The Seven Dragons | Page 8

the size of our rhinoceroses, and all about the wild parts of the island they had made their burrows as big as railway tunnels. The dormouse, of course, was the biggest of all the creatures. I can't tell you how big he was. Even if you think of elephants it will not help you at all. Luckily there was one of him, and he was always asleep. Otherwise I don't think the Rotundians could have borne with him. As it was, they made him a house, and it saved the expense of a brass band, because no band could possibly have been heard when the dormouse was talking in his sleep.
The men and women and children in this wonderful island were quite the right size, because their ancestors had come over with the Conqueror long after the island had settled down and the animals grown on it.
Now the natural history lesson is over, and if you have been attending, you know more about Rotundia than anyone there did, except three people: the Lord Chief Schoolmaster, and the Princess's uncle--who was a magician, and knew everything without learning it--and Tom, the gardener's son.
Tom had learned more at school than anyone else, because he wished to take a prize. The prize offered by the Lord Chief Schoolmaster was a 'History of Rotundia', beautifully bound, with the Royal arms on the back. But after that day when the Princess said she meant to marry Tom, the gardener's boy thought it over, and he decided that the best prize in the world would be the Princess, and this was the prize Tom meant to take; and when you are a gardener's son, and have decided to marry a Princess, you will find that the more you learn at school the better.
The Princess always played with Tom on the days when the little dukes and marquises did not come to tea--and when he told her he was almost sure of the first prize, she clapped her hands and said:-
"Dear Tom, dear, good, clever Tom, you deserve all the prizes. And I will give you my pet elephant--and you can keep him till we're married."
The pet elephant was called Fido, and the gardener's son took him away in his coat-pocket. He was the dearest little elephant you ever saw--about six inches long. But he was very, very wise--he could not have been wiser if he had been a mile high. He lay down comfortably in Tom's pocket, and when Tom put in his hand, Fido curled his little trunk round Tom's fingers with an affectionate confidence that made the boy's heart warm to his new little pet. What with the elephant, and the Princess's affection, and the knowledge that the very next day he would receive the "History of Rotundia", beautifully bound, with the Royal arms on the cover, Tom could hardly sleep a wink. And, besides, the dog did bark so terribly. There was only one dog in Rotundia--the kingdom could not afford to keep more than one: he was a Mexican lap-dog of the kind that in most parts of the world only measures seven inches from the end of his dear nose to the tip of his darling tail--but in Rotundia he was bigger than I can possibly expect you to believe. And when he barked, his bark was so large that it filled up all the night and left no room for sleep or dreams or polite conversation, or anything else at all. He never barked at things that went on in the island--he was too large-minded for that; but when ships went blundering by in the dark, tumbling over the rocks at the end of the island, he would bark once or twice, just to let the ships know that they couldn't come playing about there just as they liked.
But on this particular night he barked, and barked, and barked--and the Princess said, "Oh dear, oh dear, I wish he wouldn't, I am so sleepy." And Tom said to himself: "I wonder whatever is the matter. As soon as it's light I'll go and see."
So when it began to be pretty pink-and-yellow daylight, Tom got up and went out. And all the time the Mexican lap-dog barked so that the houses shook, and the tiles on the roof of the palace rattled like milkcans in a cart whose horse is frisky.
"I'll go to the pillar," thought Tom, as he went through the town. The pillar, of course, was the top of the piece of rock that had stuck itself through Rotundia millions of years before, and made it spin round the wrong way. It was quite in the middle of the island, and stuck up ever so far, and when you were at the top you could see a great deal