The Seven Dragons | Page 3

and
said:-
"You're a naughty, disobedient little King," and was very angry indeed.
"I don't see that I've done any harm," said Lionel. He hated being
shaken, as all boys do; he would much rather have been slapped.
"No harm?" said the Chancellor. "Ah--but what do you know about it?

That's the question. How do you know what might have been on the
next page--a snake or a worm, or a centipede or a revolutionist, or
something like that."
"Well, I'm sorry if I've vexed you," said Lionel. "Come, let's kiss and
be friends." So he kissed the Prime Minister, and they settled down for
a nice quiet game of noughts and crosses, while the Chancellor went to
add up his accounts.
But when Lionel was in bed he could not sleep for thinking of the book,
and when the full moon was shining with all her might and light he got
up and crept down to the library and climbed up and got "The Book of
Beasts".
He took it outside on to the terrace, where the moonlight was as bright
as day, and he opened the book, and saw the empty pages with
"Butterfly" and "Blue Bird of Paradise" underneath, and then he turned
the next page. There was some sort of red thing sitting under a palm
tree, and under it was written "Dragon". The Dragon did not move, and
the King shut up the book rather quickly and went back to bed.
But the next day he wanted another look, so he got the book out into
the garden, and when he undid the clasps with the rubies and turquoises,
the book opened all by itself at the picture with "Dragon" underneath,
and the sun shone full on the page. And then, quite suddenly, a great
Red Dragon came out of the book, and spread vast scarlet wings and
flew away across the garden to the far hills, and Lionel was left with
the empty page before him, for the page was quite empty except for the
green palm tree and the yellow desert, and the little streaks of red
where the paint brush had gone outside the pencil outline of the Red
Dragon.
And then Lionel felt that he had indeed done it. He had not been king
twenty-four hours, and already he had let loose a Red Dragon to worry
his faithful subjects' lives out. And they had been saving up so long to
buy him a crown, and everything!
Lionel began to cry.

Then the Chancellor and the Prime Minister and the Nurse all came
running to see what was the matter. And when they saw the book they
understood, and the Chancellor said:-
"You naughty little King! Put him to bed, Nurse, and let him think over
what he's done."
"Perhaps, my Lord," said the Prime Minister, "we'd better first find out
just exactly what he has done."
Then Lionel, in floods of tears, said:-
"It's a Red Dragon, and it's gone flying away to the hills, and I am so
sorry, and, oh, do forgive me!"
But the Prime Minister and the Chancellor had other things to think of
than forgiving Lionel. They hurried off to consult the police and see
what could be done. Everyone did what they could. They sat on
committees and stood on guard, and lay in wait for the Dragon, but he
stayed up in the hills, and there was nothing more to be done. The
faithful Nurse, meanwhile, did not neglect her duty. Perhaps she did
more than anyone else, for she slapped the King and put him to bed
without his tea, and when it got dark she would not give him a candle
to read by.
"You are a naughty little King," she said, "and nobody will love you."
Next day the Dragon was still quiet, though the more poetic of Lionel's
subjects could see the redness of the Dragon shining through the green
trees quite plainly. So Lionel put on his crown and sat on his throne and
said he wanted to make some laws.
And I need hardly say that though the Prime Minister and the
Chancellor and the Nurse might have the very poorest opinion of
Lionel's private judgement, and might even slap him and send him to
bed, the minute he got on his throne and set his crown on his head, he
became infallible which means that everything he said was right, and
that he couldn't possibly make a mistake. So when he said:-

"There is to be a law forbidding people to open books in schools or
elsewhere."--he had the support of at least half of his subjects, and the
other half--the grown-up half--pretended to think he was quite right.
Then he made a law that everyone should always have