Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886

And besides this strange complaint she caught other little bits grumbles floating about, such as

"Fiss, whiss, whiss!
Did ever I think
I should have come to this?"

And:

"Alack, and well-a-day!
Will nobody come
To take us away?"

As soon as she had recovered from her amazement, Pet opened the wardrobe, and there she saw a long row of gowns, hanging in all sorts of despondent attitudes, some hooked up by their sleeves, others caught by the waist with their bodies doubled together.

"Here is somebody at last, thank goodness!" cried a dark-brown silk which was greatly crumpled, and looked very uncomfortable hanging up by its shoulder.

"Oh, gowns, gowns!" cried Pet, staring at these strange grumblers with her round, blue eyes, "whatever do you want?"

"Want?" cried the brown silk; "why, of course, to be taken out and given to the poor."

"The poor again!" cried Pet. "Who can these poor be at all, I wonder?"

"People who cannot buy clothing enough for themselves," said the brown silk. "When your dear mother was alive she always gave her old gowns to the poor. Only think how nice I should be for the respectable mother of a family to go to church in on Sundays, instead of being rumpled in here out of the daylight with the moths eating me."

"And I," cried a pink muslin, "what a pretty holiday frock I should make for the industrious young school-mistress who supports her poor grandfather and grandmother."

"And I! and I! and I!" shrieked many little rustling voices, each describing the possible usefulness of a particular gown.

"Yes! we should all turn to account," continued the brown silk, "all except, perhaps, one or two very grand, stiff old fogies in velvet and brocade and cloth-of-gold; and even these might be cut up into jackets for the old clown who tumbles on the village green for the children's amusement."

"My breath is quite taken away," cried Pet. "I shall certainly see that you are all taken out and given to the poor immediately."

"She is her mother's daughter after all;" said the brown silk, triumphantly; and Pet closed the door upon a chorus of little murmurs of satisfaction from the imprisoned gowns.

"This is a very curious adventure," thought the little queen, as she trotted on, fancying she saw faces grinning at her out of the furniture and down from the ceiling; and then she stopped again, quite sure she heard very peculiar sounds coming out of an antique bureau which stood in a corner. After her conversation with the gowns this did not surprise her much at all, and she put her ear to the keyhole at once.

"Clink! Clink!
What do you think?
Here we are
Shut up in a drawer,"

cried the queer little voices coming out of the bureau.

"What can this be about, I wonder?" said Pet, and turning the key, peeped in. There she beheld a whole heap of gold and silver lying in the depths of the bureau, all the guineas and shillings hopping about and clinking against each other and singing:

"Take us out
And give us about,
And then we shall do
Some good, no doubt!"

"Why, what do you want to get out for?" asked Pet, looking down at them.

"To help the poor, of course!" said the money. "We were put in here by the good queen, your mother, and saved up for the poor who deserve to be assisted. But now every one has forgotten us, and we are rusting away while there is so much distress in the kingdom."

"Well," said Pet, "I shall see to your case; for I promise you I am going to know more about these wonderful poor."

She shut up the bureau, and went on further exploring the rooms, and now you may be pretty sure her ears were wide open for every sound. It was not long before she heard a creaking and squeaking that came from a large wicker-basket which was twisting about in the most discontented manner.

"Once on a time I was filled with bread,
But now I stand as if I were dead,"

mourned the basket.

"And why were you filled with bread?" asked Pet.

"Your mother used to fill me," squeaked the basket, "and give the bread out of me to feed the poor."

"Why! do you mean to say that the poor have no bread to eat?" asked Pet. "That is really a most dreadful thing. I must speak to my Government about these poor immediately. Whatever my mother did must have been perfectly right at all events, and I shall do the same!"

And off she went back towards her nursery, meeting all her twelve nurses flying along the corridors to look for her.

"Go directly and tell my Government that I want to speak to it," said Queen Pet, quite grandly; and she was brought down to the great Council Chamber.

"Your Majesty has had too much plum-pudding and a bad dream afterwards!" said the Government when Pet had told the whole story about the gowns, and the money, and the bread-basket, and the poor; and then the Government took a pinch of snuff and sent Queen Pet back to her nursery.

The next day, when all the nurses had gone to their dinner again, Pet was leaning out of her nursery window, with her two elbows on the sills and her face between her hands, and she was gazing down on the charming gardens below, and away off over the fields and hills of her beautiful kingdom of Goldenlands. "Where do the poor live, I wonder?" she thought; "and I wonder what they are like? Oh, that I could be a good queen like my mother, and be of use to my people! How I wish that I had a ladder to reach down into the garden, and then I could run away all over my kingdom and find things out for myself."

Just as she thought thus an exquisite butterfly perched on her finger and said gaily,—

"A thousand spiders
All weaving in a row,
Can weave you a ladder
To fit your little toe."

"Can they, indeed?" cried Pet; "and are you acquainted with the spiders?"

"I should think so, indeed," said the butterfly; "I am engaged to be married to a spider; I have been engaged ever since I was a caterpillar."

"Well, just ask them to be so good!" said Pet, and away flew the butterfly, coming back in a moment with a whole cloud of spiders following her.

"Be as quick as you can, please, lest my nurses should come back from dinner," said Pet, as the spiders worked away. "Fortunately they have all good appetites, and cannot bear to leave table without their six helpings of pudding."

The ladder being finished, Pet tripped down it into the garden, where she was hidden at once in a wilderness of roses, out of which she made her way through a wood, and across a stream quite far into the open country of her kingdom.

She was running very fast, with her head down, when she heard a step following her, and a voice speaking to her, and looking round, saw a very extraordinary person indeed. He was very tall and all made of loose, clanking bones; he carried a scythe in one hand, and an hourglass in the other, and he had a pleasant voice, which made Pet not so much afraid of him as she otherwise might have been.

"It is no use trying to run away from me," said this person. "Besides, I wish to do you a good turn. My name is Time."

Pet dropped a trembling courtesy.