by A. A. Milne
* * *
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 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 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 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 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, 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.
The Ferry to Nowhere
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 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 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 h
er 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.
* * *
“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 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:
* * *
Oh, come and cross over to nowhere,
And go where
The nobodies live on their nothing a day!
A tideful of tricks is this merry
Old Ferry,
And these are the things that it does by the way:
* * *
It pours into parks and disperses
The nurses;
It goes into gardens and scatters the cats;
It leaks into lodgings, disorders
The boarders,
And washes away with their holiday hats.
* * *
It soaks into shops, and inspires
The buyers
To crawl over counters and climb upon chairs;
It trickles on tailors, it spatters
On hatters,
And makes little milliners scamper up-stairs.
* * *
It goes out of town and it rambles
Through brambles;
It wallows in hollows and dives into dells;
It flows into farm-yards and sickens
The chickens,
And washes the wheelbarrows into the wells.
* * *
It turns into taverns and drenches
The benches;
It jumps into pumps and comes out with a roar;
It pounds like a postman at lodges—
Then dodges
And runs up the lane when they open the door.
* * *
It leaks into laundries and wrangles
With mangles;
It trips over turnips and tumbles down-hill;
It rolls like a coach along highways
And byways,
But never gets anywhere, go as it will!
* * *
Oh, foolish old Ferry! all muddles
And puddles—
Go fribble and dribble along on your way;
We drink to your health with molasses
In glasses,
And waft you farewell with a handful of hay!
* * *
“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 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 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.
The Cruise of the Sideboard
The sideboard behaved in the most absurd manner, spinning around and around in the water, and banging about among the other furniture as if it had never been at sea before, and finally bringing up against the tea-table with a crash in the stupidest way imaginable, and knocking the tea-set and all the cups and saucers into the water. 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; and then Dorothy would catch sight of him again far ahead, peering out from behind a chimney, as if to get a front view of the performance. All this was, of course, very impertinent, and although Dorothy was naturally a very kind-hearted little child, she was really quite gratified when the Stork finally made an attempt to get a new view of her from the top of an unusually tall chimney, and fell down into it with a loud screech of dismay.
* * *
Presently the street ended at a great open space where the water spread out in every direction, like a lake. The day seemed to be breaking, and it was quite light; and as the sideboard sailed out into the open water, Dorothy caught sight of something like a fat-looking boat, floating at a little distance and slowly drifting toward her. As it came nearer it proved to be Mrs. Peevy’s big umbrella upside down, with a little party of people sitting around on the edge of it with their feet against the handle, and, to Dorothy’s amazement, she knew every one of them. There was the Admiral, staring about with his spy-glass, and Sir Walter Rosettes, carefully carrying his tobacco-plant as if it were a nosegay, and the Highlander, with his big watch dangling in the water over the side of the umbrella; and last, there was the little Chinese mandarin clinging convulsively to the top of the handle as if he were keeping a lookout from the masthead.
* * *
The sideboard brought up against the edge of the umbrella with a soft little bump, and the Admiral, hurriedly pointing his spy-glass at Dorothy so that the end of it almost touched her nose, exclaimed excitedly, “There she is! I can see her quite plainly,” and the whole party gave an exultant shout.
* * *
“How are you getting on now?” inquired Sir Walter, as if he had had her under close observation for a week at least.
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* * *
“I’m getting on pretty well,” said Dorothy, mournfully. “I believe I’m crossing a ferry.”
* * *
“So are we,” said the Admiral, cheerfully. “We’re a Caravan, you know.”
* * *
“A Caravan?” exclaimed Dorothy, very much surprised.
* * *
“I believe I said ‘Caravan’ quite distinctly,” said the Admiral in an injured tone, appealing to the rest of the party; but no one said anything except the Highlander, who hastily consulted his watch and then exclaimed “Hurrah!” rather doubtfully.
