The Cruise of the Little Dipper, and Other Fairy Tales

“Soap-bubbles, indeed! Soap is made only to wash one’s face with. You may have all you want for that, but for bubbles, no, no! Bless my boots, what will you ask for next?”

When the other children played on the beach, building castles in the sand, or picking up pretty shells, this poor boy had to gather driftwood for his great-aunt’s kitchen fire.

But for all his hard luck he was always whistling blithely at his work. He would whistle all the tunes in the hymn book, and all the sailor’s songs, and the nursery songs, and then some more that he made up as he ran along the beach picking up driftwood. Of course his great-aunt had forbidden his whistling about the house, but other people liked to hear him, and since he had no name, they called him “Birdling.” His great-aunt called him “You!”

One day, after he had come home from school, washed his hands, eaten his dry bread and drunk his tea without sugar or cream, he went as usual to the beach to gather wood; but this day, all the boys from school were down by the sea-side making sail-boats. Their mothers and aunts and grandmas had given them odd bits of muslin from the rag-bag for sails, and their fathers and uncles and grandpas had given them little pots of paint, and the old boat-builder who lived on the beach had supplied the nails and boards and no end of good advice. They were building a splendid fleet, and when Birdling came whistling along the sands, they all hailed him and shouted:

“Birdling, Birdling, come and build a boat! We have nails to spare, and surely you have some nice boards in your load of driftwood! Come, come and build a boat!”

So Birdling, forgetting all about his duties and his great-aunt, sat down in the warm yellow sand, and built a boat of driftwood; and while he worked he whistled.

The boys were all so glad to hear him and be able to play with him that they gave him all the paint and nails that they could spare, as well as string for his rigging and a lead sinker for his anchor. Of course he had many kinds of paint, and not enough of any one color to paint his whole boat, so her hull was black, the trimming golden-yellow, the deck bright-blue and the mast was green. She was a funny boat indeed, but Birdling liked her none the less and wanted to name her after his father’s ship, the Big Dipper.

“But she isn’t big!” said the other boys. “She’s the smallest boat of all!”

So he called her the Little Dipper.

“What will you do for a sail?” the others asked. “We’d love to give you some muslin, but we haven’t a bit to spare.”

Here was a dilemma indeed. Then Birdling remembered that he had a patch on the seat of his trousers that he did not need at all, for his great-aunt always patched them before they went into holes (“If I didn’t,” she would say, “why bless my boots, he’d sit them through in two minutes!”); and now he did a dreadful thing, he took off the patch and used it for a sail!

They had such a good time with the boats, loading them with cargoes of sea-shells and digging harbors and chasing away the crabs who came to watch, that they did not notice how the sun had dipped down behind the sand-dunes and the light-house brightened far out at sea. Suddenly they heard the curfew ring.

“Why, it’s past supper-time!” they cried, and all the boys snatched up their boats and ran home. In a moment the beach was as deserted as the sea, and Birdling sat alone on the sands, his boat between his knees, while the shadows of night crept down to the water. At the furthest end of the beach gleamed a dull square of light—that was his great-aunt’s window, brightened by the oil-lamp behind it:

Oh, how she was going to scold him now! For this time he had really been naughty. He had gathered no driftwood, he was late to supper, and he had ripped the patch off the seat of his trousers!

“I don’t dare take you home, Little Dipper,” he said as he placed his boat in the safest harbor, as far as possible from the incoming tide. “My great-aunt would burn you in the kitchen stove. Goodby, Little Dipper!”

His great-aunt met him at the door as he came home. She was so angry that her cap had slid over one ear, her eyes were like tiny hot coals and her very apron-strings curled with wrath. She boxed Birdling’s ears, smack, smack, smack!—until they were as pink as seashells.

“You, you, you,” she cried, “You shall have no supper, sir, but a very good whipping! Go up on the hill behind the house and cut a switch, a strong one, a long one, for a long strong whipping, sir!”

Obediently Birdling went up to the hill where the witch-hazel bushes held out their long, strong boughs to be cut for switches. But somehow he could not find just the switch he wanted; one was not long enough and another was too long, or one would not be strong enough and the next too strong. He looked them all over very carefully.

The witch-hazel bushes were in blossom, there were fuzzy little yellow stars on their boughs; Birdling saw a bumble-bee (who should have been in bed an hour ago) darting from bush to bush and tasting the little flowers. Then the boy remembered that he was to have no supper to-night, and as he felt dreadfully hungry, he touched one of the yellow blossoms and licked his finger that was covered with fine golden pollen, just to see what it tasted like.

Behold what happened to Birdling! He did not know that the witch-hazel flowers were full of Fairy Bread! Suddenly he grew smaller and smaller, like a candle on a birthday-cake, till he thought he must go out altogether—but just before it was time to go out he stopped shrinking and saw to his great relief that he was still a good inch taller than the bumble-bee.

He sat down with surprise, hands on the ground and feet apart, and the short grasses closed above his head. All around him the daisies, who always enjoy a joke, were tittering and looking at him through the grass. Somewhere behind a huge fuzzy mullen-plant was a great noise, like the motor of an aeroplane—it was the bumble-bee, coming to see what was going on.

“What’s happened?” he boomed in his rolling bass voice.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” replied the boy, picking himself up. “I never felt so small in my life, not even when I tore my Sunday shirt and my great-aunt scolded me before everybody! Why, I’m no bigger than a sea-horse!”

The daisies were still laughing and now they could no longer contain themselves.

“He ate fairy-bread,” they giggled, “and he grew as little as a balloon when the air goes out, ho, ho, ho, ho! Tee, tee, tee, tee!”

“Ate fairy-bread!” exclaimed Birdling, “do you mean to say I am a fairy now?”

The Bumble-bee put his head on one side and deliberated.

“No,” he said slowly, “You’re not a fairy. You’re only fairyish. What’s your name?”

“I haven’t any. But people call me Birdling.”

“Well, that’s not so bad. What can you do?”

“Nothing. Oh, yes—I can whistle!”

“Where will you live? You are too small to live with your great-aunt. She would surely step on you.”

Birdling looked around; there was a groundsparrow’s nest under the witch-hazel bushes, very near the fairy-bread flowers.

“Here,” he said, “If nobody minds, I’ll live here.”

So that is where he lived all summer. Everybody on the hill grew fond of him, and in the mornings when the robin sang to the sun, Birdling too would be up and whistling.

But one day the Bumble-bee came to call. His face was serious and his voice unusually rumbly. It was a cool day so Birdling was all wrapped in a mullen leaf.

“It’s Autumn!” said Bumble. “What will you do when Winter comes?”

“I don’t know. What do the birds do?”

“They go to the Fairy Islands.”

“Mayn’t I go?”