Unnatural Creatures

“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-colored glass in the worst possible taste; his robes turned from velvet and ermine into flannelette and rabbits’ fur; his scepter 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 the 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 can 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 grey 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 own room before the bird had finished laughing. And Matilda went back to bed. Next day all the sparrows had turned into cart horses; 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? It is a sad, a tragic tale. Matilda, I was once as fat as you are.”

“I’m not so very fat,” said Matilda.

“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 favorite pudding every day.”

“What a shame,” said Matilda, “and what is your favorite 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, but while she was on her way the Cockatoucan happened to laugh, and 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 recognized 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 favorite 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 is for you.

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 to be let out—and then she had to wear her old ones that Matilda had been wearing, and then to get 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, dear?”

“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 everyone to be happy.”

“But how can anyone be happy,” asked Matilda, severely, “when everyone 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 favorite 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 even know what it is, let alone being able to do it. Could you do it to him, Matilda?”