Page:The Red Fairy Book.djvu/224

204 when shall I get my money back?’ to the great astonishment of the good folks, till he came to the King’s palace.

He strikes with the knocker: ‘Toe! toe!’

‘Who is there?’ asks the porter, putting his head out of the wicket.

Tis I, Drakestail. I wish to speak to the King.’

‘Speak to the King! … That’s easily said. The King is dining, and will not be disturbed.’

‘Tell him that it is I, and I have come he well knows why.’ The porter shuts his wicket and goes up to say it to the King, who was just sitting down to dinner with a napkin round his neck, and all his ministers.

‘Good, good!’ said Ihe King laughing. ‘I know what it is! Make him come in, and put him with the turkeys and chickens.’

The porter descends.

‘Have the goodness to enter.’

‘Good!’ says Drakestail to himself, ‘I shall now see how they eat at court.’

‘This way, this way,’ says the porter. ‘One step further.… There, there you are.’

‘How? what? in the poultry yard?’

Fancy how vexed Drakestail was!

‘Ah! so that’s it,’ says he. ‘Wait! I will compel you to receive me. Quack, quack, quack, when shall I get my money back?’ But turkeys and chickens are creatures who don’t like people that are not as themselves. When they saw the new-comer and how he was made, and when they heard him crying too, they began to look black at him.

‘What is it? what does he want?’

Finally they rushed at him all together, to overwhelm him with pecks.

‘I am lost!’ said Drakestail to himself, when by good luck he remembers his comrade friend Fox, and he cries:

Then friend Fox, who was only waiting for these words, hastens out, throws himself on the wicked fowls, and quick! quack! he tears them to pieces; so much so that at the end of five minutes there was not one left alive. And Drakestail, quite content, began to sing again, ‘Quack, quack, quack, when shall I get my money back?’