Adventures of the Wishing-Chair (3 page)

“Well, I don’t know how you expect to escape
that
way!” he said. “You’ll have to come down the steps again, and I shall be waiting here to catch you. Then what a spanking you’ll get!”

The children climbed out on to the flat piece of castle roof. There was their chair, standing just where they had left it, its red wings gleaming in the sun. They threw themselves into it, and Peter cried, “Go to the room where that little pixie Chinky is!”

The chair rose into the air, flew over the castle roof, and then down to a big window. It was open, and the chair squeezed itself inside. Chinky the pixie was there, sitting on the floor, weeping. When he saw the chair coming in, with the two children sitting in it, he was so astonished that he couldn’t even get up off the floor!

“Quick!” cried Mollie. “Come into this chair, Chinky. We’ll help you to escape!”

“Who’s talking in there?” boomed the giant’s enormous voice, and the children heard the bolts being undone and the key turned to unlock the door!

“Quick, quick, Chinky!” shouted Peter, and he dragged the amazed pixie to the magic chair. They all three sat in it, huddled together, and Peter shouted “Take us home!”

The door flew open and the giant rushed in just as the chair sailed out of the window. He ran to the window and made a grab at the chair. His big hand knocked against a leg, and the chair shook violently. Chinky nearly fell off, but Peter grabbed him and pulled him back safely. Then they sailed high up into the air, far out of reach of the angry giant!

“We’ve escaped!” shouted Peter. “What an adventure! Cheer up, Chinky! We’ll take you home with us! You shall live with us, if you like. We have a fine playroom at the end of our garden. You can live there and no one will know. What fun we’ll have with you and the wishing-chair!”

“You are very kind to me,” said Chinky gratefully. “I shall love to live with you. I can take you on many, many adventures!”

“Hurrah!” shouted the two children. “Look, Chinky, we’re going down to our garden.”

Soon they were safely in the garden, and the chair flew in at the open door of the playroom. Its wings disappeared, and it settled itself down with a long sigh, as if to say, “Home again!”

“You can make a nice bed of the cushions from the sofa,” said Mollie to the pixie. “And I’ll give you a rug from the hall-chest to cover yourself with. We must go now, because it is past our tea-time. We’ll come and see you again tomorrow. Good luck!”

IT was such fun to have a real live pixie to play with! Mollie and Peter went to their playroom every day and talked with Chinky, whom they had so cleverly rescued from the giant’s castle. He refused to have anything to eat, because he said he knew the fairies in the garden, and they would bring him anything he needed.

“Chinky, will you do something for us?” asked Mollie. “You know, we can’t be with the magic chair always to watch when it grows wings, but if you could watch it for us, and come and tell us when you see it has wings, then we could rush to our playroom and go on another adventure. It would be lovely if you’d do that.”

“Of course,” said Chinky, who was a most obliging, merry little fellow. “I’ll never take my eyes off the chair!”

Well, will you believe it, that very night, just as Chinky was going off to sleep, and the playroom was in darkness, he felt a strange little wind blowing from somewhere. It was the chair waving its wings about! Chinky was up in a trice, and ran out of the playroom to the house. He knew which the children’s room was, and he climbed up the old pear tree and knocked on the window.

It wasn’t long before Mollie and Peter, each in warm dressing-gowns, were running down to the playroom. They lighted a candle and saw the chair’s red wings once more.

“Come on!” cried Peter, jumping into the chair. “Where are we off to this time, I wonder?”

Mollie jumped in too, and Chinky squeezed himself beside them. The chair was indeed very full.

It flew out of the door and up into the air. The moon was up, and the world seemed almost as light as day. The chair flew to the south, and then went downwards into a strange little wood that shone blue and green.

“Hallo, hallo! we’re going to visit the Grabbit Gnomes,” said the pixie. “I don’t like that! They grab everything they can, especially things that don’t belong to them! We must be careful they don’t grab our wishing-chair!”

The chair came to rest in a small clearing, near to some queer toadstool houses. The doors were in the great thick stalks, and the windows were in the top part. No one was about.

“Oh, do let’s explore this strange village!” cried Mollie, in delight. “I do want to!”

“Well, hurry up, then,” said Chinky nervously. “If the Grabbit Gnomes see us here, they will soon be trying to grab this, that, and the other.”

The two children ran off to the toadstool houses and looked at them. They really were lovely. How Mollie wished she had one at home in the garden! It would be so lovely to have one to live in.

“Whatever is Chinky doing?” said Peter, turning round to look.

“He’s got a rope or something,” said Mollie, in surprise. “Oh, don’t let’s bother about him, Peter. Do look here! There are six little toadstools all laid ready for breakfast! Fancy! They use them for tables as well as for houses!”

Suddenly there was a loud shout from a nearby toadstool house.

“Robbers! Burglars!”

Someone was leaning out of the window of a big toadstool house, pointing to the children. In a trice all the Grabbit Gnomes woke up, and came pouring out of their houses. “Robbers! What are you doing here? Robbers!”

“No, they’re not,” said Chinky the pixie, pushing his way through the crowd of excited gnomes. “They are only children adventuring here.”

“How did you come?” asked a gnome at once.

“We came in our wishing-chair,” said Mollie, and then she wished she hadn’t answered. For the Grabbit Gnomes gave a yell of delight and rushed off to where their chair was standing in the moonlight.

“We’ve always wanted one, we’ve always wanted one!” they shouted. “Come on! Let’s take it safely to our cave where we hide our treasures!”

“But it’s ours!” cried Peter indignantly. “Besides, how shall we get back home if you take our chair?”

But the gnomes didn’t pay any attention to him. They raced off to the chair, and soon there wasn’t a tiny piece of the chair to be seen, for, to Peter’s dismay, all the little gnomes piled themselves into it, and sat there—on the seat, the back, the arms, everywhere!

“Go to our treasure-cave!” they shouted. The chair flapped its red wings and rose up. The gnomes gave a yell of triumphant delight.

“We’re off! Goodbye!”

“Oooh! Look!” said Mollie suddenly. “There’s something hanging down from the chair. What is it?”

“It’s a rope!” said Peter. “Oh, Chinky, you clever old thing! You’ve tied it to the leg of the chair, and the other end is tied to that tree-trunk over there. The chair can’t fly away!”

“No,” said Chinky, with a grin. “It can’t! I know those Grabbit Gnomes! I may not know what three times seven are, but I
do
know what robbers these gnomes are! Well, they won’t find it easy to get away!”

The chair rose up high until the rope was so tightly stretched that it could go no farther. Then the chair came to a stop. There it hovered in the air, flapping its wings, but not moving one scrap. The gnomes shouted at it and yelled, but it was no good. It couldn’t go any farther.

“Well, the gnomes are safe for a bit,” said Chinky, grinning. “Now what about exploring this village properly, children?

So the two spent half an hour peeping into the quaint toadstool houses, and Chinky gave them gnome-cake and gnome-lemonade, which were perfectly delicious.

All this time the gnomes were sitting up in the wishing-chair, high above the trees, shaking their fists at the children, and yelling all kinds of threats. They were certainly well caught, for they could go neither up nor down.

“Now, we’d better go home,” said Chinky suddenly, pointing to the east. “Look!—it will soon be dawn. Now listen to me. I am going to pull that chair down to earth again with your help. We will pull it down quickly, and it will land on the ground with such a bump that all the gnomes will be thrown off. Whilst they are picking themselves up, we will jump into the chair, and off we’ll go.”

“Good idea!” grinned Peter. So he and Mollie and Chinky went to the rope and pulled hard, hand over hand. The chair came down from the air rapidly, and when it reached the ground, it gave such a bump that every single gnome was thrown off.

“Oooooh!” they cried. “You wait, you wicked children!”

But they
didn’t
wait. Instead, the three of them jumped into the chair, and Peter called out, “Take us home, please!”

Before the Grabbit Gnomes could take hold of the chair, it had risen up into the air. But the gnomes pulled at the rope, and down came the chair again.

“Quick! Cut the rope!” shouted Peter to Chinky. Poor Chinky! He was feeling in every one of his many pockets for his knife, and he couldn’t find it. The gnomes pulled hard at the rope, and the chair went down still farther.

And then Chinky found the knife! He leaned over the chair-arm, slashed at the rope and cut it. At once the chair bounded up into the air, free!

“Home, home!” sang Peter, delighted. “I say! Talk about adventures! Every one seems more exciting than the last! Wherever shall we go next?”

ONE day when Peter and Mollie ran down to see Chinky the pixie in their playroom, they found him reading a letter and groaning loudly.

“What’s the matter, Chinky?” said the children, in surprise.

“Oh, I’ve had a letter from my cousin, Gobo,” said Chinky. “Gobo says that my village is very unhappy because a wizard has come to live there, called Ho-Ho. He is a horrid fellow, and walks about saying,  ‘Ho, ho!’ all the time, catching the little pixies to help him in his magic, and putting all kinds of spells on anyone that goes against him. I feel very unhappy.”

“Oh, Chinky, we’re so sorry!” said the children at once. “Can’t we help?”

“I don’t think so,” said Chinky sadly. “But I would very much like to go off in the wishing-chair to my village, next time it grows wings, if you don’t mind.”