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Seligor's Castle, fun for all the children of the world.
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Sat, 30 May 2009
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 hello welcome to the last chapter of The Old Lady who Lived in a Shoe
CHAPTER
FOUR
 "What
have you come here for?" asked the Frog King in an
awful voice, when Zed was standing before him. "And
what do you want to say to me?"
"I came to ask you where my
brothers and sisters are?" replied Zed. "None of
them were there last night when my mother
came home from market. But there were
twenty-two poplar trees that had never been there
before standing in a row by the stream."
"Those
are your brothers and sisters and there they shall
stay."
"Oh please, please don't let them
stay there!" Begged Zed. "Turn them back into boys
and girls again, as they were
before."
"No!" Answered the Frog
King, and his voice was still more
awful.
"Why not? Oh please do!"
said Zed.
"Why not? Why not? They
are so idle and lazy that they wished for to do no
more work all their lives, and I granted them their
wish. " Said the Frog King.
"Well,
I will do their work for them," said
Zed.
"That will not do. I cannot have idle
children getting into mischief along the banks of
my stream," said the Frog King. "And it's no use
begging. You had better go
home."
 "But
perhaps they will be better now," went on Zed, for
he could not bear to think of his brothers and
sisters turned into trees for the rest of their
lives, so he would not give up begging for them.
"Please give them one more chance. Think how
sad my mother is, and how sad my father will be
when he gets home."
The Frog
King thought for a moment and then he said: "I
shall not turn them back into little boys and girls
at once, for they would only remember the fright
they had for a few days, and then would drop back
into their old ways again. But I will allow them to
have their shapes at night. If I am pleased with
them after three nights, they shall keep their own
shapes in the day time as well, but if not they
shall be washed away by the stream. All this, can
only be done on three conditions."
"What are the three conditions, " said Zed.
"The
first is while they have their own shapes, you will
be turned into a frog and sit on a stone in the
middle of the stream till they come back at dawn,
every one of them, you will be a frog all your
life.
 The second is
that they must please me three nights running and
not any three nights, when you happen not to be
sleepy and may have a fancy to go into the garden.
And the third is that you do not breathe a word to
anybody until they are boys and girls again by day
as well as by night."
"Yes, yes,"
replied Zed. "I will be a frog and sit in the
stream while they are boys and girls, and I will do
it three nights running, and I will not breathe a
word to any one about it until they have their
proper shapes again by day as well as night. Only
tell me quick what to do."
"It's too late tonight," said the Frog King, "or
rather it will be by the time you get home. But
tomorrow night you must get out bed when your
mother is asleep and take some water from the
stream and pour it over the roots of each of
the poplar trees. When you have watered the whole
row of the trees you must
say:
"Brothers and sisters, work with a
will,
And the Frog King
says there is hope for you still.
Come back at
daybreak before the cocks crow,
And be changed
back to trees in the poplar row;
Or else I shall
never more look like Zed,
But must stay in the
stream like a frog instead."
"Now shall you remember that?"
asked the Frog King.
Zed said the verse
several times, till he was sure he would remember
it, then he made a low bow to the king and started
back home.
The sky was beginning to
grow pink in the east by the time he reached their
garden, and his mother was already
stirring.
"Where have you been?"
She asked in surprise, as Zed came into the
kitchen.
"I have been out," he said, but he
couldn't tell her where he had been for he had
promised the Frog King that he wouldn't.
Posted 19:52
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