Gobbolino the Witch's Cat

She threw up her hands in horror at the sight of Gobbolino.

“Your Royal Highness! Your Royal Highness! However did that dirty little cat get on your bed?” she exclaimed. “I thought I shut all the doors! I thought I shut all the windows! And he can’t possibly have come down the chimney!”

“He did come down the chimney!” said the little princess. “He is Gobbolino, and he is going to stay with me and be my cat for ever and ever.”

“We’ll see what your doctor says about that!” said the nurse tartly, whisking away the pink satin cover which was all covered with Gobbolino’s paw-marks. “He is just on his way to see you now. I can hear him coming up the stairs.”

The princess’s doctor was round and rosy. He came into the room smiling like the sun, and in less than no time the little princess had persuaded him to allow Gobbolino to stay for ever and ever.

“I feel better already, with him beside me!” she told him. “But if you send him away I shall certainly be worse.”

“What about all those pretty toys, those dolls and games and picture books I ordered for you instead of medicine?” said the doctor. “Those didn’t make you better.”

“They weren’t alive,” said the little princess. “I was just as lonely all the time they were there as before they came!”

So Gobbolino stayed in the little princess’s room day in and day out, and which of them was the happier it would be difficult to say.

“Oh, my goodness!” Gobbolino said to himself sometimes, as he sat in the window looking down on the busy street below. “Here am I, born in a witch’s cave, shunned and despised by everyone, about to live for ever and ever in a royal palace! What would my mother say? And my sister Sootica? Oh, my goodness! Whoever would have believed it?”

He did all in his power to amuse the little princess and keep her happy, for she had lain ill so many weary years that she had almost forgotten how to feel well again, but now, as Gobbolino talked to her, told her stories, and went through his tricks for her, the colour began to creep back into her pale cheeks once more.

When he told her of the adventure of the little brothers in the Lord Mayor’s coach:

“One day I shall ride in a coach again!” she cried.

When he told her of his friends, the crew of the Mary Maud:

“One day I too shall go to sea!” she said.

Gobbolino would sit long hours on the windowsill telling her about what went on in the street below.

Sometimes musicians came round the corner, and when Gobbolino had described how well they played and how the crowds gathered to hear them, the little princess had them brought up to her nursery, where they played her the sweetest airs they knew.

Another day a performing bear came down the street, so clumsy and droll, and playing such merry pranks that Gobbolino nearly fell off the windowsill with laughter, and the little princess would not rest until the bear too, and its master, were brought up the stairs to her room, though her parents, the nurse, the servants, and even the doctor, did all in their power to prevent it.

Sometimes it was a flower-seller, with a basket of yellow, pink, heliotrope, blue, all the colours of the rainbow, who was brought to the little princess’s bedside, and sometimes an acrobat who stood on his hands and walked about the room, or a juggler that tossed a dozen balls in the air at once, and balanced dishes on his nose.

The days were never dull for the little princess now. The roses bloomed in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.

Her doctor, her nurse, and her parents were delighted with her.

“Soon she will be running about again, and then she will be able to go to boarding-school like the other princesses,” they said.

“Can I take Gobbolino with me when I go to school?” the little princess asked.

“Oh, no, of course not!” said her parents, her nurse, and her doctor, looking quite shocked. “You will have so much to do there you will have no time to play with your cat!”

“Then I don’t want to get better and go to school!” sobbed the little princess when she and Gobbolino were left together again. “I want to stay here in my nursery with you, and have fun together! I shan’t get well after all!”

So the little princess refused her meals and lay on her back looking up at the ceiling.

She no longer asked for the singers, the performing animals, the acrobats and the jugglers to be brought up to her room as before. She wanted everyone to think she was very ill, or they would send her to school immediately.

But when her parents, the doctor, and the nurse were out of the room, the little princess sat up on her satin pillows and asked:

“What can you see in the street, Gobbolino?” and Gobbolino would reply:

“I can see a procession, Your Highness!” or “I can see a farmer going to market!” or “A circus!” or “A fair!” and the little princess would cry:

“Tell me all about it!”

But one day Gobbolino cried out all by himself:

“Oh! Oh! Oh! I can see a Punch and Judy show coming round the corner!”