LITMIR.BIZ

      THE KING SENT HIS ARMY, AND THE ENEMY WERE CRUSHED.

      The Butcher-King did not mind this, because it was true, however rude. But when the other King called out, “What price cat’s meat!” the King was very angry indeed, because the meat he sold was always of the best quality. When he told Matilda all about it, she said, “Send the Army to crush him.”

      So the King sent his Army, and the enemy were crushed. The Bird laughed the King back into his throne, and laughed away the butcher’s shop just in time for his Majesty to proclaim a general holiday, and to organise a magnificent reception for the Army. Matilda now helped the King to manage everything. She wonderfully enjoyed the new delightful feeling of being clever, so that she felt it was indeed too bad when the Cockatoucan laughed just as the reception was beautifully arranged. It laughed, and the general holiday was turned into an income tax; the magnificent reception changed itself to a royal reprimand, and the Army itself suddenly became a discontented Sunday-school treat, and had to be fed with buns and brought home in brakes, crying.

      “Something must be done,” said the King.

      “Well,” said Matilda, “I’ve been thinking if you will make me the Princess’s governess, I’ll see what I can do. I’m quite clever enough.”

      “I must open Parliament to do that,” said the King; “it’s a Constitutional change.”

      So he hurried off down the road to open Parliament. But the bird put its head on one side and laughed at him as he went by. He hurried on, but his beautiful crown grew large and brassy, and was set with cheap glass in the worst possible taste. His robe turned from velvet and ermine to flannelette and rabbit’s fur. His sceptre grew twenty feet long and extremely awkward to carry. But he persevered, his royal blood was up.

      “No bird,” said he, “shall keep me from my duty and my Parliament.”

      But when he got there, he was so agitated that he could not remember which was the right key to open Parliament with, and in the end he hampered the lock and so could not open Parliament at all, and members of Parliament went about making speeches in the roads to the great hindrance of the traffic.

      The poor King went home and burst into tears.

      “Matilda,” he said, “this is too much. You have always been a comfort to me. You stood by me when I was a butcher; you kept the books; you booked the orders; you ordered the stock. If you really are clever enough, now is the time to help me. If you won’t, I’ll give up the business. I’ll leave off being a King. I’ll go and be a butcher in the Camberwell New Road, and I will get another little girl to keep my books, not you.”

      This decided Matilda. She said, “Very well, your Majesty, then give me leave to prowl at night. Perhaps I shall find out what makes the Cockatoucan laugh; if I can do that, we can take care he never gets it, whatever it is.”

      “Ah!” said the poor King, “if you could only do that.”

      When Matilda went to bed that night, she did not go to sleep. She lay and waited till all the Palace was quiet, and then she crept softly, pussily, mousily to the garden, where the Cockatoucan’s cage was, and she hid behind a white rosebush, and looked and listened. Nothing happened till it was gray dawn, and then it was only the Cockatoucan who woke up. But when the sun was round and red over the Palace roof, something came creeping, creeping, pussily, mousily out of the Palace; and it looked like a yard and a half of white tape creeping along; and it was the Princess herself.

      She came quietly up to the cage, and squeezed herself between the bars; they were very narrow bars, but a yard and a half of white tape can go through the bars of any birdcage I ever saw. And the Princess went up to the Cockatoucan and tickled him under his wings till he laughed aloud. Then, quick as thought, the Princess squeezed through the bars, and was back in her room before the bird had finished laughing. Matilda went back to bed. Next day all the sparrows had turned into cart horses, and the roads were impassable.

      That day when she went, as usual, to play with the Princess, Matilda said to her suddenly, “Princess, what makes you so thin?”

      The Princess caught Matilda’s hand and pressed it with warmth.

      “Matilda,” she said simply, “you have a noble heart. No one else has ever asked me that, though they tried to cure it. And I couldn’t answer till I was asked, could I?[37]

       [38]

       [39] It’s a sad, a tragic tale, Matilda. I was once as fat as you are.”