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The Peppermint Pagoda
by
“Gracious!” exclaimed the Queen–in Chinese, of course. “Whittier and Longfellow–what pretty names! But haven’t you got Confucius there, somewhere?” Confucius, you see, was a man who wrote in Chinese long years ago, and he was one of her pet authors.
Marmaduke shuffled the cards all over, but couldn’t seem to find that name.
“I guess he’s been lost,” he said politely, so as not to hurt her feelings and lose his head, “but I’ll tell you what”–he added, pointing to a picture of Dickens–“we can call this man Confoundit just as well.”
“Confucius, not Confoundit,” the Queen corrected him crossly, then she looked at the card. “That’ll do, I suppose. That author has a kind face and a real long beard. It’s not half bad.”
She chose Marmaduke for her partner, and they played against the two tallest mandarins in the red dragon coats.
The Queen and Marmaduke beat the old mandarins badly, due to Marmaduke’s fine playing. And the Queen was so pleased that she exclaimed,–
“After all, I won’t cut off your head. You see, it might stain that pretty rug. I guess we’d better have tea and a party instead.” Then she added,–“By the way, do you drink tea?”
“Yes, thank you,” he replied, “but make it ‘cambric.'”
“All right if you prefer it,” she remarked, “but I call it silly to spoil a good drink that way.”
Then she clapped her hands, and her servants came running in, with huge trays of wonderful foods in their arms. And the Queen and the mandarins, Marmaduke and Wienerwurst, and Ping Pong, Sing Song, and Ah See, all sat around the throne, drinking out of the little blue cups and eating the strange food. It made Marmaduke’s eyes almost pop out of his head to see the way the Queen and her mandarins, and his three little yellow friends, devoured those dishes,–the stewed rats, the fricasseed shark’s fins, and the old birds’ nests. Now Wienerwurst didn’t seem to object to that sort of food at all, but “licked it right up” like the Chinamen. Marmaduke chose other things instead,–some pickled goldfish, candied humming-birds’ tongues, some frozen rose-petals, whipped cloud pudding, and a deep dish of spiced air from the sky, with dried stars for raisins. And, to wash it all down, he had a little blue cup of tea, “cambric” of course, quite as his mother would have wished.
Seeing that he was growing drowsy from such a big meal, the Queen took pity on him and said he could lean back against the golden throne and take a nap.
But first she called the mandarin who was in charge of the Fire-cracker Treasury, where they kept all the finest fire-crackers in the world, and ordered him to bring Marmaduke some. Soon the mandarin came back, and, with him, six servants, with trays heaped high with the prettiest and the fanciest fire-crackers ever boy or man saw. They were wrapped in rose-colored silk paper, with gold letters on the paper, and dragons, too, with great eyes and fiery forked tongues.
The six servants and the mandarin filled all Marmaduke’s seven pockets with the packs of fire-crackers, and tied one on Wienerwurst’s tail. Then they handed him some bundles of extra-fine punk sticks. It wasn’t at all like ordinary punk, but very sweet-smelling.
He lighted one stick, and it smelled so like incense, and he felt so drowsy and nice, that he started to fall asleep. The lighted punk fell lower and lower until it touched one of the fire-cracker-packs. The silk paper began to curl and grow black, then it burst into flames. There was a sputter, then a crackle like the firing of many rifles, and then a great roar. My! but those were powerful fire-crackers. One pack exploded–and he was blown through the palace. Another–and over the Peppermint Pagoda he flew. Still another went off, and he was tossed clean over the Great Wall to the mouth of the hole down which he had come that very same day.
Then the last pack went–bang! and he was blown through the hole, Wienerwurst after him, up, up, up, past the Coal Giant and the Furnace Pit, and up, up, up, until he saw, just above him, the little circle of light again.
Out of it he flew–and–all of a sudden his head cleared, and he saw he was sitting back at home once more, sitting against the cedar post, and the Toyman was rubbing his head.
“Never mind,” the Toyman was saying, “It’ll feel better soon. And how did you like China?”
The head did feel better “pretty soon.” Anyway, he didn’t mind it a bit. It was worth a headache, as the Toyman said, to have seen the wonderful land of China.