In the evening a banquet was (of course) given to the Deliverers. The banquet was all pineapple and water, because there had been no time to make or get anything else. But the speeches were very flattering; and Philip and Lucy were very pleased, more so than Brenda, who did not like pineapple and made but little effort to conceal her disappointment. Max accepted bits of pineapple, out of politeness, and hid them among the feet of the guests so that nobody’s feelings should be hurt.
“I don’t know how we’re to get back to the island,” said Philip next day, “now we’ve lost the Lightning Loose.”
“I think we’d better go back by way of Polistopolis,” said Lucy, “and find out who’s been opening the books. If they go on they may let simply anything out. And if the worst comes to the worst, perhaps we could get someone to help us to open the Teal book again and get the Teal out to cross to the island in.”
“Lu,” said Philip with feeling, “you’re clever, really clever. No, I’m not kidding. I mean it. And I’m sorry I ever said you were only a girl. But how are we to get to Polistopolis?”
It was a difficult problem. The headman could offer no suggestions. It was Brenda who suggested asking the advice of the Great Sloth.
“He is such a fine figure of an animal,” she said admiringly; “so handsome and distinguished-looking. I am sure he must have a really great mind. I always think good looks go with really great minds, don’t you, dear Lucy?”
“We might as well,” said Philip, “if no one can think of anything else.”
No one could. So they decided to take Brenda’s advice.
Now that the Sloth worked every day it was not nearly so disagreeable as it had been when it slept so much.
The children approached it at the dinner hour and it listened patiently if drowsily to their question. When it had quite done, it reflected—or seemed to reflect; perhaps it had fallen asleep—until the town clock struck one, the time for resuming work. Then it got up and slouched towards its machine.
“Cucumbers,” it said, and began to turn the handle of its wheel. They had to wait till teatime to ask it what it meant, for in that town the rule about not speaking to the man at the wheel was strictly enforced.
“Cucumbers,” the Sloth repeated, and added a careful explanation. “You sit on the end of any young cucumber which points in the desired direction, and when it has grown to its full length—say sixteen inches—why, then you are sixteen inches on your way.”
“But that’s not much,” said Lucy.
“Every little helps,” said the Sloth; “more haste less speed. Then you wait till the cucumber seeds, and, when the new plants grow, you select the earliest cucumber that points in the desired direction and take your seat on it. By the end of the cucumber season you will be another sixteen—or with luck seventeen—inches on your way. Thirty-two inches in all, almost a yard. And thus you progress towards your goal, slowly but surely, like in politics.”
“Thank you very much,” said Philip; “we will think it over.”
But it did not need much thought.
“If we could get a motor car!” said Philip. “If you can get machines by wishing for them. …”
“The very thing,” said Lucy, “let’s find the headman. We mustn’t wish for a motor or we should have to go on using it. But perhaps there’s someone here who’d like to drive a motor—for his living, you know?”
There was. A Halma man, with an inborn taste for machinery, had long pined to leave the gathering of pineapples to others. He was induced to wish for a motor and a B.S.A. sixty horsepower car snorted suddenly in the place where a moment before no car was.
“Oh, the luxury! This is indeed like home,” sighed Brenda, curling up on the air-cushions.
And the children certainly felt a gloriously restful sensation. Nothing to be done; no need to think or bother. Just to sit quiet and be borne swiftly on through wonderful cities, all of which Philip vaguely remembered to have seen, small and near, and built by his own hands and Helen’s.
And so, at last, they came close to Polistopolis. Philip never could tell how it was that he stopped the car outside the city. It must have been some quite unaccountable instinct, because naturally, you know, when you are not used to being driven in motors, you like to dash up to the house you are going to, and enjoy your friends’ enjoyment of the grand way in which you have travelled. But Philip felt—in that quite certain and quite unexplainable way in which you do feel things sometimes—that it was best to stop the car among the suburban groves of southernwood, and to creep into the town in the disguise afforded by motor coats, motor veils and motor goggles. (For of course all these had come with the motor car when it was wished for, because no motor car is complete without them.)
They said goodbye warmly to the Halma motor man, and went quietly towards the town, Max and Brenda keeping to heel in the most praiseworthy way, and the parrot nestling inside Philip’s jacket, for it was chilled by the long rush through the evening air.
And now the scattered houses and spacious gardens gave place to the streets of Polistopolis, the capital of the kingdom. And the streets were strangely deserted. The children both felt—in that quite certain and unexplainable way—that it would be unwise of them to go to the place where they had slept the last time they were in that city.
The whole party was very tired. Max walked with drooping tail, and Brenda was whining softly to herself from sheer weariness and weak-mindedness. The parrot alone was happy—or at least contented. Because it was asleep.
At the corner of a little square planted with southernwood-trees
