Chapter III
HOW POOR CECCO LOST HIS TAIL
It was a very large stone—larger even than Bulka had thought. It looked as if it had lain there for a very long time; almost as if it had always been there, and the potato patch and the garden and even the house itself had just grown up around it. There might very well be treasure there; it might even be a magic stone, by the look of it.
“The first thing to do,” said Poor Cecco, “is to measure off the ground.”
He began at once to measure it off in paces, five times his own length, counting the tail, and that brought him halfway down one of the furrows of the potato patch. There he found a little twig and stuck it up in the earth to mark the spot.
“That’s five lengths,” he explained, “and now if we measure five lengths from here again, in a straight line, it brings us back to the stone, and that shows exactly where we’ve got to dig.”
The others stood and watched him in admiration. It was all so perfectly simple and came out just right, only the Easter Chicken said:
“I don’t see why you need measure just to get back to where you started from.”
“You’ve got to measure,” said Poor Cecco hastily, for he did not want them to start asking questions. “It’s got to be done like that, or it won’t come out properly.”
“Do you mean the treasure won’t come out?” asked the Easter Chicken.
But Poor Cecco put him back in the Wooden Engine and told him to keep quiet.
“I wish I hadn’t come,” said the Easter Chicken, snuggling down inside the Engine. “I’m sure it’s going to be boring. Wake me up when you find the treasure,” he called out aloud.
Tubby and Bulka began to dig, taking turns with the spade, while Poor Cecco dug with his paws. Showers of earth flew over his back; soon there was quite a hole. It was exciting work, but the dolls grew tired of looking on; they wanted to see the treasure at once, and that was not possible. So they dragged Ida over to a more comfortable spot and sat down on her to gossip.
“Don’t you think Harlequin is handsome?” asked Gladys. “I find there is something so distinguished about him.”
“He is certainly good-looking,” said Virginia May, “but even you must admit that he has very little conversation. I never hear him say anything but ‘Hey Presto,’ and that is bound to become monotonous after a time, even when you are married to a person.”
“I don’t agree with you,” said Gladys. “It is perhaps true that he seemed more intelligent before we were married, but that was probably due to shyness. He is extremely elegant, and after all what more can you want?’
“Domestic life is boring,” said Virginia May, “and what’s more, it makes people stupid and conceited. I intend to keep my independence.” And she made a movement to smooth out her skirts, but remembering that to-night she had none, sat with her hands folded stiffly on her lap, staring out at the potato patch.
“She is jealous,” thought Gladys. “That is because she has no wedding-dress, but what can I do? These things are arranged for one by fate.”
Ida sighed. Romantic by nature, she was doomed to spend her life listening to other people’s confidences. No one ever thought of falling in love with her, and yet she had all the qualifications for an ideal wife.
Anna now was different. Anna held her head high. She stood now in the moonlight, serene on her little green meadow, her two glass eyes, set almost on the top of her woolly head, staring of necessity straight up into the sky. It gave her a rather stupid expression, but the lion did not notice that. He thought she was beautiful. He thought, in fact, she was the most beautiful person in the world.
“I adore you!” he said to her now for the hundredth time. “Leave this barren country and fly with me to the jungle.”
“I don’t think I should like the jungle,” said Anna. “Every one tells me it is full of snakes. I could never feel at home there.”
“How can you tell until you have tried?” objected the Lion. “The jungle is a wonderful place. There is a green twilight within it, monkeys swing from branch to branch. There the birds have a thousand voices and the flowers are lovelier than the fairest dream. Fly with me, beautiful Anna, and we will be king and queen of the jungle for ever!”
“Would I really be queen?” Anna asked, for that interested her.
“You shall be queen of the whole forest,” said the Lion. “A thousand slaves shall do your bidding and you shall wear garlands of flowers round your neck.”
“I cannot abandon my meadow,” said Anna primly. “I have made a vow never to leave it.”
“Oh, of course,” retorted the Lion, really losing his temper this time, “if you mean to spend all your life attached to a miserable bit of painted board, then there’s no use arguing with you!”
And he turned his back on her in a great huff and went off to see how the treasure was getting on. Anna felt that she had pushed matters a little too far. She had no intention of settling down in the jungle, which she pictured as an overgrown bean-patch, but she liked to hear the Lion talk about it; he put everything in such a poetic light that it really sounded quite attractive. She wandered off now among the potatoes, hoping that the lion would change his mind and follow her, as he had done many times before, but he didn’t. Anna was too proud to call him, so she blundered on and on, feeling that her evening was completely spoiled, and presently got lost among the potato vines for her pains, which served her right.
Meantime, quite a large hole had been dug under the stone, but there was so far nothing to show. Bulka’s paws were blistered from digging; he was all for giving up the job and trying somewhere else, but the Money-Pig would not hear of this. The mere thought of treasure excited him, and as his legs were too short for him to dig himself he felt quite safe in giving orders to the others.
“Remember,” he kept shouting, “I am the guardian of this treasure. I order you to keep on digging till you find it.”
“In Tubbyland,” Tubby began in her squeaky voice, “whenever there is treasure it’s always buried under big stones, and there’s heaps and heaps of it, and whoever finds it it belongs to all of them, and as soon as ever you start digging—”
“I’m sick of hearing about Tubbyland,” said Bulka, sucking his paws that had begun to smart. “I wish Tubbyland had never been invented!”
“Then if you say that,” said Tubby indignantly, “it’s just the same as saying you wish I had never been invented!”
“I do!” cried Bulka. “I do wish you’d never been invented, so Hinksman!”
“Oh! Oh!” shrieked Tubby. “Bulka’s being unkind to me!”
Poor Cecco had to stop digging.
“Can’t you two keep from quarrelling for one evening!” he exclaimed.
“Well, Tubby is so ucky!” said Bulka sulkily.
Now “ucky” is the very horridest word you can use about anybody—you can tell from the sound how horrid it is—and things were likely to have gone very badly had not Harlequin suddenly had an idea. This did not happen to him often; up to the present he had contented himself with dancing about and saying “Hey Presto” while the others worked, which did not assist matters much, but he felt now that this idea was too good to be wasted.
“Instead of digging the earth from under the stone,” he suggested, “why don’t we lift the stone off the treasure?”
Poor Cecco scratched his head. “That’s not a bad idea!”
“It’s what I told you all along,” put in the Money-Pig, “only no one listens to me!”
How to do it was the question. The stone was far too heavy to lift. All of them pushing together could not budge it an inch. “We must get a lever,” said the Money-Pig. And then it was that Poor Cecco had his really bad inspiration. It all came out of trying to be too helpful.
“If I put my tail under it,” he said, “we can use that for a lever and tilt it up.”
“Hey Presto,” cried Harlequin, striking an attitude.
Poor Cecco’s tail was of wood, like all the rest of him, but it was a fine strong tail, and in those days quite long. It was an easy job to poke the tip of it under the stone. Really it looked as if it would make a wonderful lever, and Poor Cecco himself was quite excited. “Now, all take hold of it together,” he cried, “and when I say ‘ready’ you push as hard as you can!”
And he took a long breath and planted all his four feet by firmly and said “Ready!”
What really did happen? No one knew. But at the moment they all crowded together, holding on to his tail, and Poor Cecco took his long breath, and every one pushed, instead of the stone rolling over as they expected there was a dreadful crack, and Poor Cecco’s lovely wooden tail snapped right in half!
That was a terrible moment! There was half of Poor Cecco’s tail broken off under the stone, and what was worse, they couldn’t pull it out again. Not that it would have been much use to him if they had. Tubby gave a piercing shriek, Harlequin turned very pale and tottered as he stood, the dolls hid their faces, and as for Bulka, he burst out crying louder and more like a five-finger exercise than ever before, and no one had the heart to stop him. They could only put their fingers in their ears and shake their heads and stamp.
“Indeed it doesn’t hurt,” Poor Cecco was saying. “Bulka, dear Bulka, I’ll buy a new tail to-morrow if you’ll stop crying!”
But Bulka refused to be comforted. His weeping swelled out on the breeze, loud and strong. All over the garden one could hear him, and all the potato bugs came running, wakened out of sleep, to know what the matter was. To Anna, however, lost among the potato vines and very miserable, it was a positive blessing. She lifted her head, stopped snivelling, and lumbered back, led by the sound, to where the others were gathered.
“What has happened?” she began. “Have you found the treasure? Why is Bulka crying?”
“Poor Cecco has lost his tail!”
Then Anna had to cry too.
“Hoo—Hoo—” they all lamented. “Poor Cecco has lost his tail!”
“Where did he lose it?” asked the potato-bugs, who after all are practical people.
“He broke it off. Hoo—Hooo!”
“Then why did you say he lost it?” returned the eldest potato-bug, slightly annoyed. “Lost is one thing, broken another. We can’t do anything about that!” And the potato-bugs all humped their backs and crawled back to bed again.
Now there must be an ambulance, and it was no use shouting for the express-wagon. He had been sound asleep again these two hours past. So they turned the Easter Chicken out of the wooden Engine and put Poor Cecco in that. His legs hung over the side; it wasn’t very comfortable, but it was the best they could manage. Harlequin was to be the doctor. He was the tallest and could look quite wise so long as he didn’t open his mouth, and there was no need for that. Tubby and Virginia May would be hospital nurses and wear a red cross on their arm. They arranged it all, walking on either side the Engine to keep Poor Cecco from falling out. It was almost as exciting as if they had found the treasure, and they had the added satisfaction of doing good to some one at the same time.
So they walked home, Anna pulling the engine, and Tubby and Virginia on either side, and whenever they met any one on the road they put their handkerchiefs to their eyes and said: “Poor Cecco has lost his tail!”
As for Poor Cecco, he got a ride home anyway, and when they reached the toy-cupboard they put him to bed in the dolls’ cradle and there he slept peacefully and Bulka sat by his side all night.