A Treasury of Fairy Tales Read online

  In the palace, the mice and rats were squealing and running about as usual. The cat sprang from the Captain’s shoulder and in less than five minutes had killed fifty of them and sent the rest to their holes. Then she went and sat at the Sultan’s feet, purring, and he ordered a silver dish of thick yellow cream to be set before her.

  The Sultan had never seen a cat before, and knew at once that he must have this wonderful creature for his own.

  “I shall give you five hundred pieces of gold for the cat,” said he, plucking at his turban.

  “O Mighty Sultan, may you live forever,” replied the Captain. “But if we give up this wonderful cat, the ship will be overrun by rats on our return voyage. They will eat up all the food, and we may starve to death.”

  “That, indeed, would be a thousand pities,” replied the Sultan. “I see that I must give more for the cat to make the risk worth your while. What do you say to a thousand gold pieces and this diamond from my own turban?”

  The Captain stared at the diamond, and swallowed. It was as large as a quail’s egg and flashing blue fire.

  “We will take the risk, O Mighty Sultan,” he replied. “The cat is yours.”

  When the ship came into London docks, all Fitzwarren’s men were there to receive the money paid on their Ventures. When it came to Dick’s turn, he asked if he could have his cat again, never believing that it had fetched a single gold piece, let alone a fortune. When the Captain told him the tale, Dick could hardly believe him till the Captain showed him the sack of gold and the enormous diamond.

  The merchant slapped Dick on the back and called him ‘Son Richard’.

  “You shall have a share in my next ship,” said he. “Lord Mayor of London, eh? Those bells of yours could have spoken truth, it seems!”

  Alice had told her father the story of what the bells had said, and he had thought it a good jest. Now, he began to wonder. If this boy could make a fortune out of a single cat, what else might he not do?

  Out of his money Dick bought Alice a velvet sash and Cook a silken dress and a silver pin. The rest he ventured in Fitzwarren’s next ship, and when the ship returned, Dick was twice as rich. When the ship after that came home, Dick was twice as rich again. By now he was a fine and handsome young man.

  “Cook’s boy,” said Mistress Alice, “you may smile at me now, for I have smiled at you first.”

  Dick smiled at her. One thing led to another, and soon they were married. The Lord Mayor himself came to the wedding, wearing his red robes and driving in a gilt coach with ten white horses.

  “There!” whispered Alice. “See how fine you’ll look, Dick, when you’re Lord Mayor!”

  And ten years later, Dick was Lord Mayor. He went before the King and knelt before him, and the King laid a sword on Dick’s shoulder.

  “Rise up, Sir Richard!” said he.

  So Dick was Sir Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London, as the bells had promised him so many years ago as he had leaned on the milestone in the drizzling rain. And sometimes Sir Richard Whittington would still go out of London on a Sunday to that very place, and think about the cat who had made his fortune, and listen again to what the bells were saying:

  Turn again Whitting-ton

  Thou worthy cit-izen

  Lord Mayor of Lon-don!

  The Frog Prince

  One evening a young princess went into a wood and sat down under a lime tree by a spring of clear water. She had taken with her her favourite plaything, a beautiful golden ball, and kept tossing it idly into the air and catching it again.

  Each time she threw it higher and higher, until at last she threw it too high and too far, and missed catching it as it fell. It began to roll away from her, away and away, and before she could run after it, rolled right into the spring itself.

  “My ball! O, my ball!” cried the Princess in dismay.

  She went and craned right over the edge of the well, but the water was very deep and she knew that she could never reach to the bottom of it. She began to cry, because she had really loved her golden ball, and could not bear to think that she would never play with it again.

  “I loved it best of everything in the whole world,” she sobbed. “And I’d give anything – everything I’ve got, to have it back again. All my jewels, all my fine clothes – everything!”

  As she finished speaking a frog suddenly put its flat green head out of the water and asked,

  “Princess, why do you weep so bitterly?”

  “O frog, I have lost my golden ball!” she cried. “It has fallen into the spring and now I shall never see it again!”

  “You may see it again,” replied the frog, “if you let me help you. I heard what you said just now. I do not want your jewels or your fine clothes. But if you will love me, and let me live with you, and eat from your little golden plate and sleep upon your bed, then I will bring you back your ball again.”

  He sat with his green head cocked and looked at the Princess with his great round eyes, and she looked back at him.

  “What nonsense he talks!” thought the Princess. “How could he possibly climb out of the well? And as for coming to live with me at the palace – it’s impossible! But he may be able to dive down and fetch my pretty ball, so I’ll pretend to promise what he asks.”

  “Very well, frog,” she said out loud. “I will agree to what you ask. And now – dive and fetch me my ball quickly – do!”

  So the frog splashed down into the water and disappeared. Next minute he came up again with the ball in his mouth and tossed it to the ground at the Princess’s feet.

  “O thank you!” cried the Princess, overjoyed. “My ball – my beautiful ball!”

  She picked it up and ran gaily off towards the palace, quite forgetting the frog and her own promise.

  “Princess, wait!” called the frog after her. “Remember what you promised!”

  But the Princess kept on running, and soon was safely home again, her adventure forgotten.

  Next day, the Princess was just sitting down to her dinner when there came a strange, soft pattering noise as if slippered feet were coming up the marble staircase. Sure enough, next moment there came a gentle knocking at the door, and a voice said:

  “Open the door, my Princess dear,

  Open the door to thy true love here!

  Remember the words the two of us said

  By the fountain cool in the greenwood shade!”

  The Princess ran to the door and opened it, and there stood the frog, whom she had quite forgotten! The sight of him frightened her so much that she slammed the door shut again in his face and hurried back to her seat. The King himself was sitting at the table.

  “Who was that at the door?” he asked.

  “Only a nasty frog,” replied the Princess. “My golden ball fell into the spring yesterday, and he fetched it out for me. But he made me make a silly promise, to let him come here and live with me, and now he’s wanting to be let in!”

  As she was speaking the frog was knocking at the door again, and saying his sad little song:

  “Open the door, my Princess dear,

  Open the door to thy true love here!

  Remember the words the two of us said

  By the fountain cool in the greenwood shade!”

  “You must let him in,” said the King. “If you made a promise, you must keep it. Open the door.”

  Much against her will the Princess went and opened the door, and the frog came hopping in and went right over to the table.

  “I am hungry,” he said to the Princess. “Pray lift me on to a chair, so that I may sit by you.”

  She did as he asked, though she could hardly bear to touch him, and when she herself had sat down again, he said,

  “Push your plate a little closer to me, so that I may eat out of it.”

  The Princess was forced to obey, though she did not at all like the idea of sharing her plate with a frog.

  When he had eaten as much as he could, the frog said, “Now I am tire
d. Pray carry me upstairs and put me on your own little bed.”

  The Princess was bound by her promise to do as he asked. She picked up the frog very gingerly, between her fingers, carried him upstairs, and with a shudder dropped him on to her own bed. He crept up on to the pillow, and there he slept all night long. But when morning came, he jumped up and hopped down the stairs and out of the palace.

  “Thank heaven!” cried the Princess. “Now he has gone, and I shall see no more of him.”

  But she was mistaken. That night as she sat at table there came again that same soft slippery footstep on the stair, and that same gentle knocking at the door. Once again the Princess was forced to feed the frog from her own golden plate, and take him up to her own bed to sleep.

  On the third night, when again the frog visited her, the Princess began to regret her promise bitterly.

  But on the third morning when she woke, it was to find the frog gone already from her pillow. And there, standing at the foot of the bed, was the most handsome prince she had ever seen, gazing at her with eyes that were loving and gentle and strangely like those of the little frog.

  “Dear Princess!” cried the Prince. “You have broken the spell at last!”

  He told her how he had been enchanted by a wicked fairy. She had changed him into a frog, and told him that he would never again take human shape unless he could find a Princess who would take him from the spring and bring him home with her, to feed from her own plate and sleep upon her bed.

  “And now you have done this,” cried the Prince, “and I love you dearly, and want you to come with me to my own kingdom and marry me, and be my queen.”

  And so it happened. Next day the Princess drove off with her Prince in a fine golden coach drawn by six white horses, bound for his own kingdom, where they married and lived happily ever after.

  Puss in Boots

  Once upon a time there was a poor Miller who had three sons. When he died he had nothing to leave them but his mill, his ass and his cat. So he left the mill to his eldest son, the ass to his second son, and his youngest son had to be contented with the cat.

  “Whatever shall I do?” cried he. “It’s all very well for my brothers, but once I’ve killed my cat and sold his skin to make gloves, I’ll have nothing at all in the world!”

  Master Puss heard all this.

  “Sell my skin to make gloves?” he mewed. “You can do better than this with me, dear Master. In fact, if you do everything that I tell you, there’s a fortune to be made!”

  The young man was very surprised and pleased to find that he had such a clever cat, and readily agreed to do as he was bid.

  “First,” said Puss, “find me a pair of stout leather boots, and a sack.”

  The Miller’s son found both and brought them to him, and Puss drew on the great boots with a loud purring and swaggered up and down to show them off. He then slung the sack over his shoulder and went into the nearby countryside.

  He stopped at last in a field that was full of rabbit warrens, and laid down the sack by the largest burrow. Then Puss himself lay down by the sack with his head hanging limply to one side as if he had broken his neck.

  After a time, up came a fine fat rabbit, saw the ‘dead’ cat, and went sniffing into the sack to find the bran and lettuce leaves that Puss had placed there. Up jumped Puss, pulled the strings of the sack tight, and the rabbit was caught.

  That evening Puss came to the door of the palace carrying a brace of plump rabbits, and demanded to see the King. The Chamberlain was charmed by the sight of this impudent Puss in his fine boots, and led the way to the throne room.

  Puss made a sweeping bow and laid the rabbits at the King’s feet, saying,

  “Your Majesty, here is a gift from my master, My Lord the Marquis of Carabas!”

  The King was delighted both with the gift and with Puss himself, and gave orders that the cat was to be allowed to call whenever he pleased.

  Puss purred. This suited him very well. Each day he went poaching in the king’s woods and each evening he went to the palace with his catch and offered it to the King as ‘a gift from My Lord the Marquis of Carabas’. Besides this, the Miller’s son had as many rabbits and pheasants as he wanted, as well as the presents that Puss brought back from the King himself.

  One day Puss came back from the palace in great excitement.

  “O Master, Master!” he mewed. “The time has come for your fortune to be made! Just do as I tell you, and all will be well. All you have to do is to go down and bathe in the river. At noon, the King will ride by with his only child, the Princess. You must be in the water when they arrive. Don’t be alarmed whatever should happen, and leave it all to me!”

  By now the Miller’s son was ready to do anything his cat asked, and so next day he went down to the river as he had been told. There he stripped off his worn and ragged clothes and plunged into the water. As soon as he had done so, Puss ran up, took the heap of clothes, and hid them in a ditch. Then he waited till he heard the wheels of the king’s carriage and ran out on to the road crying, “Help! Help! My Master, the Marquis of Carabas is drowning!”

  When the King saw it was his favourite, the Puss in Boots who brought him so many presents, he ordered his servants to hurry to the river.

  “Alas, alas!” cried the cunning Puss as he led the way. “Wicked robbers set upon my Master and robbed him of his fine clothes and jewels and everything he had. Then they threw him into the river to drown, and I myself cannot swim. Save him, quickly, before he drowns! O my dear Master!”

  The servants ran and pulled the Miller’s son out of the water and one of them went running back to the palace to fetch a suit of the King’s own clothes. Puss led him to the King and introduced him as ‘My most noble Master, My Lord the Marquis of Carabas.’ The King was so charmed by his noble appearance that he invited him into the carriage to join himself and the Princess on their ride. Puss purred.

  But there was still work to be done. Puss ran on ahead, tail up in the air, till he came to a field of corn where men were haymaking.

  “Good people!” cried Puss, his whiskers curling, “Soon the King is coming this way. He is sure to stop and ask who this fine field belongs to. And if you do not say that it belongs to My Lord the Marquis of Carabas, I will have you all chopped up as small as mincemeat!”

  Off he bounded, and when the king stopped to admire the hay and ask to whom it belonged, all the men in the field replied,

  “It belongs to My Lord the Marquis of Carabas!”

  “What fine hay you have, Marquis,” said the King, and the Miller’s son bowed politely.

  By this time, Puss himself had reached a great cornfield where men were cutting the ripe corn with sickles and binding it into sheaves. Puss called out to them, and they were so amazed to see a Puss in boots that they too obeyed his orders, and when the King stopped to ask to whom the corn belonged, meekly replied,

  “It belongs to My Lord the Marquis of Carabas!”

  Meanwhile, Puss had come to the castle where lived the wicked Ogre who was the real owner of all the land about. He was so cruel that anyone who disobeyed him was straightway killed and served up for the Ogre’s dinner. No one could fight him, because he had the power of turning himself into any animal he chose – and no one could fight single-handed against a savage tiger or raging wolf.

  Puss came striding up to the castle gates, bared his teeth at the guards and went straight into the hall where the Ogre sat.

  “What’s this?” growled the Ogre, chewing at a bone. “Who are you, and how dare you enter my castle?”

  “O Your Eminence, O Your Excellency, O Your Most Excellency,” mewed Puss, bowing so low that his ears brushed the ground, “I am a traveller, out to see the wonders of the world. And of all the wonders of the world, I have heard that you are the wonderfullest. Ever since I was a kitten I have heard tales of you that I could scarcely believe. They say you can change yourself into any animal you choose. Is it true? I can hardly believe it!�
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  “Believe it!” cried the Ogre, crunching his bone, “Believe it! I’ll show you!”

  Next minute, there stood a great yellow lion lashing its tail and roaring, and Puss himself was up in the rafters, arching his back and spitting.

  The Ogre changed back into his own shape again, bellowing with laughter, and Puss came carefully down from the roof.

  “O sir, O noble and mighty Sir,” cried Puss, “Forgive me for not believing! Now I have seen it with my own eyes, I see how truly wonderful you are. But there is one tiny thing that worries me.”

  “What?” roared the Ogre, tearing the leg from a roast ox. “What, miserable little cat?”

  “Please, sir, noble, sir,” said Puss. “You are so noble and fine that to be able to change yourself into a lion, the king of the beasts himself, is almost to be expected. But how could so great and powerful a person as yourself change himself into some very small and humble creature, such as a mouse, for instance? That, I’m sure is quite impossible!”

  “Impossible?” yelled the Ogre, snapping the ox bone in half. “Wretched little creature, I’ll show you!”

  A moment later the Ogre was gone and a small brown mouse scampered over the floor. Puss poised, ears back, tail a-twitch, pounced – and gobbled the mouse in a trice. And that was the end of the Ogre. Puss purred.

  All the Ogre’s servants came running into the hall, laughing and crying for joy. Puss jumped up on to a table and held up a paw for silence.

  “I have killed your cruel master,” he said, “and now a new master is coming who will treat you wisely and well. But if you do not do as I tell you, I will have you all chopped as small as mincemeat!”

  This the people could readily believe.

  “All you have to do,” said Puss, “is to tell the King when he enquires, that this castle and all its lands belong to My Lord the Marquis of Carabas!”

  And so, when evening came and the King’s coach came rolling out of the sunset and over the drawbridge, hundreds of servants in rich liveries stood in lines on either side. Puss came forward and opened the carriage door with a sweeping bow.