The Book of Brownies (The Enchanted World) (12 page)

‘Gracious!’ said Hop. ‘Here is a to-do! Goodness knows we don’t a Dragon-bird always at our heels, begging to be our slave.’

The Saucepan Man, who seemed to hear the Dragon-bird quite well, crawled out from under his bush and walked up to it.

‘Go away!’ he said. ‘If we want you we will call you. Don’t come bothering us now, or we will make you disappear, as we did your master.’

‘I will come if ever you want me,’ croaked the bird sadly. ‘I will await that time.’

It spread its wings, rose into the air, and in a few moments was out of sight.

‘That was rather a nasty shock,’ said Hop.

‘I quite thought it would take us all away again. Ugh! I hope we never see the ugly thing any more!’

‘So do
we
 
!’ said Skip and Jump.

‘Come on,’ said the Saucepan Man, and once more the four set off to the signpost.

At last they reached it, and set off down the road towards Witchland.

‘Don’t you bother to come with us,’ said Hop to the Saucepan Man. ‘We can find our way quite well now.’

‘No, I can’t hear any bell,’ said the Saucepan Man, standing still to listen. ‘You must be mistaken.’

‘Oh dear, you
are
deaf
 
!’ sighed Hop, and quickly wrote down what he had said.

‘Ho, ho!’ laughed the Saucepan Man. ‘So you think you could find the way by yourself, do you? Ho, ho! You just follow me, and you’ll soon see you couldn’t find the
way alone!’

No sooner had he said that than the four travellers came to a river. Over it stretched a graceful bridge but, to the brownies’ surprise, no sooner did they get near it than the end nearest
to them raised itself and stayed there.

‘How annoying of it!’ said Hop, in surprise. ‘What does it do that for? We can’t get across!’

‘Don’t worry!’ said the Saucepan Man. He looked about on the ground and picked up four tiny blue stones. He threw them into the river one after the other, saying a magic word
at each of them.

At once the end of the bridge came down again, and rested on the bank.

‘There you are,’ said the Saucepan Man. ‘Now we can cross.’

The brownies ran across quickly, just in case the bridge took it into its head to do anything funny again.

They hadn’t gone very far beyond the bridge before they came to a forest so dark and so thick that the brownies felt sure they couldn’t possibly get through it. They tried this way
and that way, but it was all no good – they could not find a path.

The Saucepan Man watched them, laughing.

Then he quickly ran to a big white stone lying nearby and lifted it up. Underneath it lay a coil of silver string. The Saucepan Man took it up and tied one end to a tree-trunk.

Then he said a magic rhyme, and immediately, to the brownies’ great surprise, the string uncoiled and went sliding away all by itself into the dark forest.

‘Follow it quickly!’ cried the Saucepan Man, and ran into the forest.

The silver string gleamed through the bushes and trees, and led the brownies by a hidden, narrow path through the dark forest. On and on they went, following the silver thread, until at last
they reached the end of the trees, and stood in sunshine once more.

‘I don’t know what we should do without you,’ shouted Hop to the Saucepan Man. ‘We should never have known the way!’

‘
Who’s
making hay?’ asked the Saucepan Man, staring all round about him.

‘No one!’ shouted Hop, and wrote in his notebook to tell the Saucepan Man what he was talking about.

Presently they set off again. In the distance they saw an enormous hill. As they drew nearer the brownies saw it gleaming and glittering, as if it were made of ice.

‘Glass,’ explained the Saucepan Man, as they drew near.

‘I wonder how we get up
that
 
!’ said Hop.

The brownies tried to climb it, but as fast as they tried, down them came, ker-plunk, to the bottom!

‘Tell us how to get up!’ Hop wrote in his notebook, to the Saucepan Man.

Their guide smiled. He took six paces to the left, picked up a yellow stone, and aimed it carefully at a notch in the glass hill.

As soon as it struck the notch, a door slid open in the hillside and the brownies saw a passage leading through the glass hill.

‘It’s easier to go through than up,’ smiled the Saucepan Man, leading the way.

The passage was very strange, for it wound about like a river. The sides, top and bottom were all glass, and reflected everything so perfectly that the brownies kept walking into the walls, and
bumping their noses.

They were very glad when at last they came out at the other side of the hill. In front of them towered a great gate, and on it was written in iron lettering:

WITCHLAND

‘At last!’ said Hop. ‘Now we really have arrived!’

‘Here I must leave you,’ said the Saucepan Man sadly. ‘I cannot go in and I don’t know how
you’ll
get in either. But you are so clever, that maybe
you’ll find a way. Now I must go back and make some more saucepans to sell.’

‘Thank you for bringing us here,’ wrote Hop in his notebook. ‘We are sorry to say goodbye.’

‘So am I,’ said the Saucepan Man, with tears in his eyes. ‘Thank you very much for all your goodness to me in rescuing me from the Golden Dwarf.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ said the brownies politely. Then the Saucepan Man shook hands solemnly with them all, and said goodbye.

‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ called the brownies, as he went towards the glass hill.

He turned round.

‘What sort of pie?’ he called in surprise.

‘Oh buttons and buttercups, isn’t he deaf
 
!’ said Hop, and waved to the Saucepan Man to go on.

They watched him disappear into the hill.

‘Nice old Saucepan Man,’ said Skip. ‘Wish he was coming to Witchland with us.’

‘I wonder how we get in!’ said Hop, looking at the tall gates.

‘Don’t know,’ said Skip. ‘We’d better wait until someone goes in or out, and then try and slip in as the gates open. Let’s sit down under the may-tree and
wait.’

They sat down and waited.

Nobody went either in or out of the gates. The brownies felt very bored.

Hop looked all round to see if anyone was in sight. He suddenly saw something in the distance.

‘Look!’ he said. ‘There’s a procession or something coming. We could easily slip in with that when the gates open for it, couldn’t we?’

‘Yes!’ said Jump. ‘Let’s wait quietly and then try our luck.’

The procession came nearer. At the same time somebody came from the opposite direction. Skip looked to see who it was.

‘It’s a little brown mouse!’ he said in surprise. ‘I wonder what a mouse is doing here! He seems to be carrying a heavy sack, look!’

The others looked. The little mouse was certainly carrying a sack that seemed far too heavy for him.

The procession and the mouse reached the place where the brownies sat, just at the same moment. The procession was made up of all sorts of strange people carrying precious rugs, caskets, and
plants.

‘Going in to sell them to the witches, I suppose!’ whispered Hop. ‘Look! The gates are opening! Get ready to slip inside!’

But just at that moment the mouse gave a shrill squeak.

The brownies looked round. They saw that the sack had fallen off the little mouse’s back, and that hundreds of green labels were flying about all over the place.

‘Oh! Oh! What shall I do?’ squeaked the mouse. ‘I shall be late, I know I shall!’

The brownies jumped up.

‘Let us help you to pick them up!’ said Hop. ‘It won’t take a minute.’

‘We must hurry, though,’ said Skip, ‘or we shan’t get in whilst the gates are open.’

The brownies quickly picked up the labels and filled the mouse’s sack again. He was very grateful indeed.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Hop, and turned to the gates of Witchland.

Clang! They shut, for the last of the procession had gone in!

‘Oh my!’ said Hop in dismay. ‘Now we’ve lost our chance!’

The little mouse looked very upset. ‘Did you want to get in?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Hop. ‘But it doesn’t matter – we’ll wait till someone else wants to go in again, and the gates open.’

‘I wish we could find something to eat,’ sighed Skip. ‘I’m getting so
dreadfully
hungry!’

‘Won’t you come home with me for a while?’ asked the mouse. ‘I’m sure my master, the Labeller, would give you something to eat, as you’ve been so kind in
helping me.’

‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Hop. ‘But what a funny name your master has – the Labeller! Whatever does he label?’

‘Oh, whenever people are crosspatches, or spiteful, or horrid in any way,’ said the mouse, ‘they are taken to the Labeller, and he puts a label round their neck that they
can’t get off. Then everyone knows what sort of person they are and, if they’re very nasty, people avoid them as much as they can.’

‘That seems a very good idea,’ said Skip, as the brownies followed the mouse down a pathway. ‘Do they have to wear the labels all their lives?’

‘That depends,’ said the mouse, trotting down a hole in a bank. ‘You see, as soon as they stop being horrid, their label flies off, and goes back to the Labeller! If they go on
being horrid for the rest of their lives, the label
never
flies off.’

‘I say! The Labeller won’t label
us
, will he?’ asked Hop anxiously, as they all trotted down the hole after the mouse.

‘Oh no!’ said the mouse. ‘
You’re
not horrid at all – you’re very nice.’

The passage was lit with orange lights, and beneath every light was a little door. Each door had a name-plate on, and the brownies read them all as they passed by.

‘Here’s a funny one!’ said Hop. ‘The Bottler. I wonder what he bottles!’

‘Oh, and here’s the Labeller!’ said Skip. ‘The mouse is going inside.’

They followed him and found themselves in a cosy little room where a bright fire was burning. By a little table sat a fat old man with spectacles on. He was printing names on labels in very
small and beautiful letters.

‘Come in, all of you,’ he said in a kind voice. ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re very welcome.’

The brownies said good-day politely and told him who they were.

‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.

‘Brownie Town,’ they answered.

‘Well, what are you doing
here
then?’ asked the Labeller in surprise.

The brownies went very red. Nobody spoke for a minute, and then Hop told the Labeller all about the naughty trick they had played at the King’s party, and how the little Princess had been
spirited away.

‘Dear, dear, dear,’ said the Labeller, ‘that was a very silly thing to do. Perhaps I’d better label you all silly, had I?’

‘No, thank you,’ said the brownies quickly. ‘We aren’t silly any more. We’re sorry for what we did, and we’re trying to find the Princess and rescue
her.’

The Labeller got out some buns and told the little mouse to make some hot milk.

‘Sit down,’ he said, ‘and have something to eat. I’m sure it was very kind of you to help my little servant to pick up all the labels he had dropped.’

The brownies each took and bun and said ‘Thank you’.

‘And when are you going back to Brownie Town?’ asked the Labeller. ‘When you’ve rescued the Princess?’

‘No,’ answered Hop sadly, ‘we can’t. The King said we weren’t to go back until we had found our goodness – and people can’t find their goodnesses, of
course – so we’re afraid we’ll
never
be able to go back.’

‘But of
course
you can find your goodness if you’ve got any!’ said the Labeller. ‘Why, my brother, the Bottler, can easily give you it if you’ve any that
belongs to you. He bottles up all the goodness in the world, you know, and then, when anyone starts being peevish and grumpy, he seeks out his messenger – my mouse’s cousin – to
drop a little out of one of the bottles of goodness into something the peevish person is drinking. Then the grumpy person begins to smile again, and thinks the world is a fine place, after
all.’

‘Dear me!’ said the brownies, in the greatest surprise. ‘Is that really so?’

‘And do you mean to say that if we’ve done any good deeds, for instance, the Bottler has got them boiled down and bottled up in a jar?’ asked Skip in excitement. ‘Bottles
that we can take away?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the Labeller, taking another bun. ‘With your own names on and everything.’

‘Well! If that isn’t splendid!’ cried Hop in delight. ‘
Could
we go and see if the Bottler’s got any of our goodness bottled up?’

‘Finish your milk and buns first,’ said the Labeller, ‘then you can go.’

The brownies finished their food and jumped up.

‘Well, goodbye,’ said the Labeller, shaking hands with them. ‘The mouse will show you the right door. Good luck to you.’

Off went the brownies in a great state of excitement. They almost trod on the mouse’s tail, they were in such a hurry.

They came to the little door marked ‘The Bottler’. They knocked.

‘Come in,’ said a voice.

They went in, and saw a room like the Labeller’s. It was full of thousands of bottles standing on hundreds of shelves.

The Bottler was very like the Labeller, except that he was a good deal fatter.

‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

‘Please,’ said Hop in a shaky voice, ‘please have you any goodness of ours bottled up?’

‘Who are you?’ asked the Bottler kindly.

‘Hop, Skip and Jump, three brownies from Brownie Town!’ answered Hop.

‘Hm-m-m, let me see,’ said the Bottler, putting a second pair of spectacles on. He walked up to a shelf labelled ‘Brownies’ and began peering at the bottles.

The brownies waited impatiently. Oh, if only, only, only a bottle of their goodness could be found, they could go back to Brownie Town.

‘Ha! Here we are!’ said the Bottler at last, pouncing on a little yellow bottle. It had something written on the label that was stuck round it. The Bottler read it out:

‘“This goodness belongs to Hop, Skip, and Jump. It was made when they rescued a mermaid from the castle of the Red Goblin”.’