The Story of Doctor Dolittle - Hugh Lofting (reading e books TXT) 📗

you to eat them,” he said quietly. “And besides, they’re not dirty. They’ve all had a bath this morning. YOUR coat looks as though it needed brushing—badly. Now listen, and I’ll tell you something: the day may come when the lions get sick. And if you don’t help the other animals now, the lions may find themselves left all alone when THEY are in trouble. That often happens to proud people.”

“The lions are never IN trouble—they only MAKE trouble,” said the Leader, turning up his nose. And he stalked away into the jungle, feeling he had been rather smart and clever.

Then the leopards got proud too and said they wouldn’t help. And then of course the antelopes—although they were too shy and timid to be rude to the Doctor like the lion—THEY pawed the ground, and smiled foolishly, and said they had never been nurses before.

And now the poor Doctor was worried frantic, wondering where he could get help enough to take care of all these thousands of monkeys in bed.

But the Leader of the Lions, when he got back to his den, saw his wife, the Queen Lioness, come running out to meet him with her hair untidy.

“One of the cubs won’t eat,” she said. “I don’t know WHAT to do with him. He hasn’t taken a thing since last night.”

And she began to cry and shake with nervousness— for she was a good mother, even though she was a lioness.

So the Leader went into his den and looked at his children—two very cunning little cubs, lying on the floor. And one of them seemed quite poorly.

Then the lion told his wife, quite proudly, just what he had said to the Doctor. And she got so angry she nearly drove him out of the den. “You never DID have a grain of sense!” she screamed. “All the animals from here to the Indian Ocean are talking about this wonderful man, and how he can cure any kind of sickness, and how kind he is—the only man in the whole world who can talk the language of the animals! And now, NOW—when we have a sick baby on our hands, you must go and offend him! You great booby! Nobody but a fool is ever rude to a GOOD doctor. You—,” and she started pulling her husband’s hair.

“Go back to that white man at once,” she yelled, “and tell him you’re sorry. And take all the other empty-headed lions with you— and those stupid leopards and antelopes. Then do everything the Doctor tells you. Work hard! And perhaps he will be kind enough to come and see the cub later. Now be off!— HURRY, I tell you! You’re not fit to be a father!”

And she went into the den next door, where another mother-lion lived, and told her all about it.

So the Leader of the Lions went back to the Doctor and said, “I happened to be passing this way and thought I’d look in. Got any help yet?”

“No,” said the Doctor. “I haven’t. And I’m dreadfully worried.”

“Help’s pretty hard to get these days,” said the lion. “Animals don’t seem to want to work any more. You can’t blame them—in a way. …Well, seeing you’re in difficulties, I don’t mind doing what I can—just to oblige you— so long as I don’t have to wash the creatures. And I have told all the other hunting animals to come and do their share. The leopards should be here any minute now…. Oh, and by the way, we’ve got a sick cub at home. I don’t think there’s much the matter with him myself. But the wife is anxious. If you are around that way this evening, you might take a look at him, will you?”

Then the Doctor was very happy; for all the lions and the leopards and the antelopes and the giraffes and the zebras—all the animals of the forests and the mountains and the plains —came to help him in his work. There were so many of them that he had to send some away, and only kept the cleverest.

And now very soon the monkeys began to get better. At the end of a week the big house full of beds was half empty. And at the end of the second week the last monkey had got well.

Then the Doctor’s work was done; and he was so tired he went to bed and slept for three days without even turning over.

THE NINTH CHAPTER

THE MONKEYS’ COUNCIL

CHEE-CHEE stood outside the Doctor’s door, keeping everybody away till he woke up. Then John Dolittle told the monkeys that he must now go back to Puddleby.

They were very surprised at this; for they had thought that he was going to stay with them forever. And that night all the monkeys got together in the jungle to talk it over.

And the Chief Chimpanzee rose up and said,

“Why is it the good man is going away? Is he not happy here with us?”

But none of them could answer him.

Then the Grand Gorilla got up and said,

“I think we all should go to him and ask him to stay. Perhaps if we make him a new house and a bigger bed, and promise him plenty of monkey-servants to work for him and to make life pleasant for him—perhaps then he will not wish to go.”

 

Then Chee-Chee got up; and all the others whispered, “Sh! Look! Chee-Chee, the great Traveler, is about to speak!”

And Chee-Chee said to the other monkeys,

“My friends, I am afraid it is useless to ask the Doctor to stay. He owes money in Puddleby; and he says he must go back and pay it.”

And the monkeys asked him, “What is MONEY?”

 

Then Chee-Chee told them that in the Land of the White Men you could get nothing without money; you could DO nothing without money—that it was almost impossible to LIVE without money.

And some of them asked, “But can you not even eat and drink without paying?”

But Chee-Chee shook his head. And then he told them that even he, when he was with the organ-grinder, had been made to ask the children for money.

And the Chief Chimpanzee turned to the Oldest Orangoutang and said, “Cousin, surely these Men be strange creatures! Who would wish to live in such a land? My gracious, how paltry!”

Then Chee-Chee said,

“When we were coming to you we had no boat to cross the sea in and no money to buy food to eat on our journey. So a man lent us some biscuits; and we said we would pay him when we came back. And we borrowed a boat from a sailor; but it was broken on the rocks when we reached the shores of Africa. Now the Doctor says he must go back and get the sailor another boat—because the man was poor and his ship was all he had.”

And the monkeys were all silent for a while, sitting quite still upon the ground and thinking hard.

At last the Biggest Baboon got up and said,

“I do not think we ought to let this good man leave our land till we have given him a fine present to take with him, so that he may know we are grateful for all that he has done for us.”

And a little, tiny red monkey who was sitting up in a tree shouted down,

“I think that too!”

And then they all cried out, making a great noise, “Yes, yes. Let us give him the finest present a White Man ever had!”

Now they began to wonder and ask one another what would be the best thing to give him. And one said, “Fifty bags of cocoanuts!” And another—“A hundred bunches of bananas!— At least he shall not have to buy his fruit in the Land Where You Pay to Eat!”

But Chee-Chee told them that all these things would be too heavy to carry so far and would go bad before half was eaten.

“If you want to please him,” he said, “give him an animal. You may be sure he will be kind to it. Give him some rare animal they have not got in the menageries.”

And the monkeys asked him, “What are MENAGERIES?”

Then Chee-Chee explained to them that menageries were places in the Land of the White Men, where animals were put in cages for people to come and look at. And the monkeys were very shocked and said to one another,

“These Men are like thoughtless young ones—stupid and easily amused. Sh! It is a prison he means.”

So then they asked Chee-Chee what rare animal it could be that they should give the Doctor—one the White Men had not seen before. And the Major of the Marmosettes asked,

“Have they an iguana over there?”

But Chee-Chee said, “Yes, there is one in the London Zoo.”

And another asked, “Have they an okapi?”

But Chee-Chee said, “Yes. In Belgium, where my organ-grinder took me five years ago, they had an okapi in a big city they call Antwerp.”

And another asked, “Have they a pushmi-pullyu?”

Then Chee-Chee said, “No. No White Man has ever seen a pushmi-pullyu. Let us give him that.”

THE TENTH CHAPTER THE RAREST ANIMAL OF ALL

PUSHMI-PULLYUS are now extinct. That means, there aren’t any more. But long ago, when Doctor Dolittle was alive, there were some of them still left in the deepest jungles of Africa; and even then they were very, very scarce. They had no tail, *but a head at each end, and sharp horns on each head. They were very shy and terribly hard to catch. The black men get most of their animals by sneaking up behind them while they are not looking. But you could not do this with the pushmi-pullyu—because, no matter which way you came towards him, he was always facing you. And besides, only one half of him slept at a time. The other head was always awake—and watching. This was why they were never caught and never seen in Zoos. Though many of the greatest huntsmen and the cleverest menagerie-keepers spent years of their lives searching through the jungles in all weathers for pushmi-pullyus, not a single one had ever been caught. Even then, years ago, he was the only animal in the world with two heads.

Well, the monkeys set out hunting for this animal through the forest. And after they had gone a good many miles, one of them found peculiar footprints near the edge of a river; and they knew that a pushmi-pullyu must be very near that spot.

Then they went along the bank of the river a little way and they saw a place where the grass was high and thick; and they guessed that he was in there.

So they all joined hands and made a great circle round the high grass. The pushmi-pullyu heard them coming; and he tried hard to break through the ring of monkeys. But he couldn’t do it. When he saw that it was no use trying to escape, he sat down and waited to see what they wanted.

They asked him if he would go with Doctor Dolittle and be put on show in the Land of the White Men.

But he shook both his heads hard and said, “Certainly not!”

They explained to him that he would not be shut up in a menagerie but would just be looked at. They told him that the Doctor was a very kind man but hadn’t any money; and people would pay to see a two-headed animal and the Doctor would get rich and could pay for the boat he had borrowed to come to Africa in.

But he answered, “No. You know how shy I am—I hate being stared