It was not very easy to know what would poison a dragon, because, you
see, they ate such different things. The largest kind ate elephants as
long as there were any, and then went on with horses and cows. Another
size ate nothing but lilies of the valley, and a third size ate only
Prime Ministers if they were to be had, and, if not, would feed freely
on servants in livery. Another size lived on bricks, and three of them
ate two thirds of the South Lambeth Infirmary in one afternoon.
But the size Effie was most afraid of was about as big as your dining
room, and that size ate little girls and boys.
At first Effie and her brother were quite pleased with the change in
their lives. It was so amusing to sit up all night instead of going to
sleep, and to play in the garden lighted by electric lamps. And it
sounded so funny to hear Mother say, when they were going to bed: "Good
night, my darlings, sleep sound all day, and don't get up too soon. You
must not get up before it's quite dark. You wouldn't like the nasty
dragons to catch you."
But after a time they got very tired of it all: They wanted to see the
flowers and trees growing in the fields, and to see the pretty sunshine
out of doors, and not just through glass windows and patent dragonproof
curtains. And they wanted to play on the grass, which they were not
allowed to do in the electric lamp-lighted garden because of the
night-dew.
And they wanted so much to get out, just for once, in the beautiful,
bright, dangerous daylight, that they began to try and think of some
reason why they ought to go out. Only they did not like to disobey their
mother.
But one morning their mother was busy preparing some new dragon poison
to lay down in the cellars, and their father was bandaging the hand of
the boot boy, which had been scratched by one of the dragons who liked
to eat Prime Ministers when they were to be had, so nobody remembered to
say to the children: "Don't get up till it is quite dark!"
"Go now," said Harry. "It would not be disobedient to go. And I know
exactly what we ought to do, but I don't know how we ought to do it."
"What ought we to do?" said Effie.
"We ought to wake St. George, of course," said Harry. "He was the only
person in his town who knew how to manage dragons; the people in the
fairy tales don't count. But St. George is a real person, and he is only
asleep, and he is waiting to be waked up. Only nobody believes in St.
George now. I heard father say so."
"We do," said Effie.
"Of course we do. And don't you see, Ef, that's the very reason why we
could wake him? You can't wake people if you don't believe in them, can
you?"
Effie said no, but where could they find St. George?
"We must go and look," said Harry boldly. "You shall wear a dragonproof
frock, made of stuff like the curtains. And I will smear myself all over
with the best dragon poison, and--"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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