The Magic World

Part 1

Produced by Suzanne Shell, David Wilson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE MAGIC WORLD

BY E. NESBIT

AUTHOR OF 'THE TREASURE SEEKERS,' 'THE WONDERFUL GARDEN,' 'THE MAGIC CITY,' ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. R. MILLAR and SPENCER PRYSE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1924

First published by Macmillan & Co. 1912

CONTENTS PAGE 1. The Cat-hood of Maurice 1

2. The Mixed Mine 27

3. Accidental Magic 58

4. The Princess and the Hedge-pig 96

5. Septimus Septimusson 126

6. The White Cat 148

7. Belinda and Bellamant 160

8. Justnowland 185

9. The Related Muff 206

10. The Aunt and Amabel 218

11. Kenneth and the Carp 233

12. The Magician's Heart 260

ILLUSTRATIONS

He scrambled out of the cupboard, and the boots and goloshes fell off him like spray off a bather (p. 24) Frontispiece

FACE PAGE 'If you think cats have such a jolly time,' said Lord Hugh, 'why not be a cat?' 7

It was Mabel who untied the string and soothed his terrors 14

He landed there on his four padded feet light as a feather 17

When Jane went in to put Mabel's light out, Maurice crept in too 21

Her bow went down suddenly 28

'Look!' he said, 'look!' and pointed 35

Far above him and every one else towered the elephant 39

Part 2

It became a quite efficient motor 42

Quentin de Ward 58

It landed on the point of the chin of Smithson major 67

'Who are you?' he said. 'Answer, I adjure you by the Sacred Tau!' 79

The cart was drawn by an enormous creature, more like an elephant than anything else 85

'Silence!' cried the priest. 'Chosen of the Immortals, close your eyes!' 91

On the lower terrace the royal nurse was walking up and down with the baby princess that all the fuss was about 98

Instantly a flight of winged arrows crossed the garden 109

'I would kiss you on every one of your thousand spears,' she said, 'to give you what you wish' 123

So we all sat on chairs in the drawing-room, and thought of nothing to say harder than ever 208

We scalped Eliza as she passed through the hall 213

Sidney threw the rug over her, and rolled her over and over 215

Early next morning he tried to catch fish with several pieces of string knotted together and a hairpin 235

A radiant vision stepped into the circle of light 241

There was a splash 248

'Oh, good-bye!' he cried desperately, and snapped at the worm 256

THE CAT-HOOD OF MAURICE

To have your hair cut is not painful, nor does it hurt to have your whiskers trimmed. But round wooden shoes, shaped like bowls, are not comfortable wear, however much it may amuse the onlooker to see you try to walk in them. If you have a nice fur coat like a company promoter's, it is most annoying to be made to swim in it. And if you had a tail, surely it would be solely your own affair; that any one should tie a tin can to it would strike you as an unwarrantable impertinence--to say the least.

Yet it is difficult for an outsider to see these things from the point of view of both the persons concerned. To Maurice, scissors in hand, alive and earnest to snip, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to shorten the stiff whiskers of Lord Hugh Cecil by a generous inch. He did not understand how useful those whiskers were to Lord Hugh, both in sport and in the more serious business of getting a living. Also it amused Maurice to throw Lord Hugh into ponds, though Lord Hugh only once permitted this liberty. To put walnuts on Lord Hugh's feet and then to watch him walk on ice was, in Maurice's opinion, as good as a play. Lord Hugh was a very favourite cat, but Maurice was discreet, and Lord Hugh, except under violent suffering, was at that time anyhow, dumb.

But the empty sardine-tin attached to Lord Hugh's tail and hind legs--this had a voice, and, rattling against stairs, banisters, and the legs of stricken furniture, it cried aloud for vengeance. Lord Hugh, suffering violently, added his voice, and this time the family heard. There was a chase, a chorus of 'Poor pussy!' and 'Pussy, then!' and the tail and the tin and Lord Hugh were caught under Jane's bed. The tail and the tin acquiesced in their rescue. Lord Hugh did not. He fought, scratched, and bit. Jane carried the scars of that rescue for many a long week.

When all was calm Maurice was sought and, after some little natural delay, found--in the boot-cupboard.

'Oh, Maurice!' his mother almost sobbed, 'how can you? What will your father say?'

Maurice thought he knew what his father would do.

'Don't you know,' the mother went on, 'how wrong it is to be cruel?'

'I didn't mean to be cruel,' Maurice said. And, what is more, he spoke the truth. All the unwelcome attentions he had showered on Lord Hugh had not been exactly intended to hurt that stout veteran--only it was interesting to see what a cat would do if you threw it in the water, or cut its whiskers, or tied things to its tail.

'Oh, but you must have meant to be cruel,' said mother, 'and you will have to be punished.'

'I wish I hadn't,' said Maurice, from the heart.

'So do I,' said his mother, with a sigh; 'but it isn't the first time; you know you tied Lord Hugh up in a bag with the hedgehog only last Tuesday week. You'd better go to your room and think it over. I shall have to tell your father directly he comes home.'

Part 3

Maurice went to his room and thought it over. And the more he thought the more he hated Lord Hugh. Why couldn't the beastly cat have held his tongue and sat still? That, at the time would have been a disappointment, but now Maurice wished it had happened. He sat on the edge of his bed and savagely kicked the edge of the green Kidderminster carpet, and hated the cat.

He hadn't meant to be cruel; he was sure he hadn't; he wouldn't have pinched the cat's feet or squeezed its tail in the door, or pulled its whiskers, or poured hot water on it. He felt himself ill-used, and knew that he would feel still more so after the inevitable interview with his father.

But that interview did not take the immediately painful form expected by Maurice. His father did not say, 'Now I will show you what it feels like to be hurt.' Maurice had braced himself for that, and was looking beyond it to the calm of forgiveness which should follow the storm in which he should so unwillingly take part. No; his father was already calm and reasonable--with a dreadful calm, a terrifying reason.

'Look here, my boy,' he said. 'This cruelty to dumb animals must be checked--severely checked.'

'I didn't mean to be cruel,' said Maurice.

'Evil,' said Mr. Basingstoke, for such was Maurice's surname, 'is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart. What about your putting the hen in the oven?'

'You know,' said Maurice, pale but determined, 'you know I only wanted to help her to get her eggs hatched quickly. It says in "Fowls for Food and Fancy" that heat hatches eggs.'

'But she hadn't any eggs,' said Mr. Basingstoke.

'But she soon would have,' urged Maurice. 'I thought a stitch in time----'

'That,' said his father, 'is the sort of thing that you must learn not to think.'

'I'll try,' said Maurice, miserably hoping for the best.

'I intend that you shall,' said Mr. Basingstoke. 'This afternoon you go to Dr. Strongitharm's for the remaining week of term. If I find any more cruelty taking place during the holidays you will go there permanently. You can go and get ready.'

'Oh, father, please not,' was all Maurice found to say.

'I'm sorry, my boy,' said his father, much more kindly; 'it's all for your own good, and it's as painful to me as it is to you--remember that. The cab will be here at four. Go and put your things together, and Jane shall pack for you.'

So the box was packed. Mabel, Maurice's kiddy sister, cried over everything as it was put in. It was a very wet day.

'If it had been any school but old Strong's,' she sobbed.

She and her brother knew that school well: its windows, dulled with wire blinds, its big alarm bell, the high walls of its grounds, bristling with spikes, the iron gates, always locked, through which gloomy boys, imprisoned, scowled on a free world. Dr. Strongitharm's was a school 'for backward and difficult boys.' Need I say more?

Well, there was no help for it. The box was packed, the cab was at the door. The farewells had been said. Maurice determined that he wouldn't cry and he didn't, which gave him the one touch of pride and joy that such a scene could yield. Then at the last moment, just as father had one leg in the cab, the Taxes called. Father went back into the house to write a cheque. Mother and Mabel had retired in tears. Maurice used the reprieve to go back after his postage-stamp album. Already he was planning how to impress the other boys at old Strong's, and his was really a very fair collection. He ran up into the schoolroom, expecting to find it empty. But some one was there: Lord Hugh, in the very middle of the ink-stained table-cloth.

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