As the Goose Flies

Written & Illustrated

By

Katharine Pyle

 

 

Published by

Little, Brown & Co.

Boston

 

 

 

Copyright, 1901,

By Little, Brown, and Company

All rights reserved

 

 

 

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Chapter	Page
I	Behind the Bookcase	9
II	Beyond the Wall	15
III	The Five Little Pigs and the Goat	24
IV	Up in the Cloud-Land	45
V	The House of the Seven Little Dwarfs	58
VI	The Great Gray Wolf	77
VII	The Magic Lamp	89
VIII	Bluebeard's House	108
IX	Beyond the Mist	120
X	In the House of the Queerbodies	137
XI	The Princess Goldenhair	156
XII	Home Again	175

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List of Illustrations

"Then away he flew toward the dark line of forest"	Frontispiece
"Ellen stood at the nursery window"	page	9
"Presently she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the sky"	page	16
"Mother Goose told her how to do it"	page	22
"Ellen thought they were the cunningest little things for dolls that she had ever seen"	page	34
"As her eyes grew used to the gloom she saw a very large and very ugly goat"	page	40
"The gander and Ellen began to let the rope slip"	face page	55
"There stood a little dwarf holding a great wooden spoon"	page	59
"It beat and buffeted them with its wings and hissed so piercingly in their ears that they did not know what was after them"	face page	73
"Close to her was an enormous gray wolf"	page	78
"Spread its wings and flew up over his head"	page	86
"The slaves threw themselves down before her"	face page	91
"A terrible black genie appeared before her"	page	100
"Ellen climbed upon the gander's back and she then could just reach the knocker"	page	112
"Ellen raised the horn to her lips and blew"	page	122
"Still he kept whispering in its ear"	page	126
"An enormous dragon lay stretched in a rocky defile"	page	129
"She saw a tall man oddly dressed in green and yellow"	page	138
"Timidly the little girl took the white hand"	face page	154
"The fairy knelt before her and lifted the edge of the cloak"	page	162
"The fairy drew his sword and pointed it at her"	face page	171
"Ellen put her ear against the golden wall"	page	179
Tailpiece	page	183

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Chapter One

Behind the Bookcase

Ellen stood at the nursery window looking out at the gray sky and the wet, blowing branches of the trees. It had been raining and blowing all day. The roof pipes poured out steady waterfalls; the lilacs bent over, heavy with the rain. Up in the sky a bird was trying to beat its way home against the wind.

But Ellen was not thinking of any of these things. She was thinking of the story that her grandmother had forgotten again.

Ellen's grandmother was very old; so old that she often called Ellen by the names of her own little children; children who had grown up or died years and years ago. She was so old she could remember things that had happened seventy years before, but then she forgot a great many things, even things that had occurred only a few minutes before. Sometimes she forgot where her spectacles were when they were pushed back on her head. Most of all she forgot the stories she tried to tell Ellen. She would just get to a very interesting place, and then she would push her spectacles up on her forehead and look vaguely about her. "I forget what came next," she would say.

Very often Ellen could help her out. "Why, granny, don't you know the little bear's voice was so thin and shrill it woke little Silverhair right up? Then when she opened her eyes and saw the three bears—" or, "Why then when Jack saw the giant was fast asleep he caught up the golden hen—" and so the little girl would go on and finish the story for the old grandmother.

But there was one story that Ellen could not finish for her grandmother. It was a story that she had never heard; at least she had never heard the end of it. It was about a little princess named Goldenlocks who always had to wear a sooty hood over her beautiful shining hair, and who had a wicked stepmother.

Again and again the grandmother had begun the story, but she never got further in it than where Goldenlocks was combing her hair at night all alone in the kitchen. When she had reached that point she would stop and say, "Ah, what was it that came next? What was it, little Clara? Can't you remember? It's so long since I have told it." Clara was the name by which the grandmother oftenest called Ellen.

Sometimes the little girl tried to make up an ending to the story, but always the grandmother would shake her head. "No, no," she would cry, "that's not it. What was it? What was it? Ah, if I could but remember!"

She worried and fretted so over the story that Ellen was always sorry to have her begin it. Sometimes the old grandmother almost cried.

Now as the child stood looking through the window at the rainy world outside, her thoughts were upon the story, for the grandmother had been very unhappy over it all day; Ellen had not been able to get her to talk or think of anything else.

The house was very quiet, for it was afternoon. The mother was busy in the sewing-room, grandmother was taking a nap, and nurse was crooning softly to the baby in the room across the hall.

Ellen had come to the nursery to get a book of jingles; she was going to read aloud to her mother. Now as she turned from the window it occurred to her that she would put the bookcase in order before she went down to the sewing-room. That was just the thing to do on a rainy day.

She sat down before the shelves and began pulling the books out, now and then opening one to look at a picture or to straighten a bookmarker.

The nursery walls were covered with a flowered paper, and when Ellen had almost emptied the shelves she noticed that the paper back of them was of a different color from that on the rest of the room. It had not faded. The blue color between the vines looked soft and cloudlike, too, and almost as though it would melt away at a touch.

Ellen put her hand back to feel it.

Instead of touching a hard, cold wall as she had expected, her hand went right through between the vines as though there were nothing there.

Ellen rose to her knees and put both hands across the shelf. She found she could draw the vines aside just as though they were real. She even thought she caught a glimpse of skies and trees between them.

In haste she sprang to her feet and pushed the bookcase to one side so that she could squeeze in behind it.

She caught hold of the wall-paper vines and drew them aside, and then she stepped right through the wall and into the world beyond.

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Chapter Two

Beyond the Wall

It was not raining at all beyond the wall. Overhead was a soft, mild sky, neither sunny nor cloudy. Before her stretched a grassy green meadow, and far away in the distance was a dark line of forest.

Just at the foot of the meadow was a little house. It was such a curious little house that Ellen went nearer to look at it. It was not set solidly upon the ground, but stood upon four fowls' legs, so that you could look clear under it; and the roof was covered with shining feathers that overlapped like feathers upon the back of a duck. Beside the door, hitched to a post by a bridle just as a horse might be, was an enormous white gander.

While Ellen stood staring with all her eyes at the house and the gander, the door opened, and a little old woman, in buckled shoes, with a white apron over her frock and a pointed hat on her head, stepped out, as if to look about her and enjoy the pleasant air.

Presently she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at the sky; then she looked at the meadows, and last her eyes fell upon the little girl who stood there staring at her. The old woman gazed and gazed.

"Well, I declare," she cried, "if it isn't a little girl! What are you doing here, child?"

"I'm just looking at your house."

"But how did you happen to come here?"

"I came through the nursery wall. I didn't know it was soft before."

A number of queer-looking little people had come out from the house while Ellen and the old woman were talking, and they gathered about in a crowd and stared so hard and were so odd-looking that Ellen began to feel somewhat shy. They kept coming out and coming out until she wondered how the house could have held them all.

There was a little boy with a pig in his arms, and now and then the pig squealed shrilly. There was a maid with a cap and apron, and her sleeves were so full of round, heavy things that the seams looked ready to burst. A pocket that hung at her side was full, too, and bumped against her as she walked. She came quite close to Ellen, and the child could tell by the smell that the things in her sleeves and pocket were oranges. There was one who Ellen knew must be a king by the crown on his head; he was a jolly-looking fellow, and had a pipe in one hand and a bowl in the other.

There were big people and little people, young people and old; and a dish and spoon came walking out with the rest. But what seemed almost the strangest of all to Ellen was to see an old lady come riding out through the door of the house on a white horse.

"I wonder where she keeps it," thought the little girl to herself. "I shouldn't think it would be very pleasant to have a horse in the house with you."

The old lady's hands were loaded with rings, and as the horse moved there was a jingling as of bells. The words of a nursery rhyme rang through Ellen's head in time to the jingling:—

"Why," she cried, "it's the old lady of Banbury Cross. And"—she looked around at the crowd—"why, I do believe they're all out of Mother Goose rhymes."

"Of course they are," said the little old woman with the pointed hat. "What did you suppose would live in Mother Goose's house?"

"And are you Mother Goose?" asked Ellen.

"Yes, I am. Don't you think I look like the pictures?"

"But—but—I didn't know you were alive. I thought you were only a rhyme."

"Only a rhyme! Well, I should think not. How do you suppose there could be rhymes unless there was something to make them about?"

"And all the rest, too," said Ellen dreamily, looking about her. "'Tom, Tom, the piper's son,' and 'Dingty, Diddlety, my mammy's maid,' and 'Old King Cole'—why, they're all alive. How queer it seems! I wonder if the stories are alive, too."

"Yes, just as alive as we are."

"And the story grandmother forgot—oh, do you suppose I could find that story?"

"The story she forgot!" answered Mother Goose thoughtfully. "What was it about?"

"Why, that's it; I don't know. Nobody knows only just grandmother, and she's forgotten."

Mother Goose shook her head. "If every one's forgotten it, I'm afraid it must be at the house of the Queerbodies. That's where they send all the forgotten stories; then they make them over into new ones."

"Couldn't I go there to find it?"

"I don't know. I've never been there myself. Of course, they wouldn't let me in. But you're a real child. Maybe you could get in. Only, how would you get there? It's a long, long journey, through the forest and over hills and streams."

"I don't know," said Ellen. "I've never journeyed very far; only just to Aunt Josephine's."

Mother Goose knitted her brows and began to think hard. Suddenly her face brightened. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll lend you my gander; and he'll carry you there in short order, however far it is."

"Oh, thank you, but I don't believe I could ride him! I'd fall off, I'm sure."

"No, you wouldn't. He goes as smoothly as a dream goose, and almost as fast. Yes, I'll lend him to you. But there's one thing I'd like you to do for me in return when you reach the house of the Queerbodies."

"What is that?"

"I'd like you to ask about a rhyme I used to have. I think they must have it there, for I've lost it; and if it hasn't been made over yet, perhaps you could manage to get it for me."

"What's its name?" asked Ellen.

"Well, it hasn't any name, but it looks like this:—

Ellen promised to do what she could about it, and then Mother Goose sent Little Boy Blue to unhitch the gander and bring him to them. Ellen felt rather nervous about mounting him, but Mother Goose told her how to do it.

Then the white gander spread his wings. The wind rustled through them like the sound made by the leaves of a book when they are turned. Up, up rose the gander as smoothly as a bubble rises through the air and then away he flew toward the dark line of forest that Ellen saw in the distance.

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Chapter Three

The Five Little Pigs and the Goat

On and on went the white gander so smoothly and swiftly that the country slipped away beneath just as the leaves of a book do when they slip from under your finger too fast for you to see the print or pictures.

"I wonder what that is," said Ellen as a spot of red shone out among the green beneath.

The gander stayed his wings so that Ellen could look.

It was a little red brick house. Around it were other houses that looked as though they were built of sods. They had chimneys and from two or three of these chimneys thin lines of smoke rose through the still air.

As the gander hovered above them from a knoll a little way beyond there suddenly sounded a shrill and piteous squeaking.

"Oh, what's that?" cried Ellen. "It must be a pig and I'm afraid some one is hurting it. Oh dear!"

"Do you want to go and see mistress?" asked the gander.

Ellen said she did, so the gander turned in that direction.

When they reached the knoll they found that it was indeed a pig that was making the noise, but Ellen could not see why it was shrieking so. It sat there all alone under an oak tree and with its pink nose lifted to the sky and its eyes shut it wept aloud. The tears trickled down its bristly cheeks.

Suddenly it stopped squeaking, and getting up began quietly hunting about for acorns, and craunching them as though it found them very good.

"What's the matter, you poor little pig?" asked Ellen, looking down at it from the gander's back.

She had not spoken with any idea of receiving any answer.

The little pig looked up when he heard her voice. As soon as he saw her he sat down and began squeaking so shrilly that Ellen felt like covering her ears.

"Week! Week! Week!" he cried. "Can't find my way home."

For a moment Ellen was so surprised at hearing the pig speak that she could not say anything. Then she asked, "Where do you live?" But the pig did not hear her. "Where do you live?" she repeated in a louder tone; then she shouted, "Hush!" so loudly that the little pig stopped short with his mouth half open and the tears still standing in his eyes.

"Where do you live?" she asked for the third time.

"I live over by the wood in the little sod house next to the brick one," answered the little pig.

"Well, isn't that it there?" and Ellen pointed to the sod houses over which she had just flown.

The little pig looked. "Why, so it is," he cried. Then curling up his little tail he trotted away in that direction.

The white gander flew beside him and Ellen talked as they went. "Why didn't you see it before?"

"I was coming home from market with my brother; he's quite a big pig; and I stopped to eat some acorns, so he said he wouldn't wait for me any longer, and he went on and that lost me."

"But if you'd just looked you would have seen it."

"I couldn't look because I was hunting for acorns, and then I began to cry, and then I hunted for some more acorns."

It sounded so foolish, Ellen couldn't help laughing. "I think I'd better go home with you or you may get lost again," she said. Presently she asked, "How many brothers have you?"

"Four," answered the pig. "One of them's going to have roast beef for dinner." Suddenly he sat down and began to cry again.

"What in the world's the matter now?" asked Ellen in desperation.

"Oweek! Oweek! Maybe he's eaten it all."

"Well you'd better hurry home and see. If you keep on sitting here and crying, I know you won't get any."

This thought made the little pig jump up and start toward home as fast as his short legs would carry him.

When they reached the sod house next to the brick one another pig was standing in the doorway looking out. He was larger than Ellen's companion.

He stared hard at the little girl and her gander, but when he spoke it was to the little pig. "You naughty little pig, why didn't you come home?"

The little pig did not answer this question. "Has Middling finished his roast beef?" he asked.

"There's some fat left."

As the little pig hurried in through the door, Ellen asked of the other, "Is this your house?"

"Yes," grunted the pig.

Three other pigs had appeared in the doorway by this time. They all stared at the little girl.

"It's a dear little house," said Ellen.

"Would you like to look inside?" asked the largest pig.

Ellen said she would.

She slipped from the gander and the pigs made way for her to go in; but she only looked through the doorway, without entering. The littlest pig was seated at a table eating beef fat as fast as he could. Ellen did not think he ate very nicely.

"It's a dear little house," she repeated.

Then she looked about her. At the window of one of the other houses she caught a glimpse of a head. It looked like a cat's head.

"Who live in all these other houses?" she asked.

"Well, in that brick house lives another pig," answered the pig they called Middling. "Sometimes he comes to see us, but he doesn't have very much to do with us, because he's in a story; a real story you know, and we're only in a rhyme."

"What story is he in?" asked Ellen.

"The story of the wolf that huffed and puffed and blew the house in. He had two brothers, and one built a house of leaves and one built a house of straw, and the wolf came and blew their houses in and ate them up, but this one built his house of bricks, so when the wolf came to it—"

"Oh, yes, I know that story," interrupted Ellen, for she had heard it so often she was rather tired of it. "Who lives in the house beyond that?"

"The seven little kids. A wolf really did swallow them once, but their mother cut him open with her scissors while he was asleep and they all got out."

"And who lives in the little furry house with the chimneys like pointed ears?"

"An old cat. She's nothing but a rhyme. She's very particular, though. Why, one time she was just as mad at her kittens, just because they lost some mittens she had knitted for them."

So Middling went on talking of all the people who lived in the village, while Ellen listened and wondered. It seemed so strange she could hardly believe it was all true.

"What fun you must have together!" she said at last.

The pigs looked at each other and grunted. "We would have," said a slim pig that the others called Ringling, "if it wasn't for an old goat that lives in a cave down at the end of the street."

"Oh, but he's a naughty one," broke in Thumbie, the fattest pig. "He's always doing mischief and playing tricks on us."

"That was a bad trick he played on you, Thumbie," said Middling.

"What was that?" asked the little girl.

"Well, we were all away except Thumbie, and he was asleep in the doorway, and the old goat saw him and brought a paint pot and painted his back so it looked like a big fat face lying there. So when we came home we didn't know what it was, and we were scared, but Thumbie woke up and began to get up, and Ringling she squeaked, 'Run! run! Big face is after us,' so we all began to run. Thumbie he saw us all running, so he got scared too, and he ran after us, and the faster we ran the faster he ran. After a while he tripped and fell, and then he began to cry and we knew who it was."

"Oh, yes, he's as mean as mean can be," went on Middling. "Why, one time when our raspberries were ripe old Shave-head came here—"

"Who's Shave-head?" interrupted Ellen.

"Oh, he's the goat. Old Shave-head came here and asked if he couldn't have some of our raspberries, and we said yes he could if he'd give us a present, and he said he would, so he went home and brought a big pannikin and put it on the table. It was covered.

"Then he went out in the garden and began to pick raspberries as fast as ever he could.

"We all sat round and wondered what was in the pannikin.

"Littlesie guessed it was acorns, and Thumbie thought it was apple parings, and I thought it was pancakes because it was in a pannikin."

"And what was it?" asked Ellen, very much interested.

"Well, it was a joke," said Middling slowly. "He'd fixed up a sort of big jumping-jack inside, and when we took off the lid it jumped out at us and said, 'Woof!' It scared us so we all squeaked and jumped back in our chairs, and the chairs upset and down we came, clatterly-slam-bang!"

Ellen could not help laughing at that.

"He painted all our dolls, too," said Fatty, "and almost spoiled them."

"Have you dolls?" cried Ellen in surprise.

"Oh, yes, indeed. I'll show them to you," and Thumbie ran into the house to get them. When he brought them out Ellen thought they were the cunningest little things for dolls that she had ever seen. They were little wooden pigs just like the real pigs themselves only very small. But they were painted in the funniest way. One was bright purple with a yellow nose, and one was pea-green with red legs, another was sky-blue spotted all over with pink, and the other two were just as funny-looking.

After Ellen had looked at them she asked, "Did the goat paint them that way?"

"Yes, he did, and I think it's real mean." It was Middling who answered.

"What are some of the other tricks he plays?"

Middling thought awhile. "I don't remember any more."

"There was that Fourth-o'-July trick he played on the mother of the seven kids," suggested Ringling.

"Oh, yes. That was mean too; she's so good. She bakes us cookies sometimes and then she gives the old goat some. She's always good to him and nobody likes him either."

"What was the trick?"

"He took torpedoes and put them all down the path at the Mother Goat's. It was a gravel path, and she thought the torpedoes were just part of it. Fourth-o'-July morning she came out to get a pail of water and when she struck a torpedo with her hard hoof it went off, bang! It scared her so she jumped up in the air, and when she came down it was on some more torpedoes. Bang! bang! they went. Every time she made a leap and came down some more torpedoes went off. Mother Goat was so scared she went to bed for all the rest of the day, and it was Fourth-o'-July, too. I just wish we could drive him away."

"So do we," cried all the other pigs. "Then we'd be happy. He's just an ugly old baldhead, anyway."

"I never saw a bald goat," said Ellen.

"His master shaved him," said Ringling, "he was so bad."

"Why? What did he do?"

"Well, his master had three sons, and he sent them one at a time to take the goat out to pasture. Every time before the boy brought the goat home he would ask, 'Goat, have you had enough?' And the goat would answer:

Then the boy would bring him home and put him in the stable. But the father always wanted to be sure his goat had had enough, so he would go out himself and say, 'Goat have you had enough to-day?' Then it would answer:

It made the father so angry to think his sons should have treated the goat that way that he drove them away from home."

"I know," Ellen interrupted. "Then when the father found out that the goat had deceived him and made him send his sons away—"

"He shaved the goat's head and drove it away with a yard-stick," cried Middling, raising his voice. He wanted to tell the story himself. "Then it hid in a bear's cave—"

"I know."

"And the bear was afraid to go home, for he could just see the goat's eyes shining in the cave and he didn't know what it was, and he was afraid to go in; but a bee said it would see, so it went in and stung the goat on the head and then the goat jumped out of the cave and ran till it came here, and I do wish somebody would take it away."

"I would," said Ellen, "if I knew where to take it." She was not afraid of the goat, for she had a pet one at home that drew a little wagon.

Littlesie, who had finished his roast beef and had come to the door, looked frightened. "You couldn't," he cried. "Why Baldhead would butt you right over if you tried to touch him."