Читать книгу The Wishing-Chair Again - Enid blyton - Страница 6

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The elf took them a very surprising way. He guided them to the bottom of the garden and through a gap in the hedge. Then he took them to the end of the field and showed them a dark ring of grass.

“We call that a fairy ring,” said Mollie. “Sometimes it has little toadstools all the way round it.”

“Yes,” said the elf. “Well, I’ll show you a use for fairy rings. Sit down on the dark grass, please.”

Mollie and Peter sat down. They had to squeeze very close together indeed, because the ring of grass was not large. The elf felt about in it as if he was looking for something. He found it—and pressed hard!

And down shot the ring of grass as if it were a lift! The children, taken by surprise, gasped and held on to one another. They stopped with such a bump that they were shaken off the circle of grass and rolled away from it, over and over.

“So sorry,” said the elf. “I’m afraid I pressed the button rather hard! Are you hurt!”

“No—not really,” said Mollie. As she spoke she saw the circle of grass shoot up again and fit itself neatly back into the field.

“Well—we do learn surprising things,” she said. “What next, elf?”

“Along this passage,” said the elf, and trotted in front of them. It was quite light underground, though neither of the children could see where the lighting came from. They passed little, brightly-painted doors on their way, and Peter longed to rat-tat at the knockers and see who answered.

They came to some steps and went up them, round and round in a spiral stairway. Wherever were they coming to? At the top was a door. The elf opened it—and there they were, in a small round room, very cosy indeed.

“What a queer, round room,” said Peter, surprised. “Oh—I know why it’s round. It’s inside the trunk of a tree! I’ve been in a tree-house before!”

“Guessed right first time!” said the elf. “This is where I live. I’d ask you to stop and have a cup of tea with me, but I think we’d better get on and see those chairs before anything happens to them.”

“Yes. So do I,” said Peter. “Where’s the door out of the tree?”

It was fitted in so cunningly that it was impossible to see it unless you knew where it was. The elf went to it at once, of course, and opened it. They all stepped out into a wood. The elf shut the door. The children looked back at it. No—they couldn’t possibly, possibly tell where it was now—it was so much part of the tree!

“Come along,” said the elf and they followed him through the wood. They came to a lane and then to a very neat village, all the houses set in tiny rows, with a little square green in the middle, and four white ducks looking very clean on a round pond in the centre of the green.

“How very proper!” said Peter. “Not a grass out of place.”

“This is Pin Village,” said the elf. “You’ve heard the saying, ‘As neat as a pin,’ I suppose? Well, this is Pin—always very neat and tidy and the people of the village, the Pins, never have a button missing or a hair blowing loose.”

The children saw that it was just as the elf said—the people were so tidy and neat that the children felt dirty and untidy at once. “They all look a bit like pins dressed up and walking about,” said Mollie with a giggle. “Well, I’m glad I know what ‘neat as a pin’ really means. I don’t want to be a Pin of Pin Village though. Do they ever run, or make a noise, or laugh?”

“Sh! Don’t laugh at them,” said the elf. “Now look—do you see that shop at the corner? It isn’t kept by a Pin; it’s kept by Mr. Polish. He sells furniture.”

“And he’s called Polish because he’s always polishing it, I suppose,” said Mollie with a laugh.

“Don’t be too clever!” said the elf. “He doesn’t do any polishing at all—his daughter Polly does that.”

“Polly Polish,” said Peter, and giggled. The Pins walking primly nearby looked at him in disgust.

“Here’s the shop,” said Mollie, and they stood and looked at it. She nudged Peter. “Look,” she whispered, “six chairs—all exactly alike. How are we to tell which is ours?”

“Come and have a look,” said Peter, and they went inside with the elf. A brownie girl was busy polishing away at the chairs, making them shine and gleam.

“There’s Polly Polish,” said Mollie to Peter. She must have heard what they said and looked up. She smiled. She was a nice little thing, with pointed ears like Chinky, and very green eyes.

“Hallo,” she said. “How nice to see people who aren’t as neat as a Pin!”

Mollie smiled back. “These are nice chairs, aren’t they?” she said. “You’ve got a whole set of them!”

“Yes—my father, Mr. Polish, was very pleased,” said Polly. “He’s only had five for a long time, and people want to buy chairs in sixes, you know.”

“How did he manage to get the sixth one?” asked Peter.

“It was a great bit of luck,” said Polly. “There’s a goblin called Tricky who came along and said he wanted to sell an old chair that had once belonged to his grandmother—and when he showed it to us, lo and behold, it was the missing sixth chair of our set! So we bought it from him, and there it is. I expect now we shall be able to sell the whole set. Someone is sure to come along and buy it.”

“Which chair did the goblin bring you?” asked Peter, looking hard at them all.

“I don’t know now,” said Polly, putting more polish on her duster and rubbing very hard at a chair. “I’ve been cleaning them and moving them about, you know—and they’re all mixed up.”

The children stared at them in despair. They all looked exactly alike to them! Oh, dear—how could they possibly tell which was their chair?

Then Polly said something very helpful, though she didn’t know it! “You know,” she said, “there’s something queer about one of these chairs. I’ve polished and polished the back of it, but it seems to have a little hole there, or something. Anyway, I can’t make that little bit come bright and shining.”

The children pricked up their ears at once. “Which chair?” said Peter. Polly showed them the one. It certainly seemed as if it had a hole in the back of it. Peter put his finger there—but the hole wasn’t a hole! He could feel quite solid wood there!

And then he knew it was their own chair. He whispered to Mollie.

“Do you remember last year, when somebody made our Wishing Chair invisible?” he whispered. “And we had to get some paint to make it visible again?”

“Oh, yes!” whispered back Mollie. “I do remember—and we hadn’t enough paint to make one little bit at the back of the chair become visible again—we had to miss it out—so it always looked as if there was a hole there, though there wasn’t really!”

“Yes—and that’s the place that poor Polly has been polishing and polishing,” said Peter. “Well—now we know that this is our chair all right! If only it would grow its wings we could sit on it straight away and wish ourselves home again!” He ran his fingers down the legs of the chairs to see if by any chance there were some bumps growing, that would mean wings were coming once more. But there weren’t.

“Perhaps the wings will grow again this evening,” said Mollie. “Let’s go and have tea with the elf in his tree-house and then come back here again and see if the chair has grown its wings.”

The elf was very pleased to think they would come back to tea with him. Before they went Peter looked hard at the chairs. “You know,” he said to Mollie, “I think we’d better just tie a ribbon round our own chair, so that if by any chance we decided to take it and go home with it quickly before anyone could stop us, we’d know immediately which it was.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Mollie. She had no hair-ribbon, so she took her little blue handkerchief and knotted it round the right arm of the chair.

“What are you doing that for?” asked Polly Polish in surprise.

“We’ll tell you some other time, Polly,” said Mollie. “Don’t untie it, will you? It’s to remind us of something. We’ll come back again after tea.”

They went off with the elf. He asked them to see if they could find his door-handle and turn it to get into his tree-house—but, however much they looked and felt about, neither of them could make out where the closely-fitting door was! It’s no wonder nobody ever knows which the tree-houses are!

The elf had to open the door for them himself, and in they went. He got them a lovely tea, with pink jellies that shone like a sunset, and blancmange that he had made in the shape of a little castle.

“I do wonder if Chinky’s woken up yet,” said Mollie, at last. “No, thank you, elf, I can’t possibly eat any more. It was a really lovely tea.”

“Now what about going back to the shop and seeing if we can’t take our chair away?” said Peter. “We’ll send Chinky to explain about it later—the thing is, we really must take it quickly, or that goblin called Tricky will send someone to buy all the set—and our chair with it!”

So off they went to the shop—and will you believe it, there were no chairs there! They were all gone from the window! The children stared in dismay.

They went into the shop. “What’s happened to the chairs?” they asked Polly.

“Oh, we had such a bit of luck just after you had gone,” said Polly. “Somebody came by, noticed the chairs, said that the goblin Tricky had advised him to buy them—and paid us for them straight away!”

“Who was he?” asked Peter, his heart sinking.

“Let me see—his name was Mr. Spells,” said Polly, looking in a book. “And his address is Wizard Cottage. He seemed very nice indeed.”

“Oh dear,” said Peter, leading Mollie out of the shop. “Now we’ve really lost our dear old chair.”

“Don’t give up!” said Mollie. “We’ll go back to Chinky and tell him the whole story—and maybe he will know something about this Mr. Spells and be able to get our chair back for us. Chinky’s very clever.”

“Yes—but before we can get it back from Mr. Spells, that wretched goblin Tricky will be after it again,” said Peter. “He’s sure to go and take it from Mr. Spells.”

The elf took them home again. They went into the playroom. Chinky wasn’t there! There was a note on the table.

It said: “Fancy you going off without me! I’ve gone to look for you—Chinky.”

“Bother!” said Mollie. “How annoying! Here we’ve come back to look for him and he’s gone to look for us. Now we’ll have to wait till to-morrow!”