David Blaize and the Blue DoorBenson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Science
David Blaize and the Blue Door
Benson, E. F. (Edward Frederic)
Adventure stories; Boys -- Juvenile fiction; Fantasy fiction; Imaginary places -- Juvenile fiction
David held up his hand in front of him, but he could see nothing at all
of it. It must have been there, because when he touched the end of his
nose with it, it felt quite solid. But he had certainly vanished for the
present, for there was nothing whatever of him to be seen.
‘I wish you wouldn’t interfere with me like that,’ he said. ‘You
wouldn’t like it if I made you invisible.’
The crow had put its head under its wing, and tucked up one leg, and its
voice sounded muffled.
‘You seem to think,’ it said, ‘that everything is to be managed as you
want it. But if you imagine I’m going to go on flying all night, without
a rest, just in order to keep you visible, you make a mistake. You
aren’t so pretty as all that, my young fellah.’
‘But you’ll fly again before long, won’t you?’ asked David.
All the answer he got was:
‘Haugh! Rumph, haugh! Rumph! Rumph!’ for the crow had gone fast asleep,
and was snoring.
David poked it with the place where his fingers usually were, to wake
it, but it only snored louder and louder. Then he picked it up and shook
it, but the only result was that its snoring became perfectly deafening.
‘I’ll drop it out of the window,’ he said to himself,’ and then it must
fly.’
But this was no good, for the crow didn’t even take its head from under
its wing, or put its leg down, but fell quietly on to the ground below
the window, without waking. Just then there came a bend in the line, and
though the train was scarcely moving at all, it was soon out of sight.
‘Well, there’s no help for it,’ thought David, ‘and so I may as well go
to sleep too. It seems to make one sleepy to be invisible.’
Then, so he supposed, he must have gone completely to sleep, for when
the next thing happened, it was quite light. As he had been travelling
since 11.29 P.M., it was perfectly obvious that it was now morning. For
some reason he felt inclined to lick his hand and rub it behind his
ears, but he remembered that only cats did that, and instead he drew his
three-legged stool to the window and looked out. He found he was visible
again, and supposed the crow must have begun flying.
The train seemed to be running very slowly round and round a field.
Occasionally it stopped dead, and began to whistle, but usually it
splashed quietly along, into puddles and out of puddles, without any
lines in front of it. Sometimes they curved a little to avoid a tree,
but they crushed their way through an ordinary hedge, and birds flew out
scolding them and saying, ‘I wish you would look where you are going.’
Then a voice from the engine said, ‘Sorry you _have_ been troubled,’
just like a young lady in the telephone exchange.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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