“I don’t know what you thought I said,” Polly shouted across the hedge, “but I wasn’t talking about chops. I just said good morning.”
“And I’m warning you, if you’re talking about warning,” the wolf said, suddenly disagreeable. “I’ll get you sooner or later as sure as eggs is eggs.”
“Are eggs. Not is eggs; it’s not grammar. Are eggs.”
“However many legs you have,” the wolf said nastily.
There was a pause. It seemed a difficult conversation to keep up, and Polly was not sure where they had got to. Lucy, who had stopped trying to be the chopper as well as the chorus in ‘Oranges and Lemons,’ had come to stand beside her to stare up at the wolf, her hands behind her back, stomach well out. It seemed a good moment to introduce her.
“This is Lucy, my smallest sister,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” the wolf said, more politely. “I hope it doesn’t hurt.”
“What doesn’t hurt? Lucy doesn’t, only when she rides on my back for too long at a time.”
“It’s a funny place to have a blister.” The wolf looked puzzled. “I always get them on my paws. Perhaps it’s the way you walk.”
“What’s wrong with the way I walk? I can’t walk any other way.”
“Oh well,” the wolf said huffily, “don’t talk then if you don’t want to.”
“Oh dear,” Polly sighed. “You are being difficult today, Wolf. You don’t seem to like anything I say, you keep on misunderstanding. You seem to think I’m trying to be rude.”
“I don’t,” the wolf said. “I only wish you’d try a bit harder.”
“Try to be rude?”
“Yes. If you’d try to be food I could easily pretend you were, and then—well you would be,” the wolf said simply.
“Oh you’re hopeless!” Polly said angrily. “Why don’t you listen properly? I said rude, RUDE, not food.”
“Very impolite of you,” the wolf replied. “I never have cared for rude children!”
“Big, big, BIG dog!” Lucy said admiringly.
“I am not!” the wolf said hotly. “Many names I’ve been called before now, but Pig Hog never. You’ve taught this horrid little girl, whoever she is, to be as rude as you are, Polly, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Lucy, not liking to be looked at so angrily, turned round and ran back into the house to find her mother and ask if lunch wasn’t nearly ready. The wolf looked after her thoughtfully, noticing the twinkling of her plump legs, and a pleasanter expression came over his face.
“She seems quite at home in your house, Polly. Staying with you for a time, perhaps? A relation? Cousin or something? Never mind,” he added hastily, as Polly opened her mouth to answer, “I don’t really want to know. She might be your sister for all I care. What is important now we are alone at last, is to get on with our conversation.”
“We hadn’t got very far,” Polly said. “You didn’t seem to hear anything I said.”
“Instead of what?”
“I SAID!” Polly shouted, “NOT INSTEAD! I SAID!”
“What did you say?”
“I said you didn’t seem to hear what I said.”
“Oh,” the wolf said, looking interested. “And what did you say?”
Polly found this difficult to answer. “A lot of things,” she said at last, unable to remember any one of them. Her throat was quite dry with talking so loudly across the hedge, but it was only when she really shouted that the wolf seemed to hear properly.
“I see,” she said suddenly, in her ordinary voice again, “you’re deaf! How awful for you. I am sorry!”
“I know you’re Polly,” the wolf said. “You don’t have to tell me that at this time of day.”
“I said I was SORRY.”
“It’s all right,” the wolf said amiably, “you can’t help it. Anyhow as Pollies go you’re quite all right.”
“You’re DEAF, Wolf!” Polly shouted.
“Yes!” said the wolf looking really delighted, “you’re quite right, I am. Clever of you to notice. Now let’s get started.”
The wolf trotted down the road till he was opposite the garden gate, lay down and turned his eyes on her in a rather theatrical way. Then he panted slightly with his tongue out, and waited.
Polly waited too.
Presently the wolf got up, shook himself, came a yard or two nearer the gate and lay down again in almost exactly the same position. He again turned his eyes towards Polly, and waited.
Polly waited too.
The wolf switched his tail angrily about, raising a good deal of dust out of the road; then he shook his head violently and scratched at his ears. Two small objects fell out of them, which he covered with his paw. Then he looked even more intently at Polly.
Polly looked back at the wolf.
“Well, go on,” the wolf said at last, impatiently. “Aren’t you ever going to begin?”
“Begin what?”
“Talking to me, of course. Telling me things I can’t hear properly.”
“But if you can’t hear properly, what’s the good—” Polly began, but the wolf cut her short.
“Go on, go on! It doesn’t matter what it’s about, only do, for goodness’ sake, talk!”
“About anything? Doesn’t it matter at all?”
“Anything,” the wolf said eagerly, “absolutely anything. Just go on talking, Polly, and I promise I won’t complain. I just want to hear your voice, and I’ll be quite content—or rather I just want not to hear your voice.”
“I don’t understand,” Polly said.
“Never mind. You don’t have to understand. You only have to talk.”
“And you’re not deaf now. You can hear everything I say.”
“Of course!” cried the wolf, delighted, “that’s what’s wrong! How stu–I mean that wasn’t as clever of me as usual. I quite forgot I was hearing you. That won’t do at all.”
He picked up from the road the two objects which had fallen when he scratched his ears, and tucked them back, one in each ear.
“Earplugs,” he explained to the wondering Polly. “Now I’m all right. Shan’t be able to hear a word you say. Now, talk.”
Still without understanding, Polly began.
“Hoddley, poddley, puddle and frogs,
Cats are to marry the poodle dogs.”
She stopped and looked at the wolf to see how he was taking it. He nodded at her agreeably.
“Delightful. I couldn’t catch every word, but do go on.”
“Cats in blue jackets,” continued Polly, “and dogs in red hats, what will become of the mice and the rats?”
The wolf looked puzzled.
“I don’t think I can have heard every word correctly,” he said. “It seems an unusual situation. But do go on.”
“There isn’t any more,” said Polly.
“If I’d heard it before I shouldn’t ask you to repeat it to me,” said the wolf, with a flash of temper.
“THERE ISN’T ANY MORE!” shouted Polly.
The wolf propped himself up elaborately on three legs and put the fourth behind his ear.
“I can’t quite catch what you said.”
“THERE-ISN’ T-ANY-MORE.”
“Come a little nearer, my dear,” said the wolf, in an unnaturally sweet voice, “and let me hear what you say.”
Polly looked. There was a reasonable distance between the wolf and herself, but she didn’t feel inclined to get very much nearer. She also had a strong feeling that the wolf had in fact heard her last shout, which had been a remarkably loud noise.
“WAIT A MOMENT,” she called, “I’LL BE BACK AT ONCE.”
She ran into the house. It really was lunchtime now, and Polly was hungry, and the smell coming up from the kitchen was almost more than she could bear. However she ran upstairs to the dressing-up chest on the landing, which contained, among a great many other things, an ear trumpet which belonged to Mother’s great-aunt Anna, and had never been used since she died years and y
ears and years ago.
It was only a moment before Polly was back in the garden: from well on her side of the gate she offered the ear trumpet to the astonished wolf.
“Just put that to your ear and you’ll be able to hear quite well,” she said.
“?” said the wolf.
“JUST TAKE THIS AND YOU’LL BE ABLE TO HEAR.”
“What is it?” the wolf asked suspiciously. “Will it go off bang?”
“No, silly. It’s for you. It’s an ear trumpet.”
“I don’t like junket,” the wolf said sulkily.
“AN EAR TRUMPET! TRY IT.”
The wolf put out his paw and took it gingerly. He looked down the big end of the trumpet, and shook his head. Then he squinted through the small end up at the sky. He looked across at Polly.
“PUT YOUR EAR TO IT,” she shouted.
“What for?” asked the wolf, shaking the ear trumpet as if he expected something to fall out of it.
“SO THAT YOU CAN HEAR ME TALK.”
“But you stupid little girl,” the wolf said, throwing the trumpet back into the garden. “Can’t you understand, I don’t want to hear you talk? I want not to be able to hear you talk. I just want you to come closer and closer, until you’re so close that I just jump on you and gobble you all up. Now do you understand?”
Polly put the ear trumpet to her mouth and shouted at the wolf, “TAKE OUT THOSE EARPLUGS FOR A MINUTE, WOLF.”
The wolf looked very angry, but he did as Polly asked.
“Thank goodness for that,” Polly said, in her ordinary voice. “I couldn’t go on shouting any longer. Look, Wolf, if that’s how you’d planned to catch me this time you’d got something quite wrong. Of course I wasn’t going to come any nearer.”
“Why not?” said the wolf in an aggrieved tone.
“You’d forgotten something. In those stories where the animal—it’s usually a fox, isn’t it?—pretends to be deaf, the creature he is going to catch comes right up to tell him something. But you got that wrong, Wolf. The creature in the stories always wants to show off. He really wants the fox to hear. But I don’t care tuppence if you hear what I’m saying or not. So of course I shan’t come any nearer. As a matter of fact there’s only one thing I want at the moment and it’s nothing to do with your hearing me or not.”
“What is it?”
“Lunch,” said Polly, tucking the ear trumpet under her arm and turning towards the house. “And I’m going to have it.”
“So do I want mine,” said the wolf sadly, turning in the opposite direction, “but it looks as if I wasn’t going to have it, today at any rate.”
6. Cherry Stones
IT WAS the middle of the summer, and Polly was having a delicious time one hot, lazy afternoon, sitting in the garden with a bowl of cherries beside her. Beside the patch of grass where she was sitting was a big flat flagstone, which was part of a path, and on this Polly arranged her nicely sucked-clean cherry stones. She arranged them in different patterns; squares and triangles and a big circle and a star; she rearranged them to write letters with. There were quite a lot of them, and more every minute.
Presently Polly arranged the stones in neat rows of eights. There were several rows. She seemed to be playing some sort of game with them, counting them perhaps; but she didn’t look very much pleased with the result. Several times she went through them, a finger hovering for a moment over each stone, and each time she ended by frowning and shaking her head and hastily eating another cherry and adding the stone to her collection. But still she didn’t seem satisfied.
The wolf, who had been watching this ritual going on for some time, from the other side of the garden wall, was completely puzzled. He stood it for as long as he could, and then his curiosity got the better of him.
“Hi, Polly!” he said.
Polly jumped. Then she saw the wolf, waved to him, shook her head with her finger to her lips, and went on counting.
“What are you doing, Polly?” the wolf asked.
“Wait a minute,” Polly said, “I’m just finishing . . . cotton, rags, silk, satin—oh bother!”
“Why ‘Oh bother’?”
“Because it’s come wrong again.”
“What has?”
“Who I’m going to marry.”
The wolf peered a little further over the hedge but saw nothing more than the rows of stones on the path which Polly had been counting before he interrupted her.
“Who you’re going to marry?” repeated the wolf.
“And what in. And what I’m going to wear.”
“What are you going to wear? And what in?”
“What I go to be married in. Oh you know, Wolf. Coach, carriage, wheelbarrow, dustcart, and I keep on getting wheel-barrow. It’s so undignified.”
“Where’s the wheelbarrow?” said the wolf, looking round the garden. “And anyhow aren’t you a bit young to be married, Polly? We shall miss you,” he added politely.
“Oh dear,” Polly sighed. “You are stupid sometimes, Wolf. I’m not going to be married yet, not for ages, but I’m finding out what it will be like by telling on cherry stones. You know, you lay out all your cherry stones and you say a sort of rhyme to yourself and you count the cherry stones as you go, and whatever one you end on is what you’re going to get. Like this:
“Tinker, tailor,
Soldier, sailor,
Rich man, poor man,
Beggarman, thief.”
“Are they all about marriage and weddings?” the wolf enquired.
“All the ones I know are,” Polly said firmly.
“Pooh!” cried the wolf. “We have much more interesting rhymes than that.”
“Oh, do you have them too?” Polly said, interested.
“Of course we do. Only we don’t generally do them on cherry stones.”
“Oh! What do you do them on?”
“Bones,” said the wolf simply.
“Ugh! How horrible!” Polly said, and shivered.
“Not at all. There’s nothing so comforting as a nice clean bone, well licked by all the members of the family.”
“And the rhymes?” asked Polly quickly. “I’d awfully like to hear them, and I’m sure you could think of them if you tried very hard. Have some cherries to help.”
She threw him a double handful of cherries. The wolf caught them dextrously in his mouth and ate them, arranging the stones on the road outside the garden out of Polly’s sight. Polly heard him murmuring to himself over them and soon his head reappeared over the hedge.
“I’ve got one of them,” he announced.
“Oh, do tell me.”
The wolf shut his eyes and recited:
“Thinny, Fatty,
In a meat patty;
Tender, tough,
It cuts up rough.”
“I don’t think I’d like my husband to be in a meat patty,” Polly said, rather puzzled.
“There’s another version of that one which some people prefer,” the wolf went on, not taking any notice of her remark. “It says:
“Juicy,
Tender,
Stringy, tough,
Leathery,
Hairy,
I’ve had enough.
“or some people say, ‘You’ve had enough,’ but I think that’s rather rude.”
“I think it’s disgusting either way,” Polly said. “Who wants a juicy husband? Or a leathery one? And I’m not sure how hairy,” she added thoughtfully.
“Oh you are stupid!” the wolf cried angrily. “Can’t you ever stop thinking about husbands and weddings? Our rhymes aren’t silly little jingles about useless things like that, they’re proper poetry, about the real things in life. About FOOD,” he finished, seeing that Polly still looked bewildered.
“Oh, food,” Polly said, understanding at last.
“Give me a few more cherries, Polly,” the wolf begged, “and I’ll tell you some more.”
Polly threw the wolf another handful of cherries and he disappeared behind t
he hedge once again.
“Bother!” she heard him say to himself. “I must have swallowed one. It isn’t coming out right.”
“Polly,” he said, suddenly reappearing, “could you spare me just one more—? Thank you! Now I shall get it right.”
Through the thick dark green leaves of the hedge, Polly heard him mutter:
“Young,
Old,
Hot,
Cold.
Nasty,
Nice,
Served up twice.”
“What did you say, Wolf?” she called out.
“Served up twice. And I don’t like the same dish twice running. It puts me off my food. I shall have to have another cherry, please, Polly.”
“You haven’t told me the rhyme yet, Wolf.”
“Fought,
Caught,
Stolen,
Bought,”
gabbled the wolf in a great hurry. “My cherry, please.”
Polly threw it. She ate another handful herself and began to count the stones on the path again.
“Church,
Bar,
Sword,
Squire,
Artist,
Lord.”
“Now this,” the wolf announced, leaning cosily over the hedge, “is a really useful one. It’s so difficult, isn’t it, to know straight off whether a joint of meat is going to be enough for everyone?
“Plenty for all,
Will just feed four,
Three get a meal,
For two, no more.
Enough for one,
My story’s done.”
“And if it’s only enough for one, and there’s a whole family of you, what do you do?” Polly enquired.
“Don’t tell them, of course.” The wolf looked amazed. “After all if there’s only enough for one, it’s very hard on them, isn’t it, to know that you had it and they didn’t?”
“You might give it to one of them,” Polly suggested.
“I should never do anything so silly,” the wolf replied roundly.
Polly and the wolf considered each other for a minute or two over the hedge.
“But this time,” the wolf said triumphantly, “it all comes out right. It’s young, a meal for three (which means a good hearty meal), it’s in a meat patty, or soon will be, it’s stringy, that’s bad, but one can’t have everything. And it’s stolen, which is just what it’s going to be, so NOW, Polly, I’VE GOT YOU,” and he jumped over the hedge right into the garden.
The Complete Polly and the Wolf Page 9
