Children's stories, English; Magic -- Juvenile fiction; Short stories
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, I'm a little sleigh-bell,
But I know what I know, and I'll tell, tell, tell.
Find the Enchanter of the Ringing Well,
He will show you how to break the spell, spell, spell.
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, I'm a little sleigh-bell,
But I know what I know....
And so on, over and over, again and again, because the little boy was
quite contented to go on shaking his sleigh-bell for ever and ever.
'So now we know,' said the Prince, 'isn't that glorious?'
'Yes, very, but where's the Enchanter of the Ringing Well?' said the
Princess doubtfully.
'Oh, I've got _his_ address in my pocket-book,' said the Prince. 'He's
my god-father. He was one of the references I gave your father.'
So the next night the Prince brought a horse to the garden, and he and
the Princess mounted, and rode, and rode, and rode, and in the grey dawn
they came to Wonderwood, and in the very middle of that the Magician's
Palace stands.
The Princess did not like to call on a perfect stranger so very early in
the morning, so they decided to wait a little and look about them.
The castle was very beautiful, decorated with a conventional design of
bells and bell ropes, carved in white stone.
Luxuriant plants of American bell-vine covered the drawbridge and
portcullis. On a green lawn in front of the castle was a well, with a
curious bell-shaped covering suspended over it. The lovers leaned over
the mossy fern-grown wall of the well, and, looking down, they could see
that the narrowness of the well only lasted for a few feet, and below
that it spread into a cavern where water lay in a big pool.
'What cheer?' said a pleasant voice behind them. It was the Enchanter,
an early riser, like Darwin was, and all other great scientific men.
They told him what cheer.
'But,' Prince Bellamant ended, 'it's really no use. I can't keep under
water more than two minutes however much I try. And my precious
Belinda's not likely to find any silly old bell that doesn't ring, and
can't ring, and never will ring, and was never made to ring.'
'Ho, ho,' laughed the Enchanter with the soft full laughter of old age.
'You've come to the right shop. Who told you?'
'The bells,' said Belinda.
'Ah, yes.' The old man frowned kindly upon them. 'You must be very fond
of each other?'
'We are,' said the two together.
'Yes,' the Enchanter answered, 'because only true lovers can hear the
true speech of the bells, and then only when they're together. Well,
there's the bell!'
He pointed to the covering of the well, went forward, and touched some
lever or spring. The covering swung out from above the well, and hung
over the grass grey with the dew of dawn.
'_That?_' said Bellamant.
'That,' said his god-father. 'It doesn't ring, and it can't ring, and it
never will ring, and it was never made to ring. Get into it.'
'Eh?' said Bellamant forgetting his manners.
The old man took a hand of each and led them under the bell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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