Effie clasped her hands and skipped with joy and cried: "Oh, Harry! I
know where we can find St. George! In St. George's Church, of course."
"Um," said Harry, wishing he had thought of it for himself, "you have a
little sense sometimes, for a girl."
So the next afternoon, quite early, long before the beams of sunset
announced the coming night, when everybody would be up and working, the
two children got out of bed. Effie wrapped herself in a shawl of
dragonproof muslin--there was no time to make the frock--and Harry made
a horrid mess of himself with the patent dragon poison. It was warranted
harmless to infants and invalids, so he felt quite safe.
Then they joined hands and set out to walk to St. George's Church. As
you know, there are many St. George's churches, but fortunately they
took the turning that leads to the right one, and went along in the
bright sunlight, feeling very brave and adventurous.
There was no one about in the streets except dragons, and the place was
simply swarming with them. Fortunately none of the dragons were just the
right size for eating little boys and girls, or perhaps this story might
have had to end here. There were dragons on the pavement, and dragons on
the roadway, dragons basking on the front doorsteps of public buildings,
and dragons preening their wings on the roofs in the hot afternoon sun.
The town was quite green with them. Even when the children had gotten
out of the town and were walking in the lanes, they noticed that the
fields on each side were greener than usual with the scaly legs and
tails; and some of the smaller sizes had made themselves asbestos nests
in the flowering hawthorn hedges.
Effie held her brother's hand very tight, and once when a fat dragon
flopped against her ear she screamed out, and a whole flight of green
dragons rose from the field at the sound, and sprawled away across the
sky. The children could hear the rattle of their wings as they flew.
"Oh, I want to go home," said Effie.
"Don't be silly," said Harry. "Surely you haven't forgotten about the
Seven Champions and all the princes. People who are going to be their
country's deliverers never scream and say they want to go home."
"And are we," asked Effie--"deliverers, I mean?"
"You'll see," said her brother, and on they went.
When they came to St. George's Church they found the door open, and they
walked right in--but St. George was not there, so they walked around the
churchyard outside, and presently they found the great stone tomb of St.
George, with the figure of him carved in marble outside, in his armor
and helmet, and with his hands folded on his breast.
"How ever can we wake him?" they said. Then Harry spoke to St.
George--but he would not answer; and he called, but St. George did not
seem to hear; and then he actually tried to waken the great
dragon-slayer by shaking his marble shoulders. But St. George took no
notice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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