Kitabı oku: «The Sandman's Hour: Stories for Bedtime», sayfa 6

DINAH CAT AND THE WITCH

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Betty. She was an orphan, and a bad landlord turned her out of her home. The only friend she had was a black cat named Dinah. Betty was crying as she walked along the road, and Dinah Cat ran beside her, rubbing against her feet. All at once she ran in front of Betty and stood on her hind legs. "Do not cry, mistress," she said. "I'll take care of you."

Betty was so surprised to hear Dinah Cat speak that she stopped crying at once. "You poor Dinah Cat," she said, "what can you do? We must go to the city, and if I can find work we shall be able to live; if not, you must take care of yourself, for you can catch mice and keep from starving."

"You come with me, mistress," answered Dinah Cat, "and you will not need to work and you will not starve." And she put out her paw for Betty to take and walked alongside her. When they came to a path leading into the wood Dinah Cat led Betty along this path until they were in front of two very large trees which had grown together, but there was a big opening in the trunk. "We'll go in here," said Dinah Cat, and as they stepped through they were in a hall. She led Betty up the stairs to a room where there was a snowy-white bed and pretty furnishings. "Dinner will be served as soon as you are dressed, mistress," said Dinah Cat.

After she had gone Betty looked around, and in the closets she found pretty dresses which just fitted her. She put on one of them, and in a few minutes she was ready for dinner. Just then she heard a soft, scratching noise at the door, and when she opened it Dinah Cat walked in.

"How do you like your new home, mistress?" she asked.

"Very much," Betty answered. "But we cannot live in such a nice house. We have no money, and, besides that, this house must belong to some one. And this dress I have on must belong to some little girl. I should not wear it."

"The dress did belong to a little girl," said Dinah Cat, "but she cannot wear it now, and she wants you to have it. And do not fret about the house. It belongs to me. I cannot tell you any more just now, but you need not worry any more about anything, for you are to live here, if you wish, after you have dinner, for then you will meet a boy, and you may not like him."

Dinah Cat led Betty into a room where the table was set for three persons, and when they were seated a boy about Betty's age came in and sat with them. He wore his hat, and a thick veil hung from it.

"I am sorry I cannot remove my hat," he said, in a very sweet voice, "and I will go away if you'd rather I would."

"Oh no," said Betty, feeling very much like an intruder. "I am very grateful to you for letting me stay, and I will help to do the work."

"You do not need to work," said the boy. "If you will stay we will be very glad."

Betty did not once get a glimpse of his face, he lifted the veil so carefully. And there sat Dinah Cat, using her knife and fork like any lady. Betty smiled to herself when she thought of her eating from a saucer.

Suddenly Dinah Cat slid out of her chair and crawled under it, and the little boy trembled so that his chair shook. Betty looked around to find the cause of their strange behavior, and saw standing in the doorway an old woman with a staff in her hand. She hobbled over to where Dinah Cat sat and raised the staff. Betty thought she was going to strike her.

"Don't you hurt Dinah Cat!" she cried, running toward the old witch, who was so startled that she dropped the staff, and Betty picked it up.

"Don't let her have it again," said the boy; "that is the cause of all our trouble."

Betty threw the staff in a closet and locked the door. All this time the witch was stepping backward toward the door by which she entered, and she grew smaller with each step. By the time she was out of the house she looked like a black speck, and a breeze blowing just then carried her out of sight. "But how shall we ever be ourselves again?" said the boy. "She has gone, and here we are, in this state."

"Perhaps the stick will do it," said Dinah Cat.

Betty wondered what they meant, and the boy told her that Dinah Cat was his sister before the witch changed her into a cat, and made his face so hideous that he had to wear a veil, and they had lived very happily together. "But one day the old witch came and wanted to live with us, and we let her for a while, but she was so cross and made us so unhappy we told her she must go away. Then she brought all this change upon us, and every once in a while she returns and frightens us, for we do not know what she will change us into next."

"Let me get the stick," said Betty. "Perhaps we can change Dinah Cat to your sister again."

Betty opened the door of the closet, and instead of the stick there was a bright streak of light, and walking on it was a little Fairy who held a wand in her hand.

"You will soon be happy again," she told them. "I have destroyed the stick and the old witch will never return."

Then she walked over to Dinah Cat and touched her with her wand and there stood a little girl about Betty's age in place of the black cat.

"Now close your eyes," said the Fairy, "for I want the boy to remove his veil, and his face is not pleasant to look upon."

Betty did as the Fairy told her, but I am sorry to tell you that she peeked a very little. Betty closed her eyes tight after the first glimpse and waited for the Fairy to tell her to open them again, and when she did there stood the boy with a very smiling face. His sister ran to him and put her arms around him. "Now we shall be happy," she said, "and Betty will live with us. How can we thank you?" she asked the Fairy.

"Oh, I shall be repaid by seeing you all happy," the Fairy replied. "And now I must go."

"Will we see you again?" asked Betty.

"No," answered the Fairy. "I only appear when people are in trouble, and you will never need me again."

THE STAR AND THE LILY

Once there bloomed in a garden a beautiful white lily, on a long stalk so tall that she towered over all the flowers that bloomed near her.

Of course, the sunflowers at the back of the garden were much taller and the hollyhocks that grew in front of the sunflowers were taller, too, and also the sweet peas. But they were not near the beautiful lily. Beside her bloomed pansies and poppies, and many other beautiful flowers, but they were not so tall as the lily.

A rose-bush growing near the lily noticed that she drooped and did not look as happy as usual one morning, and she asked what had happened.

"Oh, I am thinking of some one I love," answered the lily, with a sigh.

"That should not bring a sigh or make you look sad, my fair friend," said the rose. "Love should make you happier than anything else in the world."

"Yes, I suppose it should," answered the lily, "but my love is so far away I am not sure that I am loved in return."

"Oh, immodest lily!" said the rose. "I thought you the most modest of all of us, and here you are in love with some one you do not know. Tell me about it, do?" said the rose, alert with interest.

"I will tell you, dear rose," said the lily, "and perhaps you can tell me how to win the love of my beloved, or how I can overcome my great love for him."

"I will do anything I can for you, my dear," said the rose, "but do tell me quick all about your love-story."

"One night," began the lily, "when everything was quiet in the garden and all the other flowers were fast asleep, I happened to raise my head and open my petals. The moonlight was streaming over the garden, and I looked around at all the sleeping flowers and wondered how I happened to awake at that hour, when, looking up to see the moon in all her splendor, I beheld a beautiful star looking down at me.

"At first I thought it was looking at the whole garden, but then I knew all the others were asleep and I must be the one it was smiling at, for it twinkled and brightened as I gazed at it.

"I lowered my head and slyly looked again, and still the star was looking, and every time it saw me raise my head it would twinkle a smile at me. The next night I wanted to make sure it was I that the star really smiled at, and when it was bedtime I only bowed my head and did not sleep.

"Then when the garden was still and I was sure you all slept I again raised my head and saw my star smiling straight down at me.

"This time I was sure I was the only one that the star could be smiling at, and I raised my head and opened my petals and let all the perfume of my heart go up to him, and I did not feel that I was bold, for we were all alone and he smiled down upon me, his love for two nights.

"But now I am sorrowful, for it is day and I cannot see my beloved. He seems only to show his love for me at night. What shall I do, dear rose? I am not strong enough to stay awake all day and all night too. Soon I will die if I do, and yet I cannot live if I do not see my star each night. That is why I sigh and look so sad, for I might sleep all night some time and my star will think I do not love him."

The rose shook her head. "I cannot advise you, my friend," she said; "you are in love with some one far above you, and are not even sure you are loved in return. Be wise and sleep through the night as the rest of us do, and give up this uncertain lover."

But the lily only drooped her head and sighed, and that night looked for her lover again, but the sky was dark and no bright smile greeted the poor lily. All night she gazed into the dark sky, and when the first light of day came she was still looking for her lover.

The rose looked at her when the sun came upon them that morning, but the lily did not raise her head; she was too full of sorrow to lift her face to the sun, and by and by the rose saw that she was drooping lower and lower, so she spoke to her.

"Lily," she said, leaning closer to her, "raise your head and let the sun cheer you. You will die if you do not open your petals and get the light and air."

But the poor lily was past caring for sun or air; her petals were limp and her stalk withered.

The rose leaned closer to her as she faintly answered, and this is what she heard:

"Good-by, my friend; I shall bloom no more. My bright star hid his face from me last night and I have no desire to live longer. Perhaps I may see him after I am gone from here, and if that is true I shall be happy, but I cannot live here and not see his face.'"

The wind blew through the garden just then and took the lily from her stem, scattering her petals far out of the garden.

"Poor lily!" murmured the rose, "she went the way we all will go, but her heart was broken and she died before her time. If she had only looked for love here in the garden instead of looking so far above her she might be blooming now, poor lily."

LAZY GRAY

All the other squirrels called him Lazy Gray, which was really not a very nice name for a squirrel to have, but it fitted this squirrel, and I am going to tell you how he came to be called by such an unpleasant name.

When Lazy Gray was born there were three little squirrels in his family, but he was the youngest and his mother thought he was the prettiest, and all the rest of the family used to wait on him a great deal, and his mother did not ask him to do errands or to climb trees or any other of the hard tasks that most squirrels have to do. And Lazy Gray took advantage of the kindness of his mother and his brothers and sister, and used to ask them to wait on him. When he was thirsty and wanted a drink of water he would call to his mother and say, "I am thirsty"; and she would take a nutshell and go down to the brook and fill it with nice cool water and bring it to him for him to drink. And sometimes he wouldn't even say "Thank you" when he had finished.

And he used to make his brothers go on long journeys through the woods to get a particular kind of nut of which he was very fond; and if they happened to bring him one that was not good he would find fault with them and tell them that they did not know good nuts from bad ones.

All through the summer he fooled away his time sleeping and lying in the sun and never a single nut did he gather for himself. But when fall came and his two brothers were taken ill, his mother said that he would have to help her gather nuts because she could not gather enough to last the whole family through all the long winter. Lazy thought it was very hard that he should be called upon to work for his brothers even if they were sick, and he complained very bitterly about how hard it was for him to climb trees all day and store nuts. Whenever he could he stole away and lay down behind a rock and kept hidden until his mother came and found him. And then she would tell how, when it got cold and there was snow all over the ground and he was hungry, he would wish that he had been a good squirrel and had gathered the nuts while he could.

But he did not believe her and said, "Oh, I have gathered all the nuts I shall want and am not going to work any more," and then he would go to sleep again.

Weeks passed by, and it grew colder and colder and the snow came, and all the squirrels began to draw on their stores of nuts. Lazy found that he got pretty hungry sometimes and that the habit of eating and drinking all he wanted in the summer made him want to eat and drink all he wanted in the winter. And as he had never taught himself self-denial, he ate all he wanted, and very early in the winter he began to see that the nuts he had gathered would not last him half-way through the winter, and almost before he knew it his whole store was exhausted and he had nothing to eat.

Then he asked his mother to let him have some of the nuts that she had gathered, and being a kind mother, she let him have just as many as she could, but she still had to keep some for his sick brothers. When she would not give him all he thought he ought to have he decided that he would go over to a neighboring tree and ask a squirrel over there for some of his nuts, and for weeks he went from one tree to another begging nuts, until every squirrel in the woods hated to see him coming, for they knew he was going to beg food that he should have gathered for himself.

At last he became so much of a nuisance that all the squirrels in the wood held a meeting and decided that each one of them would give two nuts to "Lazy," as they now all called him, and that he would have to live for the rest of the winter on the store they contributed or else starve.

When Lazy saw what a small store of nuts he would have to live upon until spring he was frightened, for he had eaten almost as many nuts as there were there in a week.

But he knew he had to make them last, so he ate very sparingly, and his sides began to be less plump and his cheeks less full, and by springtime he was a pretty sorry-looking squirrel, with his ribs showing plainly through his sides and his bushy tail looking bigger than the whole of the rest of him.

But it taught him a good lesson, and early in the next summer, just as soon as there were any nuts to be had, he began to store them away, and when winter came again he had a big hole in the tree filled full and his mother was much pleased.

"You see," she told him, "how wicked it is not to provide for the future and store up things that are necessary against the time when you will need them."

And Lazy agreed with her and told her that never again so long as he lived would he merit the name of "Lazy."

THE OLD GRAY HEN

"Oh, dear!" said the Old Gray Hen, "what a life this is! Up in the morning at the break of day in answer to the summons of that crowing rooster; scratch all the forenoon for worms; sit on a nest and leave a beautiful egg there, and in half an hour along comes somebody and takes the egg and I never see it again. Then every spring I am put on a lot of eggs that I never saw before and am supposed to sit there until a brood of chickens are hatched out, and then for weeks I have to scratch for them as well as for myself. I don't see anything in this sort of life, and I propose to change it until it is more to my liking and more as the life of such a fine hen as I am ought to be."

Old Daddy Gander happened along just as the Gray Hen finished talking to herself. "What's the trouble this morning?" he asked. "Why all this sputtering and spluttering? One would think that the whole barnyard had turned upside down and the corn had all fallen off into the sky."

"There's matter enough," said Gray Hen. "What have we fowls to live for? I scratch and you waddle and you waddle and I scratch, and what does it all amount to? Something has got to be done, and, if no one else will do it, why, I shall. Things are going to be different with me."

"I guess I'll keep on as I am," said old Daddy Gander as he waddled away. "I might make them worse than they are, and they are not so bad, anyway."

"Good morning, Gray Hen," said Madam Duck. "What a fine day we are going to have! The water will be nice and warm for my ducklings, and I can give them a good swim in the pond."

"It is neither a good morning nor is it going to be a fine day, and as for swimming in the pond, if I had to mother a lot of children with as homely feet as your brood has I would want to keep them in the water all the time so that no one would see them."

"What a mean disposition Gray Hen has!" said Madam Duck to the turkey gobbler as she went on her way to the pond. "I tried to be agreeable to her and she insulted me and spoke so unkindly of my children that I felt quite like crying."

"I almost wish that she had been a little more unkind," said the gobbler, "for I have never seen a duck crying and I imagine it might be an almost sight. Perhaps Gray Hen needs some of my good advice, and I will walk over shortly and see her."

But the old gobbler was saved his trouble, for in a few minutes he saw Gray Hen coming down the path toward him. As she came up to him he said: "What a miserable feeling morning this, Mrs. Hen; my feathers will none of them lie straight, and every worm that I have tasted for breakfast has been bitter."

"You are quite right," said Gray Hen. "It is just like all the mornings recently, uncomfortable and disagreeable, and there does not seem to be any promise of anything better."

"You are quite right," said the gobbler. "What the gander and the duck see in the present to be so satisfied with I don't understand, and as to the future, I don't know why we should expect any more of that than the past."

"I have always felt," said Gray Hen, "that you, Mr. Gobbler, never got half your deserts in this barnyard. Everybody seems to think that the rooster, because he crows every morning at sunup, is the wisest bird in the yard, but as for me, I have always held you in greater esteem and have often spoken of the nobility of your looks and the regal way in which you walk about the place. If I had any voice in the matter I should suggest that you be recognized as superior to the rooster. But, you see, the hens have nothing to say, although some day I feel sure that it will be different."

"You are very kind," said the gobbler, "and I feel as you do, while I have no wish to be ruler of the yard, that the hens should have more to say. You should at least have independence and do as you like."

"Oh, I have determined on that already," said Gray Hen, and she told him how she had decided to lay no more eggs and to scratch as little as she had to.

"Well," said the gobbler, "I must be off and see that none of those turkey hens get so far into the wood that they cannot find their way back again. I certainly gave the kind of advice she wanted," he said, when he had got out of her hearing, "and that was easier than getting into an argument. And, besides that, discontented people and animals are always so much more comfortable if they think others are just as unhappy as they are."

Old Gray Hen, however, was as good as her word. She stopped laying eggs and the amount of gravel that she scratched was scarcely worth mentioning. She stole worms from the younger chickens, who were too polite to punish a hen so old as she was, and, altogether, she became a general nuisance to all the rest of the barnyard flock.

They could not protect themselves, but Farmer Johnson, walking through the yard one day, noticed that the Old Gray Hen's toes had grown to a most unusual length. "I guess she doesn't do much scratching," he said as he passed along, "and I suspect she doesn't lay many eggs. I must ask mother about it when I get back to the house."

"No," said Mother Johnson, when he asked her, "I haven't found an egg in Gray Hen's nest for a month or more."

"She won't pay to winter, then," said Farmer Johnson. "We had better eat her." And the following Sunday, when Farmer Johnson sat down for dinner, they brought a big platter of steaming fricassee to the table and that was the end of Old Gray Hen.

A day or two after, when the gobbler happened to meet Madam Duck, she said: "I hear that Gray Hen has left us."

"Yes," said the gobbler, "and I hope she is happier than she was here, but her contentment was greatest when others were distressed."