,” thought little Peter, “I wonder that they take so much time for holidays.”
So he ran quickly to a high, white place in the midst of the town, where they were making ready to erect the throne of the king of the carnival, and on that he stood and cried:—
“Hear me—hear me! The world is beginning. You must go and help the king.”
Now, if those about the carnival throne had only said: “What is that to us? Go away!” Peter would have been warned. But they only nodded, and they said kindly: “Yes, so it is—and we mean to help presently. Come and help us first!” And one of the revellers, seeing Peter, how little he was, picked him up and held him at arm’s length and cried:—
“Lo, now, this little lad. He is no bigger than a trumpet....”
(That was what the king had said, and it pleased Peter to hear it said again.)