David Blaize and the Blue Door

‘Come and sit on the tuffet at once,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll pretend that there isn’t room for the spider. Won’t that be a good joke? I like a bit of chaff with my spider. I expect the tuffet will bear, won’t it? But I can’t promise you any curds.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said David politely, ‘but I don’t like curds.’

‘No more do I,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘I knew we should agree.’

‘Then why do you eat them?’ asked David.

‘For fear the spider should get them. Don’t you adore my tuffet? It’s the only indoor tuffet in the world. All others are out-door tuffets. But they gave me this one because most spiders are out-of-door spiders. By the way, we haven’t been introduced yet. Where’s that silly butler?’

‘Here,’ said the butler. He was lying down on the floor now, and staring at the ceiling.

‘Introduce us,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Say Miss Muffet, David Blaize – David Blaize, Miss Muffet. Then whichever way about it happens, you’re as comfortable as it is possible to be under the circumstances, or even above them, where it would naturally be colder.’

‘I don’t quite see,’ said David.

‘Poor Mr. Blaize. Put a little curds and whey in your eyes. That’s the way. Dear me, there’s another pun.’

‘You made it before,’ said David.

‘I know. It counts double this time. But as I was saying, a little curds and whey – oh! it’s tipped up again. What restless things curds are!’

She had not been looking at her bowl, and for several minutes now a perfect stream of curds and whey had been pouring from it over her knees and along the floor, to where the butler lay. He was still repeating, ‘Miss Muffet, David Blaize – David Blaize, Miss Muffet.’ Sometimes, by way of variety, he said, ‘Miss Blaize – David Muffet,’ but as nobody attended, it made no difference what he said.

‘It always happens when I get talking,’ she said. ‘And now we know each other, I may be permitted to express a hope that you didn’t expect to find me a little girl?’

‘No, I like you best as you are,’ said David quickly.

‘It isn’t for want of being asked that I’ve remained Miss Muffet,’ said she. ‘And it isn’t from want of being answered. But give me a little pleasant conversation now and then, and one good frightening away every night, and I’m sure I’ll have no quarrel with anybody; and I hope nobody hasn’t got none with me. How interesting it must be for you to meet me, when you’ve read about me so often. It’s not nearly so interesting for me, of course, because you’re not a public character.’

‘Does the spider come every night, or every day, whatever it is down here?’ asked David.

‘Yes, sooner or later,’ said Miss Muffet cheerfully, ‘but the sooner he comes, the sooner I get back again, and the later he comes the longer I have before he comes. So there we are.’

She stopped suddenly, and looked at the ceiling.

‘Do my eyes deceive me?’ she whispered, ‘or is that the s – ? No; my eyes deceive me, and I thought they would scorn the action, the naughty things. Perhaps you would like to peep at my furniture underneath the sheets. It will pass the time for you, but be ready to run back to the tuffet, when you hear the spider coming. Really, it’s very tiresome of him to be so late.’

David thought he had never seen such an odd lot of furniture. Covered up in one sheet was a stuffed horse, in another a beehive, in another a mowing-machine. They were all priced in plain figures, and the prices seemed to him equally extraordinary, for while the horse was labelled ‘Two shillings a dozen,’ and the mowing-machine ‘Half a crown a pair,’ the beehive cost ninety-four pounds empty, and eleven and sixpence full. David supposed the reason for this was that if the beehive was full, there would be bees buzzing about everywhere, which would be a disadvantage.

‘When I give a party,’ said Miss Muffet, ‘as I shall do pretty soon if the spider doesn’t come, and take all the coverings off my furniture, the effect is quite stupendous. Dazzling in fact, my dear. You must remember to put on your smoked spectacles.’

David was peering into the sheet that covered the biggest piece of furniture of all. He could only make out that it was like an enormous box on wheels, and cost ninepence. Then the door in it swung open, and he saw that it was a bathing-machine. On the floor of it was sitting an enormous spider.

‘Does she expect me?’ said the spider hoarsely. ‘I’m not feeling very well.’

David remembered that he had to run back to the tuffet, but it seemed impolite not to ask the spider what was the matter with it. It had a smooth kind face, and was rather bald.

‘My web caught cold,’ said the spider. ‘But I’ll come if she expects me.’

David ran back to the tuffet.

‘He’s not very well,’ he said, ‘but he’ll come if you expect him.’

‘The kind good thing!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘Now I must begin to get frightened. Will you help me? Say “Bo!” and make faces with me in the looking-glass, and tell me a ghost story. Bring me the looking-glass, silly,’ she shouted to the butler.

He took one down from over the chimney-piece, and held it in front of them, while David and Miss Muffet made the most awful faces into it.

‘That’s a beauty,’ said Miss Muffet, as David squinted, screwed up his nose, and put his tongue out. ‘Thank you for that one, my dear. It gave me quite a start. You are really remarkably ugly. Will you feel my pulse, and see how I am getting on. Make another face: I’m used to that one. Oh, I got a beauty then: it terrified me. And begin your ghost story quickly.’

David had no idea where anybody’s pulse was, so he began his ghost story.

‘Once upon a time,’ he said, ‘there was a ghost that lived in the hot-water tap.’

‘Gracious, how dreadful!’ said Miss Muffet. ‘What was it the ghost of?’

‘It wasn’t the ghost of anything,’ said David. ‘It was just a ghost.’

‘But it must have been “of” something,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘The King is the King of England, and I’m Miss Muffet of nothing at all. But you must have an “of.” ’

‘This one hadn’t,’ said David firmly. ‘It was just a ghost. It groaned when you turned the hot water on, and it squealed when you turned it off.’

‘This will never do,’ said Miss Muffet. ‘I’m getting quite calm again, like a kettle going off the boil. Make another face. Oh, now it’s too late!’

There came a tremendous cantering sound behind them, and Miss Muffet opened her mouth and screamed so loud that her horn spectacles broke into fragments.

‘Here he comes!’ she said. ‘O-oh, how frightened I am!’

She gave one more wild shriek as the spider leaped on to the tuffet, and began running about the room with the most amazing speed, the spider cantering after her. They upset the bathing-machine, and knocked the stuffed horse down, they dodged behind the butler, and sent the beehive spinning, and splashed through the curds and whey, which formed a puddle on the floor. Then the door through which David had entered flew open, and out darted Miss Muffet with the spider in hot pursuit. Her screaming, which never stopped for a moment, grew fainter and fainter.

The butler gave an enormous yawn.

‘Cleaning up time,’ he said, and took a mop from behind the door, and dipped it into the pool of curds and whey. When it was quite soaked, he twisted it rapidly round and round, and a shower of curds and whey deluged David. As it fell on him, it seemed to turn to snow. It was snowing heavily from the roof too, and snow was blowing in through the door. Then he saw that it wasn’t a door at all, but the opening of a street, and that the walls were the walls of houses. It was difficult to see distinctly through the snowstorm, but he felt as if he knew where he was.

CHAPTER III

The snow cleared as swiftly as it had begun, and David saw that he was standing in the High Street of the village near which he lived. It was all quite ordinary, and he was afraid that he had somehow been popped back through the blue door during the snowstorm, and was again in the stupid dull world. Just opposite him was the post and telegraph office, and next to that the bank, and beyond that the girls’ school. There were the same old shops too, Mr. Winfall the tailor’s, and the confectioner’s and the bootmaker’s, and at the bottom of the street was the bridge over the river.

‘Well, if I am back in the world again,’ said David, ‘it would be a pity to let all this good snow go to waste without its being tobogganed on. I’ll go home, I think, and get my toboggan. I wonder how they did it.’

He started to go down the street to the bridge across which was the lane which presently passed by the bottom of the field beyond the lake, on the other side of which was the garden, where was the summer-house in which he had left his toboggan yesterday. But he happened to look a little more closely at the bootmaker’s shop, and instead of the card in the window which said, ‘Boots and shoes neatly repaired,’ there was another one on which was written ‘Uncles and Aunts recovered and repaired.’

‘I suppose they recover them when they’re lost, and repair them when they’re found,’ thought David. ‘But it’s not a bit usual.’

He found it no more usual when he looked at the girls’ school, for instead of the brass plate on which was written ‘Miss Milligan’s school for Young Ladies,’ he saw written there ‘Happy Families’ Institute,’ and in the window of the bank a notice ‘Sovereigns are cheap to-day.’

‘I’ll go in there at once,’ thought David, ‘and buy some. I wonder how much money I’ve got.’

He found four pennies in his pocket, and went in with them to the bank. The manager was there talking in a low voice to a very stout gentleman with a meat-chopper in his hand, whom David knew to be the Mint-man from London, just as certainly as if he had had it written all over him. What made it absolutely sure was the fact that sovereigns kept oozing out of his clothes and dropping on the floor. There was quite a pile of them round his feet, which the porter who opened the door to David kept sweeping up, and putting down his neck again.