CHARLES E. CARRYL

AUTHOR OF "DAVY AND THE GOBLIN"

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY REGINALD B. BIRCH

BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge

Copyright, 1891, 1892, 1919, and 1920, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1920, by Charles E. Carryl

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

"The Admiral, making a desperate attempt to get a view of his legs through his spy-glass" Frontispiece

Head-piece to Chapter I 11

The Admiral 12

The Highlander 12

Sir Walter Rosettes 15

"The Admiral, making a desperate attempt to get a view of his legs through his spy-glass" 18

"The Admiral sat up and gazed about with a complacent smile" 20

"'They're entirely different from mine, anyhow,' said the Stork" 23

"It seemed like listening to an enormous cuckoo-clock" 25

"'Dear Me!' she exclaimed, 'here comes all the furniture!'" 30

"The Admiral exclaimed: 'There she is! I can see her quite plainly!'" 33

"The sideboard slowly floated along through this strange forest" 40

Dorothy makes a call in the tree-top country 42

The extraordinary Post-Captain 47 (1) and 47 (2)

"He did a little fifing on the edges of the note" 48

"Sir Peter caught the pirate, and he took him by the neck" 50

"He was walking about with his hands in his waistcoat-pockets" 55

"There were plants loaded down with little pinafores, and shrubs with small shoes growing all over them" 56

"'Why, the place where I am,' said Dorothy" 62

"Dorothy started off at once, as fast as she could run" 63

"'It is a shelf!' she exclaimed" 65

"The Highlander, with his usual bad luck, had put on his sunbonnet backward" 68

"'You know your size does come in dozens, assorted,' continued the Jack" 75

"He sailed away under the bridge" 80

"She found it rather trying to her nerves, at first, to meet with rabbits as big as horses" 85

"—To be chattered at by squirrels a head taller than she herself was" 85

"Pushing the leaves gently aside, she cautiously peeped out" 90

The Mouse laments 93

"And found the Caravan sitting in a row on a little bench at the door" 96

"He dropped his little book, with an appearance of great agitation, and hurried away" 99

"A door at the back of the shop opened and they all rushed out" 101

Tail-piece to Chapter VIII 103

The Caravan discipline the Camel 109

"'There isn't any more,' said the Highlander, rather confusedly" 115

"An elephant and a sheep seized her by the hands, and the next moment she was dancing in the ring" 123

The animals crossing over 127

"By this time they were running so fast that she could hardly keep up with them" 135

"It slowly changed to a bird-cage with a robin sitting in it" 138

Tail-piece to Chapter XII 140

CHAPTER I

DOROTHY AND THE ADMIRAL

[Pg 11]The Blue Admiral Inn stood on the edge of the shore, with its red brick walls, and its gabled roof, and the old willow-trees that overhung it, all reflected in the quiet water as if the harbor had been a great mirror lying upon its back in the sun. This made it a most attractive place to look at. Then there were crisp little dimity curtains hanging in the windows of[Pg 12] the coffee-room and giving great promise of tidiness and comfort within, and this made it a most delightful place to think about. And then there was a certain suggestion of savory cooking in the swirl of the smoke that came out of the tall, old-fashioned chimneys, and this made it a most difficult place to stay away from. In fact, if any ships had chanced to come into the little harbor, I believe everybody on board of them, from the captains down to the cabin-boys, would have scrambled into the boats the moment the anchors were down and pulled away for the Blue Admiral Inn.

But, so far as ships were concerned, the harbor was as dead as a door-nail, and poor old Uncle Porticle, who kept the inn, had long ago given up all idea of expecting them, and had fallen into a melancholy habit of standing in the little porch that opened on the village street, gazing first to the right and then to the left, and lastly at the opposite side of the way, as if he had a faint hope that certain seafaring men were about to steal a march upon him from the land-side of the town. And Dorothy, who was a lonely little child, with no one in the world to care for but Uncle Porticle, had also fallen into a habit of sitting on the step of the porch by way of keeping him company; and here[Pg 13] they passed many quiet hours together, with the big robin hopping about in his cage, and with the Admiral himself, on his pedestal beside the porch, keeping watch and ward over the fortunes of the inn.

Now the Admiral was only a yard high, and was made of wood into the bargain; but he was a fine figure of a man for all that, being dressed in a very beautiful blue coat (as befitted his name) and canary-colored knee-breeches, and wearing a fore-and-aft hat rakishly perched on the back of his head. On the other hand, he had sundry stray cracks in the calves of his legs, and was badly battered about the nose; but, after all, this only gave him a certain weather-beaten appearance as if he had been around the world any number of times in all sorts of company; and[Pg 14] for as long as Dorothy could remember he had been standing on his pedestal beside the porch, enjoying the sunshine and defying the rain, as a gallant officer should, and earnestly gazing at the opposite side of the street through a spy-glass.

Now, what the Admiral was staring at was a mystery. He might, for instance, have been looking at the wooden Highlander that stood at the door of Mr. Pendle's instrument-shop, for nothing more magnificent than this particular Highlander could possibly be imagined. His clothes were of every color of the rainbow, and he had silver buckles on his shoes, and brass buttons on his coat, and he was varnished to such an extent that you could hardly look at him without winking. Then his hair and his whiskers were so red, and his legs were so pink and so fat and so lifelike, that it seemed as if you could almost hear him speak; and, what was more, he had been standing for years at the door of the shop, proudly holding up a preposterous[Pg 15] wooden watch that gave half-past three as the correct time at all hours of the day and night. In fact, it would have been no great wonder if the Admiral had stared at him to the end of his days.

Then there was Sir Walter Rosettes, a long-bodied little man in a cavalier's cloak, with a ruff about his neck and enormous rosettes on his shoes, who stood on a pedestal at old Mrs. Peevy's garden gate, offering an imitation tobacco-plant, free of charge, as it were, to any one who would take the trouble of carrying it home. This bold device was intended to call attention to the fact that Mrs. Peevy kept a tobacco-shop in the front parlor of her little cottage behind the hollyhock bushes, the announcement being backed up by the spectacle of three pipes arranged in a tripod in the window, and by the words "Smokers' Emporium" displayed in gold letters on the glass; and, by the way, Dorothy knew[Pg 16] perfectly well who this little man was, as somebody had taken the trouble of writing his name with a lead-pencil on his pedestal just below the toes of his shoes.

And lastly there was old Mrs. Peevy herself, who might be seen at any hour of the day, sitting at the door of her cottage, fast asleep in the shade of her big cotton umbrella with the Chinese mandarin for a handle. She wasn't much to look at, perhaps, but there was no way of getting at the Admiral's taste in such matters, so he stared through his spy-glass year in and year out, and nobody was any the wiser.

Now from sitting so much in the porch and turning these things over in her mind, Dorothy had come to know the Admiral and the Highlander and Sir Walter Rosettes as well as she could possibly know persons who didn't know her, and who couldn't have spoken to her if they had known her; but nothing came of the acquaintance until a certain Christmas eve. Of course, nobody knew better than Dorothy what Christmas eve should be like. The snow should be falling softly, and just enough should come down to cover up the pavements and make the streets look beautifully white and clean, and to edge the trees and the lamp-posts and the railings as if they were trimmed with soft lace;[Pg 17] and just enough to tempt children to come out, and not so much as to keep grown people at home—in fact, just enough for Christmas eve, and not a bit more.

Then the streets should be full of people hurrying along and all carrying plenty of parcels; and the windows should be very gay with delightful wreaths of greens, and bunches of holly with plenty of scarlet berries on them, and the greengrocers should have little forests of assorted hemlock-trees on the sidewalks in front of their shops, and everything should be as cheerful and as bustling as possible.

And, if you liked, there might be just a faint smell of cooking floating about in the air, but this was not important by any means, as it might happen at any time.

Well, all these good old-fashioned things came to pass on this particular Christmas eve except the snow; and in place of that there came a soft, warm rain which was all very well in its way, except that, as Dorothy said, "It didn't belong on Christmas eve." And just at nightfall she went out into the porch to smell the rain, and to see how Christmas matters generally were getting on in the wet; and she was watching the people hurrying by, and trying to fancy what was in the mysterious-looking[Pg 18]parcels they were carrying so carefully under their umbrellas, when she suddenly noticed that the toes of the Admiral's shoes were turned sideways on his pedestal, and looking up at him she saw that he had tucked his spy-glass under his arm, and was gazing down backward at his legs with an air of great concern.

This was so startling that Dorothy almost jumped out of her shoes, and she was just turning to run back into the house when the Admiral caught sight of her, and called out excitedly, "Cracks in my legs!"—and then stared hard at her as if demanding some sort of an explanation of this extraordinary state of affairs.

Dorothy was dreadfully frightened, but she was a very polite little girl, and would have answered the town pump if it had spoken to her; so she swallowed down a great lump that had come up into her throat, and said, as respectfully as she could, "I'm very sorry, sir. I suppose it must be because they are so very old."

"Old!" exclaimed the Admiral, making a desperate attempt to get a view of his legs through his spy-glass. "Why, they're no older than I am"; and, upon thinking it over, this seemed so very true that Dorothy felt[Pg 19] quite ashamed of her remark and stood looking at him in a rather foolish way.

"Try again," said the Admiral, with a patronizing air.

"No," said Dorothy, gravely shaking her head, "I'm sure I don't know any other reason; only it seems rather strange, you know, that you've never even seen them before."

"If you mean my legs," said the Admiral, "of course I've seen them before—lots of times. But I've never seen 'em behind. That is," he added by way of explanation. "I've never seen 'em behind before."

"But I mean the cracks," said Dorothy, with a faint[Pg 20] smile. You see she was beginning to feel a little acquainted with the Admiral by this time, and the conversation didn't seem to be quite so solemn as it had been when he first began talking.

"Then you should say 'seen 'em before behind,'" said the Admiral. "That's where they've always been, you know."

Dorothy didn't know exactly what reply to make to this remark; but she thought she ought to say something by way of helping along the conversation, so she began, "I suppose it's kind of——" and here she stopped to think of the word she wanted.

"Kind of what?" said the Admiral severely.

"Kind of—cripplesome, isn't it?" said Dorothy rather confusedly.

"Cripplesome?" exclaimed the Admiral. "Why, that's no word for it. It's positively decrepitoodle——" here he paused for a moment and got extremely red in the face, and then finished up with "——loodelarious," and stared hard at her again, as if inquiring what she thought of that.

"Goodness!" said Dorothy, drawing a long breath, "what a word!"

"Well, it is rather a word," said the Admiral with a[Pg 21] very satisfied air. "You see, it means about everything that can happen to a person's legs—" but just here his remarks came abruptly to an end, for as he was strutting about on his pedestal, he suddenly slipped off the edge of it and came to the ground flat on his back.

Dorothy gave a little scream of dismay; but the Admiral, who didn't appear to be in the least disturbed by this accident, sat up and gazed about with a complacent smile. Then, getting on his feet, he took a pipe out of his pocket, and lit it with infinite relish; and having turned up his coat-collar by way of keeping the rest of his clothes dry, he started off down the street without another word. The people going by had all disappeared in the most unaccountable manner, and Dorothy could see him quite plainly as he walked along,[Pg 22] tacking from one side of the street to the other with a strange rattling noise, and blowing little puffs of smoke into the air like a shabby little steam-tug going to sea in a storm.

Now all this was extremely exciting, and Dorothy, quite forgetting the rain, ran down the street a little way so as to keep the Admiral in sight. "It's precisely like a doll going traveling all by itself," she exclaimed as she ran along. "How he rattles! I suppose that's his little cracked legs—and goodness gracious, how he smokes!" she added, for by this time the Admiral had fired up, so to speak, as if he were bound on a long journey, and was blowing out such clouds of smoke that he presently quite shut himself out from view. The smoke smelt somewhat like burnt feathers, which, of course, was not very agreeable, but the worst of it was that when Dorothy turned to run home again she discovered that she couldn't see her way back to the porch, and she was feeling about for it with her hands stretched out, when the smoke suddenly cleared away and she found that the inn, and Mr. Pendle's shop, and Mrs. Peevy's cottage had all disappeared like a street in a pantomime, and that she was standing quite alone before a strange little stone house.

CHAPTER II

THE FERRY TO NOWHERE

[Pg 23]The rain had stopped, and the moon was shining through the breaking clouds, and as Dorothy looked up at the little stone house she saw that it had an archway through it with "FERRY" in large letters on the wall above it. Of course she had no idea of going by herself over a strange ferry; but she was an extremely curious little girl, as you will presently see, and so she immediately ran through the archway to see what the ferry was like and where it took people, but, to her surprise, instead of coming out at the water side, she came into a strange, old-fashioned-looking street as crooked as it could possibly be, and lined on both sides by tall houses with sharply peaked roofs looming up against the evening sky.

There was no one in sight but a stork. He was a very tall stork with red legs, and wore a sort of paper bag on his head with "FERRYMAN" written across the front of it; and as Dorothy appeared he held out one[Pg 24] of his claws and said, "Fare, please," in quite a matter-of-fact way.

Dorothy was positively certain that she hadn't any money, but she put her hand into the pocket of her apron, partly for the sake of appearances, and partly because she was a little afraid of the Stork, and, to her surprise, pulled out a large cake. It was nearly as big as a saucer, and was marked "ONE BISKER"; and as this seemed to show that it had some value, she handed it to the ferryman. The Stork turned it over several times rather suspiciously, and then, taking a large bite out of it, remarked, "Very good fare," and dropped the rest of it into a little hole in the wall; and having done this he stared gravely at Dorothy for a moment, and then said, "What makes your legs bend the wrong way?"

"Why, they don't!" said Dorothy, looking down at them to see if anything had happened to them.

"They're entirely different from mine, anyhow," said the Stork.

"But, you know," said Dorothy very earnestly, "I couldn't sit down if they bent the other way."

"Sitting down is all very well," said the Stork, with a solemn shake of his head, "but you couldn't collect[Pg 25] fares with 'em, to save your life," and with this he went into the house and shut the door.

"It seems to me this is a very strange adventure," said Dorothy to herself. "It appears to be mostly about people's legs," and she was gazing down again in a puzzled way at her little black stockings when she heard a cough, and looking up she saw that the Stork had his head out of a small round window in the wall of the house.

"Look here," he said confidentially, "I forgot to ask what your fare was for." He said this in a sort of husky whisper, and as Dorothy looked up at him it seemed something like listening to an enormous cuckoo-clock with a bad cold in its works.

[Pg 26]"I don't think I know exactly what it was for," she said, rather confusedly.

"Well, it's got to be for something, you know, or it won't be fair," said the Stork. "I suppose you don't[Pg 27] want to go over the ferry?" he added, cocking his head on one side, and looking down at her, inquiringly.

"Oh, no indeed!" said Dorothy, very earnestly.

"That's lucky," said the Stork. "It doesn't go anywhere that it ever gets to. Perhaps you'd like to hear about it. It's in poetry, you know."

"Thank you," said Dorothy politely. "I'd like it very much."

"All right," said the Stork. "The werses is called 'A Ferry Tale'"; and, giving another cough to clear his voice, he began:

"What do you make out of it?" inquired the Stork anxiously.

"I don't make anything out of it," said Dorothy, staring at him in great perplexity.

"I didn't suppose you would," said the Stork, apparently very much relieved. "I've been at it for years and years, and I've never made sixpence out of it yet," with which remark he pulled in his head and disappeared.

"I don't know what he means, I'm sure," said Dorothy, after waiting a moment to see if the Stork would come back, "but I wouldn't go over that ferry for sixty sixpences. It's altogether too frolicky"; and having made this wise resolution, she was just turning to go back through the archway when the door of the house flew open and a little stream of water ran out upon the pavement. This was immediately followed by another and much larger flow, and the next moment[Pg 30] the water came pouring out through the doorway in such a torrent that she had just time to scramble up on the window-ledge before the street was completely flooded.

Dorothy's first idea was that there was something wrong with the pipes, but as she peeped in curiously through the window she was astonished to see that it[Pg 31] was raining hard inside the house—"and dear me!" she exclaimed, "here comes all the furniture!" and, sure enough, the next moment a lot of old-fashioned furniture came floating out of the house and drifted away down the street. There was a corner cupboard full of crockery, and two spinning-wheels, and a spindle-legged table set out with a blue-and-white tea-set and some cups and saucers, and finally a carved sideboard which made two or three clumsy attempts to get through the doorway broadside on, and then took a fresh start, and came through endwise with a great flourish. All of these things made quite a little fleet, and the effect was very imposing; but by this time the water was quite up to the window-ledge, and as the sideboard was a fatherly-looking piece of furniture with plenty of room to move about in, Dorothy stepped aboard of it as it went by, and, sitting down on a

little shelf that ran along the back of it, sailed away in the wake of the tea-table.

CHAPTER III

THE CRUISE OF THE SIDEBOARD