be let out and let out, till there were no more turnings-in to be let out—and then she had to wear her old ones that Matilda had been wearing, and then to get new ones. And as she got fatter she got kinder, till Matilda grew quite fond of her.
And the Cockatoucan had not laughed for a month.
When the Princess was as fat as any Princess ought to be, Matilda went to her one day and threw her arms round her and kissed her. The Princess kissed her back, and said:
“Very well. I am sorry, then. But I didn’t want to say so. But now I will. And the Cockatoucan never laughs except when he’s tickled. So there! He hates to laugh.”
“And you won’t do it again,” said Matilda, “will you, dear?”
“No, of course not,” said the Princess, very much surprised. “Why should I? I was spiteful when I was thin, but now I’m fat again I want everyone to be happy.”
“But how can anyone be happy,” asked Matilda, severely, “when everyone is turned into something they weren’t meant to be? There’s your dear father—he’s a desirable villa. The Prime Minister was a little boy, and he got back again, and now he’s turned into a comic opera. Half the palace housemaids are breakers, dashing themselves against the palace crockery. The navy, to a man, are changed to French poodles, and the army to German sausages. Your favorite nurse is now a flourishing steam laundry; and I, alas, am too clever by half. Can’t that horrible bird do anything to put us all right again?”
“No,” said the Princess, dissolved in tears at this awful picture; “he told me once himself, that when he laughed he could only change one or two things at once, and then, as often as not, it turned out to be something he didn’t expect. The only way to make everything come right again would be—but it can’t be done! If we could only make him laugh on the wrong side of his mouth—that’s the secret! He told me so; but I don’t even know what it is, let alone being able to do it. Could you do it to him, Matilda?”
“No,” said Matilda; “but let me whisper—he’s listening—Pridmore could! She’s often told me she’d do it to me. But she never has. Oh, Princess, I’ve got an idea!”
The two were whispering so low that the Cockatoucan could not hear, though he tried his hardest. Matilda and the Princess left him listening.
Presently he heard a sound of wheels. Four men came into the rose garden, wheeling a great red thing in a barrow. They set it down in front of the Cockatoucan, who danced on this perch with rage.
“Oh,” he said, “if only someone would make me laugh—that horrible thing would be the one to change. I know it would. It would change into something much horrider than it is now. I feel it in all my feathers.”
The Princess opened the cage door with the Prime Minister’s key, which a tenor singer had found at the beginning of his music. It was also the key of the comic opera. She crept up behind the Cockatoucan and tickled him under both wings. He fixed his baleful eye on the red Automatic Machine and laughed long and loud, and he saw the red iron and glass change before his eyes into the form of Pridmore. Her cheeks were red with rage, and her eyes shone like glass with fury.
“Nice manners,” said she; “what are you laughing at, I should like to know? I’ll make you laugh on the wrong side of your mouth, my fine fellow!”
She sprang into the cage, and then and there, before the astonished Court, she shook that Cockatoucan till he really and truly did laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. It was a terrible sight to witness, and the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear.
But—instantly—all the things changed back, as if by magic, to what they had been before: the laundry became a nurse; the villa became a King; the other people were just what they had been before—and all Matilda’s wonderful cleverness went out like the snuff of a candle.
The Cockatoucan himself fell in two—one half of him became a common ordinary toucan, such as you may have seen a hundred times at the zoo—unless you are unworthy to visit that happy place—and the other half became a weathercock, which, as you know, is always changing, and makes