The Cozy Lion Part 2

"n.o.body in Society would speak to you if they knew of it!"

He quite shook in his shoes--only he hadn't any shoes.

"I'll never even think of it again," he said. "I see my mistake. I apologize. I do indeed!"

Now what _do_ you suppose happened at that very minute? If I hadn't been a Fairy I should have been frightened to death. At that very minute I heard little children's voices singing like skylarks farther down on the Huge Green Hill--actually little children a whole lot of them!

"It--it sounds like the Sunday School pic----" the Lion began to Say--and then he remembered he must not mention the subject and stopped short.

"Has your heart changed?" I said to him. "Are you sure it has?"

"I think it has," he said meekly, "but even if it hadn't, ma'am, I'm so _full_ of Breakfast Food I couldn't eat a strawberry."

It happened that I had my heart gla.s.s with me--I can examine hearts with it and see if they have properly changed or not.

"Roll over on your back," I said. "I will examine your heart now."

And the little children on the Huge Green Hill side were coming nearer and nearer and laughing and singing and twittering more like skylarks than ever.

He rolled over on his back and I jumped off his ear on to his big chest. I thumped and listened and looked about until I could see his great heart and watch it beating--thub--thub--thub--thub. It actually had changed almost all over except one little corner and as the children's voices came nearer and nearer and sounded like whole nests full of skylarks let loose, even the corner was changing as fast as it could. Instead of a big ugly dark red fiery heart, it was a soft ivory white one with delicate pink spots on it.

"It has changed!" I cried out. "You are going to be a great big nice soft cozy thing, and you couldn't eat a picnic if you tried-- and you will never try."

He was all in a flutter with relief when he got up and stood on his feet.

And the laughing little voices came nearer and nearer and I flew to the Cave door to see what _was_ happening.

It was really a picnic. And goodness! how dangerous it would have been if it had not been for me. That's the way I am always saving people, you notice.

The little children in the village had grown so tired of being shut up indoors that about fifty of them who were too little to know any better had climbed out of windows, and slipped out of doors, and crawled under things, and hopped over them, and had all run away together to gather flowers and wild Peachstrawberines, and lovely big yellow Plumricots which grew thick on the bushes and in the gra.s.s on the Huge Green Hill. The delicious sweet pink and purple Ice-cream-grape-juice Melons hung in cl.u.s.ters on trees too high for them to reach, but they thought they would just sit down under their branches and look at them and sniff and hope one would fall.

And there they came--little plump girls and boys in white frocks and with curly heads--not the least bit afraid of anything: tumbling down and laughing and picking themselves up and laughing, and when they got near the Cave, one of my Working Fairies, just for fun, flew down and lighted on one little girl's fat hand. She jumped for joy when she saw him and called to the others and they came running and tumbling to see what she had found.

"Oh! Look--look!" she called out. "What is he! What is he! He isn't a bird--and he isn't a bee and he isn't a b.u.t.terfly. He's a little teeny, weeny-weeny-weeny-weeny wee, and he has little green shoes on and little green stockings, and a little green smock and a little green hat and he's laughing and laughing."

And then a boy saw another in the gra.s.s--and another under a leaf, and he shouted out, too.

"Oh! here's another--here's another." And then the Workers all began to creep out of the gra.s.s and from under the leaves and fly up in swarms and light on the children's arms and hands and hats and play with them and tickle them and laugh until every child was dancing with fun, because they had never seen such things before in their lives.

I flew back to the Lion. He was quite nervous.

"It is a picnic," I said. "And now is your chance. Can you purr?"

"Yes, I can." And he began to make a beautiful purring which sounded like an immense velvet cat over a saucer of cream.

"Come out then," I ordered him. "Smile as sweetly as you can and don't stop purring. Try to look like a wriggling coaxing dog--I will go first and prevent the children from getting frightened."

So out we went. I was riding in his ear and peeping out over the top of it. I did not let the children see me because I wanted them to look at the Lion and at nothing else.

What I did was to make them remember in a minute all the nicest Lions they had ever seen in pictures or in the circus. Many of them had never seen a Lion at all and the few who had been to a circus had only seen them in big cages behind iron bars, and with notices written up, "Don't go near the Lions."

When my Lion came out he was smiling the biggest, sleepiest, curliest, sweetest smile you ever beheld and he was purring, and he was softly waving his tail. He stood still on the gra.s.s a moment and then lay down with his big head on his paws just like a huge, affectionate, coaxing dog waiting and begging somebody to come and pet him. And after staring at him for two minutes, all the children began to laugh, and then one Little _little_ girl who had a great mastiff for a friend at home, suddenly gave a tiny shout and running to him tumbled over his paws and fell against his mane and hid her face in it, chuckling and chuckling.

That was the beginning of the most splendid fun a picnic ever had.

Every one of them ran laughing and shouting to the Lion. It was such a treat to them to actually have a Lion to play with. They patted him, they buried their hands and faces in his big mane, they stroked him, they scrambled up on his back, and sat astride there.

Little boys called out, "h.e.l.lo, Lion! h.e.l.lo, Lion!" and little girls kissed his nice tawny back and said "Liony! Liony! Sweet old Liony!" The Little Little Girl who had run to him first settled down right between his huge front paws, resting her back comfortably against his chest, and sucked her thumb, her blue eyes looking very round and big. She _was_ comfy.

I kept whispering down his ear to tell him what to do. You see, he had never been in Society at all and he had to learn everything at once.

"Now, don't move suddenly," I whispered. "And be sure not to make any loud Lion noises. They don't understand Lion language yet."

"But oh! I am so happy," he whispered back, "I want to jump up and roar for joy."

"Mercy on us!" I said. "That would spoil everything. They'd be frightened to death and run away screaming and crying and never come back."

"But this little one with her head on my chest is such a _sweetie_!" he said. "Mayn't I just give her a little lick--just a little one?"

"Your tongue is too rough. Wait a minute," I answered.

My Fairy Workers were swarming all about. They were sitting in bunches on the bushes and hanging in bunches from branches, and hopping about and giggling and laughing and nudging each other in the ribs as they looked on at the Lion and children. They were as amused as they had been when they watched Winnie sitting on the eggs in the Rook's nest. I called Nip to come to me.

"Jump on to the Lion's tongue," I said to him, "and smooth it off with your plane until it is like satin velvet--not silk velvet, but satin velvet."

The Lion politely put out his tongue. Nip leaped up on it and began to work with his plane. He worked until he was quite hot, and he made the tongue so smooth that it was _quite_ like satin velvet.

"Now you can kiss the baby," I said.

The Little Little Girl had gone to sleep by this time and she had slipped down and lay curled up on the Lion's front leg as if it was an arm and the Lion bent down and delicately licked her soft cheek, and her fat arm, and her fat leg, and purred and purred.

When the other children saw him they crowded round and were more delighted than ever.

"He's kissing her as if he was a mother cat and she was his kitten," one called out, and she held out her hand. "Kiss me too.

Kiss me, Liony," she said.

He lifted his head and licked her little hand as she asked and then all the rest wanted him to kiss them and they laughed so that the Little Little Girl woke up and laughed with them and scrambled to her feet and hugged and hugged as much of the Lion as she could put her short arms round. She felt as if he was her Lion.

"I love--oo I love oo," she said. "Tome and play wiv us."

He smiled and smiled and got up so carefully that he did not upset three or four little boys and girls who were sitting on his back.

You can imagine how they shouted with glee when he began to trot gently about with them and give them a ride. Of course everybody wanted to ride. So he trotted softly over the gra.s.s first with one load of them and then with another. When each ride was over he lay down very carefully for the children to scramble down from his back and then other ones scrambled up. The things he did that afternoon really made me admire him. A Cozy Lion is nicer to play with than anything else in the world. He shook Ice-cream-grape-juice Melons down from the trees for them.

He carried on his back to a clear little running brook he knew, every one who wanted a drink. He jumped for them, he played tag with them and when he caught them, he rolled them over and over on the gra.s.s as if they were kittens; he showed them how his big claws would go in and out of his velvet paws like a p.u.s.s.y cat's. Whatever game they played he would always be "It," if they wanted him to.

When the tiniest ones got sleepy he made gra.s.s beds under the shade of trees and picked them up daintily by their frocks or little trousers and carried them to their nests just as kittens or puppies are carried by their mothers. And when the others wanted to be carried too, he carried them as well.

The children enjoyed themselves so much that they forgot about going home altogether. And as they had laughed and run about every minute and had had _such_ fun, by the time the sun began to go down they were all as sleepy as could be. But even then one little fellow in a white sailor suit asked for something else. He went and stood by the Lion with one arm around his neck and the other under his chin. "Can you roar, old Lion?" he asked him. "I am sure you can roar."

The Lion nodded slowly three times.

"He says 'Yes--Yes,'" shouted everybody, "Oh! do roar for us as loud as ever you can. We won't be frightened the least bit."