The Enchanted Castle

The Enchanted Castle

THERE were three of them--Jerry, Jimmy, and Kathleen. Of course, Jerry's

name was Gerald, and not Jeremiah, whatever you may think; and Jimmy's

name was James; and Kathleen was never called by her name at all, but

Cathy, or Catty, or Puss Cat, when her brothers were pleased with her,

and Scratch Cat when they were not pleased. And they were at school in a

little town in the West of England--the boys at one school, of course,

and the girl at another, because the sensible habit of having boys and

girls at the same school is not yet as common as I hope it will be some

day. They used to see each other on Saturdays and Sundays at the house

of a kind maiden lady; but it was one of those houses where it is

impossible to play. You know the kind of house, don't you? There is a

sort of a something about that kind of house that makes you hardly able

even to talk to each other when you are left alone, and playing seems

unnatural and affected. So they looked forward to the holidays, when

they should all go home and be together all day long, in a house where

playing was natural and conversation possible, and where the Hampshire

forests and fields were full of interesting things to do and see. Their

Cousin Betty was to be there too, and there were plans. Betty's school

broke up before theirs, and so she got to the Hampshire home first, and

the moment she got there she began to have measles, so that my three

couldn't go home at all. You may imagine their feelings. The thought of

seven weeks at Miss Hervey's was not to be borne, and all three wrote

home and said so. This astonished their parents very much, because they

had always thought it was so nice for the children to have dear Miss

Hervey's to go to. However, they were "jolly decent about it," as Jerry

said, and after a lot of letters and telegrams, it was arranged that the

boys should go and stay at Kathleen's school, where there were now no

girls left and no mistresses except the French one.

"It'll be better than being at Miss Hervey's," said Kathleen, when the

boys came round to ask Mademoiselle when it would be convenient for them

to come; "and, besides, our school's not half so ugly as yours. We do

have tablecloths on the tables and curtains at the windows, and yours is

all deal boards, and desks, and inkiness."

When they had gone to pack their boxes Kathleen made all the rooms as

pretty as she could with flowers in jam jars, marigolds chiefly,

because there was nothing much else in the back garden. There were

geraniums in the front garden, and calceolarias and lobelias; of course,

the children were not allowed to pick these.

"We ought to have some sort of play to keep us going through the

holidays," said Kathleen, when tea was over, and she had unpacked and

arranged the boys' clothes in the painted chests of drawers, feeling

very grown-up and careful as she neatly laid the different sorts of

clothes in tidy little heaps in the drawers. "Suppose we write a book."

"You couldn't," said Jimmy.

"I didn't mean me, of course," said Kathleen, a little injured; "I meant

us."

"Too much fag," said Gerald briefly.

"If we wrote a book," Kathleen persisted, "about what the insides of

schools really are like, people would read it and say how clever we

were."

"More likely expel us," said Gerald. "No; we'll have an out-of-doors

game--bandits, or something like that. It wouldn't be bad if we could

get a cave and keep stores in it, and have our meals there."

"There aren't any caves," said Jimmy, who was fond of contradicting

every one. "And, besides, your precious Mamselle won't let us go out

WHEN you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the

dullest people will tell you that they are true--such things, for

instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat

but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and

magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy

to believe, especially when you see them happening. And, as I am always

telling you, the most wonderful things happen to all sorts of people,

only you never hear about them because the people think that no one will

believe their stories, and so they don't tell them to any one except me.

And they tell me, because they know that I can believe anything.

When Jimmy had awakened the Sleeping Princess, and she had invited the

three children to go with her to her palace and get something to eat,

they all knew quite surely that they had come into a place of magic

happenings. And they walked in a slow procession along the grass towards

the castle. The Princess went first, and Kathleen carried her shining

train; then came Jimmy, and Gerald came last. They were all quite sure

that they had walked right into the middle of a fairy tale, and they

were the more ready to believe it because they were so tired and hungry.

They were, in fact, so hungry and tired that they hardly noticed where

they were going, or observed the beauties of the formal gardens through

which the pink-silk Princess was leading them. They were in a sort of

dream, from which they only partially awakened to find themselves in a

big hall, with suits of armour and old flags round the walls, the skins

of beasts on the floor, and heavy oak tables and benches ranged along

it.

The Princess entered, slow and stately, but once inside she twitched her

sheeny train out of Jimmy's hand and turned to the three.

"You just wait here a minute," she said, "and mind you don't talk while

I'm away. This castle is crammed with magic, and I don't know what will

happen if you talk." And with that, picking up the thick goldy-pink

folds under her arms, she ran out, as Jimmy said afterwards, "most

unprincesslike," showing as she ran black stockings and black strap

shoes.

Jimmy wanted very much to say that he didn't believe anything would

happen, only he was afraid something would happen if he did, so he

merely made a face and put out his tongue. The others pretended not to

see this, which was much more crushing than anything they could have

said. So they sat in silence, and Gerald ground the heel of his boot

upon the marble floor. Then the Princess came back, very slowly and

kicking her long skirts in front of her at every step. She could not

hold them up now because of the tray she carried.

It was not a silver tray, as you might have expected, but an oblong tin

one. She set it down noisily on the end of the long table and breathed a

sigh of relief.

"Oh! it was heavy," she said. I don't know what fairy feast the

children's fancy had been busy with. Anyhow, this was nothing like it.

The heavy tray held a loaf of bread, a lump of cheese, and a brown jug

of water. The rest of its heaviness was just plates and mugs and knives.

"Come along," said the Princess hospitably. "I couldn't find anything

but bread and cheese--but it doesn't matter, because everything's magic

here, and unless you have some dreadful secret fault the bread and

cheese will turn into anything you like. What would you like?" she

asked Kathleen.

"Roast chicken," said Kathleen, without hesitation.

The pinky Princess cut a slice of bread and laid it on a dish. "There