The Cozy Lion.
by Frances Hodgson Burnett.
THE COZY LION
I SHALL never forget the scolding I gave him to begin with. One of the advantages of being a Fairy even quite a common one is that Lions can"t bite you. A Fairy is too little and too light.
If they snap at you it"s easy to fly through their mouths, and even if they catch you, if you just get behind their teeth you can make them so uncomfortable that they will beg you to get out and leave them in peace.
Of course it was all the Lion"s fault that I scolded him. Lions ought to live far away from people. n.o.body likes Lions roaming about--particularly where there are children. But this Lion said he wanted to get into Society, and that he was very fond of children-- little fat ones between three and four. So instead of living on a desert, or in a deep forest or a jungle he took the large Cave on the Huge Green Hill, only a few miles from a village full of the fattest, rosiest little children you ever saw.
He had only been living in the Cave a few days, but even in that short time the mothers and fathers had found out he was there, and everybody who could afford it had bought a gun and s.n.a.t.c.hed it up even if they saw a donkey coming down the road, because they were afraid it might turn out to be a Lion. As for the mothers, they were nearly crazy with fright, and dare not let their children go out to play and had to shut them up in top rooms and cupboards and cellars, they were so afraid the Lion might be hiding behind trees to jump out at them. So everything was beginning to be quite spoiled because n.o.body could have any fun.
Of course if they had had any sense and believed in Fairies and had just gone out some moonlight night and all joined hands and danced slowly around in a circle and sung:
Fairies pink and Fairies rose Fairies dancing on pearly toes We want you, Oh! we want you!
Fairy Queens and Fairy slaves Who are not afraid of Lions" Caves Please to come to help us,
then it would have been all right, because we should have come in millions, especially if they finished with this verse:
Our troubles we can never tell But if _you_ would come it would all be well Par-tic-u-lar-ly Silverbell.
But they hadn"t sense enough for that--of course they hadn"t--_of course they hadn"t_! Which shows what loonies people are.
But you see I am much nicer than _un_-fairy persons, even if I have lost my nice little, pink little, sweet little Temper and if I am cross. So when I saw the children fretting and growing pale because they had to be shut up, and the mothers crying into their washtubs when they were washing, until the water slopped over, I made up my mind I would go and talk to that Lion myself in a way he wouldn"t soon forget.
It was a beautiful morning, and the Huge Green Hill looked lovely.
A shepherd who saw me thought I was a gold and purple b.u.t.terfly and threw his hat at me--the idiot! Of course he fell down on his nose-- and very right and proper too.
When I got to the Cave, the Lion was sitting outside his door and he was crying. He was one of these nasty-tempered, discontented Lions who are always thinking themselves injured; large round tears were rolling down his nose and he was sniffling. But I must say he was handsome. He was big and smooth and had the most splendid mane and tail I ever saw.
He would have been like a King if he had had a nicer expression.
But there he sat sniffling.
"I"m so lonely," he said. "n.o.body calls. n.o.body pays me any attention. And I came here for the Society. No one is fonder of Society than I am."
I sat down on a flowering branch near him and shouted at him, "What"s the use of Society when you eat it up?" I said.
He jumped up and lashed his tail and growled but at first he could not see me.
"What"s it for _but_ to be eaten up?" he roared. "First I want it to entertain me and then I want it for dessert. Where are you? Who are you?"
"I"m Queen Crosspatch--Queen Silverbell as was," I said. "I suppose you have heard of _me_?"
"I"ve heard nothing good," he growled. "A good chewing is what _you_ want!"
He _had_ heard something about me, but not enough. The truth was he didn"t really believe in Fairies--which was what brought him into trouble.
By this time he had seen me and he was ignorant enough to think that he could catch me, so he laid down flat in the thick, green gra.s.s and stretched his big paws out and rested his nose on them, thinking I would be taken in and imagine he was going to sleep. I burst out laughing at him and swung to and fro on my flowery branch.
"Do you want to eat me?" I said. "You"d need two or three quarts of me with sugar and cream--like strawberries."
That made him so angry that he sprang roaring at my tree and snapped and shook it and tore it with his claws. But I flew up into the air and buzzed all about him and he got furious--just furious.
He jumped up in the air and lashed his tail and _thrashed_ his tail and CRASHED his tail, and he turned round and round and tore up the gra.s.s.
"Don"t be a silly," I said. "It"s a nice big tufty sort of tail and you will only wear it out."
So then he opened his mouth and roared and roared. And what do you suppose _I_ did? I flew right into his mouth. First I flew into his throat and buzzed about like a bee and made him cough and cough and cough--but he couldn"t cough me up. He coughed and he houghed and he woughed; he tried to catch me with his tongue and he tried to catch me with his teeth but I simply made myself tinier and tinier and got between two big fierce white double ones and took one of my Fairy Workers" hammers out of my pocket and hammered and hammered and hammered until he began to have such a jumping toothache that he ran leaping and roaring down the Huge Green Hill and leaping and roaring down the village street to the dentist"s to get some toothache drops. You can just imagine how all the people rushed into their houses, and how the mothers screamed and clutched their children and hid under beds and tables and in coalbins, and how the fathers fumbled about for guns. As for the dentist, he locked his door and bolted it and barred it, and when he found _his_ gun he poked it out of the window and fired it off as fast as ever he could until he had fired fifty times, only he was too frightened to hit anything. But the village street was so full of flashes and smoke and bullets that Mr. Lion turned with ten big roars and galloped down the street, with guns fired out of every window where the family could afford to keep a gun.
When he got to his home in the Huge Green Hill, he just laid down and cried aloud and screamed and kicked his hind legs until he scratched a hole in the floor of his cave.
"Just because I"m a Lion," he sobbed, "just because I"m a poor, sensitive, helpless, orphan Lion n.o.body has one particle of manners. They won"t even sell me a bottle of toothache drops. And I wasn"t going to touch that dentist--until he had cured me and wrapped up the bottle nicely in paper. Not a touch was I going to touch him until he had done that."
He opened his mouth so wide to roar with grief that I flew out of it. I had meant to give him a lesson and I"d given him one. When I flew out of his mouth of course his beautiful double teeth stopped aching. It was such a relief to him that it made quite a change in his nature and he sat up and began to smile. It was a slow smile which spread into a grin even while the tear-drops hung on his whiskers.
"My word! How nice," he said. "It"s stopped."
I had flown to the top of his ear and I shouted down it.
"I stopped it," I said. "And I began it. And if you don"t behave yourself, I"ll give you earache and that will be worse."
Before I had given him his lesson he would have jumped at me but now he knew better. He tried to touch my feelings and make me sorry for him. He put one paw before his eyes and began to sniff again.
"I am a poor sensitive lonely orphan Lion," he said.
"You are nothing of the sort," I answered very sharply. "You are not poor, and heaven knows you are not sensitive, and you needn"t be lonely. I don"t know whether you are an orphan or not--and I don"t care. You are a nasty, ill-tempered, selfish, biting, chewing thing."
"There"s a prejudice against Lions," he wept. "People don"t like them. They never invite them to children"s parties--nice little fat, tender, children"s parties--where they would enjoy themselves so much--and the refreshments would be just what they like best.
They don"t even invite them to grown-up parties. What I want to ask you is this: has _one_ of those villagers called on me since I came here--even a tough one?"
"Nice stupids they would be if they did," I answered.
He lifted up his right paw and shook his head from side to side in the most mournful way.
"There," he said. "You are just as selfish as the rest. Everybody is selfish. There is no brotherly love or consideration in the world. Sometimes I can scarcely bear it. I am going to ask you another question, and it is almost like a riddle. Who did you ever see try to give pleasure to a Lion?"
I got into his ear then and shouted down it as loud as ever I could.
"Who did you ever see a _Lion_ try to give pleasure to?" I said.
"You just think over that. And when you find the answer, tell it to _me_."
I don"t know whether it was the newness of the idea, or the suddenness of it, but he turned pale. Did you ever see a Lion turn pale? I never did before and it was funny. You know people"s skins turn pale but a Lion"s skin is covered with hair and you can"t see it, so his hair has to turn pale or else you would never know he was turning pale at all. This Lion"s hair was a beautiful tawny golden color to begin with and first his whiskers turned white and then his big mane and then his paws and then his body and last his long splendid tail with the huge fluffy tuft on the end of it. Then he stood up and his tail hung down and he said weakly:
"I do not know the answer to that riddle. I will go and lie down in my Cave. I do not believe I have one friend in this world." And he walked into his Cave and laid down and sobbed bitterly.
He forgot I was inside his ear and that he carried me with him. But I can tell you I had given him something to think of and that was what he needed. This way of feeling that nothing in the world but a Lion has a right to be comfortable--just because you happen to be a Lion yourself--is too _silly_ for anything.
I flew outside his ear and boxed it a little.