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.”
THE KING HAD TURNED INTO A VILLA RESIDENCE.
“I’m not so very fat,” said Matilda, indignantly.
“Well,” said the Princess impatiently, “I was quite fat enough anyhow. And then I got thin—”
“But how?”
“Because they would not let me have my favourite pudding every day.”
“What a shame!” said Matilda, “and what is your favourite pudding?”
“Bread and milk, of course, sprinkled with rose leaves—and with pear-drops in it.”
Of course, Matilda went at once to the King, and while she was on her way the Cockatoucan happened to laugh. When she reached the King, he was in no condition for ordering dinner, for he had turned into a villa-residence, replete with every modern improvement. Matilda only recognised him, as he stood sadly in the Park, by the crown that stuck crookedly on one of the chimney-pots, and the border of ermine along the garden path. So she ordered the Princess’s favourite pudding on her own responsibility, and the whole Court had it every day for dinner, till there was no single courtier but loathed the very sight of bread and milk, and there was hardly one who would not have run a mile rather than meet a pear-drop. Even Matilda herself got rather tired of it, though being clever, she knew how good bread and milk was for her.
But the Princess got fatter and fatter, and rosier and rosier. Her thread-paper gowns had to be let out, and let out, till there were no more turnings in left to be let out, and then she had to wear the old ones that Matilda had been wearing, and then to have new ones. And as she got fatter she got kinder, till Matilda grew quite fond of her.
And the Cockatoucan had not laughed for a month.
When the Princess was as fat as any Princess ought to be, Matilda went to her one day, and threw her arms round her and kissed her. The Princess kissed her back, and said, “Very well, I am sorry then, but I didn’t want to say so, but now I will. And the Cockatoucan never laughs except when he’s tickled. So there! He hates to laugh.”
“And you won’t do it again,” said Matilda, “will you?”
“No, of course not,” said the Princess, very much surprised, “why should I? I was spiteful when I was thin, but now I’m fat again I want every one to be happy.”
“But how can any one be happy?” asked Matilda, severely, “when every one is turned into something they weren’t meant to be? There’s your dear father—he’s a desirable villa—the Prime Minister was a little boy, and he got back again, and now he’s turned into a Comic Opera. Half the Palace housemaids are breakers, dashing themselves against the Palace crockery: the Navy, to a man, are changed to French poodles, and the Army to German sausages. Your favourite nurse is now a flourishing steam laundry, and I, alas! am too clever by half. Can’t that horrible bird do anything to put us all right again?”
“No,” said the Princess, dissolved in tears at this awful picture, “he told me once himself that when he laughed he could only change one or two things at once, and then, as often as not, it turned out to be something he didn’t expect. The only way to make everything come right again would be—but it can’t be done! If we could only make him laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. That’s the secret. He told me so. But I don’t know what it is, let alone being able to do it. Could you do it, Matilda?”
“No,” said Matilda, “but let me whisper. He’s listening. Pridmore could. She’s often told me she’d do it to me. But she never has. Oh, Princess, I’ve got an idea.”
The two were whispering so low that the Cockatoucan could not hear, though he tried his hardest. Matilda and the Princess left him listening.
Presently he heard a sound of wheels. Four men came into the rose-garden wheeling a great red thing in a barrow. They set it down in front of the Cockatoucan, who danced on his perch with rage.
“Oh,” he said, “if only some one would make me laugh, that horrible thing would be the one to change. I know it would. It would change into something much horrider than it is now. I feel it in all my feathers.”
The Princess opened the cage-door with the Prime Minister’s key, which a tenor singer had found at the beginning of his music. It was also the key of the comic opera. She crept up behind the Cockatoucan and tickled him under both wings. He fixed his baleful eye on the red Automatic Machine and laughed long and loud; he saw the red iron[43]
[44]
[45] and glass change before his eyes into the form of Pridmore. Her cheeks were red with rage and her eyes shone like glass with fury.
FOUR MEN CAME WHEELING A GREAT RED THING ON A BARROW.
“Nice manners!” said she to the Cockatoucan, “what are you laughing at, I should like to know—I’ll make you laugh on the wrong side of your mouth, my fine fellow!”
She sprang into the cage, and then and there, before the astonished Court, she shook that Cockatoucan till he really and truly did laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. It was a terrible sight to witness, and the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear.
But instantly all the things changed back as if by magic to what they had been before. The laundry became a nurse, the villa became a king, the other people were just what they had been before, and all Matilda’s wonderful cleverness went out like the snuff of a candle.
The Cockatoucan himself fell in two—one half of him became a common, ordinary Toucan,
