"Perhaps," said Trot, pausing as she was about to leave the room, "when
I grow up I'll be as big a fool as any of you."
Then she ran away to escape another shaking, and in the first boudoir
she found the little blue dog curled up on a blue cushion in a corner.
Trot patted his head gently, and this surprised the dog, who was
accustomed to cuffs and kicks. So he licked Trot's hand and wagged his
funny little tail and then straightened up and crowed like a rooster.
The girl was delighted with the queer doggie, and she found some meat
in a cupboard and fed him out of her hand, patting the tiny creature
and stroking his soft blue hair. The doggie had never in his life known
anyone so kind and gentle, so when Trot went into the next boudoir, the
animal followed close at her heels, wagging his tail every minute.
The blue cat was asleep on a window seat, but it woke up when Trot
tenderly took it in her lap and fed it milk from a blue-gold dish. It
was a pretty cat and instantly knew the little girl was a friend vastly
different from its own bad-tempered mistress, so it sang beautifully as
a bird sings, and both the cat and the dog followed Trot into the third
boudoir.
Here was a tiny baby lamb with fleece as blue as a larkspur and as soft
as milk.
"Oh, you darling!" cried Trot, hugging the little lamb tight in her
arms. At once the lamb began chattering just as a monkey chatters, only
in the most friendly and grateful way, and Trot fed it a handful of
fresh blue clover and smoothed and petted it until the lamb was eager
to follow her wherever she might go.
When she came to the fourth boudoir, a handsome blue parrot sat on a
blue perch and began barking as if it were nearly starved. Then it
cried out,
"Rub-a-dub, dub,
Gimme some grub!"
Trot laughed and gave it some seeds, and while the parrot ate them she
stroked gently his soft feathers. The bird seemed much astonished at
the unusual caress and turned upon the girl first one little eye and
then the other as if trying to discover why she was so kind. He had
never experienced kind treatment in all his life. So it was no wonder
that when the little girl entered the fifth boudoir she was followed by
the parrot, the lamb, the cat and the dog, who all stood beside her and
watched her feed the peacock, which she found strutting around and
mewing like a cat for his dinner. Said the parrot,
"I spy a peacock's eye
On every feather. I wonder why?"
The peacock soon came to love Trot as much as the other bird and all
the beasts did, and it spread its tail and strutted after her into the
next boudoir, the sixth one. As she entered this room, Trot gave a
start of fear, for a terrible roar like the roar of a lion greeted her.
But there was no lion there; a fuzzy, blue rabbit was making all the
noise. "For goodness sake keep quiet," said Trot. "Here's a nice blue
carrot for you. The color seems all wrong, but it may taste jus' as
good as if it was red."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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