You will have made sure that the next jar I meant to try was the one for
the tongue, in hopes that it would help me to speak to some of the
creatures. Though I looked forward to the experiment very much, and felt
somewhat restless until I had made it, I did get a good deal of
amusement out of what I saw and heard the next day. The small people
were not to be seen--at least not in the morning. No, I am wrong: I
found a bunch of three of them--young ones--asleep in a hollow tree.
They woke up and looked at me without much interest, and when I was
withdrawing my head they blew kisses to me. I am afraid there is no
doubt they did so in derision. But there were others. I passed a
cottage garden in which a little dog was barking most furiously. It
seemed to be barking at a clothes-line, on which, with a lot of other
things, was a print dress with rather a staring pattern of flowers. The
dress caught my eye, and so did something red at the top which stuck up
above the line. I gave it another glance, and really I had a most
dreadful shock. It was a face. I gazed at it in horror, and was just
gathering my wits to run and call for help or something, when I saw that
it was laughing. Then I realized that it could not be an ordinary
person, hanging as it was on a thin bit of cord and blowing to and fro
in the breeze. I went nearer, staring at it with all my eyes, and made
out that it was the face of an old woman, very cheerful and ruddy, and,
as I said, laughing and swinging to and fro. Suddenly she seemed to
catch my eye and to see that I saw her, and in a flash she was off the
line and round the corner of the house, nearly tumbling over the dog as
she went. It rushed after her, still very angry, but soon came trotting
back, rather out of breath, and _that_ incident was over.
I walked on. Among the village people I met, there were one or two whom
I didn't think I had seen before--elderly, bright-eyed people they
were--who seemed very much surprised when I said "Good morning" to them,
and stopped still, looking after me, when I passed on. At last, some
little way outside the village, I saw in the distance the same
bright-coloured dress that had been on the clothes-line. The person who
wore it was going slowly, and looking in the grass and hedges, and
sometimes stooping to pick a plant, as it seemed. I quickened my pace
and came up with her, and when I was just behind her, I cleared my
throat rather loudly and said, "Fine day," or words to that effect.
You should have seen her jump! I was well paid for the fright she had
given me just before. However, the startled look cleared away from her
face, and she drew herself up and looked at me very calmly.
"Yes," she said, "it's a fine day." Then she actually blushed and went
on: "I think I ought to beg your pardon for giving you such a turn just
now."
"Well," I said, "I certainly was a good deal startled, but no harm was
done. The dog took it more to heart than I did."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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