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The Magic World
I cannot explain to you what had been going on in Amabel’s mind. Perhaps you know. Whatever it was it began like a very tiny butterfly in a box, that could not keep quiet, but fluttered, and fluttered, and fluttered. And when the Mayor rose and said:
‘Dear Amabel, you whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,’ that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of honour on the throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and extremely red about the ears —
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to make a speech, I just want to say, “Thank you,” and to say – to say – to say…’
She stopped, and all the white crowd cheered.
‘To say,’ she went on as the cheers died down, ‘that I wasn’t blameless, and innocent, and all those nice things. I ought to have thought. And they were Auntie’s flowers. But I did want to please her. It’s all so mixed. Oh, I wish Auntie was here!’
And instantly Auntie was there, very tall and quite nice-looking, in a white velvet dress and an ermine cloak.
‘Speech,’ cried the crowd. ‘Speech from Auntie!’
Auntie stood on the step of the throne beside Amabel, and said:
‘I think, perhaps, I was hasty. And I think Amabel meant to please me. But all the flowers that were meant for the winter … well – I was annoyed. I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, Auntie, so am I – so am I,’ cried Amabel, and the two began to hug each other on the ivory step, while the crowd cheered like mad, and the band struck up that well-known air, ‘If you only understood!’
‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Amabel among hugs, ‘This is such a lovely place, come and see everything, we may, mayn’t we?’ she asked the Mayor.
‘The place is yours,’ he said, ‘and now you can see many things that you couldn’t see before. We are The People who Understand. And now you are one of Us. And your aunt is another.’
I must not tell you all that they saw because these things are secrets only known to The People who Understand, and perhaps you do not yet belong to that happy nation. And if you do, you will know without my telling you.
And when it grew late, and the stars were drawn down, somehow, to hang among the trees, Amabel fell asleep in her aunt’s arms beside a white foaming fountain on a marble terrace, where white peacocks came to drink.
* * * * *
She awoke on the big bed in the spare room, but her aunt’s arms were still round her.
‘Amabel,’ she was saying, ‘Amabel!’
‘Oh, Auntie,’ said Amabel sleepily, ‘I am so sorry. It was stupid of me. And I did mean to please you.’
‘It was stupid of you,’ said the aunt, ‘but I am sure you meant to please me. Come down to supper.’ And Amabel has a confused recollection of her aunt’s saying that she was sorry, adding, ‘Poor little Amabel.’
If the aunt really did say it, it was fine of her. And Amabel is quite sure that she did say it.
* * * * *
Amabel and her great-aunt are now the best of friends. But neither of them has ever spoken to the other of the beautiful city called ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ Amabel is too shy to be the first to mention it, and no doubt the aunt has her own reasons for not broaching the subject.
But of course they both know that they have been there together, and it is easy to get on with people when you and they alike belong to the Peoplewhounderstand.
* * * * *
If you look in the A.B.C. that your people have you will not find ‘Whereyouwantogoto.’ It is only in the red velvet bound copy that Amabel found in her aunt’s best bedroom.
XI
KENNETH AND THE CARP
Kenneth’s cousins had often stayed with him, but he had never till now stayed with them. And you know how different everything is when you are in your own house. You are certain exactly what games the grown-ups dislike and what games they will not notice; also what sort of mischief is looked over and what sort is not. And, being accustomed to your own sort of grown-ups, you can always be pretty sure when you are likely to catch it. Whereas strange houses are, in this matter of catching it, full of the most unpleasing surprises.
You know all this. But Kenneth did not. And still less did he know what were the sort of things which, in his cousins’ house, led to disapproval, punishment, scoldings; in short, to catching it. So that that business of cousin Ethel’s jewel-case, which is where this story ought to begin, was really not Kenneth’s fault at all. Though for a time… But I am getting on too fast.
Kenneth’s cousins were four, – Conrad, Alison, George, and Ethel. The three first were natural sort of cousins somewhere near his own age, but Ethel was hardly like a cousin at all, more like an aunt. Because she was grown-up. She wore long dresses and all her hair on the top of her head, a mass of combs and hairpins; in fact she had just had her twenty-first birthday with iced cakes and a party and lots of presents, most of them jewelry. And that brings me again to that affair of the jewel-case, or would bring me if I were not determined to tell things in their proper order, which is the first duty of a story-teller.
Kenneth’s home was in Kent, a wooden house among cherry orchards, and the nearest river five miles away. That was why he looked forward in such a very extra and excited way to his visit to his cousins. Their house was very old, red brick with ivy all over it. It had a secret staircase, only the secret was not kept any longer, and the housemaids carried pails and brooms up and down the staircase. And the house was surrounded by a real deep moat, with clear water in it, and long weeds and water-lilies and fish – the gold and the silver and the everyday kinds.
The first evening of Kenneth’s visit passed uneventfully. His bedroom window looked over the moat, and early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin kindly lent to him by the parlourmaid. He did not catch any fish, partly because he baited the hairpin with brown windsor soap, and it washed off.
‘Besides, fish hate soap,’ Conrad told him, ‘and that hook of yours would do for a whale perhaps. Only we don’t stock our moat with whales. But I’ll ask father to lend you his rod, it’s a spiffing one, much jollier than ours. And I won’t tell the kids because they’d never let it down on you. Fishing with a hairpin!’
‘Thank you very much,’ said Kenneth, feeling that his cousin was a man and a brother. The kids were only two or three years younger than he was, but that is a great deal when you are the elder; and besides, one of the kids was a girl.
‘Alison’s a bit of a sneak,’ Conrad used to say when anger overcome politeness and brotherly feeling. Afterwards, when the anger was gone and the other things left, he would say, ‘You see she went to a beastly school for a bit, at Brighton, for her health. And father says they must have bullied her. All girls are not like it, I believe.’
But her sneakish qualities, if they really existed, were generally hidden, and she was very clever at thinking of new games, and very kind if you got into a row over anything.
George was eight and stout. He was not a sneak, but concealment was foreign to his nature, so he never could keep a secret unless he forgot it. Which fortunately happened quite often.
The uncle very amiably lent Kenneth his fishing-rod, and provided real bait in the most thoughtful and generous manner. And the four children fished all the morning and all the afternoon. Conrad caught two roach and an eel. George caught nothing, and nothing was what the other two caught. But it was glorious sport. And the next day there was to be a picnic. Life to Kenneth seemed full of new and delicious excitement.
In the evening the aunt and the uncle went out to dinner, and Ethel, in her grown-up way, went with them, very grand in a blue silk dress and turquoises. So the children were left to themselves.
You know the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing and talking.
‘It’s two hours at least to bedtime,’ said Alison. ‘What shall we do?’ Alison always began by saying ‘What shall we do?’ and always ended by deciding what should be done. ‘You all say what you think,’ she went on, ‘and then we’ll vote about it. You first, Ken, because you’re the visitor.’
‘Fishing,’ said Kenneth, because it was the only thing he could think of.
‘Make toffee,’ said Conrad.
‘Build a great big house with all the bricks,’ said George.
‘We can’t make toffee,’ Alison explained gently but firmly, ‘because you know what the pan was like last time, and cook said, “never again, not much.” And it’s no good building houses, Georgie, when you could be out of doors. And fishing’s simply rotten when we’ve been at it all day. I’ve thought of something.’
So of course all the others said, ‘What?’
‘We’ll have a pageant, a river pageant, on the moat. We’ll all dress up and hang Chinese lanterns in the trees. I’ll be the Sunflower lady that the Troubadour came all across the sea, because he loved her so, for, and one of you can be the Troubadour, and the others can be sailors or anything you like.’
‘I shall be the Troubadour,’ said Conrad with decision.
‘I think you ought to let Kenneth because he’s the visitor,’ said George, who would have liked to be it immensely himself, or anyhow did not see why Conrad should be a troubadour if he couldn’t.
Conrad said what manners required, which was:
‘Oh! all right, I don’t care about being the beastly Troubadour.’
‘You might be the Princess’s brother,’ Alison suggested.
‘Not me,’ said Conrad scornfully, ‘I’ll be the captain of the ship.’
‘In a turban the brother would be, with the Benares cloak, and the Persian dagger out of the cabinet in the drawing-room,’ Alison went on unmoved.
‘I’ll be that,’ said George.
‘No, you won’t, I shall, so there,’ said Conrad. ‘You can be the captain of the ship.’
(But in the end both boys were captains, because that meant being on the boat, whereas being the Princess’s brother, however turbanned, only meant standing on the bank. And there is no rule to prevent captains wearing turbans and Persian daggers, except in the Navy where, of course, it is not done.)
So then they all tore up to the attic where the dressing-up trunk was, and pulled out all the dressing-up things on to the floor. And all the time they were dressing, Alison was telling the others what they were to say and do. The Princess wore a white satin skirt and a red flannel blouse and a veil formed of several motor scarves of various colours. Also a wreath of pink roses off one of Ethel’s old hats, and a pair of pink satin slippers with sparkly buckles.
Kenneth wore a blue silk dressing-jacket and a yellow sash, a lace collar, and a towel turban. And the others divided between them an eastern dressing-gown, once the property of their grandfather, a black spangled scarf, very holey, a pair of red and white football stockings, a Chinese coat, and two old muslin curtains, which, rolled up, made turbans of enormous size and fierceness.
On the landing outside cousin Ethel’s open door Alison paused and said, ‘I say!’
‘Oh! come on,’ said Conrad, ‘we haven’t fixed the Chinese lanterns yet, and it’s getting dark.’
‘You go on,’ said Alison, ‘I’ve just thought of something.’
The children were allowed to play in the boat so long as they didn’t loose it from its moorings. The painter was extremely long, and quite the effect of coming home from a long voyage was produced when the three boys pushed the boat out as far as it would go among the boughs of the beech-tree which overhung the water, and then reappeared in the circle of red and yellow light thrown by the Chinese lanterns.
‘What ho! ashore there!’ shouted the captain.
‘What ho!’ said a voice from the shore which, Alison explained, was disguised.
‘We be three poor mariners,’ said Conrad by a happy effort of memory, ‘just newly come to shore. We seek news of the Princess of Tripoli.’
‘She’s in her palace,’ said the disguised voice, ‘wait a minute, and I’ll tell her you’re here. But what do you want her for? (“A poor minstrel of France”) go on, Con.’
‘A poor minstrel of France,’ said Conrad, ‘(all right! I remember,) who has heard of the Princess’s beauty has come to lay, to lay – ’
‘His heart,’ said Alison.
‘All right, I know. His heart at her something or other feet.’
‘Pretty feet,’ said Alison. ‘I go to tell the Princess.’
Next moment from the shadows on the bank a radiant vision stepped into the circle of light, crying —
‘Oh! Rudel, is it indeed thou? Thou art come at last. O welcome to the arms of the Princess!’
‘What do I do now?’ whispered Rudel (who was Kenneth) in the boat, and at the same moment Conrad and George said, as with one voice —
‘My hat! Alison, won’t you catch it!’
For at the end of the Princess’s speech she had thrown back her veils and revealed a blaze of splendour. She wore several necklaces, one of seed pearls, one of topazes, and one of Australian shells, besides a string of amber and one of coral. And the front of the red flannel blouse was studded with brooches, in one at least of which diamonds gleamed. Each arm had one or two bracelets and on her clenched hands glittered as many rings as any Princess could wish to wear.
So her brothers had some excuse for saying, ‘You’ll catch it.’
‘No, I sha’n’t. It’s my look out, anyhow. Do shut up,’ said the Princess, stamping her foot. ‘Now then, Ken, go ahead. Ken, you say, “Oh Lady, I faint with rapture!”’
‘I faint with rapture,’ said Kenneth stolidly. ‘Now I land, don’t I?’
He landed and stared at the jewelled hand the Princess held out.
‘At last, at last,’ she said, ‘but you ought to say that, Ken. I say, I think I’d better be an eloping Princess, and then I can come in the boat. Rudel dies really, but that’s so dull. Lead me to your ship, oh noble stranger! for you have won the Princess, and with you I will live and die. Give me your hand, can’t you, silly, and do mind my train.’
So Kenneth led her to the boat, and with some difficulty, for the satin train got between her feet, she managed to flounder into the punt.
‘Now you stand and bow,’ she said. ‘Fair Rudel, with this ring I thee wed,’ she pressed a large amethyst ring into his hand, ‘remember that the Princess of Tripoli is yours for ever. Now let’s sing Integer Vitae because it’s Latin.’
So they sat in the boat and sang. And presently the servants came out to listen and admire, and at the sound of the servants’ approach the Princess veiled her shining splendour.
‘It’s prettier than wot the Coventry pageant was, so it is,’ said the cook, ‘but it’s long past your bed times. So come on out of that there dangerous boat, there’s dears.’
So then the children went to bed. And when the house was quiet again, Alison slipped down and put back Ethel’s jewelry, fitting the things into their cases and boxes as correctly as she could. ‘Ethel won’t notice,’ she thought, but of course Ethel did.
So that next day each child was asked separately by Ethel’s mother who had been playing with Ethel’s jewelry. And Conrad and George said they would rather not say. This was a form they always used in that family when that sort of question was asked, and it meant, ‘It wasn’t me, and I don’t want to sneak.’
And when it came to Alison’s turn, she found to her surprise and horror that instead of saying, ‘I played with them,’ she had said, ‘I would rather not say.’
Of course the mother thought that it was Kenneth who had had the jewels to play with. So when it came to his turn he was not asked the same question as the others, but his aunt said:
‘Kenneth, you are a very naughty little boy to take your cousin Ethel’s jewelry to play with.’
‘I didn’t,’ said Kenneth.
‘Hush! hush!’ said the aunt, ‘do not make your fault worse by untruthfulness. And what have you done with the amethyst ring?’
Kenneth was just going to say that he had given it back to Alison, when he saw that this would be sneakish. So he said, getting hot to the ears, ‘You don’t suppose I’ve stolen your beastly ring, do you, Auntie?’
‘Don’t you dare to speak to me like that,’ the aunt very naturally replied. ‘No, Kenneth, I do not think you would steal, but the ring is missing and it must be found.’
Kenneth was furious and frightened. He stood looking down and kicking the leg of the chair.
‘You had better look for it. You will have plenty of time, because I shall not allow you to go to the picnic with the others. The mere taking of the jewelry was wrong, but if you had owned your fault and asked Ethel’s pardon, I should have overlooked it. But you have told me an untruth and you have lost the ring. You are a very wicked child, and it will make your dear mother very unhappy when she hears of it. That her boy should be a liar. It is worse than being a thief!’
At this Kenneth’s fortitude gave way, and he lost his head. ‘Oh, don’t,’ he said, ‘I didn’t. I didn’t. I didn’t. Oh! don’t tell mother I’m a thief and a liar. Oh! Aunt Effie, please, please don’t.’ And with that he began to cry.
Any doubts Aunt Effie might have had were settled by this outbreak. It was now quite plain to her that Kenneth had really intended to keep the ring.
‘You will remain in your room till the picnic party has started,’ the aunt went on, ‘and then you must find the ring. Remember I expect it to be found when I return. And I hope you will be in a better frame of mind and really sorry for having been so wicked.’
‘Mayn’t I see Alison?’ was all he found to say.
And the answer was, ‘Certainly not. I cannot allow you to associate with your cousins. You are not fit to be with honest, truthful children.’
So they all went to the picnic, and Kenneth was left alone. When they had gone he crept down and wandered furtively through the empty rooms, ashamed to face the servants, and feeling almost as wicked as though he had really done something wrong. He thought about it all, over and over again, and the more he thought the more certain he was that he had handed back the ring to Alison last night when the voices of the servants were first heard from the dark lawn.
But what was the use of saying so? No one would believe him, and it would be sneaking anyhow. Besides, perhaps he hadn’t handed it back to her. Or rather, perhaps he had handed it and she hadn’t taken it. Perhaps it had slipped into the boat. He would go and see.
But he did not find it in the boat, though he turned up the carpet and even took up the boards to look. And then an extremely miserable little boy began to search for an amethyst ring in all sorts of impossible places, indoors and out. You know the hopeless way in which you look for things that you know perfectly well you will never find, the borrowed penknife that you dropped in the woods, for instance, or the week’s pocket-money which slipped through that hole in your pocket as you went to the village to spend it.
The servants gave him his meals and told him to cheer up. But cheering up and Kenneth were, for the time, strangers. People in books never can eat when they are in trouble, but I have noticed myself that if the trouble has gone on for some hours, eating is really rather a comfort. You don’t enjoy eating so much as usual, perhaps, but at any rate it is something to do, and takes the edge off your sorrow for a short time. And cook was sorry for Kenneth and sent him up a very nice dinner and a very nice tea. Roast chicken and gooseberry pie the dinner was, and for tea there was cake with almond icing on it.
The sun was very low when he went back wearily to have one more look in the boat for that detestable amethyst ring. Of course it was not there. And the picnic party would be home soon. And he really did not know what his aunt would do to him.
‘Shut me up in a dark cupboard, perhaps,’ he thought gloomily, ‘or put me to bed all day to-morrow. Or give me lines to write out, thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, and thousands, of them.’
The boat, set in motion by his stepping into it, swung out to the full length of its rope. The sun was shining almost level across the water. It was a very still evening, and the reflections of the trees and of the house were as distinct as the house and the trees themselves. And the water was unusually clear. He could see the fish swimming about, and the sand and pebbles at the bottom of the moat. How clear and quiet it looked down there, and what fun the fishes seemed to be having.
‘I wish I was a fish,’ said Kenneth. ‘Nobody punishes them for taking rings they didn’t take.’
And then suddenly he saw the ring itself, lying calm, and quiet, and round, and shining, on the smooth sand at the bottom of the moat.
He reached for the boat-hook and leaned over the edge of the boat trying to get up the ring on the boat-hook’s point. Then there was a splash.
‘Good gracious! I wonder what that is?’ said cook in the kitchen, and dropped the saucepan with the welsh rabbit in it which she had just made for kitchen supper.
Kenneth had leaned out too far over the edge of the boat, the boat had suddenly decided to go the other way, and Kenneth had fallen into the water.
The first thing he felt was delicious coolness, the second that his clothes had gone, and the next thing he noticed was that he was swimming quite easily and comfortably under water, and that he had no trouble with his breathing, such as people who tell you not to fall into water seem to expect you to have. Also he could see quite well, which he had never been able to do under water before.
‘I can’t think,’ he said to himself, ‘why people make so much fuss about your falling into the water. I sha’n’t be in a hurry to get out. I’ll swim right round the moat while I’m about it.’
It was a very much longer swim than he expected, and as he swam he noticed one or two things that struck him as rather odd. One was that he couldn’t see his hands. And another was that he couldn’t feel his feet. And he met some enormous fishes, like great cod or halibut, they seemed. He had had no idea that there were fresh-water fish of that size.
They towered above him more like men-o’-war than fish, and he was rather glad to get past them. There were numbers of smaller fishes, some about his own size, he thought. They seemed to be enjoying themselves extremely, and he admired the clever quickness with which they darted out of the way of the great hulking fish.
And then suddenly he ran into something hard and very solid, and a voice above him said crossly:
‘Now then, who are you a-shoving of? Can’t you keep your eyes open, and keep your nose out of gentlemen’s shirt fronts?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Kenneth, trying to rub his nose, and not being able to. ‘I didn’t know people could talk under water,’ he added very much astonished to find that talking under water was as easy to him as swimming there.
‘Fish can talk under water, of course,’ said the voice, ‘if they didn’t, they’d never talk at all: they certainly can’t talk out of it.’
‘But I’m not a fish,’ said Kenneth, and felt himself grin at the absurd idea.
‘Yes, you are,’ said the voice, ‘of course you’re a fish,’ and Kenneth, with a shiver of certainty, felt that the voice spoke the truth. He was a fish. He must have become a fish at the very moment when he fell into the water. That accounted for his not being able to see his hands or feel his feet. Because of course his hands were fins and his feet were a tail.
‘Who are you?’ he asked the voice, and his own voice trembled.
‘I’m the Doyen Carp,’ said the voice. ‘You must be a very new fish indeed or you’d know that. Come up, and let’s have a look at you.’
Kenneth came up and found himself face to face with an enormous fish who had round staring eyes and a mouth that opened and shut continually. It opened square like a kit-bag, and it shut with an extremely sour and severe expression like that of an offended rhinoceros.
‘Yes,’ said the Carp, ‘you are a new fish. Who put you in?’
‘I fell in,’ said Kenneth, ‘out of the boat, but I’m not a fish at all, really I’m not. I’m a boy, but I don’t suppose you’ll believe me.’
‘Why shouldn’t I believe you?’ asked the Carp wagging a slow fin. ‘Nobody tells untruths under water.’
And if you come to think of it, no one ever does.
‘Tell me your true story,’ said the Carp very lazily. And Kenneth told it.
‘Ah! these humans!’ said the Carp when he had done. ‘Always in such a hurry to think the worst of everybody!’ He opened his mouth squarely and shut it contemptuously. ‘You’re jolly lucky, you are. Not one boy in a million turns into a fish, let me tell you.’
‘Do you mean that I’ve got to go on being a fish?’ Kenneth asked.
‘Of course you’ll go on being a fish as long as you stop in the water. You couldn’t live here, you know, if you weren’t.’
‘I might if I was an eel,’ said Kenneth, and thought himself very clever.
‘Well, be an eel then,’ said the Carp, and swam away sneering and stately. Kenneth had to swim his hardest to catch up.
‘Then if I get out of the water, shall I be a boy again?’ he asked panting.
‘Of course, silly,’ said the Carp, ‘only you can’t get out.’
‘Oh! can’t I?’ said Kenneth the fish, whisked his tail and swam off. He went straight back to the amethyst ring, picked it up in his mouth, and swam into the shallows at the edge of the moat. Then he tried to climb up the slanting mud and on to the grassy bank, but the grass hurt his fins horribly, and when he put his nose out of the water, the air stifled him, and he was glad to slip back again. Then he tried to jump out of the water, but he could only jump straight up into the air, so of course he fell straight down again into the water. He began to be afraid, and the thought that perhaps he was doomed to remain for ever a fish was indeed a terrible one. He wanted to cry, but the tears would not come out of his eyes. Perhaps there was no room for any more water in the moat.
The smaller fishes called to him in a friendly jolly way to come and play with them – they were having a quite exciting game of follow-my-leader among some enormous water-lily stalks that looked like trunks of great trees. But Kenneth had no heart for games just then.
He swam miserably round the moat looking for the old Carp, his only acquaintance in this strange wet world. And at last, pushing through a thick tangle of water weeds he found the great fish.
‘Now then,’ said the Carp testily, ‘haven’t you any better manners than to come tearing a gentleman’s bed-curtains like that?’
‘I beg your pardon,’ said Kenneth Fish, ‘but I know how clever you are. Do please help me.’
‘What do you want now?’ said the Carp, and spoke a little less crossly.
‘I want to get out. I want to go and be a boy again.’
‘But you must have said you wanted to be a fish.’
‘I didn’t mean it, if I did.’
‘You shouldn’t say what you don’t mean.’
‘I’ll try not to again,’ said Kenneth humbly, ‘but how can I get out?’
‘There’s only one way,’ said the Carp rolling his vast body over in his watery bed, ‘and a jolly unpleasant way it is. Far better stay here and be a good little fish. On the honour of a gentleman that’s the best thing you can do.’
‘I want to get out,’ said Kenneth again.
‘Well then, the only way is … you know we always teach the young fish to look out for hooks so that they may avoid them. You must look out for a hook and take it. Let them catch you. On a hook.’
The Carp shuddered and went on solemnly, ‘Have you strength? Have you patience? Have you high courage and determination? You will want them all. Have you all these?’
‘I don’t know what I’ve got,’ said poor Kenneth, ‘except that I’ve got a tail and fins, and I don’t know a hook when I see it. Won’t you come with me? Oh! dear Mr. Doyen Carp, do come and show me a hook.’
‘It will hurt you,’ said the Carp, ‘very much indeed. You take a gentleman’s word for it.’
‘I know,’ said Kenneth, ‘you needn’t rub it in.’
The Carp rolled heavily out of his bed.
‘Come on then,’ he said, ‘I don’t admire your taste, but if you want a hook, well, the gardener’s boy is fishing in the cool of the evening. Come on.’
He led the way with a steady stately movement.
‘I want to take the ring with me,’ said Kenneth, ‘but I can’t get hold of it. Do you think you could put it on my fin with your snout?’
‘My what!’ shouted the old Carp indignantly and stopped dead.
‘Your nose, I meant,’ said Kenneth. ‘Oh! please don’t be angry. It would be so kind of you if you would. Shove the ring on, I mean.’
‘That will hurt too,’ said the Carp, and Kenneth thought he seemed not altogether sorry that it should.
It did hurt very much indeed. The ring was hard and heavy, and somehow Kenneth’s fin would not fold up small enough for the ring to slip over it, and the Carp’s big mouth was rather clumsy at the work. But at last it was done. And then they set out in search of a hook for Kenneth to be caught with.
‘I wish we could find one! I wish we could!’ Kenneth Fish kept saying.
‘You’re just looking for trouble,’ said the Carp. ‘Well, here you are!’
Above them in the clear water hung a delicious-looking worm. Kenneth Boy did not like worms any better than you do, but to Kenneth Fish that worm looked most tempting and delightful.
‘Just wait a sec.,’ he said, ‘till I get that worm.’
‘You little silly,’ said the Carp, ‘that’s the hook. Take it.’
‘Wait a sec.,’ said Kenneth again.
His courage was beginning to ooze out of his fin tips, and a shiver ran down him from gills to tail.
‘If you once begin to think about a hook you never take it,’ said the Carp.
‘Never?’ said Kenneth ‘Then … oh! good-bye!’ he cried desperately, and snapped at the worm. A sharp pain ran through his head and he felt himself drawn up into the air, that stifling, choking, husky, thick stuff in which fish cannot breathe. And as he swung in the air the dreadful thought came to him, ‘Suppose I don’t turn into a boy again? Suppose I keep being a fish?’ And then he wished he hadn’t. But it was too late to wish that.
