At first the people of Rotundia were quite pleased with the dragon, who lived by the pillar and fed himself from the bun trees, but by-and-by he began to wander. He would creep into the burrows made by the great rabbits; and excursionists, sporting on the downs, would see his long, tight, whiplike tail wriggling down a burrow and out of sight, and before they had time to say, "There he goes," his ugly purple head would come poking out from another rabbit-hole perhaps just behind them or laugh softly to itself just in their ears. And the dragon's laugh was not a merry one. This sort of hide-and-seek amused people at first, but by-and-by it began to get on their nerves: and if you don't know what that means, ask Mother to tell you next time you are playing blind man's buff when she has a headache. Then the dragon got into the habit of cracking his tail, as people crack whips, and this also got on people's nerves. Then, too, little things began to be missed. And you know how unpleasant that is, even in a private school, and in a public kingdom it is, of course, much worse. The things that were missed were nothing much at first a few little elephants, a hippopotamus or two, and some giraffes, and things like that. It was nothing much, as I say, but it made people feel uncomfortable. Then one day a favorite rabbit of the Princess's, called Frederick, mysteriously disappeared, and then came a terrible morning when the Mexican lapdog was missing. He had barked ever since the dragon came to the island, and people had grown quite used to the noise. So when his barking suddenly ceased it woke everybody up and they all went out to see what was the matter. And the lapdog was gone!
A boy was sent to wake the army, so that it might look for him. But the army was gone too! And now the people began to be frightened. Then Uncle James came out onto the terrace of the palace, and he made the people a speech. He said: "Friends fellow citizens I cannot disguise from myself or from you that this purple dragon is a poor penniless exile, a helpless alien in our midst, and, besides, he is a is no end of a dragon."
The people thought of the dragon's tail and said, "Hear, hear."
Uncle James went on: "Something has happened to a gentle and defenseless member of our community. We don't know what has happened."
Everyone thought of the rabbit named Frederick, and groaned.
"The defenses of our country have been swallowed up," said Uncle James.
Everyone thought of the poor army.
"There is only one thing to be done." Uncle James was warming to his subject. "Could we ever forgive ourselves if by neglecting a simple precaution we lost more rabbits or even, perhaps, our navy, our police, and our fire brigade? For I warn you that the purple dragon will respect nothing, however sacred."
Everyone thought of themselves and they said, "What is the simple precaution?"
Then Uncle James said: "Tomorrow is the dragon's birthday. He is accustomed to have a present on his birthday. If he gets a nice present he will be in a hurry to take it away and show it to his friends, and he will fly off and never come back."
The crowd cheered wildly and the Princess from her balcony clapped her hands.
"The present the dragon expects," said Uncle James, cheerfully, "is rather an expensive one. But, when we give, it should not be in a grudging spirit, especially to visitors. What the dragon wants is a Princess. We have only one Princess, it is true; but far be it from us to display a miserly temper at such a moment. And the gift is worthless that costs the giver nothing. Your readiness to give up your Princess will only show how generous you are."
The crowd began to cry, for they loved their Princess, though they quite saw that their first duty was to be generous and give the poor dragon what it wanted.
The Princess began to cry, for she did not want to be anybody's birthday present especially a purple dragon's. And Tom began to cry because he was so angry.
He went straight home and told his little elephant; and the elephant cheered him up so much that presently the two grew quite absorbed in a top that the elephant was spinning with his little trunk.
Early in the morning Tom went to the palace. He looked out across the downs there were hardly any rabbits playing there now and then he gathered white roses and threw them at the Princess's window till she woke up and looked out.
"Come up and kiss me," she said.
So Tom climbed up the white rosebush and kissed the Princess through the window, and said: "Many happy returns of the day."
Then Mary Ann began to cry, and said: "Oh, Tom how can you? When you know quite well "
"Oh, don't," said Tom. "Why, Mary Ann, my precious, my Princess what do you think I should be doing while the dragon was getting his birthday present? Don't cry, my own little Mary Ann! Fido and I have arranged everything. You've only got to do as you are told."
"Is that all?" said the Princess. "Oh that's easy I've often done that!"
Then Tom told her what she was to do. And she kissed him again and again. "Oh, you dear, good, clever Tom," she said. "How glad I am that I gave you Fido. You two have saved me. You dears!"
The next morning Uncle James put on his best coat and hat and the vest with the gold snakes on it he was a magician, and he had a bright taste in vests and he called with a cab to take the Princess out.
"Come, little birthday present," he said tenderly. "The dragon will be so pleased. And I'm glad to see you're not crying. You know, my child, we cannot begin too young to learn to think of the happiness of others rather than our own. I should not like my dear little niece to be selfish, or to wish to deny a trivial pleasure to a poor, sick dragon, far from his home and friends."
The Princess said she would try not to be selfish.
Presently the cab drew up near the pillar, and there was the dragon, his ugly purple head shining in the sun, and his ugly purple mouth half open.
Uncle James said: "Good morning, sir. We have brought you a small present for your birthday. We do not like to let such an anniversary go by without some suitable testimonial, especially to one who is a stranger in our midst. Our means are small, but our hearts are large. We have but one Princess, but we give her freely do we not, my child?"
The Princess said she supposed so, and the dragon came a little nearer.
Suddenly a voice cried: "Run!" and there was Tom, and he had brought the Zoological guinea pig and a pair of Belgian hares with him. "Just to see fair," said Tom.
Uncle James was furious. "What do you mean, sir," he cried, "by intruding on a State function with your common rabbits and things? Go away, naughty little boy, and play with them somewhere else."
But while he was speaking the rabbits had come up one on each side of him, their great sides towering ever so high, and now they pressed him between them so that he was buried in their thick fur and almost choked.
The Princess, meantime, had run to the other side of the pillar and was peeping around it to see what was going on. A crowd had followed the cab out of the town; now they reached the scene of the "State Function" and they all cried out: "Fair play play fair! We can't go back on our word like this. Give a thing and take a thing? Why, it's never done. Let the poor exiled stranger dragon have his birthday present." And they tried to get at Tom but the guinea pig stood in the way.
"Yes," Tom cried. "Fair play is a jewel. And your helpless exile shall have the Princess if he can catch her. Now then, Mary Ann."
Mary Ann looked around the big pillar and called to the dragon: "Bo! you can't catch me," and began to run as fast as ever she could, and the dragon ran after her. When the Princess had run a half mile she stopped, dodged around a tree, and ran back to the pillar and around it, and the dragon after her. You see, he was so long he could not turn as quickly as she could. Around and around the pillar ran the Princess. The first time she ran around a long way from the pillar, and then nearer and nearer with the dragon after her all the time; and he was so busy trying to catch her that he never noticed that Tom had tied the very end of his long, tight, whipcordy tail to the rock, so that the more the dragon ran around, the more times he twisted his tail around the pillar.
It was exactly like winding a top only the peg was the pillar, and the dragon's tail was the string. And the magician was safe between the Belgian hares, and couldn't see anything but darkness, or do anything but choke.
When the dragon was wound onto the pillar as much as he possibly could be, and as tight like cotton on a reel the Princess stopped running, and though she had very little breath left, she managed to say, "Yah who's won now?"
This annoyed the dragon so much that he put out all his strength spread his great purple wings, and tried to fly at her. Of course this pulled his tail, and pulled it very hard, so hard that as he pulled the tail had to come, and the pillar had to come around with the tail, and the island had to come around with the pillar, and in another minute the tail was loose, and the island was spinning around exactly like a top. It spun so fast that everyone fell flat on their faces and held on tight to themselves, because they felt something was going to happen.
All but the magician, who was choking between the Belgian hares, and felt nothing but fur and fury.
And something did happen. The dragon had sent the kingdom of Rotundia spinning the way it ought to have gone at the beginning of the world, and as it spun around, all the animals began to change sizes. The guinea pigs got small, and the elephants got big, and the men and women and children would have changed sizes too, if they had not had the sense to hold on to themselves, very tight indeed, with both hands; which, of course, the animals could not be expected to know how to do. And the best of it was that when the small beasts got big and the big beasts got small the dragon got small too, and fell at the Princess's feet a little, crawling, purple newt with wings.