Charles E. Carryl

“ 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. ”

“ But there was no answer, and, stooping down at the place where the Mouse had disappeared, she looked into the thicket. There was nothing there but a very small squirrel eating a nut; and, after staring at her for a moment in great astonishment, he threw the nut in her face and scampered off into the bushes.
"Nice manners, upon my word!" said Dorothy, in great indignation at this treatment, and then, standing up, she gazed about the dell rather disconsolately; but there was no living thing in sight except a fat butterfly lazily swinging up and down on a blade of grass. ”

“ Dorothy felt very ridiculous as you may suppose, and, to add to her mortification, the Stork ferryman suddenly reappeared, and she could see him running along the roofs of the houses, and now and then stopping to stare down at her from the eaves as she sailed by, as if she were the most extraordinary spectacle he had ever seen, as indeed she probably was. Sometimes he waited until the sideboard had floated some distance past him as if to see how it looked, gazed at from behind ”

“ He was a gorgeous creature, with bells on the seams of his clothes and with arms and legs of different colors, and he was lounging in an easy attitude with his right leg thrown over the top of a toy livery-stable and his left foot in a large ornamental tea-cup; but as he was fastened to a hook by a loop in the top of his hat, Dorothy didn't feel in the least afraid of him.
"Thank you," she replied with much dignity, "I'm not a dozen at all. I'm a single person. ”

“ The strangest thing about the fiddling was that it seemed to be going on somewhere in the air, and the sound appeared to come from all directions at once. At first the music was soft and rather slow in time, but it grew louder and louder, and the fiddles played faster and faster, until presently they were going at such a furious rate that Dorothy stopped and looked back to see how the storks were getting on in their dancing; and she could see them in the distance, scampering up and down the street, and bumping violently against one another in a frantic attempt to keep time with the music. ”

“ She was eating porridge out of a bowl in her lap, and her head was so close to the edge of the shelf that Dorothy almost walked into her cap.
"Drat the toys!" cried the old dame, starting so violently that her spectacles fell off her nose into the porridge. "Drat the new-fangled things!"—and here she aimed a blow at Dorothy with her spoon. "They're enough to scare folks out of their senses. ”

“ All the houses were brilliantly lighted up, and there were great iron lamps swung on chains across the street, so that the street itself was almost as bright as day, and Dorothy thought she recognized it as a place she had once read about where nobody but astrologers lived. There was a confused sound of fiddling going on somewhere, and as Dorothy walked along she could hear a scuffling noise inside the houses as if the inhabitants were dancing about on [Pg 121] sanded floors. ”

“ Bob Scarlet isn't anywhere about, is he?" he added, staring around in an agitated manner through his spy-glass.
"About?" said Dorothy, trying to look serious. "I should think he was about five miles from here by this time."
"I wish it was five thousand," exclaimed Sir Walter, angrily, smoothing down his frock. "Old Peckjabber!"
"Why, what in the world is the matter?" said Dorothy, beginning to laugh in spite of herself.
"Matter!" exclaimed the Admiral, his voice fairly trembling with emotion; "why, look here! We was all shrinking away to nothing in that wanishing garden. ”

“ It's enough to drive a person quite distracted."
"Well, it's a corker till you get used to it," said the Robin, strutting about. "There's such a tremendous variety to it, you see, that it exercises you all over at once."
This was so ridiculous that Dorothy laughed outright. "I should never get used to it," she said. "I don't believe I know a single one of the answers."
"I do!" said Bob Scarlet, proudly; "I know 'em all. It's 'No' to everything in it."
"Dear me!" said Dorothy, feeling quite provoked at herself, "of course it is. ”

“ Then the little voice spoke up again and said, "And how big are you?"
[Pg 90] "I'm about three inches tall," said Dorothy; and she was so excited by this time at the prospect of seeing a real live fairy for the first time in her life, that she felt as if a lot of flies were running up and down on the back of her neck.
"Dear me!" exclaimed the little voice, expressing great astonishment in its small way. "Why, there's hardly enough of you to put in a corner."
Dorothy reflected for a moment and then called out, "But, you know, that depends altogether on the size of the corner." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then the Mouse sat up on its hind legs and waved a little farewell with its paws, and the door softly closed.
"If we begin to grow now," said the Admiral's voice in the dark, "we'll all be squeegeed, sure!"
[Pg 119] "What an extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Dorothy; for they had come out into a street full of houses.
"What I want to know is what's become of the door," said Sir Walter, indignantly, staring at a high wall where the door had been, and which was now perfectly blank.
"I'm sure I don't know," said Dorothy, quite bewildered. "It's really quite mysterious, isn't it?" ”

“ No one but a rat would ever have thought of using sugar for paper-weights. If I wasn't afraid of a rat I'd wish it hadn't gone away, though, for I haven't the slightest idea where the Caravan is, or which way I ought to go."
But it presently appeared that the noble rat had arranged the whole matter for her; for as Dorothy ran along she began to find lumps of sugar set up at intervals like little mile-stones, so that she shouldn't miss the road. ”

“ Dorothy gave a little scream as the coach went over, and then held her breath; but instead of sousing into the water as she expected, she came down on top of it with a hard bump, and, very much to her astonishment, found herself sitting up on a carpeted [Pg 139] floor. For a moment the rat-trap, with Bob Scarlet inside of it, seemed to be floating around in the air like a wire balloon, and then, as she rubbed her eyes and looked again, it slowly changed into a bird-cage with a fat robin sitting in it on a perch, and peering sharply at her sideways with one of his bright little eyes ”

“ Besides the bonnet-bush, there were plants loaded down with little pina [Pg 57] fores, and shrubs with small shoes growing all over them, like peas, and delicate vines of thread with button-blossoms on them, and, what particularly pleased Dorothy, a row of pots marked "FROCK FLOWERS," and each containing a stalk with a crisp little frock growing on it, like a big tulip upside down.
"They're only big enough for dolls," chattered [Pg 58] Dorothy, as she hurried from one to the other, "but, of course, they'll grow. ”

“ CHAPTER V BOB SCARLET'S GARDEN
[Pg 54] Being in a garden full of flowers at Christmas-time is a very fine thing; and Dorothy was looking about with great delight, and wondering how it had all happened, when she suddenly caught sight of a big robin walking along one of the paths, and examining the various plants with an air of great interest. He was a very big robin, indeed—in fact, he was about as large as a goose; and he had on a gardener's hat, and a bright red waistcoat which he was wearing unbuttoned so as to give his fat little chest plenty of room ”

“ She's kind of grumpy now because the other Camel stayed away, but she'll titter like a turtle when she gets to dancing."
"I don't know what relation she is to Humphrey," thought Dorothy, as the Camel took her by the hand, "but she's certainly big enough to be his great-grandmother ten times over." Before she had time to think any more about it, however, the Elephant called out, "Ladies change!" and the dancing began again harder than ever. ”

“ 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:
Oh, come and cross over to nowhere,
And go where
The nobodies live on their nothing a day! ”

“ Very popular, I believe."
"So I should think," remarked Dorothy, beginning to recover her good nature.
"But of course singles are much more select," said the Jack. "We never come in dozens, you know."
"I suppose not," said Dorothy, innocently. "I can't imagine anybody wanting twelve Dancing-Jacks all at the same time."
"It wouldn't do any good if they did want 'em," said the Jack. "They couldn't get 'em,—that is, not in this shop."
Now, while this conversation was going on, Dorothy noticed that the various things in the shop-window had a curious way of constantly turning into something else. ”

“ Give me the old-fashioned kind—deaf and dumb and blind and stiff"—but by this time Dorothy, almost frightened out of her wits, had run away and was hiding behind a doll's sofa.
"She's a nice person to have charge of a shop," she [Pg 74] exclaimed indignantly, as she listened to the old dame scolding to herself in the distance. "The idea of not knowing human persons when you see them! Of course, being so small is rather unusual, and it's really quite dangerous, you know," she went on, giving a little shiver at the thought of what might have happened. ”

“ By this time the toy-shop itself was all in a commotion. Dolls were climbing down from the shelves and falling over each other; the big marbles had in some way got out of the basket and were rolling about in all directions; and Dorothy could see the old dame at the further end of the shop, running about and frantically striking at one thing after another with her spoon. To make matters worse, quite a little army of tin soldiers suddenly appeared, running confusedly about, with the [Pg 103] drawers from the little grocer's shop upside down on their heads, and all calling "Fire!" ”

“ DOROTHY MAKES A CALL IN THE TREE-TOP COUNTRY.
The stairway ended at the top in a sort of trap-door, and Dorothy popped up through it like a jack-in-the-box; but instead of coming out, as she expected, among the branches of the tree, she found herself in a wide, open field as flat as a pancake, and with a small [Pg 43] house standing far out in the middle of it. It was a bright and sunny place, and quite like an ordinary field in every way except that, in place of grass, it had a curious floor of branches, closely braided together like the bottom of a market-basket ”

“ Then, too, she found it rather trying to her nerves, at first, to meet with rabbits as big as horses, to come suddenly upon quails whistling like steam-engines, and to be chattered at by squirrels a head taller than she herself was ”

“ Peevy's umbrella shuts up with them inside of it," she said mournfully to herself, "I'm sure I don't know what they'll do. It's such a stiff thing to open that it must be perfectly awful when it shuts up all of a sudden," and she was just giving a little shudder at the mere thought of such a thing, when the sideboard bumped up against something and she found that it had run into a tree. ”

“ The wind was rus [Pg 85] tling pleasantly in the trees, and the sunlight, shining down through the dancing leaves, made little patches of light that chased each other about on the grass, and, as Dorothy walked along, she felt happier than she had at any time since losing the Blue Admiral Inn. To be sure, it wasn't the easiest matter in the world to get along, for as the trees and the bushes and the blades of grass were all of the natural size and Dorothy was no bigger than a wren, she fell over a good many twigs and other small obstacles, and tumbled down a great many times. ”

“ The Caravan received this reproof with great cheerfulness, especially the Admiral, who took a look at Dorothy through his spy-glass, and then said with much satisfaction: "Now we're each being ashamed of by three persons" ”