Poor Prince! As he felt the icy change come over him, he cried out and clutched by instinct at his most valuable possession, the picture of Princess Lily in his knapsack. But the cry simply turned into a dismal reedy croak, and instead of the picture his little legs closed on something else. And since he clutched hold of it with a part of him that had already been changed, it stayed in his grasp. If he had caught it a moment sooner and with his own human hands, it would have vanished with them, when they vanished. If he had reached for it a moment later, it would already have been swallowed up like everything else, his knapsack, his boots, and his buttons and all, in the change. But luckily for him he got hold of it at exactly the right moment, and when he recovered himself enough to look about him, he perceived that he was holding between those little legs the letter of introduction to Miss Thomson, which had been given to him by the little cook at the inn. He would have wept (if toads could weep) because it was the letter and not the picture which he had retained. He did not know that that was really the most fortunate thing that could have happened.

At first he squatted there on the ground in despair, not knowing what had happened to him, and hopeless of ever regaining his human shape. He nearly broke down; but he was a brave toad, and not to be dismayed by anything that befell, however dreadful. So he set about thinking. Then he guessed that Queen Gamboy had something to do with the matter. What was he to do?

He took up the letter in his mouth and began trundling off to find Miss Thomson’s cottage in Tyttenhanger Lane.

But he took such a long time to get there, partly because toads can only move very slowly and partly because he could not ask anybody the way, that we shall have to go back and see what happened at the Castle while he was on his way.

That stable-boy was a very lazy fellow. When he had finished talking to the Prince and had got back to the stables, “Oh dear,” he said to himself, “I suppose there is nothing to do now but work”: and he saw the long morning stretching out ahead of him with nothing but grooming, grooming, gloomy grooming till he had groomed the whole double row of horses that stood there with their heads to the wall and their tails hanging down behind. He picked up a curry-comb and began slowly cleaning a brush: “S—s—s—s—s—,” he said, to make it sound as though he were working dreadfully hard; then he dropped the curry-comb, yawned, and as he yawned happened to look up into the stable roof.

There he saw the trap-door that led up to the loft above the stables.

“I’ll go get some more hay down,” he said, meaning to have a quiet nap up there among the sweet-smelling hay. So he fetched a ladder and climbed up through the trap-door into the hay-loft, and he was just going to throw himself down on a pile of hay, when he saw something gleaming in the far corner of the dark loft. It was half covered by a stack of dirty, used-up straw, and he couldn’t think what it was, so he yanked with his great hob-nailed boots across the loft and pulled at the bright thing, till it came clear of the straw that covered it. He had never seen anything like it before. First he turned it over and over in his hand. Then he wiped it clean on his red pocket-handkercher with white spots, saying as he did so, “S-s-s-s-s” through his teeth, just as though he were grooming a horse. And then, at last, when he had wiped the mouthpiece, he put it to his mouth and blew through it.

too.

tootity Too

tootity tootity

tootity tootity

tootity tootity

Rooty too.

And with the very first sound of the trumpet, another sound, a sound that had been going on in the stables all this time, suddenly ceased. This was the noise of horses. For they had stopped chumping hay and stamping and shambling with their feet, and all of them were standing stock stone still in rows, like marble horses. And their tails hung down behind them straighter than ever. And at the very first note of the trumpet (for it was heard in the Castle too), all the porters and doorkeepers and sweepers and cooks and bakers and pastry-makers in Mountainy Castle stopped carrying and doorkeeping and sweeping and cooking and baking and pastry- making, and looked at each other and listened. And at the very first sound of the trumpet King Courtesy, lolling in his study half-asleep, half-awake, dreaming of nothing on a sofa, started bolt upright, and cried out with a loud voice:

“Violet! Violet!”

And at the very first sound of the trumpet Aunt Gamboy drew in her scraggy neck from the window, and sat down upon her bed, and began to be so unhappy, so unhappy, dreaming of the time when she was a little girl called Gambetta with a sister called Violetta. But Princess Lily, alone up there in her tower, also heard the Silver Trumpet. And she had never heard it before. And she wondered. She wondered why she was mewed up there, when other Princesses walked about the world beneath the open sky, and she wondered what would happen to her as she grew old, and if she would spend all the rest of her life in that one little room in the tower, and what the world was like.

too. too. too-oo-oo.

Rooty Rooty Rooty

As the last note died slowly away, everybody in the Castle stirred slowly, like a man waking from sleep, and looked mazedly round him. Many of them opened their mouths to ask what had happened, but, just as they were about to speak, they seemed to change their minds, they looked away, they dropped their eyes to the ground as though they were ashamed of something, as though they all knew something which they were all pretending they didn’t know. And as the last note died slowly away, Princess Lily looked up and said: “What was that noise?” and she sounded a little bell for her maid-in-waiting to come, and when she came, scolded her for allowing vagrant musicians to play within earshot of the tower; for it was against all orders. Then she began to dab her forehead with cold water and ordered a dish of tea. And as the last note died slowly away Aunt Gamboy frowned and said:

“Tut!”

and, getting up from her bed, craned out of a window to catch a last glimpse of the toad, that had once been poor Prince Peerio, lolloping awkwardly away over the lawn to the Castle gates. And as the last note died slowly away, the light left King Courtesy’s face, and he sank back on the sofa with only a vague troubled look in his eyes.

But as the last note died slowly away, the stable-boy was so pleased with the sound the trumpet made that he put it to his lips and blew again. Once more the sound floated out from the stable, across, and in at the windows of the Castle. Once more Princess Lily began to wonder, and then suddenly she knew that she was very unhappy.

“I must help myself!” she cried, and before the sound had died away, had rung her little bell once more and told the maid-in-waiting who came to answer it:

“Send a messenger at once to Miss Thomson, Bee Cottage, Tyttenhanger Lane, and ask her to come and see me.”

Once more Aunt Gamboy sat a-dreaming, and then, if you had been there, you would have seen a queer change come over her face; the corners of her mouth began to turn up, the wrinkles to leave her forehead, and her eyes to lose their look of cunning. It seemed for a moment as though she were turning into another person. But then, as the sound ceased, her face slipped back, and she became all Gamboy again. And some say that, this time, Violet herself, deep down in her grave, heard the Silver Trumpet, and that she stirred and trembled there, and that her face too began to change, taking new wrinkles to its white brow, and that a look of cunning began to creep into her eyes underneath their coverlet of darkness.

But when King Courtesy heard the trumpet for the second time, he started up, ran to the door of his study, and called out in a voice that was itself like a trumpet:

“Who is doing that, who is doing that? Send him to me!”

For the trumpet reminded him too keenly of his beloved, and made him sadder than he could bear. So they found the stable-boy and brought him to the King, and the King threatened to execute the stable-boy, but forgave him when he heard that he had found the trumpet by accident and did not know who it belonged to. And then Courtesy took the Silver Trumpet from him, and locked it up in a cupboard in his study, and pronounced the death penalty on any man who should put it to his lips again. After he had done that, he sank back again upon the couch and buried his face in his hands.

But the stable-boy went down the hill into the town, and told the citizens all that had happened. Now the citizens were getting very tired of Gamboy’s arrogance, for she was a hard Queen. And when they heard the stable-boy’s story of the Silver Trumpet and of its strange effect upon their King, they smelt a rat, they did. “She has deceived us,” they said, remembering the time of the famine. “Why should she be cheating the King and our poor Princess? Why are

they both so wretched?”

Therefore they determined to march up to the Castle once more and to demand an audience of their King. And it would be ill, they said, for Queen Gamboy, if they found aught amiss.

This they determined to do on the following day but one, for the next day was a Sunday.