CHAPTER XIII

THE PRINCESS WITH TOES OF SILVER

On the way he kept saying, “Suppose it’s the same one? Suppose it’s the dwagon’s princess? What will I do then? I’m glad I’ve got my sword, but I wouldn’t want to hurt the little old man. It wouldn’t be right to harm a little old man not even as big as I am. I wonder who he is and I wonder how he found the princess? He must have stolen her from Dallahan, the Irish dwagon!”

And reasoning thus to himself, he arrived at the bright scarlet tent, and there was the little man with the long braided beard, in two braids, mind you, still rubbing his hands together, sounding just like sandpaper. “How would you like to see”--he began to whisper, but recognizing Peter he said, “Well, did you find a golden ducat?”

“Yes,” said Peter, trying to make his voice sound very gruff although it was trembling from excitement, and he held up the gold piece between his thumb and first finger.

“Give it to me!” squealed the little man, holding out his hand with the palm up, his bright eyes sending out sparks.

“Let me in the tent _first_,” said Peter.

The man looked very much offended. “Oh, very well, if you don’t trust me!” And up he got, wrapping his moldy, green cloak about him and stuck his head through the door of the tent, motioning for Peter to follow him. Peter, hand on the hilt of his sword, went in behind him.

The sunlight, falling through the canvas of the tent, became as red as blood and changed all the grass to the color of blood, and made the odd little man turn the color of blood also. Peter looked all about him. Where was the princess? All he could see in the tent were two large boxes, both colored blue, with locks of gold, and both exactly the same size; and over in a corner were some red sacks about as large as flour sacks, filled with something that made them very round and fat. But where was the princess? Peter held tightly to the golden coin. The old man couldn’t fool him like this and then expect to be paid. No, indeed!

The odd old man stopped before the big blue boxes and held out his hand again, palm up--“The ducat, and you shall see her,” he croaked.

“No.” Peter shook his curly head. “Show me the princess first,” he replied.

“But then you won’t pay me,” whined the stranger, “and I need the money very badly. My wife has the measles and my children have the mumps.” And tears came out of his eyes and ran down his beard.

Peter was quite firm. He did not believe the story about the measles and the mumps, and at last the old man had to call shrilly for some one named Riggy who came shuffling through a hole in the rear of the tent. Riggy was a very sad looking lad with a long pair of thin legs and long, dangling arms and hair as yellow as a buttercup with a little of it spread like butter on his cheeks and chin, and he looked as sad as the dragon had looked when Peter first saw him, way, way ahead, in the woodlot.

“Yes, sir?” he said meekly, glancing at Peter with sad admiration, for deep down in his heart, this poor slavey wanted to be a knight and wear shining armor too.

“Help me lift up the princess,” snarled the odd old man, “and be careful, this time, or I’ll tweak your nose and box your ears.”

They each took a corner of one of the blue boxes and lifted it up on end, after which, the little man told Peter to sit down on the ground and count ten and then add six and subtract six, and when Peter had done that, though he didn’t know what difference it made, the box was unlocked and there stood the most beautiful girl Peter had ever seen,--of course, she wasn’t as beautiful as Peter’s mother, but she was the next most beautiful thing with her long, long golden hair hanging down over a red robe encrusted with magic moonstones. That robe was enough to convince Peter that this was the dragon’s princess, standing there so straight with her enchanted eyes closed, but he wanted to make sure so he said, “Show me her toes.” They were covered up with tiny red slippers, you see.

Again the little man asked Peter for the golden ducat, and again Peter refused until he saw the real silver toes, so there was nothing else left for the old man to do, and slowly he uncovered the feet of the beautiful princess, and sure enough, her toes were bright silver, like the best knives and forks and the best teaspoons. Peter stared at them, trying to figure out just what he should do next. Should he accuse this little man or should he remain quiet and wait his chance? Should he kill the little man with his sword, right now, and run away with the princess? No, he couldn’t do that. The odd old man was so very, very little. Yes, the best thing to do would be to keep still and wait.

“Well, have you seen enough?” demanded the little man, showing his yellow teeth like an ugly water rat. “If so, please turn over the golden ducat because I want to go to bed.”

“Go to bed?” said Peter. “Why it’s daytime.”

“I always go to bed in the daytime,” he snarled. “Stop sticking your silly little nose into my business! Give me the money and then get out!”

He stooped over to put back the red slippers on the enchanted girl’s feet, and so missed seeing what Peter and Riggy saw. The eyes of the princess slowly opened and she looked at Peter with the saddest expression, and although she could not seem to speak it was as if she said: “Oh, Peter, Peter, help me to get away--help me to get away”--And then her eyes closed again and her face became as pale as a white jasmine flower. Peter looked at Riggy and Riggy looked at Peter, and they both understood each other, right away.

So Peter gave the golden ducat to the old man who took it greedily and carefully examined it before he put it away, somewhere in the moldy folds of the green cloak. Then he bowed Peter out of the tent, mumbling strange things.

Peter walked up and down, outside the tent, wondering and wondering, until the old man yelled, “Stop walking up and down like that. Go away. I’m trying to get some sleep.”

“I’m sorry,” said Peter, and walked away down the street of tents. When he reached the very end of the street and paused by a sky-blue canvas, the canvas shook a little and out popped a round head as yellow as a buttercup. It was Riggy. He put his long finger over his wide mouth and said, “Shh!” and pulled Peter in behind the blue canvas.

Riggy stuttered when he talked but I’m not going to try and put that stutter down on paper because stutters get embarrassed and because it would take up a whole page to make a stutter say yes or no. So you’ll have to imagine the stutter and put it in when you think it should be there.

“Oh, brave and noble knight,” cried Riggy, falling down on his sharp knees before Peter and catching his hand, “you must do a noble deed today and help me!”

Peter had never felt so manly or so thrilled or so brave in his whole life before. Oh, wouldn’t he have something to tell Johnathan when Johnathan talked about good deeds! “I’ll try my best to help, Riggy,” he said, “but first you must tell me about that odd old man.”

“He’s Mig, the magic magician,” stuttered Riggy, having an awful time with all those Ms, “and all his brothers and sisters and cousins are magicians too.”

“I don’t want to go into his family history,” Peter said. “How did he get the princess, that’s all I’d like to know.”

Riggy looked all around him and then began to whisper, cautiously. “That’s what I want to tell you. His old aunt--aunt Thissy, the witch of the forest, first enchanted the Princess Silver Toes, and then when Thissy was killed, the cave dragon found the enchanted girl and kept her in his cave until she was stolen by Dallahan, the Irish dragon, when the cave dragon left her all alone to go wandering in the future.”

“But how did _Mig_ get her?” Peter asked, impatiently.

“Give me time,” begged poor Riggy, because the more excited he became the more he stuttered. “You see, Mig is the worst sort of an old miser. All he cares about is gold, gold, gold--those sacks you saw in the tent are filled with gold, and in his home at the top of the world he has deep, deep cellars all filled with gold. So he knew if he owned the princess, enchanted as she was and with silver toes, he could make more gold, so he had an idea. He knew he couldn’t fight Dallahan because the Irish dragon is too big and powerful, so he waited until the time of the new moon.”

“Why?” asked Peter, breathlessly.

“Because at the time of the new moon, the Irish dragon changes himself into a big black spider.”

“Why?” again asked Peter, amazed.

“Because he can’t help himself--just as snakes can’t help changing their skins and green worms can’t help changing into butterflies, and pollywogs into frogs,--that’s the way Dallahan was made. Mig, the magician knew this, so he waited his chance--”

“And then he captured him!” cried Peter, jumping ahead of Riggy’s story.

“Yes, he captured him and put him in a box and nailed it down tight so that when Dallahan became a dragon again he grew just as big as the box and couldn’t grow any bigger, and there he is, still a prisoner.”

“The poor fellow must be awfully cramped,” said Peter.

“Cramped is no word for it,--he’s downright miserable,” said Riggy. “I can hear him groaning at night. He’s in there so tight that if ever the lid of the box is lifted, he’ll leap out like a spring from a clock.”

“And so Mig took the princess, did he?”

“Yes. He took the princess and has been showing her about at fairs and carnivals ever since. Now, this is how you must help, Sir Knight. You saw the princess open her eyes a little while ago, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did,” said Peter, “and how sad she looked.”

“She is dying of a breaking heart,” Riggy said, tearfully, “and _you_ must save her!”

“H-how?” asked Peter, swallowing with difficulty.

Riggy rubbed his chin. “Well, that’s for you to figure out,” he said. “I’m rather stupid when it comes to figuring things out. You can do it lots better than I can, I’m sure.”

“Oh, but this is such a _hard_ thing to figure out,” Peter returned.

“Did you ever kill a dragon?” asked Riggy.

“N-no,” admitted Peter, “I--I never did.”

“A knight in beautiful armor and never killed a dragon? That’s strange,” said Riggy, quite disappointed. “I was under the impression that you had killed many of them, seeing all those dents in your armor.”

Peter didn’t want to tell him that those dents were caused by falling down, so he just said, “N-no.”

“Are you an English knight?” questioned Riggy.

“N-no.”

“A French knight?”

“No.”

“What kind then?”

“An American knight.”

“An American knight? I never heard of that.”

“Well, it’s a great country up the road someplace,” Peter explained, awkwardly, “but let’s not talk about that. Let’s think real hard about the princess.”

“All right,” agreed Riggy, but he was interrupted by a sharp voice that called, “Riggy! Riggy!”

The tall boy started and turned pale. “That’s Mig calling me,” he cried, trembling so that his boney knees knocked together with a noise like drum sticks. “He wants me to put him to bed.”

“Put an old man to bed? Can’t he do that himself?” asked Peter with disgust.

“Oh, yes, but he’s too lazy to put his own nightcap on and heat his own hot-water bottle.”

“Riggy! Where are you?” screamed the voice of Mig. “Come here, you scamp, or I’ll tweak your nose and box your ears!”

“Oh, dear me,” cried the poor lad in distress, as he started to run toward the scarlet tent, “here I’ve got to go and nothing’s been settled, and the heart of the princess is still breaking. Can you stay here until evening, Sir Knight? The fair will be over then and we’ll be moving on--Maybe--”

“Yes, I can stay here until evening,” said Peter. “I’ll just sit and think and maybe I’ll have an idea by that time. Will you meet me here?”

“Yes, indeed,” said Riggy, and then as Mig called a third time he answered, “A-comin’, sir--a-comin’,” and he ran away, ducking under the sky-blue canvas.

There was a little tree with white berries on it like mistletoe berries, close to a striped tent, and the sun being warm, Peter crawled under it and lay still, thinking and thinking and thinking. This was indeed the strangest thing that could ever happen to him. Peter couldn’t believe it. To have rolled off the dragon’s back and to have stumbled upon the very same princess while the others were rushing way, way off into Ireland to find her!

And Dallahan was right here also--poor old Dallahan, all cramped up in a box that was at least twenty times too small for him. In there so tight that Riggy said he would leap out like a spring if ever the box was opened.

Peter continued to stare up into the branches of the little tree, his vizor thrown back, and a plump bird in a new coat of brown and red came and hopped above him and looked down with sharp, beady eyes, and chirped something that sounded like, “Hello, how are you, doodle-de-do?” but when Peter replied that he was very well but was thinking deeply, the bird shook all his feathers and flew away. Then there was silence and Peter thought and thought and thought until his little brain had pains in it like a toothache. Oh, he thought of so many, many ways he might rescue the princess, but every way had something wrong with it because Mig was a magician, and magicians are usually clever enough to grapple with any scheme. And as Peter thought and thought and thought, the red, red sun went down.