Part 10 (1/2)
”Look out!” shouted Rudolf to the coachman. ”Don't you see you are going to upset us?”
The coachman was a very grand-looking person in a white and gold livery. He never even turned his powdered head as he shouted back:
”Didn't have no--or-ders--not--to!” And for some time they tore on faster than ever.
At last Ann leaned forward and caught hold of one of the coachman's little gold-embroidered coat tails. ”Oh, do take care,” she cried, ”you might run somebody down!”
”That's it,”--the coachman's voice sounded faint and jerky, and the children could hardly catch the words that floated back to them: ”Running--down--run-ing--down! As--fast--as--ev-er--I--can.
Most--com-pli-cated--insides--in--all--the--king-dom. Can't--be --wound--up--not--by--likes--of--you--”
The horses were no longer galloping, now they were slowing up, now they stopped, but with such a sudden jerk that all three children were tumbled out into the road. They had been expecting this to happen for so long that the thing was not such a shock after all, and somehow they landed without being hurt in the slightest. They picked themselves up, and saw the little carriage standing at the side of the road, the horses perfectly motionless, each with a forefoot raised in the air, the coachman stiff and still upon his box, _gazing_ straight in front of him.
”He'll stay like that,” said Peter mournfully, rubbing the dust from his knees, ”till he's wound up again. I wish we had the key!”
”I wish we did,” said Rudolf crossly. ”You know what Betsy says about--'If wishes were horses, beggars could ride'--well, they aren't, so we've got to walk now. I wonder where we are?”
Looking around them, the children saw that they had come to the very last of the many colored fields, where the brown road ended in a stretch of creamy-yellow gra.s.s. Just beyond a thick woods began, but was divided from the creamy field by a broad bright strip of color, like a long flower bed planted with flowers of all kinds and colors set in all sorts of different patterns--stars, triangles, diamonds, and squares.
”That's the border,” shouted Ann, ”and over there somewhere we'll find the person the Queen said would help us get back to Aunt Jane. Come on!” As she spoke she bounded off across the field, the two boys after her, and in less time than it takes to tell it they had run through the tall yellow gra.s.s, jumped the border, and stood upon the edge of the wood.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
CHAPTER XI
THE GOOD DREAMS
A thin screen of bushes was all that hid from the children's eyes the people whose voices they could hear so plainly.
”Maybe it's some kind of picnic they're having in there,” cried Peter, pus.h.i.+ng eagerly forward. ”Come on quick!”
”No, you don't, either,” whispered Rudolf, catching him and holding him back. ”Don't let's get caught this time, let's peep through first and see what the people are like.”
”Yes, do let's be careful,” pleaded Ann. ”We don't want to get arrested again, it's not a bit nice--though I suppose if this is where the Queen's friend lives, it isn't likely anything so horrid will happen to us.”
”Do stop talking, Ann, and listen. Whoever they are in there, they are making so much noise they can't possibly hear me, so I'm going to creep into those bushes and see what I can see.”
As he spoke Rudolf carefully parted the bushes at a spot where they were thin and peeped between the leaves, Ann and Peter crowding each other to see over his shoulder. They looked into a kind of open glade not much larger than a good-sized room and walled on all sides by tall trees and thick underbrush. It had a flooring of soft green turf, and about in the middle lay a great rock as large as a playhouse. This rock was all covered over with moss and lichens, and the strange thing about it was that a neat door had been cut in its side. Before this door, talking and waving his hands to the crowd that thronged about him, stood a man--the queerest little man the children had ever seen!
He looked like a collection of stout sacks stuffed very tightly and tied firmly at the necks. One sack made his head, another larger one his body, four more his arms and legs. His broad face, though rather dull, wore a good-humored expression, and he smiled as he looked about him.
A pile of empty sacking-bags lay on the ground beside him, and from time to time he caught up one of these, ran his eye over the crowd, chose one of them, and popped him, or it, as it happened to be, into the sack which he then swung on his shoulder and heaved into the open doorway in the big rock, where it disappeared from sight. He would then taken another sack and make a fresh selection, looking about him all the while with sleepy good humor, and paying little if any attention to the cries, questions, and complaints with which he was attacked on all sides.
What a funny lot they were--this crowd that surrounded the little man!
The children could hardly smother their excitement at the sight of them. Not people or animals only were they, but all kinds of odd objects also, such as no one could expect to see running about loose.
A Birthday Cake was there, with lighted candles; a little pile of neatly darned socks and stockings, a white-cotton Easter Rabbit with pink pasteboard ears, a Jolly Santa Claus, a smoking hot Dinner, a Nice Nurse who rocked a smiling baby, a brown-faced grinning Organ-Man, his organ strapped before him, his Monkey on his shoulder.
There were too many by far for the children to take in all at once, but at the sight of one particular member of the crowd, the children gasped with astonishment; and Peter's excitement nearly betrayed them. There, lounging by the side of a mild-faced School-Mistress Person, still smoking his chocolate cigarette, was--the False Hare!