Read Online The Little Bookroom by Eleanor Farjeon - Free Book Online

whispering things into its ear. So he pulled his forelock again to the King, returned on his traces, and found all in the hut as he had left it.
    â€˜Well?’ asked the old man.
    â€˜Very well, indeed,’ said Joe Jolly. ‘The kitten was the kitten of the Princess, in consequence of which the King has made me Royal Woodman till you are whole again.’
    â€˜Did he say so?’ asked the old man, with a curious smile.
    â€˜It’s how I understood it,’ said Joe.
    â€˜Then so we will leave it,’ said the old man. ‘And since we are to bide together for a bit, you shall call me Daddy, for once I had a son who was a good son to me, and for his sake I like the ring of the word.’
    V
    Daddy took longer to heal than Joe would have supposed possible. Month after month went by, and the fracture in his arm would not set; moreover, he seemed to have been so shaken by his accident, that he never left his bed. Gradually Joe grew accustomed to stretching out on the hearth without thinking that it would soon be for the last time; the new job turned into an old one, and the days mounted until a year had passed. The Clumber Pup was now a dog as beautiful as his Mother, but Joe continued to think of him as the Pup, if only to mark the difference between them. The old dog lay mostly indoors by the hearth, or out of doors in the sun; but the Clumber Pup followed Joe daily to his work, and was the joy and delight of his heart. Since the day of his appointment Joe had stuck to the woods, and gone no nearer to the city than the Lodge of the King’s Forester on the outskirts of the trees. He put in an appearance early in the morning on the first day of each month, and more often than not found the Forester chatting with a pretty chambermaid from the palace, whose name was Betty, and who evidently fancied a stroll in the morning dew before the duties of the day.
    When she had gone, the Forester gave Joe his orders for the month; and wherever he might be cutting, he had each day to bind the special faggot of firing for the room of the Princess. He made the faggot of the sweetest smelling wood he could find, and with it he always bound up a little posy of whatever the season might offer. In spring there were the primroses and violets; in summer, harebells, wild rose, and honeysuckle; in autumn he found the brightest leaves and berries; and even winter had her aconites.
    On Joe’s nineteenth birthday, which fell on the First of June, he went as usual to the Forester’s Lodge, and there found Betty in her striped silk frock, gabbling away a little faster than her habit.
    â€˜Yes,’ she was saying, ‘that’s how it is, and no other! There’s something she wants, and nobody knows what, for she won’t say. Sometimes she mopes, and sometimes she sings, sometimes she pouts and sometimes smiles, as changeable as the quarters of the year, and she won’t tell her father, she won’t tell her mother, she won’t tell her nanny, and she won’t tell me! And the doctor says if she don’t get it soon, whatever it may be, she’ll fall into a decline and die of longing.’
    â€˜What’s to be the end of it?’ asked the Forester.
    â€˜Why, this; the King says that whoever can find out what the Princess is thinking, and give her what she wants, shall have whatever he wants, no matter whatso! On the last day of the month there’s to be an Assembly at the palace, so that everybody can offer his opinion, and— Oh la! there’s the eight o’clock bell ringing! Don’t keep me gossiping any longer, or I’ll be sure to be dismissed.’
    The Forester kept her just long enough to give her a kiss, for which she boxed his ears, and then ran off as fast as her heels could carry her. The Forester laughed and said, ‘That’s something like a wench!’ and turned to Joe and gave him his orders for the month. Joe went back, his head so full