‘Except silly old saucepans,’ said Jump mournfully.
‘Yes – saucepans,’ repeated Hop. Then his eyes widened as a great thought came into his head.
‘Saucepans !’ he said again, and chuckled. Then he got up and did a little dance of joy. Skip and Jump stared at him in astonishment.
‘Are you mad, Hop?’ asked Skip.
‘Or do you feel ill?’ asked Jump.
‘No, I’m not mad!’ answered Hop. ‘I’ve only got that fantastic feeling you get when you suddenly think of a perfectly splendid idea.’
‘What is it?’ asked Skip and Jump together.
‘Well, here we’ve been groaning and moaning because we’ve nothing to get us up the castle wall,’ said Hop, ‘and we’ve got the very best thing in the world to get us up there – the saucepans!’
‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Skip.
‘This is what I mean,’ said Hop, and he picked up a saucepan. He held it upside down and drove the handle into the toffee wall. It went in quite easily, and stayed there, for the toffee held it tight.
‘One step up,’ said Hop, and picked up another saucepan. He pushed the handle of that one in, a little way above the first one.
‘Two steps up!’ he cried. ‘Now do you see the idea?’
‘Oh yes !’ cried the other two. ‘What a good plan, Hop! We can climb up on the saucepans, if only the handles will hold all right!’
‘The toffee will hold them,’ laughed Hop, who was beginning to feel very excited.
One by one the saucepans’ handles were driven into the wall, so that every saucepan made a step higher than the last. They were quite firm and steady and, as the brownies were little and light, there was no fear of the steps breaking.
Higher and higher they went, until they had almost reached the window at the top. Jump carried the saucepans that were left and passed them one by one to Skip, who passed them to Hop, who drove the handles into the wall.
‘What a mercy we had so many saucepans!’ whispered Skip.
‘Yes, wasn’t it!’ said Hop. ‘I say! We’re nearly at the top. Suppose the Golden Dwarf leans out of the window and sees us!’
‘We’ll say the magic word!’ said Skip. ‘I know my bit all right.’
‘And I know mine!’ said Jump.
‘Well, we’ll have to join the bits on very quickly when we say it,’ said Hop, ‘or else it won’t sound like a word. Perhaps we’d better practise it before we go any further.’
‘Hurry up, then,’ said Skip, ‘I’m not very anxious to hang on to these saucepans all night.’
Hop said his part of the magic word, Skip said the middle and Jump joined in quickly with the end. After seven or eight times they managed to do it perfectly, and Hop thought they might go on.
They had just enough saucepans to reach to the window-ledge. At last Hop could peep over it and look into the room.
He saw a large room hung with golden curtains and spread with a golden carpet. In the middle of it, sitting on a stool, was the Saucepan Man, looking the picture of misery. He was all alone.
‘Good!’ said Hop, and whispered what he saw to the others. Then he peeped over the ledge again.
The Saucepan Man looked up and when he saw Hop, he fell off his stool in astonishment.
‘I must be dreaming,’ he said, and pinched himself very hard.
‘Ow!’ he said. ‘No, I’m not.’
He ran to the window.
‘Help me over,’ said Hop. ‘We’ve come to rescue you.’
The Saucepan Man hauled him into the room, and then they helped Skip and Jump.
Quickly, Hop wrote in his notebook to tell the Saucepan Man how they had come to him.
‘You’d better escape at once, with us,’ wrote Hop, ‘for there’s no knowing when that awful Dragon-bird will appear again, or the Golden Dwarf.’
‘Ugh! Don’t talk of them,’ begged the Saucepan Man. ‘I shall never forget being carried off in those talons. When I got here the Golden Dwarf came and looked at me, and said I wouldn’t be plump enough to eat for a week.’
The brownies shivered.
‘Come on,’ said Hop, running to the window. ‘Let’s escape while we can.’
He had just got one leg over the window-sill, when heavy footsteps outside the door made his hair stand on end.
‘Oh!’ whispered the Saucepan Man. ‘Hide, quick! It’s the Golden Dwarf.’
The brownies dived behind one of the curtains just as the door opened. In came a peculiar creature, not much bigger than the brownies, who looked as if he were made of solid gold. Hop thought he looked more like a statue than a live person.
‘I smell brownies!’ said the Golden Dwarf suddenly, and sniffed the air.
The three brownies trembled.
‘Remember the magic word,’ whispered Hop anxiously. ‘It’s our only chance.’
‘I SMELL BROWNIES!’ said the Golden Dwarf again, and strode over to the shaking curtain.
He pulled it aside. Out sprang Hop, Skip, and Jump. ‘Kerolamisti –’ shouted Hop.
‘Cootalimar –’ went on Skip.
‘Cawnokeeto!’ finished Jump.
The Golden Dwarf stared at them in terror.
‘The Word! The Word!’ he cried, and pulled at his hair. Then he uttered a deep groan, jumped into the air, and vanished completely.
The brownies and the Saucepan Man stared at the place where the Golden Dwarf had stood. Nothing happened. He didn’t come back.
‘You’ve done the trick!’ said the Saucepan Man. ‘He’s gone for good!’
‘Hurrah!’ cried Hop. ‘Thank goodness we remembered the magic word! Come on, Saucepan Man – let’s get away from this horrid castle!’
Over the window-sill they clambered, and were soon scrambling down the saucepans as fast as they could go. ‘We’ll leave them there,’ said the Saucepan Man. ‘I don’t want to waste any more time here, in case the Dragon-bird comes back.’
So off they all went in the moonlight, to the signpost pointing to Witchland.
Their Adventure with the Labeller and the Bottler
They hadn’t gone very far when the Saucepan Man began to yawn.
‘I’m so sleepy,’ he said, ‘and it really must be very late. What about getting underneath a bush and going to sleep till morning?’
The brownies thought it would be a very good idea. So they all cuddled together beneath a bush, and went fast asleep till the sun rose.
‘Wake up! Wake up!’ cried Hop. ‘It’s time to go on our way to Witchland and rescue the Princess Peronel.’
The others woke with a jump. They washed in a nearby stream, picked some blackberries for breakfast and went on towards the sign-post.
Suddenly a great black shadow came over them.
‘Oh! Oh!’ yelled the Saucepan Man in terror. ‘It’s the Dragon-bird again. Run! Run!’
The brownies ran helter-skelter to some bushes. The black shadow grew darker.
Zee-ee-ee! The Dragon-bird landed on the ground by them with a thud.
‘Where is my master? Where is my master?’ it cried in a croaking voice.
‘We have said a magic word and made him vanish for ever!’ shouted Hop bravely. ‘And if you don’t leave us alone, we’ll make you vanish too, you horrid Dragon-bird.’
‘No, no!’ shrieked the bird. ‘Oh, most powerful wizard, let me serve you, now that my master the Golden Dwarf, is gone. Let me be your slave.’
‘Gracious!’ said Hop. ‘Here is a to-do! Goodness knows we don’t a Dragon-bird always at our heels, begging to be our slave.’
The Saucepan Man, who seemed to hear the Dragon-bird quite well, crawled out from under his bush and walked up to it.
‘Go away!’ he said. ‘If we want you we will call you. Don’t come bothering us now, or we will make you disappear, as we did your master.’
‘I will come if ever you want me,’ croaked the bird sadly. ‘I will await that time.’
It spread its wings, rose into the air
, and in a few moments was out of sight.
‘That was rather a nasty shock,’ said Hop.
‘I quite thought it would take us all away again. Ugh! I hope we never see the ugly thing any more!’
‘So do we !’ said Skip and Jump.
‘Come on,’ said the Saucepan Man, and once more the four set off to the signpost.
At last they reached it, and set off down the road towards Witchland.
‘Don’t you bother to come with us,’ said Hop to the Saucepan Man. ‘We can find our way quite well now.’
‘No, I can’t hear any bell,’ said the Saucepan Man, standing still to listen. ‘You must be mistaken.’
‘Oh dear, you are deaf !’ sighed Hop, and quickly wrote down what he had said.
‘Ho, ho!’ laughed the Saucepan Man. ‘So you think you could find the way by yourself, do you? Ho, ho! You just follow me, and you’ll soon see you couldn’t find the way alone!’
No sooner had he said that than the four travellers came to a river. Over it stretched a graceful bridge but, to the brownies’ surprise, no sooner did they get near it than the end nearest to them raised itself and stayed there.
‘How annoying of it!’ said Hop, in surprise. ‘What does it do that for? We can’t get across!’
‘Don’t worry!’ said the Saucepan Man. He looked about on the ground and picked up four tiny blue stones. He threw them into the river one after the other, saying a magic word at each of them.
At once the end of the bridge came down again, and rested on the bank.
‘There you are,’ said the Saucepan Man. ‘Now we can cross.’
The brownies ran across quickly, just in case the bridge took it into its head to do anything funny again.
They hadn’t gone very far beyond the bridge before they came to a forest so dark and so thick that the brownies felt sure they couldn’t possibly get through it. They tried this way and that way, but it was all no good – they could not find a path.
The Saucepan Man watched them, laughing.
Then he quickly ran to a big white stone lying nearby and lifted it up. Underneath it lay a coil of silver string. The Saucepan Man took it up and tied one end to a tree-trunk.
Then he said a magic rhyme, and immediately, to the brownies’ great surprise, the string uncoiled and went sliding away all by itself into the dark forest.
‘Follow it quickly!’ cried the Saucepan Man, and ran into the forest.
The silver string gleamed through the bushes and trees, and led the brownies by a hidden, narrow path through the dark forest. On and on they went, following the silver thread, until at last they reached the end of the trees, and stood in sunshine once more.
‘I don’t know what we should do without you,’ shouted Hop to the Saucepan Man. ‘We should never have known the way!’
‘Who’s making hay?’ asked the Saucepan Man, staring all round about him.
‘No one!’ shouted Hop, and wrote in his notebook to tell the Saucepan Man what he was talking about.
Presently they set off again. In the distance they saw an enormous hill. As they drew nearer the brownies saw it gleaming and glittering, as if it were made of ice.
‘Glass,’ explained the Saucepan Man, as they drew near.
‘I wonder how we get up that !’ said Hop.
The brownies tried to climb it, but as fast as they tried, down them came, ker-plunk, to the bottom!
‘Tell us how to get up!’ Hop wrote in his notebook, to the Saucepan Man.
Their guide smiled. He took six paces to the left, picked up a yellow stone, and aimed it carefully at a notch in the glass hill.
As soon as it struck the notch, a door slid open in the hillside and the brownies saw a passage leading through the glass hill.
‘It’s easier to go through than up,’ smiled the Saucepan Man, leading the way.
The passage was very strange, for it wound about like a river. The sides, top and bottom were all glass, and reflected everything so perfectly that the brownies kept walking into the walls, and bumping their noses.
They were very glad when at last they came out at the other side of the hill. In front of them towered a great gate, and on it was written in iron lettering:
WITCHLAND
‘At last!’ said Hop. ‘Now we really have arrived!’
‘Here I must leave you,’ said the Saucepan Man sadly. ‘I cannot go in and I don’t know how you’ll get in either. But you are so clever, that maybe you’ll find a way. Now I must go back and make some more saucepans to sell.’
‘Thank you for bringing us here,’ wrote Hop in his notebook. ‘We are sorry to say goodbye.’
‘So am I,’ said the Saucepan Man, with tears in his eyes. ‘Thank you very much for all your goodness to me in rescuing me from the Golden Dwarf.’
‘Don’t mention it,’ said the brownies politely. Then the Saucepan Man shook hands solemnly with them all, and said goodbye.
‘Goodbye, goodbye!’ called the brownies, as he went towards the glass hill.
He turned round.
‘What sort of pie?’ he called in surprise.
‘Oh buttons and buttercups, isn’t he deaf !’ said Hop, and waved to the Saucepan Man to go on.
They watched him disappear into the hill.
‘Nice old Saucepan Man,’ said Skip. ‘Wish he was coming to Witchland with us.’
‘I wonder how we get in!’ said Hop, looking at the tall gates.
‘Don’t know,’ said Skip. ‘We’d better wait until someone goes in or out, and then try and slip in as the gates open. Let’s sit down under the may-tree and wait.’
They sat down and waited.
Nobody went either in or out of the gates. The brownies felt very bored.
Hop looked all round to see if anyone was in sight. He suddenly saw something in the distance.
‘Look!’ he said. ‘There’s a procession or something coming. We could easily slip in with that when the gates open for it, couldn’t we?’
‘Yes!’ said Jump. ‘Let’s wait quietly and then try our luck.’
The procession came nearer. At the same time somebody came from the opposite direction. Skip looked to see who it was.
‘It’s a little brown mouse!’ he said in surprise. ‘I wonder what a mouse is doing here! He seems to be carrying a heavy sack, look!’
The others looked. The little mouse was certainly carrying a sack that seemed far too heavy for him.
The procession and the mouse reached the place where the brownies sat, just at the same moment. The procession was made up of all sorts of strange people carrying precious rugs, caskets, and plants.
‘Going in to sell them to the witches, I suppose!’ whispered Hop. ‘Look! The gates are opening! Get ready to slip inside!’
But just at that moment the mouse gave a shrill squeak.
The brownies looked round. They saw that the sack had fallen off the little mouse’s back, and that hundreds of green labels were flying about all over the place.
‘Oh! Oh! What shall I do?’ squeaked the mouse. ‘I shall be late, I know I shall!’
The brownies jumped up.
‘Let us help you to pick them up!’ said Hop. ‘It won’t take a minute.’
‘We must hurry, though,’ said Skip, ‘or we shan’t get in whilst the gates are open.’
The brownies quickly picked up the labels and filled the mouse’s sack again. He was very grateful indeed.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Hop, and turned to the gates of Witchland.
Clang! They shut, for the last of the procession had gone in!
‘Oh my!’ said Hop in dismay. ‘Now we’ve lost our chance!’
The little mouse looked very upset. ‘Did you want to get in?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Hop. ‘But it doesn’t matter – we’ll wait till someone else wants to go in again, and the gates open.’
‘I wish we could find something to eat,’ sighed Skip. ‘I’m getting so dreadfully hungry!’
/> ‘Won’t you come home with me for a while?’ asked the mouse. ‘I’m sure my master, the Labeller, would give you something to eat, as you’ve been so kind in helping me.’
‘Well, thank you very much,’ said Hop. ‘But what a funny name your master has – the Labeller! Whatever does he label?’
‘Oh, whenever people are crosspatches, or spiteful, or horrid in any way,’ said the mouse, ‘they are taken to the Labeller, and he puts a label round their neck that they can’t get off. Then everyone knows what sort of person they are and, if they’re very nasty, people avoid them as much as they can.’
‘That seems a very good idea,’ said Skip, as the brownies followed the mouse down a pathway. ‘Do they have to wear the labels all their lives?’
‘That depends,’ said the mouse, trotting down a hole in a bank. ‘You see, as soon as they stop being horrid, their label flies off, and goes back to the Labeller! If they go on being horrid for the rest of their lives, the label never flies off.’
‘I say! The Labeller won’t label us, will he?’ asked Hop anxiously, as they all trotted down the hole after the mouse.
‘Oh no!’ said the mouse. ‘You’re not horrid at all – you’re very nice.’
The passage was lit with orange lights, and beneath every light was a little door. Each door had a name-plate on, and the brownies read them all as they passed by.
‘Here’s a funny one!’ said Hop. ‘The Bottler. I wonder what he bottles!’
‘Oh, and here’s the Labeller!’ said Skip. ‘The mouse is going inside.’
They followed him and found themselves in a cosy little room where a bright fire was burning. By a little table sat a fat old man with spectacles on. He was printing names on labels in very small and beautiful letters.
‘Come in, all of you,’ he said in a kind voice. ‘I don’t know who you are, but you’re very welcome.’
The brownies said good-day politely and told him who they were.
‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.
‘Brownie Town,’ they answered.
‘Well, what are you doing here then?’ asked the Labeller in surprise.
The brownies went very red. Nobody spoke for a minute, and then Hop told the Labeller all about the naughty trick they had played at the King’s party, and how the little Princess had been spirited away.